Is it Bad...

That I think, "My kid is cuter than yours" on a daily, sometimes an hourly, basis? I am sure you all think that about your own kids, too.



















And really, who can blame us?

Updates

Lately I have been....

• going to work meetings. I know this is weird, but really enjoy meetings. I volunteer to go. I get really excited about my profession instead of getting depressed about it, which occasionally happens when you're "in the trenches" as we say. Yes. We really compare teaching to war. And sometimes I get trench foot.
• Facing up to the reality of no more Harry Potter anticipation. For the REST OF MY LIFE. It's really hard and slightly depressing. I have spent the last 12 years waiting for the next book, the next movie, the guess of who's going to die and who's going to live. It's the end of an era, people. This was a once-in-a-lifetime-series, and I am sure I will never read something like this again.
• Counting minutes between contractions. I have been contracting regularly almost every night, but apparently this baby is all talk and no action. I was getting really worried last night when they started coming harder and harder--at the beginning of HARRY POTTER. I was like, are you kidding me! But I took Joe's reasoning the last time I went into labor while watching X Men Origins: we're not leaving until it seriously hurts. Well, I made it through the movie (every 4 - 6 minutes) and through the night. Contractions stopped around 2 in the morning, and baby is still here, sitting as low as humanly possible without falling out. The kid is going to have a square head from me sitting right on top of it.
• Trying to not be a bad mom to Alice even though I am really too tired and hot to do anything. I feel really bad because she wants to go and play, but I just really, really can't face walking up and down my stairs some days. I think this is why Daddies were invented (well, besides for the obvious reasons) he comes home and livens things up for her. I hope that she'll like me again after I'm up and around and not so tired anymore.
• Trying to crochet a blanket. It's harder than you think because it's hot, and I don't want a blanket on my lap, and Alice LOVES to crochet. This doesn't sound bad, but let's remember that Alice is 2. Her idea of crocheting is to hijack my yarn and needles and create knots that I later have to untangle. But you should see her cute little face when she looks at me and says, "yook, Mommy! I made it!" So I let her, even though I regret it later.
• Looking at all the recipes I want to make. When I'm not hot and I can actually reach the stove.

All in all, it's not been too bad going at this point. I'm ready to be done, and I'm ready to not be sore and walk like a penguin. Just three more weeks....

A few things I am realizing about being home...

Summers are really the only time I have to be a stay-at-home-mom, as most people know. What I have found over the last couple of years with Alice is that I have a tendency to freeze Alice in my mind from summer to summer, assuming that this summer is going to be the same as the summer before, etc. What I have come to realize in the last three weeks is that this summer is NOT last summer. Even though I saw my daughter everyday, I didn't fully understand what it was like to be with her everyday. Here are a few things that I has really caught be off guard about this summer, when (surprise, surprise) I realized I had a two-year old this time around and not a one-year-old

1. Cleaning a house with a two-year-old is A LOT different than cleaning a house with a one-year-old. Instead of getting a room cleaned once a day and call it good, it's more like taking all day to clean the same room over and over again.

2. Two-year-olds talk A LOT. Especially mine. Even if she doesn't have anything to say, she still talks. Here is an example of a conversation that happens 5 - 10 times daily in my house:
Alice: Mommy
Me: What?
Alice: Mommy
Me: What?
Alice: Mommy
Me: What?
Alice: Mommy
Me: What?
Alice: Mommy
Me: Alice, if you don't say something, you're going to bed to take a nap.
Alice: Hi, Mommy

Yeah. Alice didn't talk so much last year.

3. Feeding a two-year-old is a lot more difficult than feeding a one-year-old, especially if the two year old talks (refer to number 2). And Alice has decided that she is going to be the pickiest eater on the face of the planet. As an example, here's the conversation we shared over a PB&J Sandwich today.
Alice: Mommy, I want a sammich
Me: Okay. I'm making you a sammich.
Alice: I can't like a sammich. I want a hot dog
Me: Well, we don't have hot dogs, and I made you a sammich.
Alice: I can't like sammich. Hot dog.
Me: No. If you don't eat the sammich then you can go to bed and take a nap.
Alice: I wanna go night-night.
Me: Fine (I start to take the sandwich away so she can go to bed, since it was nap time)
Alice: No! My Sammich! I love my sammich! I no go night night. I can't like it.

4. Two-year-olds are a lot heavier, especially when you are hefting them up three flights of stairs. It's even worse if you're 35 weeks pregnant. Most of the time, I try to make Alice walk the stairs, and she usually does, but once in a while, if it's really hot, she's really tired, and I don't have the patience to be on the blazing hot stairs while she stops to examine every rock, I give in and carry her up. Which is a lot harder when you weigh 25 pounds more than last year, and you daughter weighs about 10 pounds more than last year. But sometimes, I just have to, especially when Alice turns to me and says, "Mommy, Alice too heavy. I carry you?" And then puts out her arms to be carried. What can I say? If someone was standing by that would carry me up the stairs every time I decided to be cute, I would never walk up on my own.

5. There is no shame in your daughter watching two hours of Kipper the Dog so mommy can take a nap in the morning. Because I can't train Alice to sleep in this year by leaving her in the crib if she wakes up too early, like I did last year. This year, Alice walks in our bedroom anywhere from 5 AM to 8 AM (depending on how well she slept the night before) gets in Joe's face (or mine if she sleeps in beyond Joe leaving for work) and saying (very loudly) "Hey! I awake!"

All in all, I have learned a lot about my daughter that I kind of knew before, but not really. As a result, I have a few things to say,

Mom, I realize now why you never listened to me. I talked so much, who knew if I really ever had anything valuable to say?

Jackie, I wasn't paying you nearly enough money. I am sorry. The only consolation I can offer you is this: At least she didn't "puppy kiss" you (which really is what you think it is: licking. Ew.)

My First Week Home...

Alice did this:


It's not a great picture, because I was stupid and didn't take one when it was really dramatic, but it's stitches, or the scar from stitches she received on my last day of work. Poor Jackie--she had to rush Alice to the ER while I was at graduation watching my feet swell, and Joe had to take the day off to cover for me. But that's not all.

The day before I had to take Alice to get the stitches out, she did this:

I took this picture this morning, after Alice has had a day or so to look better. Yes, this is looking good compared to yesterday, when her eye was swollen shut, or the night before when she looked like she had been hit with a stinging hex, like on Deathly Hallows. Or Igor, is another reference that seems to fit. Poor Joe was with her when she tripped over some shoes of some teenager's at the Arctic Circle play area and met the stair with her eye. He was practically in tears when he brought her home and told me that I had to take her to the ER because he couldn't handle it. I decided to wait until the morning, since I was had to take her there anyway to get her stitches out.

I tried to hold it together until Alice went to bed so she wouldn't get scared, but as soon as she went down, I fell apart. I try not to cry in front of Alice or Joe because Alice gets scared, and Joe blames himself for whatever I'm crying about, but I couldn't help it this time. Alice looked so bad, we couldn't see any sort of bone structure under her eyes, and I was convinced that she would need reconstructive surgery. Then, I couldn't sleep all night because visions of blood clots and strokes haunted me. Finally, I couldn't take it, and I crawled into bed with her so I could monitor her breathing. Alice rolled over, woke up, and saw me. She put her hand softly on my cheek and said, "Hi, Mommy. I otay. I all better now." Then rolled over and went back to sleep. I felt calm after that and decided to go back to my own bed.

And then I got up four more times to check on her.

This is why we don't have boys in my family, I guess. Because we FREAK out. And because Alice is more than enough trouble for both of us. Yesterday, then, I took my mom to the ER with me for a witness that I don't really beat my child, and to hold down the freakishly strong Alice when they took her stitched out.

And then my mom made me go to Arctic Circle to "firmly let the manager know what happens when they don't follow their own rules" (shoes are supposed to be kept on at all times, and no one over 48 inches tall is supposes to be playing. Both of which were not being enforced). It's no wonder I became a teacher. My mom is such a rule-follower, and gets upset when no one else is. I think rule-following is an inherited trait, which is why, I assume, I have always gotten upset, even in fourth grade, when grammar rules weren't followed. How else can we communicate when no one follows the rules? So, I (a little too politely for my mom's taste) informed the manager what happens when people don't follow the rules. And then we got ice cream.

The plan this week was to get portraits for Father's Day. And to take Alice to a friend from High School's wedding to brag to my old boyfriend about how pretty my kid is when his are ugly. Oh, Alice. You do have a way of humbling me.

Alice's Fishing Pole

When my Grandpa died, we went over to help my Grandma finally clean out the garage. There was a whole bunch of cool stuff there, including a really old fishing pole Joe inherited. Unfortunately, it was not Joe's for long.

Alice discovered the fishing pole, and all of a sudden, she carried it around the house all day declaring it as "moin" (mine. She's started inserting "O" sounds in some of her words). Joe wasn't too attached, so the fishing pole became officially hers. And she carries it around constantly. She has even gotten out her swimming pool floatie, had Mommy blow it up, and she sits in the front room in her "fishing boat" and her fishing pole and watches Mickey Mouse. I first I thought it was a little odd, but cute.

Now, after last night, I just think she's weird. Alice has started sleeping in her Big Girl Room (pictures soon, I promise). It has been really hard for her, and so Joe and I have been taking turns sitting with her until she goes to sleep or until we get sick of her...whichever comes first (she has yet to go to sleep before we get annoyed and leave). Well, last night was my turn, and I just wasn't in the mood. Alice was being very good, reading books quietly, and I thought, she seems fine. Let's see what will happen if I leave. So I turned on some piano music, hoping it would help, and I left.

Alice got up a couple of times and grabbed me, telling me I had to listen to the music with her, and I would go back in her room, put her to bed, and then leave again. She didn't cry, which was a huge improvement over the last three nights. Finally, she stopped trying to come and get me. I could hear her playing in her room, but I thought, whatever, at least she's not coming to get me. And then, all of a sudden, she started to cry.

It sounded like a "hurt" cry, so I went to her room. Alice was sitting on the floor, crying. I put her in bed, and asked her what she wanted. She babbled something that I couldn't understand, so I started holding up books, her stuffed elephant, her blanket. No, no, no. Finally, I saw her fishing pole on her floor.

"Alice, do you want your fishing pole?" Yes, she did. So I tucked her in with her fishing pole. And she went to sleep. Weird.

It is Better for One Man to Die than for a Nation to Suffer

I've been thinking about this post since Sunday. I really didn't want to write it because I don't want to talk about it. But I feel, for posterity sake, that I should have an opinion. What happened on September 11, 2001 was one of the most influential events in the past 50 years, possibly passing up Pearl Harbor in seriousness. And I was alive, an adult. I remember where I was when, which is something my daughter will never understand, just as I don't understand Pearl Harbor or the intense hatred of the Japanese that my grandfather harbored until his dying day. Even in the midst of his Alzheimer's he would mumble about the "damn Japs."

So, where do I stand? First off, I can't ever forget what it was like at that time. I was one year out of high school, taking both a Political Science class and the required Ethics and Values class (philosophy). My EV class started at 7:00 A.M., so none of us in class knew what was going on until after the fact. I walked into the Institute of Religion in Orem and watched the towers fall on the LDS Institute television screen. I remembering thinking that there was no way the footage was real, that it must be some spectacular feat of special effects. I soon realized it was not.

I skipped the rest of my classes that day and spent all my time in the chapel watching the news that was being televised on the jumbo screen. My best friend, Beth was crying (and incidentally, it was the ice-breaker for her and her now husband. He played the manly comforter that day very well), but I didn't really know what to think. I was shell-shocked, I guess. For most of the rest of the semester, my Political Science class, taught by a man from Afghanistan, was a Q and A from the class about his religion, and my EV class talked about Terrorist Theory and argued about the death penalty and war. It was an interesting time to be in college, to say the least.

Now, ten years later, I am a teacher in a public school, and I am surrounded by students who were 5 and 6 years old when this happened. They have very little memories of it, other than their Kindergarten teachers crying at school; I have stopped asking about it in journal prompts, because my students have very little to say on the topic. I doubt they fully understand the implications of this week, just as I didn't fully understand the implications of the Berlin Wall falling when I was ten. No one has really talked about it here, other than the re-telling of the orders in the copy room. But after perusing some blogs, and watching the celebrations on the news, and listening to my talk radio to and from work, I have been thinking a lot about this.

What is my stand? What should I, as a Christian, think? Should I be celebrating the death? Should I feel relieved? Should I be abhorred at the thousands who are celebrating? And what do the Prophets think? I mean, most of them were around for Pearl Harbor, so this is familiar territory for them, and back then, it was patriotic to hate the enemy. But now, when public opinion is so widely spread, it's a different story. I have finally come to a decision about how I feel.

First off, I believe in Jesus Christ, and I believe he was the perfect man. He was a man that the government hated and eventually killed. But he did nothing wrong, so if you think I'm going to make a comparison here, I'm not. My point is, after all the abuse He took, the pains He suffered, and the burden He bore, He still said with one of his last breaths, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do," referring to the Roman Soldiers. So he forgave what they did. Can we forgive Osama Bin Laden? That would be the right thing to do. But on the other hand, I always remind myself, Christ forgave them, but he wasn't chummy with them. We don't have to like them, we just have to forgive them. So the question: Can I forgive that much? Well, in a way, I can. What Bin Laden did was horrific, a sin by a seriously evil man, a man who was following Satan. And I do not like Satan. So...I don't think I hate Bin Laden. I think I hate Satan and hate what he is doing to our country and has been doing for the last century.

Should I celebrate in the killing of Bin Laden? I think celebration is a little much. I don't want to celebrate, and and I am not naive enough to think this means it's over, the terrorist threat is done, because it's not. It is a little sigh of relief, just as Sadam Hussein was. Bottom Line: am I sorry he is dead? No. Am I sorry Americans killed him? No. Do I think that we should have captured and put him on trial? No. Do I think we should have honored his Muslim tradition in death? No. And here's why I am okay with that.

The Lord told Nephi (and I'm working on memory here, so I will probably misquote it) that it was better for one man to die than for a whole nation to suffer in unbelief. In this case, I think it is better for one man to die than for a nation--and possibly, the world) to suffer.

But death of another of God's Children is never something to celebrate. It is sad, not that he's dead--Bin Laden's death is NOT in any way sad--but it is sad that there is that much evil in the world, and that Satan has taken what I am sure is a beautiful religion and twisted it and turned it so that it is something ugly and violent. It is sad that a man who was once so innocent sitting in his mother's lap took the path he did and caused so much hatred in this world.

A man like that had to die for the help of the rest of the world, and I think that Americans should have been the ones to do it, just as Nephi, the most righteous of prophets, was the man to kill Laban. But it is sad that another one of God's children has chosen to follow Satan. Satan didn't lead away just a third of heaven. Satan is still fighting the old war, and he's still taking casualties. That is what we should mourn: that Satan has won another soul that was beloved to Him, and the loss of another soul is never a cause for celebration.

One thing I clearly remember about 9/11 was that the First Presidency gave an address later that day. Since I didn't leave the Institute Chapel, I watched and listened as it was broadcast. One thing I clearly remember was President Hinckley talking about how Secret Combinations, whose only master is the master of all that is evil and wicked in this world, even the very same Satan, were alive and well.

This man, Osama Bin Laden, was one of Satan's followers. I am glad that we have eliminated one of Satan's followers here on the earth, but it is important to remember that in this war, this war that we have been fighting since the beginning of time, did not start with physical bodies, and it will not end with the destruction of a physical body. It is good that Osama Bin Laden cannot cause any more hurt and destruction on this earth, and for that I am glad. But this death is a casualty of that more-important Spiritual War.

Someone won this battle. And it was not us.

This war will be bitter to the very end; we will suffer more and more casualties, and it will get to the point where we feel we cannot win, but we will. We have that guarantee. Even though wicked is reigning and Satan is gathering and strengthening his armies, we know that we will win. And at this time in our country, this fact, that Christ will conquer evil, is the most important thing to remember.

Alice Says...

This morning, Alice woke up crying. I went into her room and said, "What's the matter?"

Alice says in her new "crying" voice, "I can't see Ky-yer."

Kyler is our neighbor, about one year older than Alice. She loves him and asks for Kyler and Beckett (his little brother) constantly. It took a while to convince her that she can see Kyler tomorrow at her birthday party.