Buddies

Lately I have been referring to Abigail as "buddy," trying to remind myself that she is a friend as well as a (cute) responsibility. I find that when I do this it is easier for me to be cheerful, since it somehow brainwashes me into believing that I am hanging out with a friend instead of changing a diaper. Weird, but it works.

Today when we were coming out of the store, Abigail threw her arms around my neck and said "Hug! Tiss! Buddies!" It was really adorable. I also felt very loved when I came home this morning--I gave my 9 am class a workday to meet with their clients (they're doing a service learning project right now where they're writing documents for businesses in the community), so I came home after my 7:30 am class. Abigail was not expecting to see me so early, but she heard the garage door open, and I was almost knocked over by a little yellow blur yelling "Mommy! Mommy! Mine Mommy!" as she wrapped her arms around my knees.

I know I say this all the time, but I can't believe how fast she's "growing up." She is so eager to help me with everything that I spend a lot of my day inventing small tasks for her to do so that she is actively contributing. For instance, this morning while I stripped the tape down from the nursery (the painting tape) I showed her how to mash it up into a ball; when I fold laundry I give her things like one pair of socks to go put away in her drawer (one at a time!); when we make macaroni and cheese for lunch I hold the pot down by the floor so that she can stir all the goop in. One of the most frequent things I hear from her is "Help! Help Mommy! Ab-ee-dal help!"

I also have to write about her obsession with peas, because it's quite funny. When I was a little kid, I loved frozen peas and applesauce, and apparently it's genetic. Abigail can get through several pounds of frozen peas in a week, largely because she insists on them for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner. I hope that peas are not bad for one's digestion, because she sure loves them. It is definitely nice, however, to have a food that we can give her when she is still hungry but has eaten all the main dish--peas are always welcome. And they are non-messy, so I don't mind giving her a little bowl of frozen peas to take in the car, if we have to go somewhere right when she wakes up from a nap and needs a snack. Ah, the merits of peas...

And one more funny thing--I went in to check on her last night about an hour and a half after I put her to bed, and she had passed an important milestone: the ability to completely divest herself of her sleeper. In the past she's unzipped it the entire way and then fallen asleep, or gotten one or both arms out. Instead of being asleep, the little minx popped up and said "Hi, Mommy!" and started laughing. She thought it was hilarious. Crazy kid. She has just learned in the past few weeks how to take off and put on her own clothes, and she is very proud of herself.

today

major accomplishments today:

• taught two classes
• took Abigail to a gymnastics studio for a playgroup and watched enviously as she jumped repeatedly into a five-foot deep twenty-foot-square hole filled with big foam blocks
• put a second coat of primer on the nursery
• finalized all grades for massive student projects (11 components that had to be mashed into one grade) and emailed all students individual grading breakdowns
• de-grassed half of the side flowerbeds (the grass grows there more thickly than the lawn. sad!)
• put a first coat of cucumber green on the nursery (this could be interesting...but i think i like it)
• will now be going to bed

I have to write these posts so i remember what i do all day. and that sometimes i do, in fact, accomplish something other than just feeding people and cleaning up the food.

and my fun thing for the day--mary beth called! yay!

Productivity

This morning I...

• worked out at the gym for an hour
• made blueberry muffins for breakfast
• changed and washed all the sheets
• washed more laundry
• took Neil to the doctor (2 hours)
• picked up Neil's prescriptions
• stripped all the ugly wallpaper borders in the nursery (and washed off the leftover glue)
• yanked down the ugly molding in the 2nd bathroom
• spackled all the holes in the nursery and 2nd bathroom
• fed everyone lunch and cleaned up
• prepped my lectures for tomorrow
• remembered to take the trash to the curb, renew library books, respond to emails, etc.

It is funny how my to-do list has changed over the past five years, but I feel quite productive for a full-time mommy, considering the fact that it's only 1:30.

Oh, I also taught Abigail a new word..."Belgium." Pretty cool.

update

Neil is alive! Yay! Seriously though, he's doing much better. He slept for nine hours last night (the longest he'd been able to sleep previously was 4 hours). He went to class on Friday and has been able to do a little homework over the weekend and make a dent in the whole catching up process.

Hopefully he will be able to go to all his classes next week and finish catching up by the end of the week. It's a little stressful, since he is technically still supposed to be in bed and not doing anything other than drinking liquids and sleeping, but unfortunately he doesn't have the time in the semester to really take it easy. I am just hoping that his professor allows him to take another week off before he goes back to work, since he is still so weak that he can really only do one thing a day (like go to the doctor or go to an hour of class) and then he has to come home and sleep. It's pretty crazy to see how thoroughly this pneumonia has knocked him out.

We have been really blessed this week--four of my friends either called to say they were bringing dinner over or spontaneously showed up at our door, food in hand. I usually turn down offers like that, since I feel bad for adding to someone else's list of things to do, but it was so wonderful to have them reach out like that, since I was absolutely exhausted from just taking care of Abigail and Neil, especially when Neil needed eight to ten "mini-meals" every day. Not having to make (and clean up!) dinner allowed me that extra hour I really needed to keep everything else running (folding laundry, cleaning bathrooms, reading to Abigail, preparing my lectures), so it was a really huge enormous blessing. The thing that really impressed me was that the majority of the people who called to check up on us this week had no idea that anything was wrong, and simply said "Hey, I just felt like I should call--what can I do for you guys?" Our RS lesson today talked a lot about being in tune with the Spirit so that we can be receptive to those types of promptings, and I was so grateful to have so many friends who were living their lives in a way that they could know to reach out to me when I needed it.

Abigail continues to be an absolute sweetheart. It never ceases to amaze me how much she picks up--for instance, I was sitting at a stoplight a few days ago running over everything I needed to do when I got home, and Abigail said "Green! Go, Mommy, go! Green!" Funny girl. She is fascinated by birds these days, and nearly knocked the two of us over when we were biking on Friday when she began vigorously flapping her arms in imitation of the hawks overhead. She has also had a sudden explosion of what Neil and I have begun calling the "princess gene," and loves wearing dresses, hairclips, necklaces, and bracelets, an outfit which she likes to round off with a pair of my high-heeled sandals. Speaking of princesses, she somehow learned to identify those of the Disney variety--I was reading an article on MSNBC a few days ago that had an advertisement for the Little Mermaid DVD scrolling up the side of the screen, and Abigail came running in and said "pincess! pincess peez!" I finally figured out that she wanted to watch Ariel singing, and gave in with a few minutes of YouTube.

Speaking of which, YouTube is entirely too addictive. My weakness for it reminds me of the part in one of the Anne of Green Gables books where Mrs. Rachel Lynde tells Diana Barry that she (Mrs. Lynde) amused ten children without the aid of Eaton's catalogue, which Diana allows her children to look at frequently. Anyway, the Sesame Street clips on YouTube are my way of getting Abigail to sit still while I clip her nails, or a way of stealing a precious few minutes in which to take a shower, clean the bathroom, etc. etc. You'd be amazed at how much you can get done in less than four minutes when it's a toddler-free four minutes...

update

Neil is alive! Yay! Seriously though, he's doing much better. He slept for nine hours last night (the longest he'd been able to sleep previously was 4 hours). He went to class on Friday and has been able to do a little homework over the weekend and make a dent in the whole catching up process.

Hopefully he will be able to go to all his classes next week and finish catching up by the end of the week. It's a little stressful, since he is technically still supposed to be in bed and not doing anything other than drinking liquids and sleeping, but unfortunately he doesn't have the time in the semester to really take it easy. I am just hoping that his professor allows him to take another week off before he goes back to work, since he is still so weak that he can really only do one thing a day (like go to the doctor or go to an hour of class) and then he has to come home and sleep. It's pretty crazy to see how thoroughly this pneumonia has knocked him out.

We have been really blessed this week--four of my friends either called to say they were bringing dinner over or spontaneously showed up at our door, food in hand. I usually turn down offers like that, since I feel bad for adding to someone else's list of things to do, but it was so wonderful to have them reach out like that, since I was absolutely exhausted from just taking care of Abigail and Neil, especially when Neil needed eight to ten "mini-meals" every day. Not having to make (and clean up!) dinner allowed me that extra hour I really needed to keep everything else running (folding laundry, cleaning bathrooms, reading to Abigail, preparing my lectures), so it was a really huge enormous blessing. The thing that really impressed me was that the majority of the people who called to check up on us this week had no idea that anything was wrong, and simply said "Hey, I just felt like I should call--what can I do for you guys?" Our RS lesson today talked a lot about being in tune with the Spirit so that we can be receptive to those types of promptings, and I was so grateful to have so many friends who were living their lives in a way that they could know to reach out to me when I needed it.

Abigail continues to be an absolute sweetheart. It never ceases to amaze me how much she picks up--for instance, I was sitting at a stoplight a few days ago running over everything I needed to do when I got home, and Abigail said "Green! Go, Mommy, go! Green!" Funny girl. She is fascinated by birds these days, and nearly knocked the two of us over when we were biking on Friday and she began vigorously flapping her arms in imitation of the hawks overhead. She has also had a sudden explosion of what Neil and I have begun calling the "princess gene," and loves wearing dresses, hairclips, necklaces, and bracelets, an outfit which she likes to round off with a pair of my high-heeled sandals. Speaking of princesses, she somehow learned to identify those of the Disney variety--I was reading an article on MSNBC a few days ago that had an advertisement for the Little Mermaid DVD scrolling up the side of the screen, and Abigail came running in and said "pincess! pincess peez!" I finally figured out that she wanted to watch Ariel singing, and gave in with a few minutes of YouTube.

Speaking of which, YouTube is entirely too addictive. My weakness for it reminds me of the part in one of the Anne of Green Gables books where Mrs. Rachel Lynde tells Diana Barry that she (Mrs. Lynde) amused ten children without the aid of Eaton's catalogue, which Diana allows her children to look at frequently. Anyway, the Sesame Street clips on YouTube are my way of getting Abigail to sit still while I clip her nails, or a way of stealing a precious few minutes in which to take a shower, clean the bathroom, etc. etc. You'd be amazed at how much you can get done in less than four minutes when it's a toddler-free four minutes...

as of tomorrow, we will have gone to the doctor four days out of five this week. and we're going monday. let's hope it gets better.

Things I am grateful for

1) Washing machines!
2) Multiple sets of sheets
3) X-ray machines
4) Antibiotics
5) Running water
6) Amazing visiting teachers who say "I just felt like I should call you--is everything okay?"
7) Thermometers
8) Tylenol and ibuprofen
9) Free DVDs from the library
10) Grapes and orange juice

!!!

So...Neil has pneumonia, and the doctor told him no work or school for a week. She said he probably got it because he is overworked and too stressed, and that part of his recovery process isn't just sleeping, but taking a break from all the stress factors.

It will be interesting to see how this goes over with his professors. I think we will just tell them about the pneumonia part, not the stress factors part.

The really exciting thing will be seeing how generous they are in terms of letting him take exams when he is actually out of danger of hospitalization...

Sick day

Neil woke up this morning with a fever of 103.5, so it's been interesting around here today. I am pretty worried about him, since it's hard to give yourself adequate time to recover when you've got projects and midterms the entire next week. Hopefully he will wake up tomorrow feeling much better.

I'm pretty exhausted from today, so I don't have much more to say. It really makes me appreciate all the contributions Neil makes when he's well--it's much harder to prepare, serve, and clean up after three meals all by myself when Abigail is confused about why Daddy isn't playing with her and hence demanding full and unwavering attention from Mommy. At least it was Sunday today and I could just focus on keeping everyone fed and rested, as opposed to shuttling everyone back and forth from all our activities (Abigail and I just went to church for sacrament meeting, since I didn't want to spread any possible fevers throughout the nursery).

Neil's parents called tonight from Mongolia, so it was fun to talk to them and hear how they are doing. They have about another eight months on their mission, and they are having some really neat experiences--last week they went to watch a camel polo game. How cool is that!?

Nightmares

When I was little, I used to have all these terrible recurring nightmares, mostly about the Gulf War or about my family burning up in our house or about a crocodile eating Mary Beth during our swimming lessons. Trust me, they were not fun.

Then for awhile (when I was pregnant with Abigail) I would dream that Neil decided that parenthood was too much responsibility, so he would leave me and the week-old baby for a life as a ski bum or something like that. Distressing, but not as terrifying as the burning family dreams (which made me completely obsessive about checking our house for smoke every fifteen minutes and making sure all the vents were uncovered. And I mean obsessive. Ask my family!)

Anyway, last night I had one of the most horrifying nightmares I've ever had, although in retrospect it was quite funny.

I dreamed that Neil brought him a really adorable cute cuddly kitten, and we were all excited to see it and play with it. All was going well until the day after the kitten came home, when we realized it had somehow managed to devour Abigail's blankie in its entirety, a fact only made obvious to us when we noticed the fleecy green shards dangling from its vampire-like incisors. Horrors! Mass panic ensued, and Neil and I faced the dark prospect of long years in which our child would become a gaunt zombie incapable of sleeping without her beloved blankie. I'm not sure what happened to the kitten, but I think it was not good.

You'd think I'd have nightmares about things like losing jobs or children or something, but no, apparently the blankie is of paramount importance around here.

I love this man...

Every so often I find a tired and homeworked-out Neil in the kitchen with the junk mail. He really dislikes all of the credit card-type offers we get (one day a month ago we had 11), and sometimes he likes to send back their postage-paid envelopes with a few choice gifts of his own.

Just now, I walked into the kitchen to find Neil mailing the following back to Capital One:

• four paint-color chips/swatches
• one Chiquita banana sticker
• one "I've been Krogering" sticker
• two pieces of shredded coconut
• one twisty tie
• two "Terms and Conditions" letters from other credit-card companies

It's a girl!

In August, we will outnumber Neil three to one. Sweet!

But yes, we had an ultrasound today, and it looks like a girl!

Cool things

It was 77 degrees today, so we went out two walks and generally spent every possible moment outside. Abigail is now addicted to sidewalk chalk, with which she liberally decorated herself while Neil cut strips of sod (from the grass overgrowing the sidewalk--about 4 inches wide--he then used it to fill in the holes where some brilliant person decided to drive a truck across our lawn. At least that's what we're guessing).

Last night Neil had some of his ME lab colleagues over to play computer games--I think it was really nice for him to have a bit of a break. His professor was pretty happy with the big final report he wrote over the weekend, so after Neil finishes revising that, I think he will be pretty relieved (and able to focus on his midterms next week. Sigh. It never ends). Neil's friend/co-worker Phil also came over for dinner, so it was nice to see him, since we've been meaning to have him over since we moved in and just haven't planned it!

Abigail's big event today was buying a potty chair--she's been showing increased interest in that type of thing, so we figured we'd get one so she can get used to the idea. It would be nice to potty-train her before the baby comes, but I admit it (potty-training, not the baby) isn't something I'm really thrilled about, but I guess the end result justifies it all.

One funny thing today--Abigail was lying on her tummy in the bathtub tonight trying to "swim" along the tub, but her little bottom kept floating up and unbalancing her. It was pretty funny to watch!

Two-day spring

We had a brief spring preview this weekend, and we thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. On Saturday we took a picnic lunch to the playground (Abigail lives for slides these days, especially the twenty-foot curly slide), and then went for a long walk after Abigail's nap. It was so nice to be out in the sun together (even if we were wearing coats and gloves!) But today it seems like we're back into the gloomy gray skies...sigh. We are ready for nicer weather.

I just went into Abigail's room to see why she wasn't napping, and she had managed to levitate her doll stroller into her crib. Crazy kid! I have no idea how she hoisted it up...she's now making "choo-choo" noises, so we'll see how long it takes her to fall asleep.

One really nice thing that's been happening recently is that Abigail's words are becoming much more comphrensible, leading to less frustration for all concerned. She's much more cheerful these days, and I think it's due in large part to the fact that we can all communicate pretty easily now--most of the "battle times" like grocery store, breakfast, etc. have become nonevents, which is soooo nice--it's really a blessing for her to be able to tell us what she wants to eat (although her first choice is always "cookie!" so we're still negotiating on that one). Speaking of cookies, Abigail is getting quite good at not only telling us what she wants to eat, but working to get everything out to make it--instead of just asking for "pop-pop," she'll get out the popcorn popper and the popcorn, drag in her "popcorn-watching chair," etc. She also got out the muffin tins a few days ago and brought them over to me, saying "pup-cook peez?" (which was unexpected, since we've only made cupcakes once in the last six months). And as you can see from the pictures, dressing up, especially in Mommy's shoes, has become quite the hit around here...

In other news, congratulations to Elise!!! She and her partner took first place in duo this weekend--yay!!!

Abigail birthday ideas

Yes, I know it's six weeks away, but I like to plan. Anyway, I spent some time surfing the internet this afternoon looking for Abigail birthday ideas, and I want some ideas here! (btw, I have my blog set up so that anyone can comment--you don't have to be a registered user--and it emails your comments directly to my email account. so please, all of you who are reading this, feel free to comment as the mood strikes you!)

Anyway, here are some things I've been thinking about, but I don't really know. So if you have any ideas, please let me know, because we didn't celebrate her birthday last year but now she definitely knows what it is, thanks to watching "Blue's Birthday Celebration" repeatedly while Neil and I finished painting the kitchen.

So here are my ideas:

• dress-up clothes (the kid loves putting on about eight shirts, including one on her head, so I might as well feed the frenzy)
• toy cars or trains or something--she has two Hot Wheels cars that we found in one of the cabinets when we moved in, and she really seems to like them
• some kind of outside thing? sprinkler or kiddie pool?
• books, books, books

That's really all I could think of. She's starting to really use her imagination, so I'd like to foster that with things that encourage her to make-believe. I also thought about Legos, but we have a big 5-gallon bucket full of small ones already, so I think I may wait until she's old enough and just let her play with those.

So...any ideas?

Otherwise, it's been a great day. I went for an impromtu eye checkup this morning (we stopped in to make an appointment and were told that I could be seen right away), and I must say, I was really impressed. We just went to the local Wal-mart vision center, since that's what most people recommended to me, and they were great. They had a glassed-in waiting area just off of the exam room, and they put on Toy Story for Abigail and locked the door of the waiting room so no one could get in, then left the exam room door cracked. So she could watch Toy Story and play with the sketchy doodle toy things, and she would come in to the exam room periodically to be reassured that I was still there.

I was impressed with the optometrist too--he's in our ward, and he was very thorough and quick, the latter of which I really appreciated, because I've gone to some optometrists who take about an hour and my eyes start to hurt. And all the opticians were really nice--they were all guys, which was nice because women usually tend to try to lure Abigail over to them or touch her hair, which makes her burst into tears. The guys just say something like "cute kid--what's her name? Hi, Abigail," and leave it at that.

When we got home, we went outside and drew on the driveway with sidewalk chalk (which Abigail had been clutching during the entire eye exam) and then went for a walk around one of the loops in our neighborhood. It took us about 40 minutes to walk four tenths of a mile, but it was fun. Abigail was fascinated by the water from the melting snow, so we spent five minutes or so crouched in front of every drain watching the water ("bye-bye, wadoh!"). It's a beautiful day today--sunny and sixty degrees.

Last but not least, here are some cute Abigail-isms: she now refers to her "pretties" (hairclips) as "pwincess." Not sure why. She also will point to us and say "Daddy tummy. Ab-i-dal tummy. Mommy tummy baby tummy!" I'm not quite sure where she picked that up, but she likes to lift my shirt periodically and check to see if the baby hiding underneath is visible yet. She's also discovered the joy of sneaking up on people--yesterday I was sitting on my heels to unlace my shoes, and she crept up behind me, lifted up my shirt, and blew bubbles on my back--I was not expecting a wet little mouth, so I yelped, lost my balance, and fell over, and she thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. She kept trying to re-enact it the entire day. And finally, she now loves giving hugs as well as kisses, and will throw her arms with complete abandon around our necks. It's pretty much the cutest thing ever. We've also been working on expanding her "politeness vocabulary" now that she's got "peez" down well, so the next one up was "excuse me." She grasped it rapidly and very enthusiastically, to the point when she will now pretend to burp and then say "scooz yoo!" (Apparently we need to back off on our praise a bit...)

Oh! One more. About a month ago, I was singing that weird "na na na na, na na na, etc. hey hey hey, good-bye" song, and I heard a little voice say "na na hey hey bye bye!" and now we hear her sing it constantly! She has no idea of the tune, but she sings herself to sleep with it and sings it to her dollies when she wakes up, or when she's coloring, or pretty much any time she wants to make us laugh. Funny kid.

The Square

Like the words across the picture? Yeah, me too.

Anyway, when we were married, Neil introduced me to the pleasures of "the square," aka the square of sunlight that falls across the floor in the late afternoon. I have seen him lie down on the floor to take a nap, waking up periodically to move with the sun. Funny boy.

The point is, the square is at its best in spring and summer...and it's back! Hurrah for sunlight. Abigail and I walked over to Andrea's this morning and played on their swingset for awhile (Abigail was much happier when Elise and Andrea came out to join us--Mommy does not yell "dance" and do cool dances like Elise, so apparently Mommy is not nearly as interesting a playmate!)

In other news, yesterday I briefly conquered all the grading and enjoyed several hours of respite--long enough to read a quite boring historical fiction novel about Cicero that nonetheless occupied me until far past my bedtime. Then today another pile of papers were turned in--bah. But one nice thing--I decided to have two groups rewrite their papers, and overheard one person in one group complaining, and another say "Be quiet--do you have any idea what's going on? She's being really nice to us--the university takes this [accidental plagiarism] seriously and we could have bene in real trouble." So that was nice to hear, since I completely agonized over slashing their grade so severely and forcing them to rewrite. Then another person from the second group emailed me and thanked me for letting them rewrite instead of just failing them all, so it was really really nice to see that at least two of them realized what was going on instead of simply hating me for making them rewrite their paper over spring break.

Aah, the joys of teaching.

Grading woes

Grading has never made me as miserable as it is doing this semester. Typically, it takes me about half an hour to grade a research paper. I just spent two hours on one, and wanted to cry when I finished. I felt like a failure as a teacher because somehow my students had managed to produce this MESS. And in all honesty, I wasn't expecting much from this particular student, but my expectations were apparently about four letter grades too high, and my expectations also included things like, oh, not plagiarizing. Argh. So I spent two hours on the thing, and for the first time in two years, I'm refusing to assign a grade until the paper's entirely rewritten.

I've certainly had classes before which were excellent as a whole and others which were not so excellent, but it is always frustrating to sit down to grade papers and feel that my lectures never made it past their eyeballs. This particular batch has been so frustrating that I have been literally unable to grade more than one per night, and I usually try to knock out a whole class in a day or two. So the process has become even more miserable and awful, and I am looking forward avidly to the end of the semester.

Oh well...at least my other class is working hard. But this is probably the most wretched I have felt in some time, as the reason why I wanted to become a teacher in the first place was because I absolutely love and thrive on the feeling that I am actively helping people to improve and grow as a direct result of their interaction with me, and I love, love, LOVE having a student tell me they've finally broken through their block about writing, or they feel like they "get it," or their other professors are commenting on the quality and clarity of their writing, or something like that. Not so much with this class...sigh. :-(

And the worst part is that it's 10:30, so I can't even drown my sorrows in a few hours of reading before I go to bed.

Part of a complete breakfast

A week or so ago, Neil and I had a conversation about concessions that we make to Abigail in order to get her to do something with a minimum of screaming. I confessed that I had let her eat her lunch carrots off her play plates that day, and asked him what he let her get away with. After some reflection, he loftily informed me that he didn't. We then moved on to a discussion about getting her to eat breakfast (something which has been frustrating for him), and I suggested that he try making her a hot breakfast, since I have found that she eats pancakes or scrambled eggs better than cold cereal and fruit.

Today when he dropped Abigail off with me at school, I asked him how she'd eaten this morning.

He replied, "Oh, she had a great breakfast. She ate a bowl of macaroni and cheese, and then I gave her a cookie for finishing all her macaroni and cheese."

Right, honey. No concessions to the macaroni/cheese/cookie monster. :-)

Kitchen pictures

So...here these are, a week after I was asked for them. None of them turned out very well, since we took them all quite late at night and it's pretty shadowy, which means you can't see the colors, which colors are the whole point of the pictures, but these should at least give you an idea. And I think our camera has some sort of water droplets or something on the lens, because it looks like many of the photos are splotchy...hmm. I included the one with Abigail waiting for the popcorn because I think it's the best view of the actual end color after it had finished drying.

Tonight for Family Home Evening we had a lesson about Noah and the ark. We looked at some pictures from the Gospel Art Kit and talked about the boat and the animals and being obedient; then we gathered up all Abigail's animals and put them into a "boat," naming each one and making the appropriate noise as we did so. Apparently, our ark was overrun by puppies and tigers.

Our unexpected treat today was a package that arrived from Uncle Kevin and Aunt Pam. In addition to a gift card for me and a CD for the family (which Abigail immediately insisted we all dance to), they included two books for Abigail, which we read a total of six times in the hour between their arrival and her bedtime. Needless to say, the package was a much-appreciated hit with all of us, especially the one who had to be pryed away from her books at bedtime! Thank you both! I am looking forward to some shopping now :-)(especially since all my maternity clothes are for cold winter months!)

Election musings

Abigail took a long nap today, so I decided to do some reading about the presidential candidates, because I really felt like I didn't know much about many of them and their voting records and policies, etc.

It's interesting to see how polarized everyone seems to be right now--the idea of a Mormon, a woman, and a black as candidates seems to have absolutely inflamed a lot of people. It's kind of sad to see how many of the comments on internet articles about the candidates ended up being a vitriolic condemnation of the person's background, rather than the person themselves. It was interesting to see how the discussion around Mitt Romney ended up in a debate on the validity of Mormonism, rather than noting that his religion means he lives a clean life with high moral standards and leaving at that. It was frustrating to see how many people still regard the LDS religion as restrictively patriarchal where women are objects, although I loved the comments after that about the Relief Society and all of the opportunities and encouragement the church gives women (and one guy who said that he was LDS and his wife certainly runs him, not the other way around. I think most women probably do, inside the church and out!)

As a sidenote, I won't say that I haven't come across my fair share of people who believe that those types of things are really all women should be doing, but I think it's more a cultural problem than a religious one, and certainly isn't limited to any religion. I took a seminar as part of my master's program tracing viewpoints and treatment of women throughout history, and I think it's absolutely amazing how vilified women were for centuries, but I think by and large as people become more educated, that disappears. So I think it's a function more of education or lack thereof than religion, especially since Catholicism seems to bear much more historical responsibility for that particular perspective on women. There you go, Mary Beth--I've been thinking about your paper over the last day or so and that's what came out (and I have some really good historical reading references if you want them. In particular, Woman Defamed, Women Defended traces the treatment of women for about fifteen centuries and is jam-packed with contemporary passages from the authors of those periods).

On that note, one of the things I like most about Hillary Clinton is the power she has to change the position of women all over the world--simply having a woman as President, or as a presidential nominee, I think, would do so much for so many women who are told that they are worthless and unintelligent. Clinton gave a speech in Beijing in 1995 that I used to make my freshman students read called "Women's Rights Are Human Rights," which I absolutely love. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it: http://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hillaryclintonbeijingspeech.htm

On another sidenote, all this reflection makes me realize how blessed I've been in the people surrounding me. Today someone commented "Wow, five girls. How did your dad feel about that?" and I responded "He loved it, and we loved it," but it really made me think about how grateful I am to have parents who rejoiced in the fact that they had daughters and constantly told us we were talented and intelligent and beautiful, and never told us that we couldn't do something because it was for boys. I was the only girl on my soccer team for years, and my parents and coaches were all really supportive, and my dad taught us to rock climb and took us camping and bought us baseball gloves and all those cool things. I remember once when my mom was pregnant with Rosalind or Elise when somebody said "I bet you really want a boy after all those girls" and I really worried about it until she told me later she wanted to smack him for saying that.

So I feel very blessed to have always felt loved and supported and encouraged to do everything I was capable of doing. I feel especially blessed to be married to a man who bent and bends over backwards to make sure that I am happy and that I feel like I am fulfilling my potential--it was not easy for him spending his hectic senior year trading off Abigail with me so that I could teach, or watching her so that I could work on my thesis, or spending our meagre funds on sending me to conferences--and now he works through half of the night (I'm not kidding--he'll run programs all night and check on them at 2 am and 6 am) to finish his own work so that he has time to watch Abigail while I teach. I'm especially grateful for all these since when we got married I was 19 and he could have easily said, "You know, let's start a family, why don't you drop out of school, etc." but instead he's spent the last four years encouraging me through my bachelor's and master's and regularly asks me if I'm happy and if there are things I would like to be doing or learning about that I'm not and how he can make those things happen. What a great guy. There's my ode to him for the day (not that he reads my blog. Slacker!).

So anyway...it will be interesting to see who ends up getting the nominations.

Finally Friday!

This week has been so crazy. I don't know if it's just all the painting or what, but I'm really looking forward to the weekend.

Tonight we're planning to put on another coat of the actual red in the kitchen--hopefully we will be able to end up with a nice even surface that doesn't show all the blotches and paint roller marks. Hopefully.

I was able to schedule an ultrasound today for the last day of spring break (March 16), so we're really looking forward to that. It will be nice to know if we need to start looking for some new gender-appropriate baby clothes. I also finally went to the doctor today and heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time, so that was reassuring.

I can't really think of anything else to post. I've been so busy all week that Neil has really taken over a lot of the things around here, like watching Abigail--fortunately he's been able to get a lot of work done at home and hasn't had much homework, which has been great, since I've really been deluged this week with grading and conferencing and random appointments. It will be nice to spend some time with Abigail and Neil this weekend and just relax a bit.