Eight Months

You're such a little man!

Dear Benedict,

The time is flying by and you are becoming a little boy! You have the most wonderful personality and are smiley so often that I have to remind myself that there are unhappy babies out there and I am one lucky mom. There are some days I have to smother you with love because you are so awesome, and often that doesn't feel like enough.  How do you express love this big? It helps when your dad is around and we can just stare at you and ask each other "how did we produce such a wonderful little being?" It is quite miraculous.

And then there are the days where I'm so tired I can hardly keep it together long enough to entertain you, and I nap just as much as you do. Those days are rough. Luckily they're not as frequent as the good days.

Your achievements seem to come to fruition in the even months, so this month was chalk full of great things. It's amazing to watch you begin to grasp a concept and then work to get it down and, within a matter of days, you've mastered it. I'm trying not to be impatient about the crawling thing. You don't absolutely loathe tummy time anymore, and you are getting pretty strong, but you get so bored so easily these days and I know once you begin to move around you'll be so much happier. Granted, that means I'll actually have to baby-proof the house.  You win some, you lose some, right?

You and your pal Hudson hanging out. I couldn't for the life of me get both of you to smile simultaneously.

Your pre-crawling efforts have left you with a pretty muscle-y torso, but your arms and legs are still about as smooshy as they come. Our friend Kimber was holding you a few days back and remarked "your thighs are so fat, it's almost like holding a teddy bear!"  It's true. And we love those yummy rolls. Your feet are still about as tall as they are wide, and you point your toes so nicely when you're sitting up and get excited about something; You hold out your arms and legs straight from your body and your hands and feet twitch and rotate and you practically vibrate from anticipation. It makes me laugh so hard, especially when you're looking forward to eating because it's about ten times more pronounced.  You make me laugh a lot and I love it.

You seemed to think your new carseat was pretty spiffy. 

Likes:

• Food. Your solid food intake has taken off. You love everything we've given you so far which includes sweet potatoes, prunes, bananas, pears, beets (the poop! oh the magenta poop!), green beans, carrots, apples, and cheerios, although you haven't mastered the art of swallowing non-pureed food yet, so you mostly gag on what cheerios do make it to your mouth. I'm very much looking forward to feeding you table food because that means I don't have to make you unique food, and I'm lazy. Win/win. 

  

  Who needs lipstick when you have beets? 

This is what things turned into after just a few spoonfulls.

• Getting ready to eat. When you know food is coming you start vibrating and it's hilarious. 

• Hangouts with the family.  This is a wonderful thing, especially around the hours of 4-6 pm before your dad gets home and I'm just about at the end of my rope and lacking creativity in entertaining you.  You seem to think Grandma and Grandpa are pretty awesome (and Auntie Beth when she joins us) and I like the adult interaction. Win/win/win.

This is what happens when we hang out. You floss yourself and we all laugh. 

• Toys.  Or non-toys. You still like things that shake (the coriander, tums, teething tablet bottle, mint tins etc.), your bottle brush, my sewing measuring tape (it's pretty much useless now that you've killed the spring inside and chewed off the numbers near the end), and most spatulas/whisks. You're getting bored of most of the old stuff you've had in your box, so I'm constantly figuring out what new household object can be your next toy. 
• Dropping stuff from high chair. You've hit that stage and my back is not thrilled. 
• Bouncing in the crib.  You have discovered you can get places when you bounce, and this is compounded when it's on a mattress. Your crib is extra springy and you love the air you can get when you bop around. 
• Grabbing faces/necks. Sometimes your love is a little painful. 
• Grabbing yourself. Every single diaper change. Why?!?
• Playing "Where's the baby?"  Peekaboo doesn't quite have the same effect, but you love having your face covered by a blanket/towel/pair of pants and then pulling it off while we ask you where the baby went. This silliness extends to your crib too. 

I love your little face!

• Blowing on your tummy.  It took you a while to warm up to the zerbert, but now you giggle really hard when we blow on your fatness. This works with your neck and cheeks too. 
• Standing up.  You've perfected the grab-Mom's-fingers-pull-yourself-up trick and now you will violently grab my shirt (and any flesh underneath it) and do your best to stand when you get tired of sitting in my lap. This often is accompanied by a faceplant into my chest, but you're getting better. You have pulled yourself up on your crib railing a few times, but you're not steady enough do stay up long, and this requires I sit you up first, since you can't do that on your own yet. 
• Singing.  You LOVE "popcorn popping" and still are calmed by "Race You to the Top of the Morning" and "I Am A Child of God."
• Yelling.  You have discovered that the garage echoes nicely and so whenever we go downstairs to get into the car you start making quite a racket. You also don't really babble, but your vocal cords get a great work out and you sound like a pterodactyl.  
• Propping your right foot up while you play. This is adorable and makes your thigh look extra fat. 

You have surprisingly good balance considering how you're sitting. 

Dislikes:

• Getting dressed.  You really like getting undressed though, and are great at helping pull shirts off over your head. 
• Diaper changes. You don't really dig laying on your back much these days. 
• Getting your face wiped off.  I suppose this is something that's built into children's DNA, but unless it's turned into a game, you loathe this. 
• Being left alone. You grunt loudly to show your displeasure. Separation anxiety, here we come!
• Being stopped up.  Oh this is awful. You literally eat prunes with every meal, and even then, anything that's not terribly fibrous is like cement. You are such a happy little man until your belly hurts; however once things are all cleared up down there, you can play by yourself for almost an hour before complaining. 

Adventures and Achievements thus far:

• Bouncing as locomotion. As mentioned above, you have figured out if you hop on your bum it gets you places (although you usually forget this, so you're pretty much stationary 90% of the time). I did make the mistake of putting you down by the window one day and then found you by the mantle about to put the TV antenna in your mouth. 

• You got your second hair cut! Everything was getting too shaggy, so we buzzed you. It took me a few days of feeling very guilty before I got used to your cute short hair. It was a little severe, but those fine baby hairs are so hard to get in the clippers unless you go pretty short. 
• You are now officially sleeping with your arms outside of your sleepsack. This happened about 3 weeks ago once you discovered you could roll over, and I figured it probably wasn't the best idea  to keep your arms pinned to your sides, so out they came. This caused us both to sleep terribly for 4 or 5 days, but you realized you can roll onto your belly (you can't roll to your back yet!) and fall asleep and stay asleep for a good long while. This has been awesome.  We're finally getting back into our sleeping groove and it's great. 
• You are getting babysat by all sorts of people. It's so nice to have Jenny and Mike near us right now because this means you get used to hanging out with people other than me.  Joel's parents are still fabulous baby sitters, and the ladies in the ward are kind and willing to help out, so you get to see lots of new friendly faces. 
• You love sitting up in shopping carts.  This started a couple months back, but you seem to think it's pretty awesome. You are so observant, that having you out in a place where you can watch and soak in your environment keeps you happy.  You smile at cashiers and other people who say hello and they love it and it makes me feel like the best mom (you know, cause I did something to make that happen?). You're a great little shopping buddy. 

We're heading up to the family cabin in a few weeks and I'm so excited to be there with you for the first time. Sadly, Joel is so busy he probably won't make it (I'm trying hard to not think about it so it doesn't make me sadder) but I'm looking forward to more fun with the family. I love watching other people love on you because it allows me to see you through different eyes. So often I am the only one with you during the day and your awesomeness becomes normal, but when I'm around my family and everyone keeps telling me how much they love you, it reminds me how ridiculously blessed I am to be your mom.

I love you to the moon and back.

Loves,

Mama

Crazy doesn't even begin to cover it.

One day a couple of years ago Joel and I were talking to our friends about the crazy week we were having. These friends told us they had times like that (doesn't everyone?) but to mitigate the insanity they called the week "Swear Week."  I'm not entirely sure if it was to allow profanity while under extreme duress, but regardless of the cause, the name stuck. 

This has been one of the biggest swear weeks of our life. 

It's all the little things, you know?

Like the canker sores and the constipation and the fruit flies and the general uncleanliness (filthiness?) of our apartment that directly mirrors the stress level of our days. 

Monday was a holiday for the rest of the world. Joel's work schedule suggested otherwise for him. So he was gone from 9 until almost 4. Do you want to know the most recent holiday Joel actually spent outside of the office? Christmas. That was almost half a year ago.  

So he gets home. We decide we should probably run 5 miles that evening, but we're both so hungry. So we decide, "hey, we've worked hard today. We deserve some happiness in the form of sushi." So we get online and look up the stuff we want to order and call in to the sushi place. It's not open till 5. Same with pretty much every other take out sushi place within easy distance of our apartment.  Frustrated, we decide to have some toast, go for a run, and then call the sushi place on our walk home. We run 5 miles, feel like we're going to die (not a great day of pre-run eating), and then call in to order food. We get a pre-recorded message that says because of an emergency with the chef, they won't be open until Wednesday. So we get home and find somewhere else to eat.Unfortunately they don't deliver.* 

sigh. 

Joel enters warp speeds at work on Tuesday. Things get crazy enough during the week that on Wednesday he comes home at 2:45. In the morning. He had to take a cab because the trains weren't running any more.** On Thursday he gets home at 8 PM. This actually allows him to get more than 4 hours of sleep. 

On Friday (that's today) Joel is exhausted but needs to get into the office relatively early to file something with the courts on time. He heads out the door only to call me once he gets on the train and then off one stop later because there's a system-wide "delay" (more like a shut-down).  I head downtown to pick him up but it takes rather a long while since I have to get Benedict into his car seat and then actually find Joel. We get on the freeway and even though it's only 7 and a half miles to Joel's office, it takes us almost an hour and a  half to get through the tolls, across the bridge and into San Francisco because everyone else can't take the train either.*** It takes Benedict and I a total of 15 minutes to make it back home. Because of the traffic I miss my last chiropractic appointment before our race. This makes me anxious. 

sigh. 

During all of this, Benedict has decided he will only roll over when he's attempting to nap in a darkened room. Unfortunately he's still in his sleep sack with his arms strapped down to his sides. So he'll get put down for a nap, roll on to his face, and then grunt until I rescue him. After doing this twice in a row one day, I figured it was probably wise to put his arms on the outside of the sleep sack and hope he would still be able to fall asleep. He can, but it takes twice as long and he only will sleep for 45 minutes at a stretch again (I was under the impression we dropped this 3 months ago).  He's not only waking himself up during the day, but also at night. Last night I was up about every hour and a half either feeding him because he was inconsolable or putting a pacifier back in his mouth. Needless to say I'm rather bleary today. 

To top off all the craziness, we're running a half marathon tomorrow morning. I kind of want to kick myself.**** 

I also kind of  (and by "kind of"  I mean "really") want to eat chocolate chips by the fistful. 

Maybe next week will be better? 

Footnoted upsides of this week's craziness:

*It ended up being quite good (and cheaper) sushi, so that was nice. 

**I read an entire book from start to finish that evening while under the impression Joel was still coming home at a decent hour. I hadn't done this since Benedict was born. Unfortunately I went to bed far far too late. 

***We spent the time downloading all sorts of apps onto Joel's new iPhone (thou shalt not covet...) and it was the longest amount of time I had spent with Joel just talking in days. 

****I'm thinking happy thoughts about the whole race, and one of them I just realized this morning was the fact that I'll burn more than 1,250 calories. That's a lot of calories. 

The Skinny, Part 3: Wherein I Discover a Corner of the Food Pyramid I Had Previously Neglected

To read Part 1, go here.
To read Part 2, go here.

So. We moved from Provo to California.

Joel was working from 7:30 until 6:00 most days and I was supposed to be looking for work myself. Instead of doing that, I was hanging out in our small apartment making a quilt and trying to not feel too guilty. We were in limbo again; we had been promised an apartment managing job, interviewed for it soon after we got to California, and were just waiting for the apartment to be fixed up so we could move in. I wasn't motivated at all to do much of anything, but I did make an effort to be active for at least 40 or so minutes a day. It was late summer in northern California, and therefore the warmest part of the year. We had a swimming pool at the complex, and so I swam about 2 or 3 times a week when it got hot enough. The other days of the week found me walking 3 miles along the trail that abutted our apartment complex to do some light grocery shopping, or running 3 or 4 miles at a go. It seemed like I should have been much more fit than I was.

The problem? I still didn't eat fruit. Now, this is rather embarrassing, and has been something that has been an issue my whole life. (Well, not my whole life--my mom tells me I loved fruit as a baby and then one day when I was a toddler I decided I didn't want to eat fruit any more and I abstained from that day forward.) I was eating good food and not eating a ton of sweets but I felt like I had plateaued. Looking back, I realized eating 2 slices of peanut butter toast (generous on the peanut butter) put me back almost 500 calories. No wonder I wasn't feeling particularly svelte.

The fall right after we moved to the new place. 

We moved (finally) and got settled down. I had a job that required me to clean 3 floors of hallways, a parking garage, sidewalks needed to be swept, and windows needed to be free of grime. I was walking four or more miles 4 or 5 times a week. Things were getting better, but I wanted to be fitter. I was getting tired of the endless effort it took to even remotely stay in shape--it was an uphill battle that I fought, and one that nagged me relentlessly. There had to be a better way!

Then the miracle occurred. Joel had been campaigning for greater fruit intake in our lives and had attempted to get me to eat "just a few bites" (do I sound like a toddler here? This is embarrassing.) but I usually ate as little as I could get away with and called it good. But since I couldn't shake the nagging softness of my new non-teenage body with my current diet, I knew something had to change.  I decided I would have to like fruit.

I knew I opened myself up for ridicule when I got around to telling Joel of my personal discovery (well, not eating fruit my whole life did, so it wasn't much of a change), but he was kind and made it his personal crusade to expose me to all the "good" fruits (apparently mangoes and cherries and oranges aren't in this category, but we'll let those slide for now), and so he became my biggest supporter. With him by my side I started small. Grapes were sweet enough--it was the texture that threw me for a while--and crisp apples were relatively easy to handle. I took the initiative to branch out to pears and peaches and eventually realized that I had been missing out on some really awesome foods.  I was finally getting somewhere!

With the addition of fruits in my daily diet, my attempts at being fit didn't feel so futile. Instead of those two pieces of peanut butter toast--heavy on the peanut butter--I would have one piece of toast and a whole apple.  I started eating cucumbers like they were going out of style. Greens made up a decent portion of our diet. If there was a fruit I had trouble eating, I'd just stick it into a smoothie and it suddenly became palatable.  I felt like I had unlocked the secrets of the universe, even though they had been staring at me in the face the whole time.  

I learned I'm a rather stubborn person: ultimately it had to be my own decision to overhaul my eating habits. No amount of cajoling from my sweet husband could change my  mind (poor guy). Logically, I knew my fruit aversion was silly, but I hadn't gotten scurvy in all my years of not eating fruit, so things couldn't be too bad, right?  But I learned there's a difference between fighting tooth and  nail to hold on to a figure I knew I wanted, and living a lifestyle that allowed me to do so far more easily; The first was a battle against my poor choices, while the second was a proactive approach to include as much good as possible in my diet.  There's a surprisingly large difference between the two.

I've battled stomach issues my whole life and once I started eating fruit and vegetables as a larger part of my diet, my stomach felt so much better; one greasy meal used to clean me out (if you know what I mean...) but that was no longer an issue; the nightly bloat I experienced went down significantly. I finally had a decent handle on the whole "diet and exercise" thing. It had only taken me 23 years of my life to figure it out.

The summer after finding fruit!
(taken by Tara B Photography)

I played around with my new healthy lifestyle for a year and enjoyed the fruits of my labors (heh, no pun intended). I felt great and even though I didn't have ripped abs, I was healthy and my clothes fit nicely.  I had found what I was looking for.

And then I got pregnant.


...to be continued...

19 Things I Will Do With My Second Baby

Since Benedict was born, I've been thinking a lot about the things I'm glad I did with his birth and postpartum experience and some of the things I'm not glad I did. I want to write them down for my own sake since I assume I'll be doing this birthing thing again in the future and don't want to reinvent the wheel every time. If there's something you loved/hated about your own birth experience that I didn't touch on, please share!

So. In no particular order,

What I'm Glad I Did with Benedict's Birth:

• Had a professional photographer take newborn pictures of Benedict. Our amazing friend Kimber gave us a mini-shoot for a gift, and we were able to time it when Benedict was still a brand new baby and therefore pliable. I look at my hefty dude now and wonder how he was ever less than 8 pounds, but I have photographic evidence, and not just my crappy point-and-shoot camera, but well-framed and beautifully lit photos. 
• Had familiar, calm music in the hospital room. I have never been a huge proponent of a "birthing playlist" but I married a man who lives and breathes music. Joel was the DJ of our hospital stay, and it was really nice to listen to something very familiar in a very unfamiliar setting. I didn't listen to anything while actually giving birth, but for those downtimes when we were hanging out waiting for my body to do its thing while the epidural kept me numb as well as in the postpartum room, it was great.  In case you were wondering, this is what we listened to the most (albums 1 and 2).  This also doubles as fabulous music for those newborn days when you can't stand much more than quiet background music: 

• Had my mom come out almost 2 weeks after my due date. Had she come when she originally planned, we would have been staring at each other for 3 days before Benedict showed up, and by the time we left the hospital, she would have been gone. This way Joel and I could do our thing (and just having Joel in the labor room with me was perfect for us), and by the time Joel was getting burned out of being the only help, my mom appeared! Joel went back to work and my mom did the metaphorical heavy lifting. 
• Didn't buy any baby clothes before Benedict came home from the hospital. We had 2 showers and thanks to the generosity of so many amazing people, we were blessed with an abundance of clothes. I bought a pack of newborn onesies and even that was too much. 
• Made copious list of what to bring when it was go time. I'm a compulsive list maker and terribly forgetful, so it was nice to have everything written down. Once those contractions were really going I didn't have any spare brain cells to direct Joel to do anything. I just gave him the list and he ran with it. 
• Went on the hospital tour. I'm a creature of habit and new places and experiences sometimes intimidate me. The hospital tour was one more way I could be comfortable with the unknowns of the birthing process. 
• Got a breast pump before hand. I was lucky enough to be the second of my friends to give birth in a one month period, so my friend Sandy (who is also a first time mom) gave me the heads up about engorgement and the awfulness of dealing with it without a pump. I bought one but ended up sending it back because the hospital gave us one (a simple hand pump) when we were discharged. It has been very well used.
• Registered on Amazon.* This made it really easy to keep track of what I wanted all in one place. It was also fabulous because you have thousands of real moms weighing in on what is worth the money and what is crap (and all of you pregnant women just know how wonderful it is to be biologically driven to register for only the absolute best stuff for my baby!!!).
• Signed up for an Amazon Mom account. This is just a gateway drug to the Amazon Prime membership, but I'll be darned--it's fabulous. I signed up for it a month before Benedict was due. At that point I had accounted for all the stuff I received from the baby showers and blitzed through my Amazon registry with the ease of a few mouse clicks. There is also a 10% off code you get around that time frame that you can use toward certain baby items. 
• Got many friends to bring me meals/bought lots of decent frozen offerings. Our church congregation is fabulous and we had 3 meals within that first week that kept us going with leftovers until we felt a little more like human beings and less like zombies. 
• Had multiple pacifiers available. We tried one style of pacifier at the beginning and Benedict liked to suck on it, but just couldn't keep it in his mouth. Luckily we had another style of pacifier waiting to be used, so we tried that and found happiness. 
• Had a box of the next size up diapers. This saved my sanity. Too many blowouts? Try the next size up and see if it fixes things. It's so much nicer than just wondering if it would help, and it saves you from yet another trip out to the real world in stressful circumstances. 
• Took everything in the recovery room that wasn't bolted down.  I was hesitant at first, but then the nurse saw we were on our way out and hadn't taken all of the supplies in the drawer and practically forced them on us. This was fabulous since it saved us from making a Target run sooner than we had to in order to re-stock up on huge pads and witch hazel (Buy those things in advance--you'll need them anyway!).
• Bought nursing pads in bulk. You go through them SO fast and the last thing you want is crappy pads against your already sore self. I loved the Lansinoh pads, and you can get 240 at a time on Amazon (here!!) for much cheaper than the single boxes at Target. I still use these religiously 7 months out. 
• Used Craigslist for stuff like swings and bouncers. We found some almost immediately just down the street (thanks to the East Bay being so populated) and it was fabulous. 60 bucks for both, and the bouncer alone would have been 70$ new. We just laundered the covers, cloroxed the rest, and were set.
• Called the advice nurse early and often. We're part of the Kaiser system and it's free to call the advice nurse, and call them we did. My healing was very very slow and I had more setbacks than I ever thought possible, but at least I was able to talk to someone (who wasn't dealing with postpartum hormones and sleep deprivation) who knew what questions to ask and when it would be prudent to come get checked out. Many times it was just "you sound ok, let us know if anything changes" and that was that. But sometimes I needed to be seen and those nurses were the gateway to quick checkups. Even if it wasn't serious, it always put my mind at ease after being reassured by a medical professional. 
• Got outside as much as possible. Unfortunately we live on top of a rather steep hill and I was a mess physically after giving birth so long walks with a newborn weren't in the cards, but just strolling Benedict in his stroller and smelling fresh air and seeing other people (they still existed!!) was rejuvenating. 
• Used nail scissors to cut Benedict's fingernails instead of clippers. We have clippers, but I was always terrified that I would be clipping off skin along with the fingernails. Having scissors makes that less of an issue, and as long as I don't poke Benedict when he wiggles, we're good. 
• and last but definitely not least... Bought a Kindle Paperwhite.  (This was rather fortuitous; I was going to buy myself a Kindle Touch with my wellness challenge winnings, but when I went looking to get one they were all out of stock. Word on the street was they were going to trot out a new version in a few months, and they did! My patience paid off in a huge way.) The kindle is not only a great source of portable nursing entertainment, it also functions as a soft night-friendly light. I still use it for reading during middle of the night feedings--it's backlit and therefore needs no reading light--and then turn up the light a bit and stick it on the floor so I can see what I'm doing when I change Benedict's diaper. I don't have to turn on any lights and Benedict stays sleepy so the transition from feeding/diapering to going back to sleep is extremely smooth for him and me. 

*No, this is not in any way a sponsored post.  Amazon doesn't know who the heck I am (except they probably would recognize me by my credit card number because I use it so often...) I just delight in the laziness-enabling power of online shopping.

Seven Months

You are such a ham. 

Dear Benedict,

You have made it over the hill of your first year! It has been a month of consistent naps, more and more personality, and general happiness. You are still growing like a weed; your 9 month jammies are getting immodestly tight and your new car seat is set to arrive tomorrow (!). We've finally settled into our new apartment and life is good. You hardly cry, and for that I'm grateful. You do let me know if you are feeling abandoned or neglected by coughing and grunting until I pay attention to you. You have developed the most adorable habit of staring at something and then turning your head sideways as if to get a different view of it. It's especially endearing when you are in my arms and you rest your head on my shoulder.

Things must look different from this vantage point.

You've been a pretty solid napper as of late, although when you aren't terribly tired you tend to mess around. You still nap in your bouncy chair and more and more lately you've decided it's fun to kick your legs and bounce yourself out of the chair. Thanks to our video monitor, I have the pleasure of watching you inch your way out and then get worried and start grunting anxiously once your back is the only thing still in the seat. A few times I have had to resort to laying you on a blanket in the closet, but this enabled you to wedge your head into the corner. I just can't win.

I believe the first hints of separation anxiety are showing themselves. This makes me slightly apprehensive, but then I remember that every mom lives through this. It might not be pretty, but it will be ok. You seem to do well with your grandparents, but if you get tired or hungry you get much sadder when I'm not around.

As of 7 months you:

Like:

• Playing with your ever increasing number of toys. Well, "toys" is sort of a misnomer, since most of the stuff you play with comes from what's laying around the house and involves many kitchen gadgets. Your favorite things to play with are Sophie (still), my Old Testament Chronology from seminary (it's colorful! It's plastic! It's scriptural!), the mesh strainer, your oxo baby spoons (chewy on one side, and a good size for grabbing on the other), the bottle brush, and straps or ribbons or strings of any kind. You really groove on having your box of toys by your side and slowly going through all of it and emptying it onto the ground around you. This is my go-to way to keep you entertained until dinner is made.

• Holding stuff in your mouth without using your hands. You stick stuff in there and then let go with your hands and make eye contact with me to show how proud you are of yourself.

So many fun toys!

• Smacking things. A few weeks ago when you attempted to grab at items within your reach while nursing (my hair, my lips, the sensitive skin on the inside of my arms, my kindle), I would hold on to your arm and make your hand smack mine. This made you smile big smiles and eventually you figured out you could do it on your own. Now you like you smack my hand while nursing, and if you're sitting up, your arms naturally come down at your middle, effectively making you hit yourself repeatedly in the crotch. Thank heavens for the soft padding diapers provide. 
• Eating my food.  Well, eating my apple slices and carrots. You know the difference between a plate of food that's not Benedict-friendly and a plate filled with apple slices. You get far more impatient when you know it's an apple I'm eating and won't stop grunting until I share. 
• Eating everything. No matter what it is, it goes in your mouth. Every. Single. Time. 
• Walks.  You still get excited when we're heading down the hallway in your stroller and you are wonderfully content to be outside. I am forever grateful for this, and you're still a fabulous running buddy. 
• Dad. He's still your favorite person to see come through the door and he can make you giggle like crazy. 

You two are the best

• The grandparents. We had the chance to enjoy both sets of grandparents this month and you love love love the attention they all give you. You are one spoiled boy. 

Hanging out with Grandpa.
Can we pause for a moment and exclaim over the delicious fatness of your thighs? 

• Music.  Still. If you are getting frustrated or bored, all we have to do is turn on music and you get happier. You love it when we sing to you, and I've started branching out to more songs (thank heavens for Primary--without those years of Little Purple Pansies and Give Said the Little Stream I would be hard up for happy kid songs!) and you rather like Popcorn Popping, complete with hand motions, and the Horsey song. 
• You like to pull hair and grab faces and anything that is interesting and within your reach. For this reason I've made an appointment to get my hair cut really short. This has been a long time in coming, but your tugging has helped speed up the process.   
• Bathtime. We found you an awesomely cheap and generally awesome little tub at Ikea and it has enhanced your bath enjoyment tenfold. Now you sit up and chase your duck and shampoo bottle around for a long time before you get bored. You're not terribly averse to getting water dumped over your head to rinse out the shampoo, although you do splutter and give me accusatory looks. 

So happy about your newly attained cleanliness!

Dislike:

• Putting on/taking off clothes. You don't like to be restricted, and getting a onesie over your fat head makes you squirmy. You have learned that if you push your arms out once they go into a shirt, your hands show up sooner, and this has made dressing you much easier. 
• Tummy time.  I'm afraid you'll never learn to crawl because now that you sit up so nicely, you despise being on your front. Last month you started to scoot your knees under you once you got put down, but now you just wiggle around and pivot yourself and cry with no attempt at locomotion. We've have a few long discussions about how we need to get over this, but none of them seem to have stuck. 
• Being put down prematurely.  Especially after a nap. It takes you a while to warm up to the idea of playing on the floor sometimes, and if you aren't thrilled about it, you let me know. 
• Not being able to eat everything.  When you go to grab things like remotes or cell phones or charging cords and we have to take them away, you get rather cross with us. 

Adventures and Achievements thus far:

• I forgot to include our trip to you Aunt Tamie's house last month for Easter. You were teething something fierce and didn't want to be held by anyone other than myself, your dad, your grandma, and occasionally Tamie. This made your uncle Dave sad, but we figured it must be the fact that most of us are smallish and brunette, both of which Dave is not. Someday we hope you will understand that Dave is awesome and be happy when he holds you.  
• We headed up to Utah for the graduations of Jenny, Sam, and Brooke from BYU.  You and I left early early on Monday morning and flew to Salt Lake where my mom picked us up and we painted the town red cleaned the grody provo apartments of my sisters and helped them pack.  You were a great little traveler (you got your own seat on the plane!) and rolled with the lack of naps and napping in odd places. One day you had 5 naps and went to bed at 9:45 pm (!) but you were surprisingly happy the next day.  You had fun meeting your Great Grandma and Grandpa for the first time and they enjoyed smooching on you. We were sad when we found out your dad couldn't make it to Utah because of his crazy work load, but that made it extra nice to come home to see him. I don't know how single parents do it. I am so grateful for your dad and his willingness to do as much as he can to help us both out. 

You're a great flier. 

Chilling with Great Grandma Ellen

Listening to the band Jenny student taught this semester--they played "October" and it just about made me weep remembering my marching band days. 

Hanging out with Auntie Beth 

Celebratory Indian food with the graduates.  Apparently you weren't too thrilled.

Jenny graduated! And all the sisters together. 

• You started eating solid food!  We began the adventure on the day of your 6 month check up. This was rather foolish because we didn't know if you weren't doing well with the immunizations or the new food in your tummy, but for a while there you weren't sleeping well at all. I chalked it up to your shots, but after a day of no solid food, you slept well again. So we figured you were just plugged (you were) and gave you some prunes and you were fine. You're only eating solids once a day in the afternoon and whatever you eat always has prunes in it. You come by your gastrointestinal issues honestly. Sorry about that. You really enjoy carrots and sweet potatoes, but apples are iffy. The more we feed you real food the more you get excited when you see your blue bib coming out of the cupboard, and you're practically vibrating with happiness by the time you get your first bite. This makes me laugh really hard. 
• You've discovered you can sit up using my hands and you love it. I'll put out my two index fingers and you then grab them and I pull you up while you hold on. One day you didn't let go after sitting up, so I kept pulling and you stood up. You thought this was the best thing ever and have since only wanted to stand when I help you up. 
• We hung out with all my lady friends and their babies at the beach one day for a good 5 hours. It was going to be a hot hot day (90+ degrees without air conditioning) so we decided we would wait it out out by the bay. We ended up sitting in the shade and never making it to the water, but it was so lovely and with the breeze, it hardly felt hot. You also looked smashingly handsome in your beach getup. :)

See? Smashingly handsome is not an overstatement. 

• You are starting to use some consonants amidst your attempts at speech (mostly yelling, but it is what it is), although I think the T and S sounds you make end up being the beginning of experiments with spit.  It's still adorable.

Thanks for being the best little man. You get yummier and yummier with every month and even though you are HUGE I wouldn't stop your growing up. It is surprisingly delightful to chat with you about the minutiae of our days, especially when you smile so readily and love me completely.  I didn't realize how wonderful a little person could be.

I love you to the moon and back.

Loves,

Mama

The Skinny, Part 2: The Post-Mono Months Plus Marriage

If you haven't read Part 1, do so here. 

In the last post we ended our meandering journey with me getting Mono and losing my bum and any muscle previously on my person. Let's continue from there.

Ahem.

After the worst of my mono experience was over and I could get up and walk around with out feeling exhausted, Joel got back from South Africa and came to visit. He decided to do so on a whim (probably because he was lonely in Provo and was pining for my awesomeness) and by the end of his short visit he had convinced my parents to let him take me back to Provo. They figured it was as good a time as any and they knew I was going to be well looked after. During this visit Joel brought up the "M" word again and I didn't know if I was feeling it. But let's face it--who feels like doing anything while plagued with mono? So we talked the entire 11 hours back to Provo and by the time we hit southern Utah I was thoroughly convinced that my misgivings were unnecessary.

About a week later we were engaged. Work was uneventful and my boss was extremely understanding, my living situation was crappy after Tausha moved out (except for Syd and Melody!), I fell into bed exhausted every night and had to catch my breath after climbing any stairs thanks to the lingering mono. I got a little more meat on my bones since my stomach was finally getting more room in my torso and things got back to normal. Well, as normal as any engaged person can feel. (For the record, I really disliked being engaged. I'm glad we only had 2 months till the wedding.)

This is an engagement picture taken a few weeks after getting back to Provo. (click to enlarge) 

I had no bum and my arms were ridiculously skinny!

And then married life began. It was great. Joel started law school and I finally declared a major. I began to really cook for the first time in my life. I had control over what we were eating and I enjoyed it. I still wasn't eating any fruit or enough vegetables but my body hung on to its teenage metabolism so it wasn't such a big deal. Joel was the most receptive audience and, since his mom wasn't much of a gourmet, he praised my casseroles to the heavens. We were getting to bed at 10:30 on a regular basis and Joel started pushing me to at least try running. Between walking all over campus, a regular lifestyle, and running 3 times a week I was happy and didn't really have to watch what I ate (and Joel isn't a huge fan of ice cream, so we rarely had it in the house). I stayed fit.

The next 3 years felt much the same. When we were in California for 2 summers we had enough time in the evenings to run by Lake Chabot and on Canyon Middle School's track. There would be times where we fell out of exercising during the school year (hello finals!) but we never stopped walking around campus so we didn't feel pudgy.

The last summer in Provo felt like an eternity. I was working almost full time and going to school part time while Joel studied for the Bar exam for months. We were both very excited to move to California and start our real adulthood (because Provo adulthood is fake? I don't know. I don't understand either). Between working long hours, sitting on my butt during those hours, and being generally bored with life, I started to get soft. I wasn't motivated to do much of anything including exercise. I just wanted to graduate already! I needed more structure in my life. There were endless excuses to make for why I didn't exercise. And so the downward spiral started. I was frustrated with my lack of exercise but not enough to motivate me to get myself in gear.

At the end of August we finally moved. And then my body decided it was time to slow my metabolism down.

Tune in next time for more of my boring, mostly-healthy life.

The Skinny, Part 1: The Freshman 15

Once upon a time I used to keep up a private blog with only a few readers. There's some content on there that I rather like and want to bring it out into the sunshine again. I'm going to post some of the older stuff here every once in a while and hope it can be welcomed by my newer, somewhat expanded readership. This particular post is the beginning of a series that I never finished, but in light of my pregnancy and postpartum getting in shape, I figured it was a good time to finish it. Enjoy!

[Originally written on December 10, 2010]

So. I've decided I want to tell my story.* It's not very dramatic and there's really not a lot to tell, but I'd like to document this particular achievement in my life and reflect on how things are going. We'll kick part 1 off with an anecdote.

Ahem.

It's April of 2006. I just finished my freshman year at BYU. I successfully lived out the BYU co-ed dream: dated the pre-missionary, failed a few classes, and ate ice cream at 2 in the morning on a regular basis; as a result, I gained the freshman 15. I knew things weren't quite what they used to be--the only pair of jeans I could comfortably fit in would have slid down my hips 8 months earlier. I went home to Arizona that summer to work and had a horrible time of it. No one told me the conclusion to the BYU co-ed dream consisted of pining after a missionary, hating your GPA, and feeling rather dumpy. Lucky for me I gain weight in my face so the world could see the source of my self loathing. But I didn't know what to do. I had been fit all of my life and felt awkward in this softened and somewhat enlarged version of myself. Of course, I knew conceptually what I needed to do to lose the weight: diet and exercise. But it wasn't easy to put it into practice. I am blessed to have a health conscious mother who cooks well so, in the course of my crappy summer job where I stood up and moved a decent amount and ate well at home, I slimmed down a bit. I still wasn't entirely back to my post-high school physique, but I was feeling more comfortable in my body.

As a way of comparison: Before the Freshman 15

...and After the Freshman 15

That next year of college forced me back into my active lifestyle: I was in the BYU marching band color guard and I lived twice as far from campus as I did my freshman year. Because of this I was getting in at least 16 hours of exercise a week. Even with all this exercise I was back to feeding myself (which required quite a few white flour tortillas) and my late nights were perpetuated by the newly acquired boyfriend (I had laid off the post-midnight ice cream intake by this time) so all of my exercise wasn't as beneficial as it could have been. I was fitting into my clothes and I was happy, albeit sleep deprived, all the way through that year. I officially fell in love with said boyfriend, felt like I wasn't being true to the afore-mentioned missionary, and got the best grades I had ever experienced because of my boyfriend's immaculate study habits (yes, we're talking about Joel). I was still thicker than I wanted to be, but things changed when I went to Portugal.

My brother was finishing up his mission in Porto, Portugal and my parents had dreamed up a scheme to pick him up at the end of March and tour the places he served for two weeks with the entire family. We had so much fun traipsing around cathedrals and meeting members who loved my brother. We also had to walk a million miles an hour to keep up the missionary pace Matthew set and we opted to walk many times to save a few euros. By the end of the trip my pants had begun to feel rather loose and I was so tired. I made it through the trip and then came back to Provo to finish my finals. Joel and I took a trip to Arizona before he headed off to South Africa with the BYU Singers' for 3 weeks, and upon coming back to Provo it hit me.

I had mono. It was awful. The doctor said it was so bad that it was impacting my liver (usually the spleen is the only casualty) so my parents got me on a plane and I headed back to Arizona. I slept so much and was listless anytime I was awake. It was taxing just holding a book upright when I read. My stomach was losing space because of my other enlarged organs so I wasn't hungry, and when I was, I couldn't eat much simply because there wasn't any room for my stomach. From the time I received my diagnosis in Provo to the time Joel got back from South Africa I had lost 10 pounds. I had reached my post-high school weight but then kept going, ending up weighing around 123 pounds. My mom told me I didn't have a bum. The shorts Joel gave me earlier hung on what was left of my hips. My sisters said I had stick legs. Still, in my heart of hearts I knew I had finally gotten rid of that freshman weight, and did so without diet and exercise. I was grateful that it was gone, but hadn't learned how to deal with my weight in a healthy manner.

To be continued... dun Dun DUNNNN!

(OK, I know it's not really that dramatic.)

Tune in later for more installments of my boring, mostly-healthy life.

*As a preface: I have never intensely struggled with my weight, hated my body, or had any sort of eating disorder. I'm not writing this to say I'm in any way better than those who have or to equate my struggles with theirs, but for the last few months weight has become a bigger issue than it has been in the past. I'm simply writing about the lifestyle changes that I had to make to be happy with the body I've been given.

Six Months

So much fat. We love the fat. 

Dear Benedict,

Where has the time gone? You used to be tiny and barely able to hold up your head and now you're giant and about as beefy as they come! It's amazing what half a year can do. I can't believe how much my attitude toward mothering has changed either; before it was very much a chore to feed, burp, diaper, clothe, and bathe you, but now you have so much personality and it makes me happy to be around you and snuggle you and keep you entertained.  I still love it when you take long naps though. I need time to myself to think deep thoughts and cater to my own needs--having this time makes me more able to be a good mom to you.

You are teething up a storm. You have been a trooper for a while but then a few days ago your gums went into high gear and you got really sad.  Lucky for us, one tooth popped through a few days ago and you seemed to feel a little bit better. I am so grateful for tylenol and teething tablets when things get really rough.

We finally moved in the middle of last month and we're still settling in here.  You took everything in stride (apparently living in 2 places for a month has its perks in terms of getting you used to change) and didn't bat an eye at your new surroundings. I believe you now understand that this is home. You're content and relaxed when we're here.  I miss our old place, but this one is nice. You have  a fabulous walk-in closet in which to nap (yep, still doing that) and a whole room for all of your stuff. Hopefully we don't have to move any time soon since we're still unpacking two weeks later. On top of all the unpacking we're doing, I just realized I need to start baby-proofing since we know you'll be toddling around soon enough.

This move has given you much more stability in your day-to-day routine and I've finally figured out what works best for you. You usually get up around 7:30 and make noise in your crib until I come and pick you up. We hang out for a while and then you eat around 8 and go down for your first nap an hour and a half after you wake up. After your nap we usually have something to do, whether it's a run or errands or playing with friends, and two hours after you wake up from your nap you take another one. This continues the rest of the day until, 2 hours after your last nap, you head to bed. You're a very good sleeper but we have yet to wean you off of your 4 AM wake-up. I'm hesitant to do it right now since you're teething and you wake up inconsolable during the night sometimes, but eventually we'll make it through.

I love watching your silly personality grow every day. Everyone--even strangers--tells me you are a very observant boy. You get quiet in new environments and are slow to respond to strangers. Although once you warm up to someone you are quick to smile huge grins that light up your whole face. You love to know I'm around (which melts my heart) and if you're hanging out with your toys on the floor while I make dinner and I pop up to say hi you always smile at me. You also have figured out that coughing gets my attention, so when I leave your line of vision, you start up your fake coughs until I show up again and then you giggle because you think you're so sneaky.  I love this.

My healing has improved in leaps and bounds since the physical therapy class I went to. I have stretches to do that will help keep me healthy and happy and in much less pain. I am so grateful for good insurance and a husband who wants me to be healthy and so helps me stay motivated and positive. I have a long way to go until I'm better, but with time and patience and consistency I'll get there. I'm so glad.

As of 6 months you:

Like:

• Food. duh. 
• Singing. We still sing and so far, that's the only thing (besides nursing) that will calm you down when you have worked yourself into a lather. You especially love when your daddy sings. 
• Patty Cake and "This is the way the lady rides." I'll start in on those and you grin big happy grins. 
• Your daddy. So much so that sometimes if he's home from work and you need to eat, I must banish him from the room because any noise he makes (coughing, laughing, standing up from a chair) is immediately distracting and you whip your head around to see what he's done.  This is somewhat painful for me, but I love how much you love your dad. No one gets you to laugh as much or as hard as Joel does. 
• Roughhousing.  I'm still a little bit hesitant to do much more than lift you up (let's face it, it's really more like bench-pressing you) when I'm sitting on the floor, but Joel enjoys tossing you in the air and you giggle and gasp and turn pink and laugh again and again. 
• Video chatting with Grandpa and Grandma in Arizona. We started chatting more frequently since we moved and now you've figured out the people in the screen are talking to you so you get extra smiley when they come on. General Conference was a heyday of happiness since there were so many people talking to you! At least you seemed to think so. You really smiled for Rosemary Wixom since she looks a lot like your Grandma. 

Smiling at President Eyring

• The baby in the mirror. This is an after-nap ritual since our full length closet mirrors are right outside your bedroom. I love seeing your sleepy face light up when you see the handsome baby staring at you. 
• Chewing on everything. Teething definitely has a lot to do with this, but your grab-item-put-in-mouth maneuver is pretty seamless these days. 
• Grunting/squealing/screaming.  There weren't a lot of consonants happening this month, but your throat got a pretty good work out. 

Dislike:

• Tummy time. You still haven't rolled over again since you were 4 months old, but now tummy time is so abhorrent you get angry and pull your knees in under you. This has lead to you propelling yourself head first into the carpet, which then makes you madder so we give in and sit you back up. This should eventually lead to crawling, but tummy time happens so infrequently I'm not sure when that will be. 

You got your knees under you but then gave up and rested your heavy head.

• Teething. It's been a rough few weeks. We saw your teeth one day on a walk when you started crying and wouldn't be soothed. You rub and rub your eyes and pull on your ears and scratch deep gouges in your face, so we've started clipping your fingernails every three or four days to keep the personal injuries down to a minimum. Hopefully your little gums stop hurting soon. 

Adventures and Achievements thus far: 

• At your six month doctors visit you: 
• weighed 20 pounds 10 ounces and went down to the 92nd percentile for weight (up 2 lbs 2 oz from your 4 month appointment). So so fat. 
• measured 29 inches and were still in the 100th percentile for height for 6 months running (up 1 inch from the last appointment). We need a new carseat. Also, you were standing in my lap one day after I fed you and I realized I had to reach up to smooch your fat cheek. What is this? Where did my little baby go?
•  your head was 17.6 inches around and in the 87th percentile for head circumference (up an inch and a half, and up from the 85th percentile). We have very few hats that still fit you.
• You got the last booster shots for the year and took them like it was nothing. You looked affronted to have been chatting with the nice nurse lady and then BAM! shots to the fat thighs. But once it was done and I picked you up you stopped crying and were over it. You didn't seem phased by the side effects of the shots like you did last time, or maybe I just lumped it all into teething. I did give you some tylenol that day and you slept for almost 3 hours. 
• Sitting up by yourself. You have always liked to be propped up so you could see better, but now that you can do it on your own, your happiness, personality, and ability to play by yourself has tripled. You are content to play with your toys for quite a while now (especially since when you drop them you can find them in front of you rather easily) and you seem even more engaged with whatever is going on now than ever before. Your ability to sit up has made you into a little person and I love it. We often put the boppy pillow around you just in case you topple and sometimes you end up reclining bit by bit until you're practically horizontal. This is not ok and you let us know by grunting extra loudly. Also sometimes you reach a little too far and you (so rudely) end up on your belly with an arm pinned underneath you. This makes you extra mad so you skip the grunts and head straight to crying. 

The boppy has seen more time around your fat little cheeks than around me.

• You are the best little running buddy. Since we moved I have started training for a half marathon and this has required that you sit in the stroller while we zip around the lake (at 6 miles an hour if I'm feeling particularly frisky). You seem to get a kick out of the wind and oooh when it blows in your face. And sometimes you start grunting when you're getting tired of the stroller and it pushes me to run faster because I feel bad for you. But then you fall asleep while I'm the one running mile after mile and I don't feel too bad. 

Not a lot has happened this month in terms of achievements, but we're headed to Utah for your aunt Jenny's (and other relations) graduation so hopefully we'll have more to report next time. 

I've loved month six more than any of the other months. You are such a wonderful little person and things just keep getting better. You complete our family. I can't imagine life without you. If I try, it makes me sad so I don't try very hard or very often. 

Keep being awesome.

I love you to the moon and back,

Loves,

Mama

Real Life After the Move

So you know how I had a list of things I was going to accomplish after we finally moved? Here they are, along with the progress (or lack thereof) made:

... I'll finish that quilt. - Not happened. Too much crap is still sitting around with no home for me to feel like I can bust out my sewing machine, no matter how much I want to use my new walking foot. le sigh.

... I'll invite the girls over to make bread. - Nope. See above comment about the still-homeless crap.

... I'll start running again. - YES!! In a big way. Like, I plan on running a half marathon sort of way. This is craziness people. For years I was an avid devotee of the "I Hate Running" school of thought, but look at me now! Apparently depriving myself of serious physical activity through a pregnancy and recovery period is quite motivating.  I was chatting with Sandy on one of our walks around the lake and she informed me that all the ladies had decided this was something they wanted to do. I thought about it  off and on throughout the rest of the day and by the time Joel got home I sheepishly admitted that I wanted to do this. I say sheepishly because Joel has been urging me for years to do something of this caliber and I always turned him down. What prompted the change, you ask? Well, a post-pregnancy body for one, the fact that I have 4 other training buddies for another, and probably a dash of crazy to finish it off. There's nothing like motherhood to drive you to drink run.  Also having an awesome stroller.*


... I'll stop eating so many chocolate chips. - Yes, but not as enthusiastically as the above point. I've stopped eating chocolate chips by the bag, but I have found a beyond delicious wreck-your-diet-and-waistline dessert. Behold the S'mores Cookie Bar:

Photo and recipe via Lovin' From the Oven

In the words of Joel (who, 99% of the time, doesn't like the same intense desserts I favor): "This is freakin' good. You have to make this again." Ohh twist my arm dear. So yeah. 

Also Cadbury Mini Eggs. They're not technically chocolate chips, right?

... I'll have more time to myself. - This point is true, although I won't feel entirely free until things are totally unpacked. I have had more time to myself, devoted to my own pursuits. This has been lovely and I keep waking up in the morning with entire days devoid of anything on my calendar (even if it was only taking out the recycle bins, it still made me feel beholden to someone else's schedule).  Now we wake up, eat, play, take naps, get in a run, shower, nap some more, wait with baited breath for Joel to get home, and end our day pretty early. Benedict finally has a rhythm he's fallen into and has been so much happier and a much better napper since we figured it out. It only took 6 months.

... I'll have more time to serve others. - This is kind of true. I have been up to my elbows in sad teething baby and unpacking, so the serving has been put on the back burner. I did make dinner for a new mom in our ward so that was good, but I still have piles of cardboard boxes sitting on my kitchen floor, and empty bookshelves and stacks of boxed-up books. This is my own fault for being lazy and say, blogging, instead of unpacking. But blogging fills my cup and sometimes unpacking just doesn't cut it.

//


We spent the Easter weekend at Joel's sister's house in Sacramento, and I was pleasantly surprised by how happy I was to come home to our messy little apartment.  Like everything, this change has taken some adjusting, but it's going well. Some cleanliness would definitely help it feel more homey, but we seem to have settled in to some degree.

This is not to say I don't have moments where I miss our old place. I don't miss the managing by any means, but that funny apartment with its long hallway and floor-to-ceiling windows was where we brought home our brand new baby boy. I became a mom in those three rooms. It's where we lived as Joel's career really got underway. It's where I grew in leaps and bounds as I struggled through my first months as an apartment manager and a member of a unique ward that often asked of me more than I thought I could give. This place was home for two and a half years.

I was the last person out of the apartment on the night when we picked up the final few items. I got to walk through the rooms and say one more goodbye to the funny little pellet stove, the warmer in the kitchen, and the space where we became a family of three. It made me sad to go.  And in the days after that goodbye I would see the building on my walks home--to the new home--and part of me wanted to run back in and pick up life like we never left.**

Our new place is good though. It's got three walk in closets and a kitchen with enough cupboards to hold all of my stuff and have leftover space. I think it will be a good fit for this next chapter of our lives.  I just wish it had a little more sunlight. Maybe a little less noise from upstairs. But it's nice. I'm sure we'll come to love it too. I have to get those boxes unpacked first. I guess I'll take it one thing at a time.





*There are too many ways in which I would like to praise this stroller. I have used it almost daily since Benedict was born and I love it with my whole soul. It suits my lifestyle beautifully and I couldn't have asked for a better form of transportation for my little man.

** I told Joel (and he agrees) that this feeling is akin to that just-broke-up-with-a-significant-other feeling where you see that person and for a split second things seem like they never changed, but then your mind catches up and your stomach drops and you hurt all over again.  Obviously it's not as dire (also this isn't high school). We were the ones who decided to move, but it all happened so fast and we were transient for so long before we moved so I think my mind hadn't really processed that we would no longer live there once it was over.  On the upside, we are significantly closer to Whole Foods (I think our bank account would not agree this is an upside), and Joel's walk to the BART station is shorter. It's getting easier to walk by our old blue building and not feel sad. 

Thoughts

I have had so many thoughts running through my head lately. I don't know whether it's because I'm done managing and so I have to have something to fill up my mind (cue the once-a-day panic that comes because I think I've forgotten something important, but really there's nothing to forget. I've had this happen ever since we moved), or if I've been reading so much about so many controversial issues that require a lot of thought to work through. Here's a smattering of the contents of my mind.


//


I came across this photo series depicting a woman's journey through breast cancer. Although it's wordless, I feel chastened.

I've been complaining for months now about my postpartum hair loss. I am losing my hair because I created life. This woman lost her hair because she was trying to save her own life. I get to watch the new fuzz around my face come back, while she never had that chance. It is sobering.


//


The current same-sex marriage debate and court ruling are, as one friend put it, "tying my stomach into knots." This issue is so much bigger and convoluted than I can deal with right now. It's rife with hate, tolerance, kindness, bigotry, anger, triumph, and discomfort. I don't even know which of those words describe my own ideas about the issue.

In the midst of listening to this beautiful talk by Elder Holland from last General Conference I sat with Benedict standing on my lap. He had just been fed and was busy chatting and chewing on his fist in an attempt to keep his sore gums from hurting. In that quiet moment I heard these words:

"My beloved brothers and sisters, I am not certain just what our experience will be on Judgment Day, but I will be very surprised if at some point in that conversation, God does not ask us exactly what Christ asked Peter: “Did you love me?” I think He will want to know if in our very mortal, very inadequate, and sometimes childish grasp of things, did we at least understand one commandment, the first and greatest commandment of them all—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.” And if at such a moment we can stammer out, “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” then He may remind us that the crowning characteristic of love is always loyalty." 

Suddenly the debate in the courts isn't about statutes and precedent. This is something that touches millions of lives. How would I feel if Benedict came to me one day and told me he had these kinds of feelings? How would I react? I know exactly how Heavenly Father wants us to react--with increased love and the loyalty of which Elder Holland speaks. But translating that knowledge from the realm of the ideal to the real world gets sticky. We are flawed. I am awkward when I am out of my depth. And surely this issue of love and marriage is vastly out of my depth.


//


Joel and I recently started reading the Book of Mormon again. I'm not sure what it is about this time around, but suddenly these characters aren't just characters. I have understood more clearly Sariah's anguish at the potential loss of her sons; the heart-wrenching talks she must have had with Lehi while her boys were confronting Laban--someone so much more powerful and cunning than her little band of children; her exhale of relief when, with eyes searching the horizon, she saw every boy accounted for coming back to the tents.

It makes me wonder, was Zoram jumpy? Was he someone who had worked his way up through the ranks to be capable of holding the treasury keys, or was he born to that privilege? Was he proud of his standing in Laban's house?  Or how did Nephi feel, watching his older brothers (whom he probably looked up to very much) consistently do what he knew to be wrong? How many insecurities did he have to face in order to tell them as much? How much did he ache when time after time his brothers continued to physically beat him, to the point where an angel had to intervene?

I think sometimes I forget how much these great men and women had to wade through to become the strong and capable people we read about.