linkage

I'm watching my friends' children today (while they prepare to bring their baby home from the NICU after a month! Hurray!!) so no time for posting. But here are a few things I read/saw yesterday that I found interesting:

Scratch That: Is it Cost-Effective to Make Pantry Staples from Scratch?

The NY Times Curious Cook (on making yogurt)

SouleMama: The Princess and the Pea

The Dervaes Family: Living Green (a minute-long video clip, I think from Oprah)

so that's what's on my mind today.

my happy place

Right now, I think our study is my favorite place in the house. It's actually supposed to be a dining room, and we used it as such the first year or so that we were in this house. Then the table sat in there alone for another year because Juliet was in a food-throwing stage and I decided I'd rather just eat in the breakfast area in the kitchen for all our meals. Finally I got sick of the big wasted space and redid the whole room, and I've loved loved loved it over the past six months or so.

Definitely not perfect--there's still things that I need to do, like find the perfect fabric to recover the futon, or pick up a brushed pewter vase to balance out the lamp, and find an office chair that is both comfortable and chic, but the hours we spend in here are some of the happiest of our day. I love working at my nice clean desk surrounded by brilliant flowers, pictures of my family, my favorite books (or half, since the rest are in the living room), and the gorgeous springtime flowers that crowd up around the window. Something about light being filtered through pink crabapple blossoms makes the whole day just wonderful.


And of course, the room is even better because it's filled with these adorable chickies poring over their books--what better sight to warm the heart of their bookworm mother? (except Abigail is reaaally fascinated by this slinky right now. I've untangled it a bajillion times already tonight and I'm remembering why I hid it in the first place--too bad it was found when we were redoing toy storage today).

loose ends

yes, those are elephants

I haven't been very good about either taking or posting pictures lately, which means my camera is full of single shots of various things (for instance, we went to the zoo on Saturday and I took exactly 2 pictures. It just wasn't a priority, but you can read about previous zoo excitement here).

A couple of weeks ago we went to the university's Spring Fest. Again, not many pictures, but the girls were in love with the chicks and ducklings. I really would love chickens some day. Are they very smelly? And bees...I would really, really, really love bees. I always have these really long involved conversations with the beekeepers at the farmers' markets, and Abigail was just as fascinated as I was by the frames of bees at the spring fest.

One of my favorite squares for Abigail's quilt--the count now is at 12. Only 8 more to go! I'm really motivated to finish this soon--not only do I want to have it done pre-baby, but we're going to be moving Jules out of her crib in the next week or so (aaaahhhh, scary), and I use new bedding as the bribe. So Juliet will inherit the twin-size quilt I made for Abigail a couple of years ago, while Abigail will upgrade to this new quilt for the full bed. Exciting stuff.

Abigail's been doing a soccer camp the last couple of weeks. I think she spends a lot of time picking dandelions, but she's barely four, so I'm not too worried about it. Mostly I'm just glad that she's having fun running around outside.

See? I told you. Running around...


...picking dandelions.



And she does love kicking the ball around at home, so that's been fun for us lately. We've been spending so much time outside the last couple of weeks, and it's just been lovely. Abigail's main birthday gift from Neil & I this year was a bike, and the weather has been so great that we've been biking around just about every day. I was also thinking today while I was watching the kids go crazy on the swingset that I'm so grateful that we are able to be in this house while we're in grad school--I love having the space in the backyard for the kids to run around, and I love my garden that is being so happily compliant thus far this year!! But really, I'm so grateful that Abigail and Juliet have each other as best friends and that they get along so well. I love watching them together--seeing their joy and delight in each other is one of the best parts of being their mother.

Oh...and the other thing about the nice weather--it flips the "spring/summer" switch in my cooking brain. Is there anything better than the smell of lemon zest and grilled shrimp on a breezy spring day?

And last but not least, "Juliet homeboy" as I heard Abigail call her tonight when she saw Juliet's bedtime getup. This child is so darling these days. Darling and frighteningly inventive and clever, and talking so quickly and stringing so many sentences and concepts together that it's hard to keep up with her from day to day. Both girls are at a stage right now where Neil and I are having some serious quality time in parenting discussions--we're starting to introduce the concept of time out to Juliet, and working with Abigail on obedience the first time she hears a request (and being polite initially, not just after the fact when she's reminded). Often frustrating, but I'm really grateful that I have a husband who is so invested in his children's development and is an active participant in these kinds of discussions. We rarely agree when we first start talking about how to solve a particular problem, and it always makes me so grateful for the fact that by the end of the chat, we've both compromised and reassessed our positions and found a set of strategies that we're both happy with.

And today was tiring, so I'm just going to end this here. I got up exceedingly early to teach my classes (and walked to the bus for the first time in almost a month, yippee!!), came home and acceded to the girls' request for a long walk through the neighborhood, took Abigail to soccer while Juliet napped at home with Neil, and then mowed 2/3 of the lawn (don't worry, Mom, Neil finished up the hilly parts). So I am off to bed. And hoping that I don't pay the price for this tomorrow (but the surgery was 3 and a half weeks ago, so hopefully not).

productive with a vengeance

So far today I have...

• taught two classes
• graded oral presentations, memo reports, and blog postings
• done laundry
• picked up some clothes for the baby at a garage sale
• gone on a walk/bike ride with the girls (Abigail rides her bike, I push Jules in the stroller)
• switched over our homeowner's and auto insurance (word to the wise: Liberty Mutual is half the price of State Farm if you're a BYU alum), which entailed a LOT of phone time with insurance agents and our lender
• double-checked on the baby's insurance--more time on the phone!! (relief: still covered under mine for 30 days after birth!)
• purchased and programmed keyless entry for the van
• double-checked everything for title transfer of the van with the DMV--phone again!

I've spent a loooong time on the phone today, but I'm making significant inroads on my "do before the baby comes" list!! In the next month, I'll have my quilt finished, the van registered, titled (and a new driver's license for me), and the rest of the dental work done. And then I can attend to all the gardening and canning and things like that come with the beginning of June...I'm relieved that it's naptime and that after naps we have nothing on the schedule other than a long lazy afternoon on the swingset.

quality time

I've been sewing a LOT lately--probably because it's one of the few productive things I can do sitting down. And I feel so unproductive lately that it's very reassuring to have a measurable accomplishment. As of last night, I have ten squares done of this latest quilt I'm doing, so I'm halfway done (I'm making a full-sized quilt for the bed that Abigail and Juliet will eventually share).

I thought about posting pictures of all the squares I've done so far, but I didn't think that would be a very exciting post, so the picture that we ended up with is of the second square I did. I was really proud of how perfectly the corners matched up, which did NOT happen on the last quilt I made. My latest excitement is figuring out how to actually pin AND sew curved pieces. Pretty cool stuff (and facilitated by Neil's engineering mind, because I was in pinning desperation).

One of my favorite things about this quilting class is that I'm actually learning how to do all of the sewing things that I just sort of mucked my way through before. I had a couple of home ec classes in middle school, but that's it for formal sewing instruction. So while I've always really liked sewing, I never really understood enough about it for it to be more relaxing than frustrating. But at last! It's fun! It's enjoyable! It's creatively satisfying! And I finally understand enough to ask the questions that will solve my problems (like having my mom explain all the intricacies of her machine, which I didn't know enough about before for it to actually make sense).

For instance, I made Abigail a knit nightgown for Christmas, which she absolutely LOVES. Unfortunately, I sewed all the seams using a regular presser foot because I didn't know about the roller foot for knits, which meant that the fabric kept getting sucked down and bunched up, so I finished it, but it wasn't exactly pretty. And when I cut it out, I used shears on my kitchen table rather than a rotary cutter on a self-healing mat--because I neither knew about nor possessed those latter two things. And I didn't know about the side knob to adjust the bobbin tension, so everything was puckered and kept tangling. I think I ended that project in tears. Of course, she loves this nightgown, and wants to wear it every night, so the seams have all started to pop and the hem was pretty much gone. So last night I resewed it, and voila! SO much better.

So now I'm having fun sewing my quilt squares, and reveling in the fact that they're getter smoother and straighter and better each time, and that when I make mistakes, it's not the end of the world because I know I can unpick it and resew it in a reasonable amount of time.

That's what I've been thinking about today.

happy Earth Day!

on my to-do list today...meander (slowly, slowly, slowly) through the woods with the kids in search of more pretties.

she looks so innocent, but she's almost two with a vengeance. this morning she painted herself, the treadmill, and a lamp with Vaseline (never again do I do online banking with her out of the room).

we're settling back into a semblance of normalcy here. I'm still getting tired very easily, and the nausea seems to be sort of ever-present, but I'm able to do things now that I couldn't two weeks ago. It still seems like a depressingly long road, however.

so in that spirit (and because I was listening in church on Sunday), here are some things I'm grateful for:

• tulips, bleeding heart, and flowering crabapple
• enough greening in the garden that the plants are now visible from the kitchen windows (window doors?)
• a 5-lb tub of cottage cheese (favorite breakfast: cottage cheese and pineapple)
  
• all the canning I did last summer--really helpful when I am exhausted and don't want to cook elaborate breakfasts or lunches
• that next Friday is the last day of classes
• my children are cute enough that even when they're being little stinkers they're still adorable enough that it's hard to stay mad very long
• and mostly they're not stinkers (except juliet, who is really being a stinker today, in all senses of the word)
• that it is naptime and an overcast day, which means longer naps. hurray!
  

one year older

One

Two

Three


Four

it doesn't seem like it's been that long. fortunately, as she reminded me two days ago, no matter how big she is, she will always be my special baby.

there are way worse ways to convalesce

i have a million pictures to post, but since I'm totally worn out from walking around our half-mile loop once, they'll have to wait.

many thanks go to my mom, who spent the whole week here taking care of me. translation: letting me sleep in every morning (and go back to bed for the entire morning when I came home from teaching) and nap in the afternoon, feeding the girls, entertaining them, making sure we have groceries, buying all the supplies for and hosting a little party for Abigail's birthday, keeping the house tidy, ensuring that little people get to soccer practice, chatting with me all day (when I'm actually awake) and facilitating yummy meals. plus staying in touch with Dad and my four sisters and helping everything else run smoothly. oh...and doing her actual business stuff from her laptop.

pretty much my mom rocks (can you tell who taught me to multitask?) I miss her already (but don't worry, Mom, I'm not relapsing!)

love you Mom--wish you were here to picnic with us on the lawn today.

celebrations

Yesterday we colored eggs as a family. We don't really celebrate Easter around here in the bunny-leaves-a-basket fashion (primarily because Neil and I decided we want to separate the religious holiday from the candy festival, although we do eat Peeps and deck the girls out in the gorgeous dresses their great-grandparents send), but oh boy, do we color eggs.



Abigail was absolutely fascinated and did all kinds of crayoned designs on the eggs before they were dipped. Juliet happily colored away, then smashed her eggs vigorously down on the table.

Abigail coolly informed Juliet that all of Juliet's eggs were destined to become "lunch eggs."

It was a really lovely morning. So nice to spend time together as a family (even if I did--literally--have to spend the ENTIRE rest of the day in bed to compensate). So wonderful to laugh with everyone again. Lovely to sit outside and watch them all run around, while I sat on a chair wrapped up in blankets and had time to notice all the little flowers poking up and rejoice in the fact that the daylilies and lemon thyme I transplanted last summer are alive and thriving.

And absolutely delightful to hear Juliet say things like, "Devil egg! Mmmm--yummy!" in her little baby voice.

What can I say? The kid loves deviled eggs.

Of course, poor Neil got stuck with all the cleanup all day long, since I could be up about long enough to help make a really good mess. After dinner I collapsed on the couch and left the poor guy alone with a kitchen full (like really, really, really full) of dishes and a very messy Juliet who required a bath before the dishes were even done, and Neil stopped at one point, looked at me, and said, "Don't ever die. Please, don't die and leave me alone with this."

Have I mentioned lately that husband of mine is my hero? The last couple of weeks have made me fall in love with him all over again.

what I've missed

with Jules last April

This past week has made me realize how much I love my "normal" life. There are always moments or days (or weeks) where I wonder if what I'm doing with my life is what I really want to be doing.

So over the last week, while I've basically been lying in bed staring at the clock willing it to go faster, I've realized that by and large, what I do is an expression of things I love and that make me happy. How much creativity I've built into seemingly routine aspects of my daily life. The number of things I accomplish each day. The extent to which my children's moods are largely a function of how much quality time we spend together.

It's been a hard week. I'm grateful beyond measure to everyone who has made it easier--it's been really, really, really hard to have the girls gone so much, but I've been so grateful that they've been able to play with friends and do crafts and have Easter egg hunts, because right now it's very difficult for me to spend much time with them (case in point: Juliet lifting her arms up to me with tears running down her cheeks when I couldn't pick her up and cuddle her before bed. Or even get out of my own bed without help so that I could cuddle her on the floor). I also didn't realize how much I look forward all day to making dinner until I had wonderful friends doing it for me every day--I'm excited to be able to get back in my kitchen and repay the favor. And I didn't realize how much I take my normal accomplishments for granted until things like making my own bed or carrying a basket of laundry were simply beyond my capacity. Or how much I depend on my daily workout session for not only a physical recharge, but a spiritual or creative one as well, since it's when I do things like read The Ensign or decorating magazines or simply make dreaming plans. It's also been a little bit of a shock to me to realize how grown-up Abigail is in many ways--she's like my little miniature nurse, constantly reminding me what I can and can't do (she totally chewed me out today for wandering back in to watch them eat lunch after I told Neil I'd go lie down) and telling me funny little stories about her day so that I know what she's been doing.

So I'm excited to be me again, although it's still going to be somewhat of a journey (the surgeon told me today that I should be 95% healed in 4-6 weeks). Slowly but surely. Grateful that it wasn't worse. Grateful for all my friends--I was pretty choked up when my visiting teacher told me she had lost track of all the people who had called her offering babysitting or meals. Grateful for this chance to take a step back and realize that the things that I thought were vital to my sanity (like teaching) are nice, but not what really make my days meaningful and worthwhile. Excited for little things like being able to lift Juliet into her carseat, bend over to pick the daffodils in my garden, and join in the afternoon "sunshine dance" with the girls.

I...feel...happy...

Thanks to wonderful friends and a great husband, I've been able to really rest these past few days (and the rest of this week). I've decided there are worse things in life than bedrest, although I am definitely feeling the effects of a lack of exercise--sore, a little stiff, and a tendency to be a bit more grumpy than I usually am. I've been really trying to stretch out the pain pills, since they make me pretty dizzy and nauseated, and the wonderful thing about having my children happily playing at friends' homes is that I can lie still without moving (hence, less pain, and less pills).

But I really miss my girls. I was so excited yesterday when I could sit up for about twenty minutes and read to them. That felt like making progress!

The other thing I notice about the pain medication is it makes me much more emotional. I keep saying things to Neil like, "I love you. So. Much." and holding his face and staring in his eyes. And I also start to cry whenever I think about everything he is doing for me. Then the medicine wears off and I feel a little sheepish and he laughs at me. When I was arranging all the playdates for the girls this week I had to stop between each phone call because I got so weepy over all the really wonderful friends I have who were so willing to help out. And yesterday I spent quite a while writing thank-you notes to all the surgical staff, and I got all teary-eyed again.

Then again, I feel so blessed and loved that I would probably be crying without the narcotics.

here's the skinny

photo from cornair.com and not of me

Here's the quick update (and it probably says a lot that I'm able to sit at the computer, however briefly).

The surgery went well. It was more complicated than initially expected, and they had to do additional work--apparently there was not only a hernia that needed to be repaired, but the round ligament was also damaged, and there was a problem with the veins that the doctor had never seen in 37 years of practice. Eek. Add that to the 1 in 1,000 odds of developing an inguinal hernia while pregnant, and I think you can all consider yourselves safe. In any case, the inflamed, matted, and swollen veins were likely the cause of a lot of the pain I've been experiencing, so hopefully that will go away as I heal. It was an interesting experience being awake through the whole surgery (since they couldn't give me general anesthesia with the pregnancy), and I was really impressed by how the staff went out of their way to treat me as a person rather than just another case. Very comforting to have the nurses rubbing my hands and arms when I was shaking and in shock, or to have the anesthesiologist gently touch my head as he was explaining yet another procedure. It made the whole thing much less terrifying (and it was really terrifying. I don't really want to be awake in the OR ever again. Interesting, certainly, but terrifying).

Other than that--I have a nice lovely incision and I'm just focusing on recovering, so I probably won't make much of an appearance in the blogging world for awhile. Thank you for all of your prayers, telephone calls, and emails. I have felt such an outpouring of love from friends and family this past week that has really touched me and made me feel incredibly blessed to have such wonderful people in my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

something I learned today: it's easy for an insurance company to deny approval of a procedure to someone calling from a doctor's office.

it's not so easy for them to deny the client who's crying hysterically.

so glad this mess got sorted out. so very, very, very glad.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf - CREATE

woe is me

well, here's the deal: the round ligament that supports the uterus apparently created itself a rapidly expanding hernia that is getting progressively larger and more dangerous. so I'm scheduled for surgery early Friday morning.

I don't know why, but this is absolutely overwhelming to me. Maybe it was a cumulative effect from the hour and a half I sat waiting to see the surgeon, who was running late, and imagining all sorts of dire possibilities. Maybe it was the news that I wouldn't be able to pick up my children for the next four months, or go for a restorative run. Maybe it's just the fact that I've usually been able to do everything and more I need to do, and now I'm so bewildered and overwhelmed that I literally cannot even think how to entertain the girls for the rest of the day--something that I've been doing day in, day out for the last four years. Maybe it's the fact that I still have five weeks of the semester left--of getting up at 6 am and somehow getting through two hours of lecturing and grading when I get home. Maybe it's just the enormously terrifying prospect of having abdominal surgery when I'm 24 weeks pregnant, and listening to an endless list of adjustments they're going to have to make to ensure the well-being of the baby (high up on that list: no general anesthesia, and possibly nothing after the surgery).

I'm sure everything will seem better tomorrow, but right now about all I'm good for is sitting on the floor with the kids in my lap and crying.

a lot of things running through my mind right now...I saw my obstetrician this morning and she has no idea what's wrong. so I'm seeing a surgeon in an hour. today I'm feeling very grateful for friends--it was so much easier to go to the ER last week or the doctor today secure in the knowledge that the girls were being taken care of and I could focus solely on what the doctor was saying. and especially grateful for my husband, who is being much more solicitous of my health than I ever have been, and who has not reprimanded me once for calling too much or asking him to come home early when he's already overworked but I can't get off the bed, or lying on the couch crying while he takes care of dishes and dinner and baths. and grateful for my children, who remind me daily that whatever I'm going through right now, it's worth it for another baby like them.

grateful, and really hoping and praying that things will be okay and that this can get figured out soon.