Love Journal: My Angels

I'm not as tough as some people. But don't worry-- I've come to terms with my wussiness. We are one, my wussiness and I. Some women can work full time while pursuing an advanced degree and raising a family. I can't. And this is okay.

However.

There's another thing I can't do alone-- and that's living my life. You know, the one where I work full-time and manage a household and do church things and love a husband and develop friendships and nurture two challenging children.

God knew this. So he sent me some angels to help make it work.

There's my Daddy, whom I called one frustrating Tuesday afternoon, sobbing like a child. I told him I was about to kill Soren and had no idea what business I had being a mother. Poor guy, he made a lot of empathetic noises, but you could tell-- even over the phone--that it was like he was fumbling around in a tuxedo at his first black tie affair, just not sure what to do with his hands. But then to my parenting rant I added, sobbingly, "...and I've been trying to take my dishwasher apart because I'm so sick of washing dishes by hand but the screws are weird and I can't even get it apart to see what's wrong!" (Wailing.)

In about ten minutes my dad was in the doorway with a tool box in hand. He solved my dishwasher problem and read a book about bugs to my boys. A little while later my mom showed up, having come home to a note on the kitchen whiteboard: "Rachel is in crisis. Needs her mama too."

There's Briar. She used to take Fridays off from work, just because she could. But then Abe finished his Master's degree and got a job and suddenly we needed a little extra help with babysitting. Without hesitating, Briar volunteered to watch the kids on her day off. So now Briar "takes a day off" each week from work to take care of our little guys for an often long and trying day. She does this for free. Without complaint.

Briar also always makes sure that we get to go on our Saturday night date. She'll come upstairs in the evening, scoop up a whining kid, and shoo us away. Every week. Without complaint. For free.

And then there's my Mom. And my sister Collette. They, too, provide mounds of free babysitting. For years they've watched our kiddos on varying schedules while Abe and I worked and/or went to school. When Abe's work schedule changed a few months ago, I called them each to let them know that we would only need babysitting one day every other week. Both of them, separately, responded like this: "But that's not enough! I need to see my little boys more often than that! Can I please keep watching them every week?"

I am so grateful that my children are loved and nurtured by so many good people. So thankful that I'm not expected to do this alone.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. All of you.

P.S. Dear Briar, I am sorry for the sappiness and publicity.

Tomorrow's Miracle

If you woke up tomorrow and a miracle had happened and your life were now exactly how you wanted it to be, what would it look like?

Last week I saw this question written on the white board in the office of one of the counselors I work with.

I've been thinking about this a lot. I guess part of the reason I was so struck by this question is that it runs counter to the psychological operation I'm trying to run in my own life, which is being happy with what I have--not making myself miserable by thinking about what I don't. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are is my motto. **

You can't go wrong with gratitude and resourcefulness, right? So is our counselor trying to make her clients miserable by teaching them to focus on what they don't have?

Maybe not. When I go into the kitchen to make something, I have an idea of what I want it to be...a cake, a casserole, a salad, a sandwich. I get out the ingredients I need for that particular kind of food and cook the item accordingly. If I went into the kitchen, pulled out a bowl, and just started randomly mixing whatever came into my hand-- a cup of flour, a cup of milk, a half an onion, a mango, dry pudding mix, a package of Ramen Noodles--the end product would probably be less-than-scrumptious. I might luck out and end up with something amazing, but more likely it would be an inedible glop.

And so it is with life. (Imagine that last sentence in a Motivational Speaker voice.) It's important to have an end in mind, even if it's a bit fuzzy, just so you don't end up mixing onions and chocolate pudding. Even if you enjoy every minute of blending the two together, you're still going to have to throw them out when you're done-- and then you will have wasted time, ingredients, and energy. I mean, at least you enjoyed it, but if you're going to cook, you might as well get to eat when you're done, eh?

I think it is key, even when identifying how things could be different, to maintain an appreciation for each moment of life. So much of life is about balance-- that "middle way"--between two extremes. Like finding a way to want/work towards good things while simultaneously choosing to enjoy the things you already have. Happiness should never be postponed for the perfect conditions.

So before I move on I do want you to know that I am keenly aware of the many good things in my life and that I am grateful for them: things like good friends, a good job, healthy children, a happy marriage. I'm blessed with parents and siblings and parents-in-law and siblings-in-law who offer us oodles of love and support. My health is good; Abe's health is good. We have plenty to eat. We live in a comfortable home. We have enough money to meet our needs and allow us to do a few extra things. We live in a place that is safe, not torn by war or violence, where we are granted freedom to choose to live as we see fit.

While I was thinking about what my "ideal life" would look like, I considered things like, "In my ideal life I would never, ever be tired." or "I would have spent three years in the peace corps after college," or "I would be married to a long-haired Brazilian sculptor babe who adores my every breath," or "The world would be healed of all cruelty, jealousy, and hatred and all people would live together in sweet communal harmony," or "I would live in a tree house in a jungle in South America."

Then I decided to go with a possible life that would exist here in the real world.

So, without further ado, here's my list:

1) I would get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep most nights.

2) I would be passionately in love with my husband. (Which isn't to say I'm not in love with my husband...but, you know, eight years in, kids to care for, finances to worry about...the fire's just not wildly ablaze...)

3) I would have a part-time job editing and/or be the proud owner of a wind chime shop.

4) I wouldn't be afraid to write and would be happily plugging away at a novel or a collection of essays or a volume of poetry.

5) I would genuinely love all human beings, be concerned for everyone's well-being, be honestly happy for everyone else's successes, and always know the right thing to say or do to help someone feel loved.

6) I would boldly pursue more adventure.

7) Abe would have a grown-up job in a university library and a 401K with a matching plan, excellent health/dental/vision insurance, and lots of paid time off. He would be paid enough to enable us to live debt-free on a single income, donate 20% of our income to charity, put 20% in savings, and use the remaining extra to take quarterly weekend getaways and one excellent family vacation every year.

8) We would live in a beautifully decorated Victorian-style house in the country on a big plot of land. We would have a big garden, a bunch of chickens, a goat, a cow that we shared with several neighbors, a horse, a dog that didn't bark, and a barnful of cats. The house would always be relatively clean.

9) I would run five miles a day four days a week, followed by yoga with a group of friends in a renovated barn in the neighborhood. I would be physically strong and confident.

10) We would sleep in on Saturdays and eat waffles with strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast.

11) I would have time for lots of reading-- fiction, poetry, history, science, art, religion, psychology, sociology. I would learn and learn and learn.

12) Soren wouldn't be insane; Liam wouldn't be behind. They wouldn't be perfect, but they would at least respond to positive healthy discipline in the way the books say they're supposed to. They would pick up their own messes without being prompted. There would be no whining for sugary snacks between meals. I would spend just the right amount of time with them. I would always know exactly what to do in every sticky parenting situation. I might even find the strength to have another child! (One that immediately slept through the night and didn't cry much, of course.)

13) I would have finally figured out my relationship with God and be busy cultivating it daily, gaining strength and guidance from a positive connection with the divine.

14) I would take dancing classes and piano lessons and karate lessons.

15) I wouldn't worry about whether or not people liked me. I would make friends easily and interact with others confidently. I would have many close friends from a variety of backgrounds with whom I felt comfortable just stopping by to chat, or visiting with while one of us hung out laundry. We would often have dinner at each others' homes. Our children would play together happily.

16) I would make lots of homemade things, like soap and candles and cheese and granola and warm nourishing bread.

Some of these things are unrealistic-- like hoping for my children to be different from how they are. Some of them are totally doable-- like making soap and becoming more confident. And others are future but not present possibilities-- sleeping in on Saturday, running five miles a ay. But it's kind of nice to lay it out there. To smack my hands down on the table of life and say without apologies, "This is what I want." (And then add, a little more meekly-- "But I'll be happy with what I have until I can get it.")

__________

**My sister, Collette, and I recently discovered this is a life motto we share. "Where did you get it?" she asked me when we discovered this commonality. "The scrolling marquee at Cox's Honey!" I told her, "Oh. I think I read it in the biography of Warren G. Harding," she said. And that, my friends, is the difference between me and my sister.

Christmas 2011

Three months late isn't too late for a Christmas post, is it?

For me, the best moment of Christmas this year was when Soren rushed into the front room on Christmas morning, stopped, spun around, and said, "What! Howy cow! Mommy, I know why Santa brought all this stuff! It's because he liked the picture I sent him!"

Liam opened his Zhu Zhu pet and was happy the remainder of the morning.

First Picnic of the Year

Family Goals

A while ago we decided to start teaching the kids about making goals. We did this really well for a couple of weeks but then someone (Mommy) slacked on her goal and we've never moved forward.

Nevertheless, these are our first goal charts. We all sat down together at Family Home Evening and everyone got to choose what they wanted to work on. (Liam may have gotten a little guidance from me.)

My goal was to either hang up my clothes or put them in the laundry basket at night when I took them off, rather than draping them in an ever-growing mound on the dresser. Daddy's goal was to make the bed every morning. Soren's goal was to pick up his toys twelve times. Liam's goal was to practice walking up and down the stairs ten times.

My favorite part is that Soren immediately turned his goal chart into a little person.

Once everyone meets their weekly goal the family gets to do something fun together. One week we had an indoor camping trip. Another time we went out for ice cream. It was a good thing-- while we were doing it.

Gotta get back on that train.

Celestial Zombie

"Mommy, a black hole is a dead star that eats other stars...."

"...It's like a zombie eating the brains of people who are alive."

-Soren (age 5)

(Soren's been very interested in the life cycle of a star lately.)

(Mommy's response was: "Where did you learn about zombies?")

Love Scrapbook: Siding Story

Today was like a little hurricane in Southeastern Idaho. The wind was blowing. Hard. When I walked between the car and my office I honestly feared that my earrings would be torn out of my ears. Debris was flying. Trees were uprooted. Power outages were reported all over town.

At home, Abe watched helplessly as the siding on the side of our house flapped wildly in the wind (the siding, it turns out, was never actually nailed or screwed to the house; just stuck together and attached at the corners). "We're going to lose siding off our house," he texted me, "and there's nothing I can do."

I sighed inside. We had already had an incident like this on a less windy day. That time I had shined a flashlight on the ice-covered side of the house while Abe had pushed the siding back into place. "It's not very steady," he had commented then, "but we'll have to hope it will hold until the weather will allow for some repairs." Thinking about this, I knew that bits of our house were going to be lost in today's gale. I wondered how much it would cost to replace the siding. I wondered how recently it had been put up. Was it still covered under a warranty? Who had done the siding? How could I get the contact information for the previous owners to find out?

A while later I texted him back. "Dumb wind. I'm sad about the siding."

His reply: "Since there is nothing I can do I just said a prayer and let God worry about it."

"Good plan," I wrote. I figured it would all work out. We would lose the siding but find a way to get it repaired.

When I came home tonight, the wind--which had gotten up to sixty miles per hour during the day-- had died down some. And the siding? It was entirely intact.

Homemade Laundry Soap

So I've been wanting to do this for months and finally took the plunge. It was SO EASY and I'm excited to use it in my laundry. From start to finish the whole process took about 10 minutes.

(All ingredients were purchased at the local Broulim's grocery store.)

Homemade Laundry Soap
1/3 bar Fels-Neptha soap, finely grated
1/2 cup borax
1/2 cup washing soda (not baking soda!)
1 2-gallon bucket (I used an empty Member's Mark laundry detergent container)
A lot of water

Heat six cups of water on the stove with the grated soap until the soap has melted. Add the borax and washing soda; cook and stir until dissolved. Put four cups of hot water in your bucket; add the soap and 22 more cups of water (1 gallon plus 6 cups). Stir. Let sit 24 hours. The texture will gel and be kind of drop-egg-soupy. Use 1/2 cup for a large load of laundry. (You can add 1 oz of essential oils for a scent if you want.)

I haven't double-checked the math on this, but the lady whose website I stole this recipe from claims the cost comes down to $.01 a load.

Celebrities I've Loved

When I was a five or six, I thought that Miguel (above far right) on 3-2-1 Contact was soooo dreamy. I'd be riveted whenever he was there to explain a scientific concept.

I also had a little thing for Macaulay Culkin. I may or may not have spent some time kissing the cover of my book copy of Home Alone.

Then I must have hit latency. I don't remember a lot of celebrity lovin' between the ages of six and twelve. But then, puberty.

At twelve, I borrowed my brother's Crossroads album and fell in love with Jon Bon Jovi. While jumping on the bed and singing along with "Livin' on a Prayer," I decided that he would join the Mormon church, edit his songs to conform with gospel standards, and take me to the temple.

At thirteen I watched Stargate and started having daydreams about Kurt Russell. I knew just how things with the two of us would go. He and I would be rehearsing for a movie together and he would reach over my shoulder to point out something on the script. I would turn to look at him. Our eyes would meet. Fireworks.

Good bye, Goldie Hahn.

At fourteen I watched Seven Years in Tibet and couldn't stop thinking about Brad Pitt. My friend Jamie informed me that, yuck, he was the same age as her dad. Someone else told me he never bathed. Nevertheless, I hoped that we would one day marry.

I still think he's real hot. And I'm pretty sure he bathes.

In high school my best friend Holly and I developed an unnatural obsession with a local band of acapella-singing brothers called The Standards. We followed them to concerts in Logan, UT and Twin Falls, Idaho. In Twin Falls we arrived early enough to drive slowly past their house and their Dad's chiropractic clinic. So you can bet that when they came to do an assembly at our very own high school, we abused our Russet newspaper press passes to the fullest extent. My favorite was the goofy beat-boxing bass, Nic. Here we are together, locked in an embrace. Oh, the ecstasy!

Today Abe and I share a crush on Hugh Jackman. He's so dreamy.

So who were/are your celebrity crushes?

Dead Chickens

"Mommy, what are those?" Soren asked one morning as I unwrapped a couple of whole roasting chickens and rinsed them in the kitchen sink.

"They're chickens, honey," I told him.

"Dead chickens?" asked Soren, looking horrified. He's used to the lively flock of hens and roosters who run around the yard at his cousins' house.

"Dead chickens," I confirmed, looking glumly at the empty hole where one of the chicken's neck had once been attached to its body.

Soren's eyes were wide. "Who killed them??"

"I don't know. A butcher, I guess. A butcher is somebody who cuts up animals so we can eat them. All meat comes from the bodies of dead animals."

"I don't fink it's very nice to KILL animals and then eat them," said Soren.

"I agree," I said, turning the chicken over and examining the hole where its guts had been ripped out. "Do you think we should stop eating meat?"

"Yes," said Soren.

"Me too."

This exchange took place three weeks ago aaaand...we're still eating meat.

However. Our conversation acted as a catalyst on a thought process that has been churning around in my brain since last year when I ordered a free vegetarian starter guide from PETA (the premiere unbiased resource on vegetarianism) and started thinking more about the ethical implications of eating meat and other animal products. Seriously, if you want to improve your ethics in just one area of your life, eating is a good place to start, seeing as how eating is something most people do every day, multiple times a day (or, if you're me, all day).

What I've decided is that the key to ethical eating is mindful eating-- eating with an awareness of the food you're eating, its source, its impact on the world, and how that impact aligns with your own values.

The truth is, most of us eat food without really thinking about where it comes from. When I eat a hamburger, I might briefly think, "Hamburger comes from a cow," but I don't really allow myself to absorb and understand the reality of that fact. If I did, I probably wouldn't eat the hamburger. This is largely a product of my tender-hearted personality: I don't like for any living creature to suffer or die. Seeing a dead skunk on the side of the road makes my heart hurt. Mouse traps upset me. I catch and release spiders that I find in my home. When someone carves on a tree, I grab their hand, press it against the bark, and gasp, "Can't you feel its pain?"

So if I stopped to really consider that the flesh ground up and mashed between the two pieces of white bread in my hands once belonged to a living creature-- that this food source had once had great big long eyelashes framing giant brown eyes, that it had spent his days lowing, moving like a mindless adolescent in groups of other cows, and flapping its tail around its manure-covered butt-- I'd probably set the burger back down. Especially if I thought about the day he (he!) was herded into a processing plant, shot in the head, gutted, skinned, and hacked into bloody pieces for my consumption.

This doesn't bother some people. And that's okay. My sweet beautiful little nieces, for example, happily shoot and butcher their own deer. But since I would have to be pretty darn hungry before I could find myself capable of going out and killing my own animals for food, I probably shouldn't eat them so readily and so casually.

But even if you're the sort not bothered by animal sacrifice, it's still important to be mindful of where your food has come from and cultivate an awareness of whether the dietary habits you pursue are making an impact on the world in a way that aligns with your values.

For example, a lot of people don't know about the horrible living conditions that many egg-laying hens and grown-for-meat chickens are subjected to throughout their sad, short, hormone-injected lives. I don't know about ya'll, but I have no desire to continue to contribute to an industry that abuses living creatures this way.

Another consideration we often stifle during our daily consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy products is the environmental impact of our diets. Did you know that in in America 1/3 of all annually used fossil fuels go to producing animal food products? That the crops grown to feed food animals deplete soil nutrients more quickly than crops grown to feed humans? That it takes 10 times more energy and land resources to produce a meat-based meal than a plant-based meal? The meat-heavy diet to which we have become accustomed is unsustainable.

Lastly, I don't care what you were told in school or what you read in Self magazine, animal products are really not all that healthy for you. Vegetarians who eschew all animal products are far less likely than their meat-eating peers to develop osteoporosis, heart disease, kidney stones, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension, certain cancers, strokes, and obesity.

So what I'm saying is, I'm thinking about going vegan.

But it's hard. I was a vegetarian for a couple years as a teen, but that's because I didn't really mind cutting an entire category of food from my diet. Now I'm a bit more attached to food and have moved past a single food-choosing criteria ("What diet will make me the skinniest?") to a longer and more complicated list of questions, such as:

-What foods will provide my body with the vitamins and nutrients it needs, increase energy, and promote overall health?

-What foods will my husband and children eat?

-Will this diet fit into our budget?

-Will at least one meal I prepare during the week be deemed consumable by Briar, who needs her dietary sugar content thinned by something at least mildly nutritious?

-What foods are convenient and easy to prepare?

-Which foods will keep me from getting hungry again within the hour?

-How will eating/not eating this food affect my relationship with the people around me?

-How will eating/not eating this food impact the overall quality of my life?

-How is my diet impacting the broader world?

I'm quite entrenched in my current dietary habits, so change might be incremental and slow-going. However, since my conversation with Soren I have switched to buying locally-produced milk and eggs. The dairy farm where the milk is produced is located almost directly across the street from my office. I can go look at the cows any time I want and as them how they're doing and about whether they've been offered a 401K and dental plan. The origin of the eggs I am less certain about-- the girl at the counter said they were brought in by a farmer in nearby Ririe. (I wanted, couldn't bring myself, to ask if they had been produced by a non-oppressed chicken population. So if any of ya'll have contacts in Ririe, maybe you could do some sleuth work for me?)

I promise I won't judge you if I see you eating a meaty cheesy omelette. Eating is such a personal thing and many, many factors go into our food choices. You don't have to go vegan to be a good person. However, I would encourage you to think through the broader impact that your diet makes on the world and find a small way to change and improve that impact.

Love Scrapbook

At times I hear stories and experiences about love-- people loving people, God loving people, people loving God-- that make me stop and say: Yes. That is true. That is real. The substance of that story reaches down into my core self and gives it a firm squeeze, like it wants to make sure that I know I am awake, that I'm not dreaming, and that this loving reality is not just my imagination-- that it's solid, substantial, important.

I am not a woman of great faith, but I want to be. I want to open up my heart and become more acquainted with this love. I want to trust in it. I want to walk in it. I want to allow love to guide my life-- to be my life-- because, in the end, all we have is love. There is nothing else. God himself (herself?) is love.

Which isn't to say that I understand God. I don't. I won't pretend to. I tear my hair out in frustration at times at what seems to me to be the unfairness of a world in which some mothers worry about organic vs. regular baby food and other mothers worry about finding food for their babies, period. But, despite my inability to understand it all, I believe that God is good.

For a long time I've contemplated creating a "Love" scrapbook. Whenever I hear about a person or an experience that set off my inner truth-o-meter, I think, "That is Real. That is Goodness. I should put that in my Love scrapbook." But I've never actually made one. Today it occurred to me that I could share my Love scrapbook entries on my blog, so I'm going to give it a try. Though I will still continue with my Regular Blog Stuff, I will also occasionally post Love Scrapbook entries. My entries will be random-- "little" stories mixing with "big" ones, posted as I hear them, or as they occur to me, or as the mood strikes.

I'll start today with the story of my week:

Let's just say it rough week at work. Very rough. I had unintentionally hurt someone's feelings and she was making sure I suffered, though she wouldn't even tell me what I had done. I was hurt. Sad. Angry. Tired. Tense.

But I was given some little gifts from the universe to help me get through it all:

First, at our company meeting Monday night it was announced that we would be losing a member of our office staff. She was an excellent employee and will be missed. Many people expressed their sadness at her leaving. And then someone (who was oblivious to the uncomfortable situation in the office) piped up, "But if Rachel goes, we all go!"

Then a friend (who had no idea what was going on) took me out for a surprise lunch.

Another friend (who did know what was going on) stopped by just to give me a hug.

A coworker friend happened to stop by with a question during a particularly rough time. He saw my tears and took me out of the situation long enough for me to talk it out and get myself under control.

Yesterday an old man at the bank stopped me and said, "I know why it's so sunny outside! It's from you walking around with that beautiful smile!"

Other co-workers, my boss, and my parents all also offered support while we waded through the Junior High-esque drama at work. My dad assured me the problem was rooted in the fact that I'm just so wonderful in every way. :)

Anyway, the week is over, and things are looking up, and I'm grateful I was given these little gifts to buoy me up through a difficult time. Thank you, Love.

Haircut

It's all gone! And I'm loving it! Makes me feel frisky.

Turning

Lately I've been feeling wrung out. Exhausted. Spent. Empty. Dried up. Drained. I look at a sunset and feel tired. I sit down to write and feel tired. I am impatient with other people. Holidays make me cranky. Poetry, art, learning new things, connecting with God...they all take waaaay too much effort. I just don't have energy for such things.

At first I blamed the children. They wake up a lot at night and I just don't get enough sleep. Then I blamed my job. Too much pressure, too little paid time off. Then I blamed church. Two callings, plus three hours of church a week, suck away a lot of my time. Most recently I've blamed Abe. If that man would lift a finger to help out once in a damn while, I've thought, I would have more time to recharge my batteries.

Admittedly, all of these factors contribute to my stress. But the truth is that, at the very core, I am the source of my own stress. I am creating my own problems. And I need to change something in order for things to improve.

One of the big contributing factors is my obsession with productivity. I floss while I pee. I check my email while I talk on the phone. I plan menus and create grocery lists on one side of a computer screen while my children watch Sesame Street videos on the other. I get a little high thinking about all the things I've been able to accomplish in a day. Abe will come home on Tuesday (the day I stay home with the kids) and I'll immediately intercept him on his way down to the computer room: "Do you want to know what I did today? Do you? Do you? Huh? Huh? I cooked whole wheat pancakes for breakfast. I washed and folded (and put away!) four loads of laundry. I went grocery shopping, took the kids to the library, mopped the floors, vacuumed the carpets, cooked two nutritious meals (one for today, one for tomorrow), introduced the children to Beethoven while engaging in imaginative play, visited with both of my stay-at-home mom friends, and cleaned out the fridge! Aren't I amazing? Aren't I? Aren't I? Huh? Huh? Huh?" I despise being behind on things-- I never want to be scrambling at the last minute to do anything--but I've become so hell-bent on being ahead that not being ahead has become like being behind and I find myself scrambling anyway.

The second issue is that I have convinced myself that my children surely couldn't live for a single day without having me-- their sun! their soil! their water!-- there to nourish and guide and direct them. I feel guilty about having to leave them for thirty- six hours a week while I go to work. I feel guilty leaving them on Saturday evenings to go on a date with their father. I want desperately to be able to spend more time with them, teaching them, reading to them, crafting with them, taking them to play dates, creating structure and routine for each of their days. I do what I can, but it's never what I wish I could do. Because I'm gone much more than I would like to be, I feel compelled to spend all my non-working time lavishing the children with attention and nurture. Besides going to work, taking naps, and leaving for a weekly date with Abe, I don't go anywhere without them.

So my life is a series of identical days that go something like this: Wake up sometime between five and six a.m. with my wild little boys, who think this is a godly hour for waking. (They are wrong, of course, but try convincing them of that.) Then, from the moment they persuade me that I am not going to talk them into letting me sleep for another hour 'til the moment my head hits the pillow at 9 pm or so, I am a whirlwind of frantic activity. Cook a hot breakfast, bathe the boys, get ready for work, dress the children, play with the kids, family scriptures, family prayer, drive to work, work-work-work, come home, cook dinner, play with kids, get the kids ready for bed, family prayer, story time, admire the children, appreciate them as they are right now, enjoy them because they grow up too fast, now put them to bed, clean up house, wash dishes, fold laundry, read for ten minutes, and crash into bed. There's just not enough time! I always think. There's so much to do and just not enough time! I run around panicked all the time, terrified that I am not doing enough.

This isn't living-- it's wheel spinning. Something needs to change. I need to change. But the question is, what? And how?

I don't know for sure, but as I've pondered this question, the following thoughts have come to mind:

Delegate.

Seek quiet.

Love.

Trust.

Be mindful.

Let go.

As the New Year approached, I found myself identifying a lot of ways in which I could improve, areas in which I could use a lot of work. I was trying to figure out an efficient way to work through them as quickly and effectively as possible. Then I had a wild, gasping, sobbing breakdown at work last week (so embarrassing), and I realized that I wouldn't be able to do anything to better myself or heal the world if I didn't slow down, remember how to breathe, and reconnect with the simple joys of life.

So that is what I am going to do. Over the next twelve months or so, I'm going to dedicate some time to exploring, writing about, and trying to weave the above concepts into my life. If you find yourself pushing yourself to go, go, go at an unhappy and unsustainable pace, I hope you will join me.

Here's to a calmer, more joyful 2012.

Brothers

About a year ago, Soren finally accepted that he really wasn't going to be able to persuade us to return Liam. They still fight a little, of course, but they've also become friends.

No mistletoe needed. Just brotherly love.

Bedtime roughhousing.

I love how in this shot Liam looks like he's twice Soren's size.

Soren will be quick to point out that he weighs two full pounds more than his baby brother.

Every night when I come home to work, this is how I'm greeted. "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

Soren made this gingerbread house at preschool.

Here he's sharing some of the candy from the roof with Liam.

Toothbrushing time.

Fabulous idea from pinterest: add a little food coloring to cheap shaving cream and you've got some fabulous bathtub paint. The boys love this.

Liam: January 2012

Tonight Liam picked a piece of wooden railroad track out of the toy box and began "playing" it like a harmonica. As I tucked him in bed, he was happily sawing it back and forth across his lips while singing a tuneless, wordless song. That's a fun change I've observed in my littlest guy over the past couple of months: he has become very imaginative. He'll eat pretend food and make little chewing noises, saying "mmm!"while appreciatively nodding his head; he'll put on his lion mask and follow me around, grinning and gently saying "rawwwr! rawwwr! rawwwwr!"; he'll touch a picture of fire in a book and quickly pull back his finger, exclaiming, "Hot! Ouch!" One of his favorite things to do is stand in front of the couch, wave his arms around like he's losing his balance, say, "Woah...woah...woah!" and fling himself backwards onto the cushions.

The world's most adorable lion.

Liam loves to cook. He especially loves to stir things around in the electric skillet. He'll happily saute onions and garlic, brown beef, or stir together a sauce for me. When we bake bread and cookies, he helps by liberally sampling the dough.

When Liam wants a kiss he'll make smacking noises with his lips, then kind of suck them in and lean forward. It ends up being a lipless kiss, but he always makes a big popping noise and grins broadly afterwards. I love it. I'm sure the girls will too.

The child still can't consistently differentiate between "Mommy" and "Daddy" (I imagine him waving a dismissive hand in his mind, saying, "'Mommy,' 'Daddy,' whatever. They're just those big people who are here to make me happy.") but--as Soren has pointed out--he definitely knows who his brother is. It's so cute to hear him call out, "Sonin!' and have Soren answer, "What, Neeum?" and watch Liam pad off in the direction of his brother's voice. (Incidentally, Liam currently weighs just 2 pounds less than Soren.)

Today while Daddy walked the half block and back to pick up Soren from preschool, Liam (who, just for visualization's sake, was wearing nothing but a diaper) snuck into the kitchen, swiped a hunk of cheese, and took it to the front room, where he climbed up on the couch to savor his illicit treat in comfort. Then Daddy came home. Knowing he was in all kinds of forbidden territory, Liam tried to hide the cheese under his chubby little body where Daddy wouldn't see it.

Recently Soren bumped his head on a doorknob and was screaming loudly about the pain. Liam followed him around, repeating, "Sowwy. Sowwy. Sowwy." Finally Soren turned to Liam and solemnly said, "It wasn't you, Neeum. It was the doorknob."

If is not uncommon for the little Bubba to fall asleep while eating. He's such a Skousen.

He loves books, of course. Here he's reading Kevin Henkes' Birds.

Last month Liam randomly started having some foot/ankle pain in his right foot. We weren't ever sure what happened, but he stopped putting weight on it and crawled everywhere he wanted to go. It would get better, then worse, so it took us a while to take him to the doctor. The doctor sent us to a radiologist, who--while Liam screamed directly into my ear as though we were extracting his toenails without anesthesia--took an x-ray and sent it back to the doctor, who said, "Looks like he might have had a fracture that's healing. But it's hard to say. That might be how his foot always looks. But I don't think we need to do anything about it." A few days later Liam was walking on the foot like nothing had ever happened. Sigh. Another wasted co-pay.

Liam is a creature of comfort. You'll put him in bed and he'll nestle down under the covers, grinning with sparkly Disney eyes. He loves to snuggle under blankets, he loves to cuddle, he loves to be hugged and squeezed and kissed and adored. He is my little cuddlebucket of love and it totally blows my mind that the little pootums is going to be three next month. 'taint natural.

'Taint.

Soren: January 2012

I'm sure it's some sort of developmental phase, but Soren is constantly comparing things: size, height, strength, speed, age, toughness. He talks about it all the time. He can rank everyone in our family according to age or size, and does so frequently. The comparing also comes out in his story-telling. For example, last night Soren told me a lengthy story about a monster whose feet were the size of six houses and whose teeth were each as big as a skyscraper. The monster swalloed him and Liam whole but then pooped them out into a fragile toilet that didn't flush. Tonight he told me a story about a "minivan minivan minivan bus car" that was longer than a train and so tall you couldn't even see a monster truck semi truck from the windows. Soren's stories generally consist of lengthy wide-eyed, spittle-flecked descriptions of objects of incredible size ("Bigger than DADDY! Big enough to hold TRILLIONS of people, Mommy! Bigger than THIRTY SIX ELEPHANTS! Bigger than the WHOLE EARTH!" ) or speed ("Faster than a CHEETAH! Faster than WIGHTNING MCQUEEN! Faster than WIGHTNING!") These descriptions are generally repeated over and over, particularly if I don't give a sufficiently enthusiastic response the first five times. "Mommy! Mommy! Are you wistening? I said it was FASTER THAN WIGHTNING!"

Side note: Possibly the happiest moment of Soren's life occurred when we googled "biggest truck in the world" and he discovered that Monster Truck Semi-Trucks really DO exist.

My daddy was over for dinner one evening when Soren ran over and asked if I wanted to hear something. "Mommy! Do you want to hear blahblahblahblblbah?" What the something was, I didn't really understand, but I enthusiastically replied, "Sure, honey!" Soren then burst into an ear-splitting scream. I could literally feel the pressure on my ears. It was at that moment that my auditory memory processor flashed back to our prior exchange (imagine rewind sequence here) and I realized that he had said "Mommy! Do you want to hear the loudest scream in the world?"

The scream was painful, but look of utter consternation on my father's face was priceless.

(Unfortunately, Soren also utilizes the World's Loudest Scream when he's frustrated or angry or overtired or experiencing any form physical discomfort. At least one of these circumstances arises at least once daily; hence my inability to hear his request in the first place.)

Soren has lately become very interested in adding and subtracting numbers. We were sitting in sacrament meeting one Sunday when he randomly whispered to me, "Mommy, twelve and twelve make twenty-four." He'd figured that out from counting the numbers on the hymn board. One day he told me, "Mommy, Daddy has five more years than you. He's firty free and you're twenty eight. That's five years apart." And he can tell you how old Liam will be when Soren is any age up to twenty.

One evening Soren informed me that mice were poisonous.

"Ummm, no they're not," I said.

"Miss Misty says they are," he countered.

"Welllll," I said. "Sometimes if a mouse is sick its poop can make you sick. That's called Hantavirus. But mice all by themselves aren't poisonous."

"Or," added Daddy, looking up from his book, "Sometimes a mouse can have rabies, and then if it bites you it will make you sick. But mice aren't poisonous."

"But mice are poisonous," insisted Soren.

"No," I said.

"No," Daddy said.

"Wook," said Soren. "I know you beweeve they're not poisonous, but some people know that they are."

(This is a rhetorical technique he's been utilizing in other settings as well: "I know you fink that's true, Briar, but I know you're wrong.")

Soren's been exploring his relationship with Liam, trying on different perspectives to see how they fit. For a while he had it all figured that Liam was a naughty kid and he was the good boy. Liam would commit some minor indiscretion and Soren would be like, "That Liam. He is so naughty. Mommy, you're always mad at Liam, aren't you? It's a good thing I never do naughty things." (Just for the record, I think by the time Soren was Liam's age I had contemplated killing him TRILLIONS of times. I don't think I've considered killing Liam even once. Liam at two is the sweetest cakewalk in the world compared to the holiest of holy terrors that our two-year-old Soren was. Which isn't to say that Soren hasn't bloomed into an extremely sweet if somewhat emotionally volatile and loudly expressive five-year-old, nor is it to say that Liam is perfect. I'm just trying to point out that, while I may have lost double digits worth of IQ points through the sleep-deprivation torture of motherhood, the irony here wasn't lost on me.)

More recently, though, he's been trying out protector/protected roles for himself and his brother. Today the boys woke up from a nap and, instead of finding Daddy, they went into the kitchen where Soren microwaved them some hotdogs for a snack. Tonight he said, "Mommy, I would like to take care of Liam for four days while you and Daddy go somewhere nelse."

One Sunday morning I sat down on the couch and--exhausted-- burst into tears. Soren rubbed my back, got me a pillow and blanket, and had me lie down. While I was napping he very carefully decorated the house with his collection of silk flowers. (It looked like a hurricane had hit the Macy's Day Parade, but Abe, who watched the whole thing, said he was extremely careful about the placement of each flower.) When I woke up I felt much better. "I heawed you, Mommy," he said.

Soren loves his stuffed animals. Bucky (a stuffed rabbit left over from my own childhood) is his favorite. "Bucky is very special to me," Soren will say. Bucky is, according to Soren, six years old. But he's small, according to Soren, like a baby, so sometimes he gets carried around in a bucket baby carrier. Sometimes Bucky comes with us places in the car and has to be buckled in. Sometimes we have to make Bucky paper food. The other stuffed animals get in on the action too, though. Occasionally the stuffed animals will have birthdays and we'll have to have a party. Sometimes they attend a school that Soren teaches. Occasionally they sit around for hours and read a book together, as pictured below.

Soren, like his mommy, has a very active dream life. One night he woke up screaming and Abe went in to comfort him. "Daddy! I dreamed that Briar chopped mommy up into little pieces and I was trying to talk to the pieces but Briar put them in the crockpot and cooked her! Briar cooked Mommy! In the crockpot!" (He later climbed into bed with me ...I think just to make sure I was still alive.)

Here are some delightfully quotable things he's said recently:

"Mommy, I'm nicer than you."

"Oh yeah? What makes you say that?"

"Because you get food on your clothes like a baby without a bib. And I don't."

"Dear Hevnwyfather, Fankyoufrthsday. Fankyoufr Mommy and Daddy and Liam. Please help us to worship our bodies. And fank you for Jesus (that's you, Jesus)!"

"Briar, we're pretty much the same size, except that you have wonger arms and eat more candy."

"Mommy, I was just wying still and finking. And I was finking about how I will eat lots of healthy food and get a lot bigger than Koen so he can't push me anymore."

"Mommy, does Jesus live on a cloud in space?"

"There are three kinds of people: good guys, bad guys, and old people."

And what would a Soren update be without pictures of some of his latest creations?

A Christmas wreath. Materials and patience supplied by our friend Pam.

Snowman complex, complete with visiting Creepy Santa.

A Christmas hat, inspired by the book Christmas with the Mousekins.

A better angle.

A cottonball glitter snowman, made at my sister's house.

A "pillow puppet," also courtesy of Auntie Clee.

This is one of my favorites. It's an airplane.

He wrote and illustrated this book. It's bound with yarn.

And here are a couple of random snapshots: