Things I've Been Thinking

Life is busy, but there hasn't been much out of the ordinary lately. I read this book through the recommendation of our ward book club and I literally could not put it down. So far it ranks as my favorite of the year- I guess we'll see if something can replace it. I would rate it as something along the lines of a PG-13 standard.

One thing that stood out to me in this book is the historical aspect within the parenting relationship. In the entirety of my college education, I was only given one chance to write a research paper on any topic I wanted as long as it related to my major. I decided to write on how, historically, outside factors have influenced parental interactions with their children. I really wish there had been a class along those lines available at BYU, because I believe the historical setting in which we parent to be a major influence on how we act towards our children. It's an interesting idea to think that maternal love, something so innate and instinctual, can be manipulated by surrounding circumstances. For instance, during the Renaissance, at harvest time peasant mothers used to leave their crying babies in a type of sling hanging on the wall all day so that they could assist in the fields. Not surprisingly, many of those babies died of starvation as a result. There were so many horror stories like that that I came across about things I never considered. Anyways, within this book I found the aspect of having a black maid fulfilling the major role of a mother to be absolutely fascinating. Not to mention the fact that I felt that way a lot when I was a nanny for a few years.
Seriously, you have to read it.

When I look at my ancestors and what I know of their parenting style, I've found my grandparents and great-grandparents to be rather cold and distant. I don't know how much of that relates to the era in which they parented, or perhaps the fact that they lived rather difficult lives, but the more I talk with others about their family, it seems to be rather common for that day and age. I wonder what made them so inept at expressing their feelings. I know if you look more towards the 19th century it could be seen as easier to limit the love for a child because they may or may not reach adulthood, but I really don't understand what it was in the 1940s that attributed to what seems to be a higher than average proportion of emotionally repressed parents.

Perhaps I should be looking at the world through rose-colored goggles.


One last plug for the book. At the end of the novel, Stockett sums up a patriotic attitude that I have been trying to put into words for years.

Mississippi is like my mother. I am allowed to complain about her all I want, but God help the person who raises an ill word about her around me, unless she is their mother too.

Another thing that has been on my mind lately is concerning goals. I gave my testimony about it a few weeks back, but our home teacher brought it up again tonight. I've been wondering if it is harder to attain goals if you have never accomplished or known what it is you are working towards. In Conference they talked a lot about starting early with your children in making sure you are putting them on the right path. I reflected in my testimony that one of the problems of being a youth is that you don't have a good perspective in that you don't always see where people, especially peers, end up as a result of the choices that they have made in their lives. I wonder if that kind of perspective could dissuade youth from making similar mistakes.

Another problem is that sometimes you don't know what exactly it is that you are working towards. I came from a broken home where I didn't get to witness what a healthy marriage was. We didn't have close relationships with extended family and honestly the only exposure I got of healthy marriages was at church, but even that wasn't very in depth. I didn't know what a temple marriage was. Honestly, it was a lot like those in Lehi's vision who clung to the rod through the mists of darkness without really knowing what it was going to be like at the end. There was some part of me that knew this kind of relationship was desirable, but I had no idea how good it could be. I guess on the flip side, children who grow up in a healthy and happy home don't necessarily know how bad it can be when you make choices that lead to divorce, children out of wedlock, and so on. If I had known how good it could be, how good it has been, I wonder if that would have changed anything. I guess I would of had more hope and felt more urgency to get to where I wanted to be. And I would have dumped a lot of boys a lot sooner than I did. :) The vast majority of my goals are things I have never attained nor do I know what it would be like to attain them. No one knows what the celestial kingdom is going to be like, yet in the Church we work towards going there because we have faith that it'll be worth it. So far, in my limited, and often bumpy, experiences of following Christ, it has always been worth it.

Anyways, things are still going well here. Steve and I had the opportunity to go help at a community-wide effort by the Salvation Army to make one million meals for those in need in Haiti. It was an inspiring and touching experience to see so many people come to serve and help. Definitely quite the contrast from an earlier experience I had at a garage sale where two woman fought over a fake potted plant. People are strange. Steve has his prelim this Wednesday- cross fingers- and we are planning to go up and visit friends/go to the temple this weekend. Rowan's preschool is ending soon and I'm trying to find some activities to fill up our summer a bit- swimming lessons for sure and perhaps a sports class too. Nadia's blood test from last week came back fine and now we are just trying to encourage her to talk more. She says "no" and "uh-oh" with great consistency, but beyond that her interest in talking is still secondary to moving. One of these days that girl will start talking and if she's anything like her brother, she won't stop. After looking at this blog post, I wonder where he got that from...

Food, Friends, and Other Fascinations

Life is chugging along here in Illinois. We've enjoyed the company of some good friends over the past two weeks and also some really good food. We made homemade ice cream for one of our Sunday dessert days last week and used our Easter candy as a garnish in the hopes that we would get rid of what we haven't already consumed. Thankfully some friends helped us out with our efforts.

Rowan was a willing participant in the cause as well.


We still have a babysitting swap going on with some friends. It's been great to continue to have some time off at least once a month and also get some social time for the kids. We've been working hard to gain the affections of Zach's sister, Halle, and it has taken several months, but last week she actually decided not to hate us. It was funny that we felt such elation about her not crying, smiling, and actually eating- it was great!

You like us! You really like us!


Zach and Rowan



3 out of 4 of us are in pajamas right now as I haven't been feeling that great today and as a result, only basic needs are being met. But we had a fantastic dinner- Jucy Lucys with fresh strawberries on the side. I found the idea for it on a new favorite cooking blog you can find here. There's some places in Minneapolis that claim to have come up with the idea, but suffice it to say it's a burger with the cheese cooked on the inside. When you bite into the patty, a molten lava of cheese oozes out- it's pretty awesome.

Before


After

Next time we'll probably cook them longer as it was a little more pink that I'd like, but we were running low on fuel for the grill. Apparently lean ground beef tends to stay pink even after it reaches the needed 160 degrees to be considered cooked, so I'm not sure if more time on the grill would have changed anything. Still one of the best burgers I've had in a long time!

Rowan had a hard time opening his mouth wide enough!



Definitely the way I will make burgers from now on.

Nadia had a doctor's appointment this week and underwent several forms of torture. We've been told multiple times that she has a heart murmur, but that it isn't anything to concern ourselves about. This time, however, the doctor ordered a blood test because of some other problems she has been having. I'm sure she's fine, but it was quite the ordeal to get her blood drawn on top of the 2 other shots she was due for. I just know that every time we walk into that place from now on, she's going to tense up like a pet at the vet.

A few days back I bought Nadia a new baby doll. She has one already, but it's a crawling one that she can't really snuggle with and it seems to be shorting out. She loves the new one and will snuggle with it and feed it with it's sippy cup, but she's very insistent that I help take care of it. Every chance she gets, she'll shove the baby at me like it's my responsibility- it's neat to see the maternal side of her come out though. The other day I was scrubbing the floor and she came up beside me, picked up a rag, and started to scrub right alongside me. I don't know why, but it really touched me. She's so little, yet learning so much and the fact that she learns mostly from me inspires me to be better than I am.
Rowan has also shown immense interest in the aforementioned doll. He's constantly fighting with Nadia over it and the other day I caught him watching a movie like this:


I think it's great that he sees being a dad as a positive responsibility and he certainly has a great example of that in his life. But it's just funny to me to see him with it all of the time. He's even holding it right now while I type this.




As for Steve and I, we've been reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and enjoying them for the most part. There's enough similarities between this set of books and Harry Potter that it's hard not to notice, but we like it for its intended demographic better than Potter. Steve says you can tell a man wrote this series- Percy doesn't want to sit around and talk about his feelings all the time. He had some other funny insights, but I'll save those so I don't offend too many of our Potter-loving friends.

Anyways, all in all life is good. Love my kids. Love the hubbs. Love life. The end.

Hope is Springing Up

Today is a happy day. The windows are open, my children are content and happy, and we have a good week ahead of us. I feel hopeful about so many things. Hopeful for change, both from myself and others, hopeful for the future, and hopeful for our family. Conference will do that to you along with tidbits of good news along the way.

I went to my first garage sale this season. I bought toys, which is completely ridiculous. Our house is already like a Toys R Us without me compounding the problem. I just have a hard time saying no when you can get the following for $4.


They have spent all week playing with that car that cost the same as a Happy Meal, without all the saturated fat. Cheap entertainment.




Later on this week, Nadia and Rowan got to have separate playdates with Tiffany's kids while she was preparing a missionary zone conference meal. Nadia and her buddy Clayton got along really well. I've noticed that Nadia is much more interested in social interaction these days and has no qualms about approaching kids to play. Needless to say, she showed Clayton all of her tricks.

I found her brushing her teeth while Clayton circled the toilet wondering how she got up there.


They also had fun banging on our whiteboard and having snack time together. I was surprised that they followed each other around so much.


Rowan and Clarissa had a good time together too, while Nadia was taking a nap. I like that Rowan gets along with girls just as well as boys. I'm sure that will change at some point, but for now it's really nice.


There was also a little thing called Easter this weekend. Rowan got to go to 3 different Easter egg hunts- lucky kid. He had one at preschool, one at a friend's and another at a park with more friends. Our candy bucket is definitely replenished for quite some time.

While the dads played Easter Bunny, the kids spent the majority of their time throwing things down the drain. I was surprised that their focus was so intent that they didn't see what was going on.

Apparently Chris and Steve thought the kids were 6 feet tall...





Nadia was more interested in the playground than the random plastic eggs on the ground.



Easter morning brought a pleasant surprise...


Apparently the Easter bunny drinks our beverage of choice.




For our dessert day on Sunday, we made apple betty along with the traditional Easter ham, scalloped potatoes and carrots. We made a lot, so we borrowed an apple peeler/corer, which Rowan loved using. He peeled about eight pounds of apples!


After Conference, we went to the last Easter egg hunt of the weekend. It was perfect weather and timing, especially after the kids had been cooped up inside all weekend while we listened to the Conference.









I'm not sure what we'll do for an encore... :) Happy Easter everyone!

Merry Morsels

Spring break came and spring break went. We did a few fun things to try and make it a vacation, but for the most part it was business as usual. Cleaning, cooking, haircuts, fixing bookcases- thanks hun- and doing the day-to-day things. Steve took a few half days and we went running those days. I'm so much more motivated to exercise as a family than to push myself out the door and I also find that I run longer when I have Steve next to me. In a perfect world, we would be able to go everyday together, but it's not a perfect world- surprise, surprise. Still, it was nice to have Steve around a little bit more than usual and have some adult conversations during the day.

One of the highlights of our week was having a Rifftrax/New Moon get together at our place with some friends. There were some pretty hilarious jabs and it was nice to kick back and enjoy some down time. Apparently we didn't clean up after ourselves very well because the next morning Rowan ran into our room and told us he had a GREAT idea- we should pretend that there was a movie theater downstairs and watch a movie. He had found our living room set up differently to optimize viewing the television and he had also found our leftover popcorn and chips. So he filled up empty bowls with chips and popcorn and put a Scooby-doo movie on. He even collected pretend movie tickets as we came down the stairs. Normally we don't watch T.V. first thing in the morning, but this was a definite exception.

I'm still cringing about letting them eat the leftover popcorn, but he was so into the whole thing.


It was nice to have Steve around a little bit more than usual with the kids. Nadia is becoming quite the little reader and found Steve to be a willing participant.


We also have some new members of the family in our household. Meet Batfish and Robin II.

A few weeks back I went to an enrichment activity and won some goldfish. I joke that I always seem to win things when I don't care and this seems to prove my theory. The night before I went to a community subdivision meeting where there are a lot of prizes given away for attending. This is the second year that I have walked away empty-handed even though there are a ton of prizes. The only year Steve and I have won something was the year that there were more prizes than attendees. It's a good thing we don't gamble. Anyways, now we have fish. Robin I didn't live past the first night so Rowan never got to see him, which was for the best. We decided Batfish looked a little lonely- seriously, he would spend the day doing something that looked like he was circling the drain- so we got him Robin II. This will be a nice test run for a pet, but I find I'm kind of paranoid about them. Last night I had a dream that I had a cat, but I had forgotten to change the litter and feed it for an entire year. It was still alive in my dream, but I found it pretty disturbing. Fish aren't that durable.

Apparently, Easter is approaching. I'm so not up to date on holidays. This Sunday my co-teacher Carli taught a lesson that involved the Easter Bunny and Rowan was completely clueless. I'm sure we've mentioned it in the past so maybe he just forgot from a year ago, but it was just sad, yet funny to watch him laughing in class about something that sounded so strange. But, seriously the Easter Bunny is weird- a bunny who hides dyed hard-boiled eggs? Someone in the seventies must of come up with that when tie dye and smoking mind-altering substances were in. Off the soapbox now... the kids wore their Easter outfits with General Conference on next week and I managed to get a few pictures after church.


Yes, they really are that fun.





Yes, they really are that beautiful.


Yes, they really do love each other that much.


I guess it's been a while since I've taken pictures with these two together. We tried the usual setup of Rowan holding Nadia, but that didn't work out this time as evidenced by the following-


I'm admittedly still in shock about how fast this has all happened.


We've also started up a new family tradition. Sunday is now our dessert day! Last week we had banana cream pie and this week we did doughnuts. It's fun to bake with Rowan and enjoy a special treat at the same time and Sunday is the perfect day to do it. Aside from a minor kitchen fire and some burns from splattering oil, this doughnut making experiment was a great success- so good!! I'm wearing a glove in this picture to avoid future oil burns.

Yummy fried goodness!

And my fabulous glazer...


Suffice it to say, my house smells like a doughnut factory right now.

Life is good. And that's all she wrote.

Just an Update

Spring is here! Or is it? We had a gorgeous week until the weekend hit and now we are stuck indoors. Nadia begs to go outside CONSTANTLY. If someone goes outside without her, there is a whole lot of screeching going on. She spends a lot of her day hanging by the window watching the world go by and as a result there is a consistent layer of "Nadia-prints" 3 feet up the window. Needless to say, I've given up on cleaning them. When we do get outside, you have to keep a close eye on this little one. She has NO fear, quite the opposite of her cautious brother. Her first time (and second, and third...) on the playground, Nadia walked straight off the slide. She is so dead set on moving on to the next step physically that she is quite reckless and needs constant supervision. Her legs already look like she's gone into battle and I'm cringing at the thought of bare knees.

This little girl takes her snack time on the go.




Nadia has learned to do several things this month- come down stairs, climb into her high chair, give five, and call people on the phone. Luckily, Daddy is most often the one on redial. I've tried to get video of some of these things, but she gets stage fright.




When we aren't able to go for endless walks, we are extremely blessed to be able to have a little outdoor space where the kids can have a good time. I'm rethinking the sandbox, but it's constantly played with so I guess I'll put up with sand being tracked into the house.

I caught the kids playing peek a boo with each other one day. Forgive the "through the screen shot", but videotaping kids is like trying to capture wildlife on film.


I've noticed that I have a lot more videos of Nadia than pictures. I think the following picture illustrates why that is pretty well.


She's a total monkey that doesn't stop moving! And she likes looking through her legs. I did find this picture though as evidence that she does sit still sometimes. She's really quite a snugglebug and likes to look through books as long as you don't try to turn the pages for her. I'll often find her reading to herself with just about every book taken off the shelf.



Grandma and Grandpa sent some letters to the kids a few weeks ago. Rowan was in heaven as evidenced by the following:

There were construction stickers inside that Rowan got to put on a landscape drawn by Grandpa.


Rowan's creative streak continues. All this kid wants for Christmas is tape. A lifetime supply of tape. And that will last us for a few months we hope.


I forget what this is because it morphed into several different things. At one point it was a campsite, then the umbrella became a machine gun that shoots down zombies, monsters, and your average bad guys.


He actually had a web of tape at one point with words that he had written on paper embedded into the structure. I foresee a conspiracy theorist in the works. An OCD one because at this point he is cleaning his "gun" with baby wipes. Grandpa would be so proud. At least he has his scriptures in there with him too.


Rowan's really into writing these days. The other day he asked his dad how to write the following:


This is apparently his plan for his upcoming birthday party. Chocolate cake and his dad had to note that the chocolate cake should have chocolate baby jaguars on it. Thanks Diego. We plan to have a party when Rowan's friends are available and the weather is agreeable. Lucky Christmas babies get two cakes.

And this fetching specimen was captured by Rowan himself. A little frazzled looking, but with spring break ahead of her perhaps that will take some of the edge off. I've started running again to offset my nightly Oreo encounters. Darn you Sam's Club with your obscene quantities of forbidden goodies...


Otherwise things are going well here in Lukeville. Steve's prelim has finally gotten through the red tape enough to be scheduled soon and then he'll just have to write his dissertation. Easy as pie....right? :)

Rowanism:
"When I grow up, I want to marry Nadia." This resulted in a long conversation about who we can and cannot marry and other rules about marriage. Then somehow we got involved in a conversation about what superhero Rowan could be when he grew up. The result was T. Rex Man, because you have to be something frightening right?