cute chickies

I didn't do any formal photo session for Easter, but I did snap a few pics when we came home on Sunday.  I loved the girls' dresses; I don't usually make a point of getting Easter dresses, but I saw these after Christmas and snapped them up right away.

(Juliet would not smile normally no matter how much we coaxed her--she would smile beautifically until the flash went off and then make a horrible Calvin-like grimace.)

Isaac is finally--finally!!!--starting to be happier playing on his own.  This is a big deal, since he is usually planted so firmly on a lap!  A couple of days ago he spent about half an hour by himself lying in one of the papasans reading.  He was so cute that I couldn't resist the camera.

38 weeks

I realized when I snapped this photo this morning that I was wearing that same shirt YET AGAIN.  Oh well.  The truth is, I pretty much wear the same 4 shirts all the time because when I first bought maternity clothes, I was teaching every day at BYU, so all my maternity clothes are really formal, beautiful, require ironing, and are completely unsuitable for being the mother of small children.  So I wear the same 4 shirts, jeans, and gray hoodie pretty much all the time, because I am awesome like that (rotating in yoga pants when it's time to do the laundry). 

38 weeks today!  I saw my doctor and things are progressing--perhaps not as fast as I'd like, but they are definitely progressing.  The baby has noticeably dropped this week (he's at about -1 station now).

Tonight I ran 4 miles nonstop in under 40 minutes.  I have not done this in a long time--I've been coddling myself, going slower, taking water breaks and generally feeling miserable when I run.  I don't know what it was today, but I just kept going!  Oddly enough I was a lot more comfortable running today than on Monday, when the baby was still pretty high and my run was HORRIBLE.  Weird, because you think it would be the other way around. 

waiting game

Still pregnant.  (Not unexpected since I'm two weeks away from my due date, but this is the point where you start feeling like this will never end.)
I've been doing pretty well up until today.  Last night I didn't sleep well at all, and today has been one of those crazy busy days where I stop briefly at home long enough to change the laundry over to the dryer.  I developed a pretty killer headache and went to bed while Isaac napped rather than running, but I still wasn't able to sleep.  I really hate just lying in bed hurting and wondering if the contractions will actually DO anything.

Before this turns into a litany of complaining, let me just say this:  I am writing this to try to bolster my resolve.  I really want to wait this baby out.  And I know my doctor will offer tomorrow to speed things along, or to schedule an induction. 

I'm going to stop thinking about it all and spend the rest of the day just taking it a little easier.  We'll go out for dinner tonight one final time to our favorite local Indian place, I'll spend the afternoon at the library with the kids, and maybe I'll run tonight and maybe--just maybe--I'll give myself a day off for feeling crummy for the first time since I was on bedrest during my first trimester. 

my little sisters graduate

A big congrats this weekend to my sisters Ruth (the blond) and Mary Beth (the brunette) who respectively graduated with a Master's in Accountancy and a Juris Doctorate this weekend.  For more pics go here.  I just wish I could have been there along with everyone else in my family...

(also, trying to think up what ventures I should pursue now that my family includes an accountant and a lawyer.  I think I need to patent some genius ideas.)

now we are six

We kept things pretty low-key for Abigail's birthday this year.  We gave her the "big" birthday present (a new bike) almost a month ago, and celebrated in Chicago over the weekend (our trip to the zoo was followed by Abigail's favorite egg rolls, crab rangoon, and pad Thai at Noodles in the Pot).  For her actual birthday, she asked if she could have a friend over for the day, have a treasure hunt, and throw balloons up in the air (would that the requests would always stay so achievable!!) 

 

So we threw a huge sheet full of balloons over her this morning (the subsequent popping of which scared Isaac half to death)...

opened presents after breakfast...

turned a third batch of Rice Krispie treats into birds' nests (we made two other batches and sent them to school with her today for her classmates) and filled them with jellybeans from our treasure hunt...

...and glammed it up with some Fancy Nancy-esque rings (I don't think more glee has ever come out of a dollar purchase). 

I think Abigail had a lovely day--I was thankful that she was willing and happy to keep things so simple.  I'm grateful for the last six years I've had with her, and even more grateful that I have a lifetime to figure out the best way to be her mother.  Sometimes I feel terrible because she's my "guinea pig" child...I'm fumbling through all the learning and trial and error, pleading in my prayers every night to "just be more patient tomorrow and show Abigail that I love her," and right now we're clashing more often than not.  But she keeps on forgiving me and giving me another chance.

go to the temple

This weekend, we drove up to Chicago to go to the temple one last time before the baby is born.

I would be lying if I said it was an easy trip.  We usually try to make it a really fun experience for the kids so that they'll look forward to it as Neil & I do, but the reality is that Chicago traffic is a nightmare, sharing a hotel room with everyone is difficult, and we are inevitably tired and exhausted afterwards (although we did go to the zoo on Saturday, which was fun.  Maybe I'll get around to posting pictures at some point).   

As I was sitting in the bathroom with Isaac at 2 am on Saturday morning (he had inexplicably woken up and was throwing a tantrum), I was thinking about the sacrifices that people all over the world make to go to the temple.  In the Philippines, where Neil served his mission, many members will save for years in order to be able to go to the temple just once (and here I am complaining about sitting in traffic for four hours!). 

I don't have any really coherent thoughts this morning; just a feeling of gratitude for the fact that we ARE able to go to the temple and learn, both about things of eternity in formalized teaching, and to learn through spiritual promptings that come in response to questions we may be actively seeking answers for, or things that simply come into our minds as we sit in thoughtful contemplation.  I was flipping through my journal earlier and I was surprised at how many of the entries had to do with the temple, either waiting outside for my parents and describing how I felt or just talking about how much I was looking forward to the time when I could go in myself. 

Some things I was thinking about over the weekend:

• My earliest "temple memory" is of hanging over the edge at the reflecting pool at the Washington, D.C. temple and just wanting so badly to be married to my husband for time and all eternity, and resolving that I would do whatever it took to be married in the temple.  I was probably seven or eight at the time.
• As a teenager, we were visiting the St. Louis temple during tornado season.  When we were walking from the parking lot to the temple, tornado sirens were blaring and the world just seemed like a cacophony of noise and dust and storm.  And as soon as the temple doors closed behind us, everything was silent and still and serene.  I've always thought of that as the perfect metaphor for how the temple provides a haven and a refuge from the world.  
• When I lived in Utah as a student at BYU, my roommate and I were fortunate enough to be able to work out a time to go to the temple together every week, and it was definitely the highlight of the week. My freshman year was really stressful, and this was such a respite from all my worries and difficulties and stresses. (I also love this segment on Blessings of the Temple.)
• When Neil and I were dating, I ran into him at the temple one day.  He was just coming out, and I was visiting the grounds with some children from our ward (I was in the Primary presidency at the time and we'd taken a trip to the temple with the children one Saturday).  I looked at his face and knew that he'd been praying about whether to ask me to marry him, and that his answer was yes.  
• My little sister Mary Beth is currently preparing to receive her endowment next week.  She wrote a post that I really enjoyed reading about her feelings during this process and why the temples are so integral to our beliefs. 

spring fest 2011

One of our favorite weekends here is the second week in April, when the whole university turns out to show off all the cool things that they've been doing in their various departments.  It's pretty geared towards kids, which is awesome! 

I mentioned in my last post that Neil got up super early to get to work so that I could run the 5K.  For the last few years, he's been heavily involved with the electric vehicle go-kart Grand Prix, which has a pretty big setup at Spring Fest (more on this later).  He's been working long and late to get ready for this doing all sorts of hard things like test-driving supercharged remote-controlled electric cars up and down our street, disassembling aforesaid cars all over the house, etc.  (which is a fairly facetious way of saying he has been working really, really hard, and it was really sweet of him to rearrange his whole morning so that I could run). 

When we got to campus, we went straight to the evGrand Prix tent and Neil spent half an hour or so troubleshooting and fixing problems with the circuitry of the demo vehicles (if you know him in real life, he's something of a mechanical genius and completely in his element doing things like this).  After the girls had sampled all the available candy and tied balloons all over themselves, we deserted him for the tent where they were giving away free cotton candy and popcorn (my children thought they were in heaven). 

Then we went to the animals tent, where Isaac truly did not know where to look first.  It was like all his wildest dreams come to life--the kid is absolutely obsessed with animals (one of his first recognizable words was "duck").

 

And there were ducks.  Boy howdy, were there ducks.

(About two seconds after I took this picture Isaac tried to pick up the duckling by the head.  The duckling was not happy.  I was extremely relieved that the duckling survived, because he was very determined and enthusiastic about grabbing that duck, and I honestly thought for about five seconds that the duck was toast.)

And there were piglets.  Which was about the most exciting thing ever for Abigail and Juliet, who have been playing Charlotte's Web every single day for the last month (I am so not exaggerating, although I wish I were.  Juliet always wants to be Templeton the rat...she came to me in tears during a playdate last week when her friend didn't want to be a rat with her.  And we are no longer allowed to dispose of spiders in our house in case one of them might be one of Charlotte's children). 

Walking away from this baby cow was very difficult for Isaac.  He came back four more times for just one more pat. 

 

This grasshopper is an origami creation.  Isn't that awesome?!  There were a dozen or so different origami insects--really impressive.

Another thing Isaac was really, really, really excited about--bees.  We were tasting all different kinds of honey when Isaac looked up and said, "Bug bug bug bug bug bug BUG BUG BUG BUG!!"  This is always one of my favorite exhibits--there's a honey tasting, live bees, and then a pretty extensive display (all of which you can touch and pick up and heft) about the process of beekeeping and extracting the honey from the hives.  And lots of helpful people eager to answer questions.



The highlight of the day was when we returned to the evGrand Prix tents so that Neil could check up on things.  The sun was finally out and the rain had stopped, so he got out the Power Wheels and the kids went crazy.  Fortunately there weren't too many other kids around at this point, so Abigail and Isaac spent almost an hour in the cars (Juliet accidentally hit the gas with her foot climbing in, ran into a bench, and was done for the day...we tried three more times, but she froze up and started crying each time she climbed into the car).

Abigail was a total pro--she started teaching younger children how to use the cars, which I thought was really sweet (especially when she would drive over, climb out, and offer them not only instruction but the use of the car she was driving).


Isaac was initially sitting with me eating his lunch, but very quickly decided he wanted to drive too.  Neil put him in one of the cars and was manually working the gas and the steering wheel, and it took Isaac only a few minutes to figure out how everything worked.  The next time I looked up, Isaac was zooming around chasing Abigail (with a watchful Neil nearby to pick up the car and flip it around when Isaac got too close to pedestrians).

I think Isaac had the time of his life--when we finally took him out, he went completely boneless and cried the whole way home.  Poor kid...we'll have to go visit Daddy at work sometime soon.

Running with cargo @ 35 weeks

I ran the 5K this morning!!  It was fantastic, and the very best part was my cheering section at the end.  Such a treat to have them there, and a huge thank-you to Neil for making it happen (he went to work at 6:30 AM on a Saturday so that he could be back in time to watch the kids while I ran). 

If you want to read more (and see more sweaty pictures of me with no makeup), go here. 

(And to read about the other races I ran during this pregnancy, go here for the 10K and here for the half-marathon.)

It's funny to realize that I only started running a few years ago, just a couple of weeks after Juliet was born.  And I'm certainly not what a lot of people would consider a "real" runner, but I have to say that I really feel like I've come a long way.  A year ago this month, I was staring down the barrel at my first half-marathon--my first race EVER.  It's been so exciting to see my improvement, and that even during pregnancy, I'm still faster and stronger than I was before.

being sappy

All day today I've been counting down the hours until Neil gets home.  Some days I just miss him so much.  (I even made lasagna tonight, just for you, honey!  Just pretend that tofu is actually cheese.  Or meat.  Take your pick.)

I was looking at wedding pictures today and doing a little reminiscing for the days when it was just the two of us starting out together.  I love the way he's looking at me in this one--like I'm the most wonderful thing he's ever seen.  He's really good at making me feel like that every day (like last night I was turning on my iPod after we turned out the lights, so it was lighting up my face in the dark, and he told me how beautiful I was.  He's always really sweet about saying that at times when I don't feel particularly lovely, as well as when I've gotten fancied up for a date or something like that).  I love how when it's been a hard day and he comes home and just holds me things are suddenly so much better.  I'm really ready for that today.

following up

Remember when I posted about this?  Today I got this email back from the library: 

Thank you for the comment you submitted when you visited the library on March 16, 2011. Your concerns are important to me.  After reading the book and conferring with youth librarians, we agree. All copies are being moved to the adult collection.

The young adult collection is for ages 12-18. While the reading level may be appropriate for younger children, the content may not be. Young adult content consists of characters in middle school, high school or college, and the theme or subject matter is of interest to and intended for those groups.

The library upholds the right of parents and guardians to make individual choices for their own families. I applaud the interest you are showing in the selection of materials for your daughters. In the future if you have a question about content, I encourage you to ask for assistance from our staff or feel free to contact me at the any time.

 I was so grateful to read this, especially since I just got off the phone with the post office to express my frustration with their customer service (yesterday Neil got there 5 minutes before closing time and the clerks, all busy chatting, told him to come back the next day.  Which he did, asking for the cheapest way to mail a package internationally, and the clerk charged him so much that we lost money on the sale, without ever mentioning the cheapest way to mail the package, which I found out by calling the manager later.  Who was understandably upset with the clerks).

Sometimes I can never decide if I'm being a concerned citizen trying to make things better, or just a pain.  So that email was really nice to get.