rememberies

One thing my Grandma Colleen always tells me is to write down my memories and my stories. To be honest, she's a main part of the reason why I started this blog, since I felt like there were so many cute little moments that I was forgetting. I couldn't even remember the funny things Abigail had done that day by dinner in order to tell Neil (for some reason I have to compulsively recite the day to him while he shovels in forkload after forkload and mutters "Uh-huh" while I natter along. I think it's because I want him to feel like he's getting every moment of the day at home, as well as at work, so it's like he's living two lives, so I rattle along saying things like "and then Abigail picked up her fork and put a piece of cantaloupe in her mouth, and chewed it up and swallowed, and then she picked up her fork and put another piece of cantaloupe in her mouth, and chewed that one up too!" No, really, it's not quite that bad, but Neil might tell you it's close.)

Anyway, I was thinking about Neil the other day, which isn't unusual, since I think about him a lot, but I was thinking specifically about how we met, and how it's sad that these are my journal entries while I was dating him:

October 2, 2002:
My head hurts and I'm going to marry Neil. I'm too tired to write anymore.

October 14, 2002:
I really should write in my journal more often. Anyway, Neil proposed tonight and I didn't exactly say yes, but I think I will tomorrow. I love him--I just need to be sure of what the Lord wants.

and then the next entry is dated January 18, 2005, at which point we had been married for three years, I had graduated from BYU, begun my master's program, and was five months pregnant with Abigail. Pretty sad. (and then the entry after that is dated October 9, 2005).

So my plan is this: I'm going to start blogging about things like how we met, our first date, his proposal (in all its I-manipulated-him-into-proposing glory) and things like that that I would like to have a written record of. Stay tuned for the first installment (on a day when my kids don't do anything cute. Which would probably be today, since basically we went to half of church and then came home (I didn't want to infect the entire ward nursery with whatever Abigail has)and had a few power struggles, but this is my blog for today, so no dice).

it could be an interesting week or so. Abigail started running a fever yesterday of about 102; we ended up going camping after all because the pediatrician told me we might as well (we went in yesterday for the second time this week to get both girls checked out) and it was actually a pretty good camping trip, possibly because both girls sleep well under the effects of Tylenol and ibuprofen (also pediatrician-directed), but also somewhat interesting because Abigail woke up quite frequently, insisted on me sleeping next to her and rubbing her head (she made Neil get up and move) while Julesie also needed me. So the upshot of this is that tonight I am "relaxing" with my family rather than going to the Relief Society broadcast and the stake enrichment meeting, since I fear to leave Neil with a feverish Mommy-craving toddler and I don't think Juliet would do too well there anyway, since she is alternately between extended periods of howling and extremely frequent feedings.

So we'll be spending the night rubbing heads, cuddling, watching "nooies" (movies) and downing lots of juice and Jell-O which, come to think of it, isn't a bad way to spend a Saturday evening.

Awhile back, I wrote this post confessing my secret addiction to science fiction and fantasy novels. So here's part two: my sub-genre loves. I was thinking as I was blow-drying my hair this morning about what I would write a book about if I ever wrote a book (inspired by the fact that I was trying to read while I dried my hair--hey, I don't have much free time these days!) and I thought about how I can't necessarily come up with ideas on my own very easily, and then I thought about how Harold Bloom says in The Anxiety of Influence that basically we're all ripping off of Shakespeare and Milton anyway (which I see as problematic because he uses that to demonstrate the way nobody thinks too originally--we all have to imitate and then undermine our "father" texts--but here's my question--what's the original father text? Beowulf? Which I don't like because, hey, I don't really like Beowulf, mostly because I hated translating it and I thought I could have spent my time in better ways, like reading Hamlet for the umpteenth million time). Okay, but anyway, I thought about how I really love reading books that are recreations or retellings of older legends or fables or things like that, and I thought that's probably what I would write. And then I started thinking about my favorites in that genre, and I thought I would share them with my friends here in the blogosphere...but you have to return the favor, because I'm always looking for new things to read.

When I was a kid, my favorite books were these enormous leather-bound copies of Bulfinch's Mythology, The Grimm Fairy Tales, and Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales (and Shakespeare for Children and King Arthur and His Knights, but this post isn't necessarily about those, although I really did love them). Anyway, I used to snuggle up with these books that were so heavy I had difficulty holding them, and read them over and over again. I later amazed various teachers, both in high school and in college, with my vast knowledge of the Greek and Roman pantheon and various fairy tales (which came in quite handy in my required Myths, Legends, and Folklore class at BYU), but again, that's beside the point.

So now whenever I read a story that's a retelling of another story, for some reason I think they're so clever to do that. I'm not really sure why, since all they're doing is fleshing out what somebody else came up with, but I always think it's pretty cool. Kind of like when I'm reading a book and they refer to something contemporary or literary, and I get the reference--it makes me feel like the author and I are in a Cool People Who Understand Allusions club.

My absolute favorite retell-it author is Robin McKinley, who wrote Spindle's End (Sleeping Beauty), Beauty and Rose Daughter (Beauty and the Beast), Outlaws in Sherwood (guess!), and Deerskin (Donkeyskin). I also like Gillian Bradshaw's The Wolf Hunt (Marie de France's Lai de Bisclavret) and her Arthurian trilogy (Hawk of May, Kingdom of Summer, In Winter's Shadow). And surprisingly, Orson Scott Card has a very interesting novel called Enchantment, which is a Sleeping Beauty story set in Russia (and includes Baba Yaga) and Juliet Marillier has a lovely lovely story called Wildwood Dancing (the Twelve Dancing Princesses) which I just read last week and which is one of my new favorites (thanks to MB for recommending it!) What I really like about these particular authors is that they are good writers as well as good storytellers.

Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series (The Fire Rose (Beauty and the Beast), The Gates of Sleep (Sleeping Beauty), The Serpent's Shadow (Snow White), Phoenix and Ashes (Cinderella) The Wizard of London (that one with Gerta and Hans where Hans gets ice in his heart and the Snow Queen takes him and Gerta goes and rescues him--I don't know what the name is. The Snow Queen?) and The Black Swan (Swan Lake) are not as well written as McKinley or Bradshaw's works, but they're okay for a quick read.

I also like Sharon Shinn's The Safe-Keeper's Secret, The Truth-teller's Tale, Summers at Castle Auburn and The Shape-Changer's Wife, although they don't necessarily fit in with these, but they are good, so you should read them and your young adult friends should read them too, since that's who they're targeted towards.

And lastly, my love of retellings also gives me a real bent for historical fiction, but I prefer to read my historical fiction about sort of central female characters. I think this is due in large part to a number of seminars in grad school about the role of women in history, which meant that I actually read through all of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon because I was so interested in the way she depicted the intersection of pagan goddess worship with Christianity, and how she used that as the mechanism of the downfall of Arthur's court. Anyway, to this end I have read countless novels about Helen of Troy and Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn. Many of them were pretty worthless (and I didn't finish several), but some were actually quite good. Again, some of these also focus on goddess worship as a motivating force, like Amanda Elyot's The Memoirs of Helen of Troy (skippable bits). Surprisingly, one of my favorites on this topic was Caroline B. Cooney's Goddess of Yesterday. And I like books about events too, like Robert Harris's Pompeii, which I read after seeing a reference to it in The Atlantic Monthly (very well written and intensely interesting to see the sequence of events unfold, but also quite a lot of sexuality and lots of skippable bits, so I don't know if I'd recommend it). Anyway, if you're getting into reading about women's place in history, I also think you should read Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts and A History of Women in the West: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints (vol 1). I find it fascinating to research how other cultures have revered and worshipped women while much of Western civilization has vilified both women and their occupations of nurturing children and running a home. Or perhaps not necessarily vilified, but certainly not treated with the same respect as many of the ancient civilizations. (And there has been some definite vilification. That whole original sin thing). I'm not an uber-feminist, but I do think it's important to understand how far we've come and the strides we've made in the past century for women and their rights and what we still need to do.

I'd write more but my children need to be pried out of their beds, so I'm turning it over to you--what books in these genres do you recommend? What books do you recommend, period? (and Rachel, I'm putting The Omnivore's Dilemma on hold!)

pumpkins

Last night we had a (delayed) family home evening to welcome in fall: we decorated little mini pumpkins.




As you can see, Abigail got totally stripped, and for good reason: she thinks her skin is a lot more fun to color than the pumpkins.



I don't even know how to caption this. Neil doing...something.


My puffy-paint-galore pumpkin


Abigail's pumpkin about halfway through


Realizing that she can make this go a lot faster


Giving up all pretence of coloring the pumpkin

After we cleaned up, Neil talked on the phone to his brother, I put Abigail to bed, Juliet started howling, and we spent the next few hours until 1 am alternately doing the following: studying (Neil), crying about a huge list of guilt complexes (me), which ranged anywhere from not having gone to the gym that morning because I was tired due to the fact that although I went to bed at ten I still only got four hours of sleep, to things like feeling guilty because I hated potty training Abigail or I felt like the house was always a mess and I hadn't had dinner quite ready when Neil got home because I'm afraid of the grill because I always burn things, or other things like feeling guilty for asking Neil for help with the girls when I know he's super busy and stressed and then feeling guilty because I monopolize taking care of the girls and rationalize that he's busy and stressed, and then feeling guilty for alternately asking for help/not asking for help. Or feeling guilty because I was jealous of the fact that Neil got to leave and go to work and do things that had tangible results and were seen by the world as worthy pursuits, but also feeling guilty because he's working so hard he can't even think straight when he comes home while I get to lounge around while the girls nap. It was kind of a very long day.

Oh, and then I felt guilty because Neil should be studying rather than comforting his crying wife. You just can't win.

And the reason I was up until 1 am? I'll give you a hint: she weighs about 11 pounds and is soft and squishy, with an amazing capability to be awake for 8 hours straight, defeating all attempts to wake her up at 5 pm so she'll go to bed at a reasonable hour.

This sounds really defeatist. I feel okay today; but at the same time my life definitely isn't perfect and I think a lot of times I only blog about the idyllic moments or the really sweet moments. So this is one of the others.

of doctors and sicknesses

When Abigail was about sixteen months old, she got truly sick for the first time. I kid you not, that kid was about as healthy as they come (barring one mysterious fever when she was ten months old). She had an ear infection and we were so sickness-naive that we had NO idea what was wrong, and the poor kid suffered for several days before we finally took her into urgent care. Heck, I didn't even know ear infections resulted in fevers, lethargy, and refusal to eat--I thought "ear infection" just meant your ear hurt. Maybe a little redness.

Anyway, poor little Juliet is a complete opposite. Thus far in her seven weeks of life she has had two yeast infections, a cold which has lasted in one form or another for five weeks, and three separate cases of seborrhoeic dermatitis, which generally go away on their own but in her case have been severe enough that the pediatrician prescribed hydrocortisone. Her skin is so sensitive that she can't be washed with normal baby shampoo. Before she goes to bed, she's anointed with an entire pharmacopoeia of medicines (which now includes rubbing Vicks on her chest to reduce her wheezing). She can't sleep without both a humidifier and a heater running in her room, and today the pediatrician diagnosed her with thrush, sending us to the pharmacy yet again. The upside to all this is that Jules also seems to have inherited Neil's temperament and stoically endures all of this with only an occasional whimper.

Today as we left the pediatrician's office to head to the pharmacy, something which is becoming part of our normal routine, Abigail looked over anxiously at her little sister and said "Oh, baby Juliet. We go to get medicine, then baby Juliet feel better, right Mom? You feel better, baby Juliet." So sweet. I feel so blessed to have my two little sunshine babies.

If you've ever been to the home improvement store Menards and heard their jingle ("You'll save big money, you'll save big money, when you shop Menards") then you will appreciate this. We generally go at LEAST once a week in order to supply our home improvement project needs, so all members of our family are quite familar with this and generally begin singing it when we walk in.

This morning Abigail asked me what we were doing today. I was still trying to figure that out myself, so I didn't answer right away.

Obviously striving to be helpful, Abigail suggested "We go Menards? Save big moneys?"

And she informed me pleasantly last night when I doled our her two M&Ms for going in the potty that "Mommy, peez more potty candies! One, two, free, four, five, six, seben, eight potty candies!"

And if you've ever heard the song "Werewolf of London" it's now Abigail's favorite--she howls along all through the choruses, and requests "wolf awhoooo song" whenever we get in the car. Pretty fun. Reminds me of the days when she would insist on singing Johnny Cash's "Winga Fire...ah fell dobn dah buhning winga fire!"

Why it's good to be married to an engineer

Yesterday evening we went over to have dinner with a new family who had just moved into the ward. We spent most of the afternoon baking cookies to bring with us, which meant that the kitchen really heated up. It was sort of like the seventh ring of the Inferno in there. We gladly fled our overheated house, only to return several hours later and find that we felt just as hot.

Neil walked over to one of the vents and said "Uh, honey...I think the AC is out."

Not the words one wishes to hear, especially in the middle of wrestling two sweaty sobbing children into their pajamas. And especially not the words one wishes to hear when one has spent the entire cookie-making afternoon discussing with one's spouse the rather pricy visit-the-family trips which are coming up in the next year, not to mention the quickie Chicago getaway you were thinking about for your little family of four to celebrate a) end of the qualifiers and b) your five-year anniversary.

After some checking of various apparati, Neil determined that yes, indeed, the AC was broken.
He started banging on things while I sat calmly on our bed, fed Juliet, and read Martha Stewart's Gardening 101 (which meant we could have conversations like this "Honey, it's the blower, which means the furnace won't work either." "Oh? That's not good. Hey, did you know that garlic grows all winter and then you harvest it in July?")

Fortunately, when we moved into our house we recieved two really neat housewarming gifts: The Reader's Digest New Fix-it-yourself Manual, and the Black and Decker Complete Guide to Home Repair, thanks to my parents and my Uncle Kevin and Aunt Pam. Incidentally, I highly, highly, highly recommend both books--they have saved us oodles of $$$.

So my incredibly smart and mechanically talented husband consulted these two fix-it-up bibles, realized that something had done something to make something hossmguyg guhuhsh and that suhuhgkjg ajhjhjgks did something sjhjhs to something else.

Translation: he fixed it. As soon as I wend my way to Wal-mart to buy a replacement filter (which will prevent another ice buildup on the lines, which was what was causing the problem), we will have AC again.

I love having this guy around. "You don't like the tile on the wall in the kitchen, honey? No problem. I'll tear down the wall and put up new drywall for you. The bearings in the rear axles are going out? Okay, I can fix that. There's a leak in the pipes in the garage and water's gushing everywhere? No problem. You want a fence in the backyard? Okay, I'll build you one. You're exhausted and volunteering to spend the night on the couch with the baby? Okay, I'll rig up a mechanism to turn off the light from the couch, so you don't have to move once she falls asleep."

Pretty much I won the husband lottery. Even if he does throw all the blankets off the bed in the night.

last night Abigail got into my black eyeliner and used it to draw kitty-cat whiskers on her face.

i wish i had a picture (neil washed it off before I thought to grab the camera).

it was truly priceless.

Saturday is a special day

Why I Love Saturdays

by Abigail

BECAUSE MY DADDY IS HOME!

And he does lots of cool things...



Daddy snuggles us while Mommy showers.

He wraps sparkly heart things around my chair so I will agree to sit in it and eat breakfast because it is now a princess chair.

He agrees to read The Twelve Dancing Princesses over and over (even if it he turns it into a scathing critique of any father who would lock a man in with his twelve daughters to figure out why they wear their dancing shoes out every night)

Daddy draws cool pictures on my tummy

He gets us dressed and chuckles over how cute our overalls are


And most of all because I just get to spend time with my most favoritest Daddy ever.

Donny Osmond has his dreams come true with Jimmy Kimmel

nasties

Yesterday the Family Laundry Labs conducted impromptu but thorough testing of the efficacy of various stain removal methods.

Our verdict: blood, vomit, poop, and mud can all be removed from clothing quite effectively through liberal application of dish soap, copious amounts of Spray and Wash, and vigorous rubbing.

We highly recommend these methods. Or at least I do. Abigail and Juliet aren't quite sure--they started creating Round II of the soiled clothing samples early this morning. Thus far, Juliet is our number-one contributor in a multitude of categories. She also continues to break projectile vomiting records.

We're pretty impressed by our kids. You should be too.

p.s. don't worry--i'm not a suds-drenched sobbing wreck. actually, i just think it's funny they managed so much all in one day. why am i so cheerful, you ask? because JULIET SLEPT FOR SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW! oh yes, my friends. i am becoming humanized again.

forbidden to urinate in mommy and daddy's room, the living room, the kitchen floor, juliet's room, and on her bed, abigail came up with the following creative places today:

• the garden
• the lawn
• the sidewalk
• and my personal favorite...standing on top of her little potty with the lid closed

i was reminded today of something i once told mary beth when we were little kids "we never get spanked for the same thing twice." today when we were outside planting our trees, abigail ran over to the sidewalk, urinated all over it, and proudly announced "No-no go potty on lawn, no-np go potty on garden! i go potty on sidewalk!"

how long do you think it will be before she runs out of not-yet-forbidden places?

and speaking of potty training, how is it that abigail can identify each disney princess on her big girl panties by name when she has never seen any of the movies? i swear, there's a princess gene that kicks in. everything in our house these days has been renamed...we have "princess shoes, princess chair, princess towel" you name it.

one last abigail note: she's developed the habit of holding conversations "with" me when she's asking for something forbidden. as in she'll say "i have some cantaloupe in my room, right Mom?" and then cock her head to one side and say "oh ok right yeah" and then "ok, cantaloupe in my room!" (and since when am I "Mom"--i thought the mommy/daddy stage would last a lot longer, but this past week we've been Mom and Dad).

ok and REALLY the last abigail note: i love listening to her pray. she always prays "thank you mom, dad, abigail, and baby juliet" and then goes on to pray for whatever she's been doing that day/whatever items have played a recent role on the Abigail Life Stage, as in "thank you blankie, park, friends, ketchup, peach jam, toys, dolly, car, swimming, garden," etc. Sometimes she'll go through our entire extended family by name, or bless all of her friends by name, or her friend's parents ("Tywer, And-wee-ah, Kaf-ween, Milly mommy, Milly daddy"), or Neil's colleagues (Phil, she's sent a few prayers your way!). It's always fun to listen to her prayers. So cute and so sweet, and she insists on saying every prayer at mealtimes and family prayer every night. We sure love this kid. One thing I love about listening to Abigail pray is that she never asks for anything--she just says thank you for everything she can think of. It's a good reminder to me to be grateful for all the blessings in my life, rather than focusing on the I-wants.

Ramblings on civilization

Last night as we drove to Lowe's to stock up on silver maples (get 'em now, folks! Only 10.98 on sale through the end of September!) I shared my ruminations from the day with Neil. I was trying to convince him that civilization hadn't really done us too many favors. My arguments? I told him that if we were still an agrarian society we would see each other a lot more while we worked on the farm instead of splitting our seperate ways for 18 hours every day (we would avoid that whole The Good Earth thing), we wouldn't spend money on projects that we made up to keep ourselves busy, we wouldn't spend money on exercise to keep in shape and junk food that then required exercise, we would be very self-sufficient, etc. Mostly I just liked the idea of all of us being together and not having to pay the grocery stores.

Neil didn't think my jesting idea of turning our backyard into a mini farm would work (even when I told him we would commandeer the neighbors' yards as well). He reminded me that Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder always seemed to be in debt, and that it's nice to have things like toilets (which I agree with). And he likes having hospitals (so do I). And he didn't think I would be very good at making clothes (he's got a point).

And while I really do love many modern conveniences, and I like being able to fly around on planes and enjoy air conditioning and deep freezers and printing presses and all that jazz, sometimes I really just wish we lived out on a farm or ranch or something, and he was there for lunch every day (which would have like 20 main dishes because we'd be working so hard), and we would watch the sunsets over our wheat fields (which would never experience droughts, hailstorms, or pesky bugs), and we'd say hah, take that grocery stores!

What do you think? Idyllic, or not so much?

geeky confession

A few weeks ago, Laura started posting "Sunday Confessions."

Well, it's not Sunday, but here is mine...I am a fantasy/sci-fi novel junkie. Oh yes. I tend to be pretty selective--I only read a few authors--but I read everything they write over and over again.

You would think, since I sweated and slaved to get a master's in English literature, that I would be reading literary things. Since I read, on average, at least one 300-page book a day (which is why I am often sleep-deprived, since two small children do not make for much reading time during the day). And yes, I love Hemingway, and I adore Jane Austen, and I really like Thackeray, and I enjoy Henry James, and I'm up for the occasional Faulkner, and I'm crazy about Walt Whitman, but...

...for fun I read them not.

When I was in high school, my sister Mary Beth was really into Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series. I considered that series sort of the epitome of dorkiness. Then after I finished my master's thesis, I went crazy for fantasy literature. I was so incredibly brain-dead that I needed fluff or brain candy or whatever. I went over to the BYU library the day after my thesis defense, turned in all 42 books that I'd hung onto to prep for the defense, and proceeded the sampler room in the library and just started cleaning out the sci-fi and fantasy shelves. Mercedes Lackey, Robin McKinley, Diana Wynne Jones, Tamora Pierce...they all came home with me. Among them...the first book in the The Wheel of Time series (which incidentally is probably the best).

If you've never read the books, I wouldn't really recommend that you start. They're interesting, and involved and complex, which I like, but most of them are at least 800 pages long and quite slow-moving. And there's like 11 or 12 of them, I don't really remember. However, due to that whole didn't-have-a-TV-growing-up thing, I read pretty fast, so they weren't too bad. So I got to the last one and waited impatiently for the next one to come out, which was the final wrap-up-huge-plotline book. (and in all fairness to MB and what I said about "epitome of dorkiness," let it be noted that she stopped after the fourth or fifth book, whereas I plodded on through the rest. Who's the dork now?)

Here's the second part of my confession...Robert Jordan, the author, died yesterday. And while I was sad that he died, I didn't know him, so I wasn't really sad for the fact that he died, but the fact that he died without finishing the last book. AAAhhh! How does it end?!

So basically I'm a selfish person for regretting someone's death because it thwarts my own reading happiness. Or maybe that's just a good tribute to an author...

Autumn

You might not expect it, but fall here is lovely. Last night we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and took a looong walk as a family. Abigail requested ducks, so we hiked over to a nearby pond where we did indeed see ducks, along with muskrats and herons. On our walk to a nearby celery bog we also saw rabbits, squirrels, and a pair of white-tailed deer, or as Abigail noted "Dere are reindeer in dat tree over dere!"

Today the girls and I spent several hours at a nearby playground with a bunch of our friends. Abigail had a great time with her little buddies, and I had a wonderful time talking with my friends! We both sorely needed it after our weekend of cabin-fever-inducing potty training.

this lil' girl

A few days ago, I was reading Peter Pan to Abigail. We turned the page and the main picture was of Peter playing on his pipes. Abigail turned her big brown eyes towards me and said joyously "Oh Mommy! Look, hot dogs!"

Yesterday on our walk she said "Thank you, nice nice man" to the gentleman who invited us to walk across his lawn and look at the stone lamb that Abigail was baaing at from the sidewalk.

And today she found a pen under our pew in church and informed me that she had found "a Mommy crayon."

And here are our you-share-with-me-I'll-share-with-you pictures:

Abigail zipping herself into Juliet's carseat ("Look, Mommy! A boat!")

Abigail putting her underwear on Juliet ("Baby Dooey-yet, you wan sum big girl pannies?")

This morning...

Abigail went in the potty three times and had no accidents.

Juliet nursed well for the first time in three days and napped in her crib.

My cup o' motherhood runneth over.

I am not going to blog about this morning, because it was full. of. messes. I think we need more paper towels.

So instead, I will write about random things.

First of all, have you ever read this quote before? It's one of my favorites:

"We feasted on love; every mode of it, solemn and merry, romantic and realistic, sometimes as dramatic as the thunderstorm, sometimes comfortable and unemphatic as putting on your soft slippers. She was my pupil, my teacher, my subject and my sovereign, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress, but at the same time all that any man friend has ever been to me." --C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Secondly, I am addicted to home magazines in a non-healthy way. I think it's akin to other photographic forms of addiction--I can't stop looking and then I mope around being uncontented with what I have. Normally I am very happy with my house, but there are days where I just click around online or flip through design magazines and sigh "Why don't I know how to reupholster furniture? Where does one find vintage glasses in which to pile bits of sea glass?" (while conveniently forgetting that a collection of sea glass is not exactly toddler-friendly.)

Which leads me to point 3: I need a project. I feel totally lost during naptimes because I have nothing to work on or accomplish. I really have trouble lying down to read or rest during naptimes--I'm fine with it at night when the girls are asleep, but during the middle of the day I need to be doing something. I love my family and I love being a stay-at-home mom, but at the end of the day, it drives me bonkers that I haven't done anything tangible. Yes, I've made three meals and two snacks and cleaned up after them all, I've done laundry and swept and mopped and vacuumed, I've read stories and sung songs and gone on walks and made Play-Doh animals and magazine collages...but there are no lasting records of my day. Of course, my children's continued growth and development are tangible in a way, but I really need to be doing something. That's what I like about teaching--I can look over at a pile of papers I graded or something like that. The limbo we're in right now with Neil's area exams is a bit frustrating for me, not only because well, he's studying ALL THE TIME and I feel so bad for him and all the stress, but it's also hard because I keep wanting to start a project but I don't want it to suck him in.

So here is my list that I am making for myself as I write this. I think it will help me to feel better.

When Neil finishes the area exams, we/I/he will:

• extend the front flowerbeds
• divide the hostas
• plant trees
• build a swingset
• prune back the bushes for winter
• winterize the lawn
• plant ornamental grasses along the fence
• refinish the dining room table
• paint silhouette prints of our family using this technique
• build a padded headboard
• fix the dishwasher
• paint the master bedroom closet
• paint the laundry room
• rip up the garden for winter
• recaulk the kitchen doors
• add to the insulation in the attic

Ooh, I am so excited to get started. How 'bout you, honey? Doesn't that make the end of your exams look tantalizing? :-)

Mostly I just want to get outside in the sun and the breeze and dig things up. That's really all I ask.

my cutie pies

we've begun potty training! so far we're 2 for 3 (although maybe it should be more like 1.5, since she did go to the toilet by herself, but instead of lifting up the seat of her training potty she stood on it and urinated while neil and i were clearing the dinner table. interesting. but she did manage to get the messy one in the toilet, which resulted in an entire handful of m&ms after she proudly announced "yay me!" yes, lots of candy, but we had been working on potty training for less than half an hour at that point and i really wanted to make a big deal out of it to encourage future compliance. plus, i was really excited about not having to change a yucky diaper). sadly, after our walk we forgot to ask her to go to the potty immediately until she said "uh...i all wet."

about two seconds after I took this picture, she walked up to me, turned her back to me, pulled down her panties, and said "Look, mommy! See my bummy!"

So it took a grand total of five minutes in big girl panties for her to moon somebody...what does this indicate about her future proclivities?

life lessons from a toddler

This morning was Abigail's first day of Joy School. I really wanted it to go smoothly, so we all got up early and had breakfast together as a family. Unfortunately, a certain small blonde person did not want to eat breakfast. She wanted to snuggle with her blankie. This caused no small amount of stress at our breakfast table, especially when another small person joined in the yelling chorus.

Consequently, most of the morning my interaction with Abigail was conducted with a very raised voice and lots of frustration, like "PLEASE eat your eggs NOW! We have to LEAVE! DO YOU WANT TO STAY HOME?!" As you may know, there are few things more frustrating and futile than trying to cajole a stubborn two-year-old into eating when she does not wish to eat. And few things more frustrating than having a child refuse to eat when you know she will be cranky all morning and you will not be there to salvage the mess.

So I took some breakfast with us in the car hoping to get her to eat. But in the car I discovered that Neil had forgotten to take a lunch (what is it with my starving family?!). I tried to turn the car around to go home, he protested that it didn't matter, we both ended up yelling.

Are you seeing a pattern developing here?

Anyway, Abigail decided she wanted her banana after all. She ate about half of it, then said it was yucky (a brown spot) and refused to eat any more. But she also refused to give it to me--she just wanted to squish it around. And guess what...I ended up raising my voice again.

I was seething in my frustration and irritation, exacerbated by the fact that we were late dropping her off due to moronic drivers who blocked the road waiting to turn and silly bikers who cut across in front of us and made us slam on our brakes and all those other things that aren't irritating except when you're in a hurry, and told her one final time "Abigail, eat your banana! JUST EAT IT!"

...and I heard a very small voice say from the back seat "Quiet voices, Mommy? Quiet voices?"

I can't even tell you what an effect that had on me. I almost started crying. I felt so horrible and guilty for yelling at my family all morning and doing exactly what Abigail gets put in time out for: raising my voice to the people I love best. Talk about a lesson for me as a parent...I've been making some new resolutions this morning that I sincerely hope I can stick to. I was so excited about today and about her being able to do this preschool thing with her friends and about having time to myself to do all the things around the house that have been pushed aside lately that I completely forgot that the very most important thing is to show my family how much I love them. I haven't been doing a very good job of that lately--I've been taking care of everyone's physical needs, but I haven't made their emotional needs a priority. So thank you, Abigail, for reminding me of my primary responsibility as a mother--to nurture and teach. I love you, kiddo.

happiness

things that made me happy today...

• fall is here!...or at least enough so that I can bring out my beloved down comforter and revel in its fluffiness
• the pediatrician identified juliet's facial rash today and prescribed something for it...hurray!
• and speaking of pediatricians, jules weighed 10 lbs 6 oz today (five weeks old) and was 22 inches long. not bad, not bad at all.
• the garden exploded with cherry tomatoes, filling an entire colander full. also i ate almost all of them already. yum.
• today we took a field trip with some other mommies and kiddies to Pizza Hut, where all the kiddies made their own (free) pan pizza. cool? i think so.
• for dinner we had veggie soup and pesto-mozzarella-tomato panini. oh my favorite.
• neil agreed to new floor-length curtains in our room. abigail inherited the windowsill-length ones. i just love floor-length curtains.
• yesterday i moved the former dining room table into the kitchen, and this morning we feasted on blueberry pancakes in the kitchen. it was so nice to not stand around eating while we waited for the next batch of pancakes, or to have some of us eating in the dining room and others waiting for pancakes in the kitchen.
• soon, very soon, i will strip the new dining room table down to its bare bones and begin the delightfully fun process of giving it new life and pizazz
• and best of all (again), fall is almost here...that delightful nip in the air is pervading my home! the air conditioning is off and the windows are open. the breeze is wafting through my sunny kitchen and i am oh so so so happy to welcome autumn!

These are Abigail's new dress-up shoes, courtesy of her great-grandma and great-grandpa Peters (she picked them out herself!) She insisted on sleeping in them last night and told me they are princess shoes.

Last night I told Abigail she was beautiful and she looked up at me calmly and said "Yes...like a princess." Very suave.

And this is my "cookie buddy," as she named herself yesterday.

We got ambitious last night--Juliet seems to be settling into more of a schedule during the day (the night is still pretty awful) so Abigail and I pulled out the August issue of Martha Stewart Living for some jazz-up-dinner inspiration. We ended up making grilled lime-basil pork chops, spicy creamed corn, baked potatoes, tomato and basil salad, and chocolate chip cookies.

Poor Neil did the dishes while I escaped to mow the foot-high lawn. I think I got the better end of the deal.

Ever since we came home from Michigan, Abigail has been talking nonstop. I'm not sure if it was having so many people around teaching her lots of new words (Elise, you stinker!) or just people talking to her all the time (which would make me feel guilty for not talking to her as much at home and possibly delaying speech development or something like that), but she's saying some of the most random things! For instance, yesterday we went to Walmart to pick up some groceries and she said "Oh, get some movies and CDs at the store, right? Some movies watchie on computer, right?"

I don't know how she knew that was the store for movies and CDs, since I've never bought any there, but she was pretty convinced! She also coolly informed me at the checkout counter that "I want some potty candy now" (I bought M&Ms as treats for potty training, which I'm planning to start on Thursday...dum dum dum).

She says so many cute things and does so many cute things all day that I wish I could remember, but quite frankly, with all the sleep deprivation, I feel lucky if I call her the right name. Poor kid. Oh well, at least she got to lick the cookie beater yesterday. That's worth something, right?

Hey, it's good to be back home again...thank you John Denver

When Neil and I were dating, we talked about things like this:

• our life aspirations and ambitions
• why we chose our majors and the things we really loved learning
• our passions and hobbies
• our political leanings
• what we liked about each other

After we'd been married awhile, we talked about things like this:

• how much homework we had
• the cool things we learned in class that day
• how were we going to afford to buy x, y, and z
• idealistic parenting notions for our future children
• if we had time to go up in the canyon and light a fire for the sheer joy of fire-ness

Last night, after a week of absence, we snuggled up together and rejoiced in the fact that both children were finally asleep. And then what words of tenderness did we utter? What soul-searching communications ensued? Well, it went like this:

Neil: "How are Juliet's poopy diapers these days?"

Me: "Well, let me tell you..."

Let me briefly qualify this conversation for you. Ooky, I know, but this is a matter of great relevance in our house, since Abigail's first six months were the diaper equivalent of the Terror during the French Revolution. She would go anywhere from seven to ten days between messy diapers, which meant that the first four or five days were light-hearted and happy, and the last few days were miserable for all concerned--Abigail because of discomfort, Neil and I because we were absolutely terrified to leave the house without a sack of plastic bags and two rolls of paper towels. They were just that bad. All I can say is, thank heavens for apple juice and oatmeal. You never saw two people so excited about their child starting solids in your life.

After about ten minutes of very animated conversation in which we discussed consistency, frequency, and general comparisons to Abigail at the same age, I finally said "Ew. This is really gross. Why are we still talking about this?"

Neil pondered a few moments, then replied "Because it's interesting. And relevant."

So, all you non-parents, that's the kind of "interesting" and "relevant" conversations you have to look forward to in your future. Enjoy your intellectual pursuits while you have them.

So I have about a million pictures, but I forgot to bring my camera cord so that I could upload them...so prepare yourselves for an absolute barrage of photos when I get home.

Abigail keeps me laughing...here are my favorite gems from the last few days.

• "Oooh...at's a nice purse, Geat-Gamma!"
• To the mosquitoes..."no, bugs, no! No bitey me!"
• her new habit of ending every question with "right?" As in "put dis here, right? Drinkee some water mommy, right?"
• carrying around a shoebox stuffed full of washcloths to make a bed for her Winnie the Pooh toy
  
• kissing everything goodnight, from the Cheez-It box to the computer
• Her different names for me: Mama when she's upset with me, Rachael when she wants something, and Mommy for everything else
  
• finding her trying to take a nap on one of the steps on the stairs, just for novelty
• wearing the arm covers on my parents' living room chairs as hats
• running from door to door in my parents' house and proudly announcing "I lockee dis one," which we later realized was quite literal when various family members began beating a tattoo on the door from the outside
  
• insisting that the boat go "faster, faster, faster!" when she was out on the tube behind it
• telling Neil to "go work now Daddy" when he refused to give her a cookie for breakfast
• somehow managing to drop the ten-foot-long blinds on my parents' living room windows and proudly announcing "night now!"
• sitting at the piano and contentedly singing to her own accompaniment

Last night when I asked Neil how his studying for the qualifiers was going, he told me that he'd realized that if he went the non-thesis route, he could graduate with his master's very soon. Like December. Of this year. As in...fourteen weeks from now. As opposed to four years from now if he passes the quals and continues with his Ph.D.

It's nice to know there's always a back-up plan, except for that whole we-bought-a-house thing. Let's just hope (and pray) that all this studying pays off in the direction we've anticipated!

One funny thing I realized lately when I was talking to my friend Kathleen is that I really am very contented with my life right now. I didn't anticipate living the student lifestyle for ten years (I'll be twenty-eight when Neil graduates), but when I look back over the last six years, it really hasn't been bad. In fact, it's been surprising good. Yes, it would be nice to have a little more money, but in all honesty, enough of it would go for taxes and the like that we probably wouldn't notice that much more difference. And when I think about it, if we had more money, we'd probably just spend it on things we don't really need (although I admit I do get a little nervous about retirement).

The student lifestyle really is nice in a lot of ways--Neil has a fairly flexible schedule, I can teach and we can just swap the kids on campus, we live in a place with a ton of members and I have lots of young moms to hang out with, there's fun cultural stuff to do on and around campus, we have inexpensive access to fitness facilities, and we have lots of chances to be inventive and creative with everything in our lives, whether it's figuring out what free things we can do as a family or how we can wring the last bit of usefulness out of various possessions. We're in good shape physically because we're motivated to walk or bike rather than pay for gas; we make sure that we follow prophetic counsel on planting a garden because it makes fresh fruits and veggies affordable, and we've had lots of time to laugh and work together over the last year as we invest lots of sweat equity in our house. (ok, I ran out of patience making hyperlinks, so you'll just have to imagine the rest.)

If I've learned nothing else over the last six years, I think I've learned--or at least begun to learn--how to not only be content with what I have and where I am, but how to revel in it and love my life and the people who make it so blessed.

Well, here I am...sleeping in my old room with my clothes hung up in my old closet, sharing a bathroom with my sisters. It's just like I never left--except my sisters are six years older, a lot more fun, and two of them are missing. Oh, and I have two kids.

Being away from Neil is, quite frankly, a little rough on me, but it does have its perks...like going tubing on the lake yesterday. (Pictures to come.) It's nice to spend time with family and know that Neil is getting lots of studying done, and I am also glad that we are far away since Jules is sick and having a lot of trouble sleeping at night. For instance, on Saturday night I slept for two hours.

One thing that IS nice about not seeing my husband is that I appreciate my middle-of-the-night awake time with Juliet more (which is a good thing, since I've had an excessive amount of it due to her cold). That sounds a little odd, but when I'm cuddling Jules in the middle of the night, even when she's shrieking and unhappy and snuffling, I am filled with love for her because she is her daddy's little girl and I have time with her if not with him.

Abigail has really enjoyed having all this time with her extended family. So much, in fact, that she was quite disconsolate this morning when she realized that Dad was at work and and Elise and Rosalind were at school. She found a picture of Rosalind somewhere and carried it around while I was getting ready, reading stories to it and talking animatedly. It was pretty cute.

I'm too tired to write much more, and I can't really think of anything interesting to say...