Aren't you ridiculously sad that you only hear from me once a week? If only Jessie was gone every night instead of just Wednesday. Sad day. Things here are going swimmingly. We had a great Memorial Day and took the girls down to check out City Creek. They got McDonalds, ice cream, new shoes, and played in the fancy fountain, so they gave the place a pretty good review. That will comfort the builders, I know, who were waiting for the okay from my kids to consider their work done. We also visited some graves, which was nice, although I'd forgotten how tiny cemetery roads are. We ended up hiking in with the stroller, which made me grateful we have one that can contain three children. Best Mother's Day gift ever. Jessie was so thoughtful when he said okay and let me order it. (In a girlie color, even. He is a saint.) All together, everything a holiday should be. And today was everything the day after a holiday should be-that is, lazy. To recover from the holiday.
Also new since our last report: I have a new calling. Before you place your guess, let me give you these stimulating and obscure clues: 1) The relief society president is my next door neighbor. 2) The relief society president is my visiting teacher. 3) Jessie got to know my calling before I did. (That may or may not be relevant, but I felt like that was a little unfair.) Back to the facts: Yes, my calling is in the relief society! How did you know? I am the new Visiting Teaching Coordinator in my ward. This should be comforting to my mother, who worries that I don't "get" relief society. Think of it as special training for the relief society challenged, Mom! I'm actually really excited about it. A lot of it is on the computer recording stuff. Is it nerdy that I'm kind of excited to do some work that is more brain work than repetitive cleaning work? It'll be good for me. Let me know if you have any tips for me on how to coordinate. I'm still working on coordinating schedules. And outfits. And other coordinating things.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
I am a young mother. Or so they tell me.
So I have some kids. A few of them. Not a ton. I know a lot of women
with a ton of children, all a year apart, whom they dress in homemade
designer clothing and feed homegrown jam and read to five hours a day. I
am not one of those women. But I feel like I can safely say that we're
in the throes of what some might call "young motherhood", and thoughts
on the subject have been percolating in my brain. (You see how I used
the word percolating there? That was totally gratuitous. Just to remind
myself I know some big words. One of those young motherhood things,
probably.) Sometimes young motherhood is awesome. Take today. When it
took my daughter four hours to pick up a dozen toys. Reminded me of the
time my mother wouldn't let us come out of our closet until we cleaned
it. We were in there all day. Mom brought us dinosaur macaroni and
cheese to eat in the closet. Best day of my young life. I wonder now if
my mother was relieved to have us so happily contained. Probably. Smart
lady.
Today I went to a relief society meeting. That was a smart move, because Jessie sits with the bishop Wednesday nights, so we got to bring all the kids, and they love field trips. Madeline terrorized the nursery. Spencer terrorized Daddy's lap. And Kimberly spent three minutes in nursery, thirty minutes in the hall climbing all over the stroller with dad, thirty minutes in the relief society meeting driving trucks on seats and flipping the lights, and five minutes stealing pudding from the treat table. I got her down the hall by confiscating her pudding and using it as bait to lure her. She cried the whole way and people looked at us funny. I gave them my "young motherhood is glamorous and I know you are jealous" look, which is a great look for me. It should not be confused with the "I feel like a circus freak show and probably should not be in charge of multiple small children" look, which is what it looks like on most other women, but not me, because I'm cool like that. Then I dragged several small children out the door crying loudly for their father. Home to their beds where they thanked me profusely for getting them to bed at a decent hour and feeding them vegetables and washing their laundry.
Sometimes we are a circus when we walk out the door. Sometimes we're loud and unruly. Sometimes I feel like dishing out a round of spankings or hiding in the closet and eating macaroni and cheese. Sometimes when there's a lot of kicking and screaming and the kids are kicking and screaming even louder than me, I think to myself, "Wow! This is making me really passionate about having lots more babies! 500 of them!" Young motherhood rocks. But seriously. It does rock. Because sometimes a pudding faced kid is the last straw, and sometimes they are the perfect photo op.
Today I went to a relief society meeting. That was a smart move, because Jessie sits with the bishop Wednesday nights, so we got to bring all the kids, and they love field trips. Madeline terrorized the nursery. Spencer terrorized Daddy's lap. And Kimberly spent three minutes in nursery, thirty minutes in the hall climbing all over the stroller with dad, thirty minutes in the relief society meeting driving trucks on seats and flipping the lights, and five minutes stealing pudding from the treat table. I got her down the hall by confiscating her pudding and using it as bait to lure her. She cried the whole way and people looked at us funny. I gave them my "young motherhood is glamorous and I know you are jealous" look, which is a great look for me. It should not be confused with the "I feel like a circus freak show and probably should not be in charge of multiple small children" look, which is what it looks like on most other women, but not me, because I'm cool like that. Then I dragged several small children out the door crying loudly for their father. Home to their beds where they thanked me profusely for getting them to bed at a decent hour and feeding them vegetables and washing their laundry.
Sometimes we are a circus when we walk out the door. Sometimes we're loud and unruly. Sometimes I feel like dishing out a round of spankings or hiding in the closet and eating macaroni and cheese. Sometimes when there's a lot of kicking and screaming and the kids are kicking and screaming even louder than me, I think to myself, "Wow! This is making me really passionate about having lots more babies! 500 of them!" Young motherhood rocks. But seriously. It does rock. Because sometimes a pudding faced kid is the last straw, and sometimes they are the perfect photo op.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
In honor of Mother's Day...the kids.
Welcome back to the mad house. The kids alternate between running me ragged and making life amazing, so we're staying busy enough. In honor of Mother's Day, which was appropriately celebrated with extra sleep and treats, let us indulge the mother in me and check in on the little munchkins and their latest award winning escapades.
Spencer is three months today, although we didn't have any cake, so I'll probably convince him to stay two months for a while to compensate. At the risk of totally screwing myself, I will admit that he is a dream. He sleeps anywhere from 8-11 hours a night, usually more on the 10-11 hour end, and therefore is my favorite child. He's getting more vocal about not being alone and responds to attention by hyperventilating. Clearly he needs to be adored by the public, and you'll see him on some reality television very soon. He is also laughing a lot, which is quite the drug high for my mama brain, so I spend a lot of time acting like a loon to get my fix. Madeline enjoys it too, but Spencer tends to clam up when she grabs his face and demands he laugh. I don't know why.
Kimberly has taken another one of those inexplicable leaps forward where she wakes up ten years older and I don't know how it happened. She weathered her second ear infection last week and takes her medicine with enthusiasm. She enjoys waking up at six in the morning and climbing into bed with Mom and Dad in order to make sure we don't sleep through our alarm, because she is thoughtful. Mostly she talks to Jessie and kicks me, which shows you how much gratitude I get for giving her life. Kimberly also enjoys sneaking suckers and Warheads out of the pantry, although the joke was on her with the Warheads. Hee hee. She talks a lot, mostly to Daddy on her play phone, and pretty much just spends all day hanging on the outskirts of the chaos picking up whatever food, treats and toys she can scavenge. She loves the new stroller I got for Mother's Day and spends a lot of time begging to sit in it. Happy Mother's Day to Kimberly.
Madeline continues to be the most interactive, the funnest, and the most exasperating of our children. Hazards of the firstborn. She has memorized the first two Articles of Faith and likes to bear her testimony in church. She is convinced one of the men in our ward is President Monson, but amazingly, this does little to convince her to be reverent in sacrament meeting. She pretty much spends all day either playing with friends outside, or with nose pressed up against the windows begging to be outside with her friends. I think she has a more active social life than I did in high school. Although that may not be saying much. Madeline loves to throw tantrums and whine, and then tell Dad how good she was all day. She has about 389 best friends. You are probably one of them. Congratulations. She spends a lot of time pretending, which is adorable, unless she is pretending to listen. She also spends a lot of time loudly referring to people as "that old man" or "that old lady", whether they look 20 or 90. They are always uniformly flattered and amused. She also likes to ask loudly about the baby in people's tummies, which also makes us a lot of friends.
Jessie was good to me for Mother's Day, and as I mentioned, I got to sleep in several times, try out my new stroller, go out for dinner, and hear how impressed Jessie was that I don't turn into a homicidal maniac listening to all the whining and crying all day every day. So nice to be appreciated for my accomplishments. Good weekend with my little family, living motherhood in all its bittersweet and wonderful glory. Hope you all enjoyed it too.
Spencer is three months today, although we didn't have any cake, so I'll probably convince him to stay two months for a while to compensate. At the risk of totally screwing myself, I will admit that he is a dream. He sleeps anywhere from 8-11 hours a night, usually more on the 10-11 hour end, and therefore is my favorite child. He's getting more vocal about not being alone and responds to attention by hyperventilating. Clearly he needs to be adored by the public, and you'll see him on some reality television very soon. He is also laughing a lot, which is quite the drug high for my mama brain, so I spend a lot of time acting like a loon to get my fix. Madeline enjoys it too, but Spencer tends to clam up when she grabs his face and demands he laugh. I don't know why.
Kimberly has taken another one of those inexplicable leaps forward where she wakes up ten years older and I don't know how it happened. She weathered her second ear infection last week and takes her medicine with enthusiasm. She enjoys waking up at six in the morning and climbing into bed with Mom and Dad in order to make sure we don't sleep through our alarm, because she is thoughtful. Mostly she talks to Jessie and kicks me, which shows you how much gratitude I get for giving her life. Kimberly also enjoys sneaking suckers and Warheads out of the pantry, although the joke was on her with the Warheads. Hee hee. She talks a lot, mostly to Daddy on her play phone, and pretty much just spends all day hanging on the outskirts of the chaos picking up whatever food, treats and toys she can scavenge. She loves the new stroller I got for Mother's Day and spends a lot of time begging to sit in it. Happy Mother's Day to Kimberly.
Madeline continues to be the most interactive, the funnest, and the most exasperating of our children. Hazards of the firstborn. She has memorized the first two Articles of Faith and likes to bear her testimony in church. She is convinced one of the men in our ward is President Monson, but amazingly, this does little to convince her to be reverent in sacrament meeting. She pretty much spends all day either playing with friends outside, or with nose pressed up against the windows begging to be outside with her friends. I think she has a more active social life than I did in high school. Although that may not be saying much. Madeline loves to throw tantrums and whine, and then tell Dad how good she was all day. She has about 389 best friends. You are probably one of them. Congratulations. She spends a lot of time pretending, which is adorable, unless she is pretending to listen. She also spends a lot of time loudly referring to people as "that old man" or "that old lady", whether they look 20 or 90. They are always uniformly flattered and amused. She also likes to ask loudly about the baby in people's tummies, which also makes us a lot of friends.
Jessie was good to me for Mother's Day, and as I mentioned, I got to sleep in several times, try out my new stroller, go out for dinner, and hear how impressed Jessie was that I don't turn into a homicidal maniac listening to all the whining and crying all day every day. So nice to be appreciated for my accomplishments. Good weekend with my little family, living motherhood in all its bittersweet and wonderful glory. Hope you all enjoyed it too.
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