Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens

Back before I used to subject my long-suffering family to tangential and extensive emails, I used to write in a journal. In the inside cover of my journal, I wrote the following quote by Nancy Mair: I will write myself into well being. Well, I need some of that today.

I am grumpy. I think I'm grumpy because I'm tired of hearing the whining and complaining coming from...me. So why am I complaining? Is it that my desk is buried under the detritus of weeks? Is it that I have laundry to fold and dishes to wash and I’m not doing them? Is it that I have too much to do and I am not doing well at ANY of it? Is it Braeden’s heroscape game spread all over the dining room floor? Is it the spot on Emma’s bed where (oops) she “spilled” her gum? Is it that Mark insists on running around the house, yelling and smacking walls and siblings just because he has such a huge amount of energy? Is it that my shoes are too tight and my heart is two sizes too small? Whatever the reason, the heart or the shoes…I’m grumpy.

What I really need is a good shot in the arm of gratitude. So here I go. What I’m grateful for. Today.

1. Sunshine. In February. In Seattle. Amazing.
2. Taking Mark to the car wash during Braeden and Emma’s piano lessons. He told me over and over it was the best day of his life. Who am I to argue with that kind of unabashed joy?
3. Adam, Adam and forever Adam. He listens to my whining and complaining and loves me anyway and gives me advice and encouragement and if nothing else works, wraps his arms around me.
4. Talking on the phone with Janet…having someone I can talk to until one of our cordless phones die out and we have to finally go back to our lives.
5. I made it to the gym today!
6. My kids are healthy.
7. My husband has a good job and I get to stay home full time with these healthy kids.
8. I get to take my kids to London! The big frequent flier pay off!
9. I can home school my kids and watch them learn all the while fulfilling my dream that started in first grade when I wanted to be a school teacher like Mrs. Jund.
10. Clicking on the “publish post” button when I write a blog. I feel like a real writer for 20 seconds.
11. Hearing my kids reenact Guillermo (from Jimmy Kimmel) trying out for the Wiggles.
12. It’s the last week of basketball.
13. We got our car back from Aldercrest Auto Repair. We are once again a two-car family!!
14. Adam wasn’t hurt in the accident that landed his car at Aldercrest Auto Repair.
15. Emma wanted books with her birthday money.
16. My mom taught me how to make bread. Nothing nourishes body and soul like homemade bread.
17. Good books to read. Right now I’m reading 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith. It’s funny.
18. It’s the Blue and Gold banquet tonight (sorry Janet) and guess whose son turned eleven and no longer has to go to those…well, until Mark is eight.
19. Good quotes, like the following:

It’s easy to complain about children. But when we want to express our joy, our love, the words elude us. The feelings are almost so sacred they defy speech. –Joan McIntosh

I’ll stop complaining. No more grumpy. I promise.










And the Guillermo video...

I know what you're thinking...you didn't think I, who barely knows how to check my cell phone voice mail, was smart enough to attach a video to my blog. Well, you're right. I am not that smart. I'm married to one who is though.

Emma's Birthday

Yesterday Emma turned nine. I'm so glad that she's my girl. I think everyone needs a girl. Someone to make you pretty Valentines and steal your hairbrush. Emma's grandparents gave her a book for her birthday: The Girls' Book-- How to be the Best at Everything. It's contents, among many other things, include How to make shadow puppets, How to whistle really loudly, How to eat with chop sticks, and my personal favorite, How to cope if zombies attack. Emma was reading it aloud to us last night. I wondered where the time had gone. Just when did my tiny baby wrapped in pink at the Yale New Haven Hospital become this tall confident girl, laughing as she read "If you have no choice but to stand and fight a zombie, always check your body carefully for bite marks afterward."

Hazards at the YMCA

I grew up in rural Nevada around horses. When you take a saddle off a hot dusty horse and turn it out into a field, often it will buck and kick its legs and roll around on the ground, presumably getting the feel of the saddle off its body. I finally realized when watching Mark play in his basketball game at the YMCA on Saturday that that is what Mark reminds me of when he plays.

When Mark plays basketball, it is with pure joy. Mark approaches everything with either pure joy or real contempt. He’s an intense kid and feels things strongly. And he loves being in a gym.

He doesn’t at all get the concept of basketball. He runs around, sometimes making zooming noises, sometimes holding his head to the side like he’s trying to resist the g forces. Occasionally, seemingly as an afterthought, he’ll steal the ball, or grab a loose ball but then he doesn’t really have a clear concept of what to do with it and he hands it off…usually to one of the timid little girls on the team.

You can imagine that little kids who are really into the game and really get the concept of basketball get irritated with Mark. Who is this wild-eyed red head and why is he disrupting our game? Similar to how Mark is either really happy or really not, kids seem to either really like him or really…not.

A lot of kids genuinely like Mark. They go out of their way to say hello to him. I have watched out my window and seen neighborhood boys actually coming to blows fighting over Mark’s attention. There are those that feel otherwise though. I was visiting teaching once and a small boy came down the stairs and told his mom that it was time to go home. She said, “But you are home.” He pointed upstairs to where Mark was playing (and presumably ruling the roost) and said, “No, HIM.”

There have been several athletic basketball playing boys that feel the same way. Get him out of here. As paroxysmal as Mark is in his basketball playing, he is really pretty fast, strong, athletic and aggressive (he got none of those qualities from yours truly) and when he decides he wants to get the ball, he’s hard to stop. This doesn’t further endear him to anyone.

So Mark’s been shoved, kicked, punched and tripped. It never really bothers him much. I don’t like to see it but I usually just let it go because unlike my other two who I feel such a compelling urge to protect, Mark seems somehow like he doesn’t need my protection.

On Saturday there was an intense kid on the other team. He was also a red head but with a buzz cut and a UW headband on his shorn head. He was a pretty good little player and was in control of most of the game. Mark randomly decided to go after a loose ball and got it from the other kid. The other guy yelled out in rage and pounded on the mat that covered the wall (so that’s why they placed the mats there). Then he started kicking the wall. Mark was oblivious and handed the ball to this little girl, Isabella who is so tiny I’m afraid she’ll fall over if Mark runs by her too fast. Mark zoomed away, probably forgetting the whole incident.

The other player did not forget. He got in Mark’s face and tried to underhandedly get him for the next few minutes. Mark didn’t seem to be minding so neither did I.

Then it happened. Mark was running down the court. Headband kid was standing his ground. I saw a particular look in Mark’s eye. He lowered his shoulder like a football player and literally flattened the kid. I yelled out, “Mark!” and I told Adam, “He did that on purpose!” Adam said he was sure that was not true.

I knew better. And I ejected my son from the game. I took him off the court and held him on my lap…on the floor because there are never enough chairs at those games. Other mothers smiled over at me with an understanding smile. They’re the mothers whose children sometimes run crying from the court because they’re hurt and they then sit on their mother’s laps. I smiled back. Let them believe that Mark is sitting here because he’s hurt, I thought. He was really sitting there because he was in trouble. I asked him if he had done it on purpose. “Yes,” he admitted in a small voice. “That’s a mean kid.”

No flattening other players, Mark. You just can’t.

Since I gave birth to this big strong kid, I figure it’s my duty to civilize him. Teach him things like don’t knock kids over.

I do take comfort in the fact that for all the abuse Mark takes from frustrated kids on the basketball court, he is really very good-natured. He is a head taller than almost every other kid and could conceivably flatten them all if he decided to. He’s usually just happy to be in a gym and happy to share with the smaller kids who would otherwise never get a chance to touch the ball.

And like Adam said, “No one complained when Mark knocked that kid down.”

Of course we won’t mention that to Mark. We’ll just tell him, “No flattening other players. You just can’t.”

Yes, Jessica. I Do

I just looked over my blog and saw that I had a comment from Jessica. Jessica wondered if I remembered her.

I do.

I know Jessica from Connecticut. “Connecticut” isn’t just a state in New England in our family’s vernacular. It’s a time period, like the Pax Romana or the Golden Age of Greece. Certainly not a perfect time but looked back on through a very rosy lens. I learned more about myself and grew up more during “Connecticut” than any other period of my life.

We lived in a strange microcosm of Real Life. We women in the student ward. Our husbands were in graduate school, our families were largely still in the West and we were navigating young marriage and motherhood together. We talked about serious things and not so serious things…always with our children in tow. Our children were a part of everything. They were woven into our lives as tightly as we were woven into each other’s lives.

Jessica was one of the children. She is Mindy and Bill’s daughter. Mindy and Bill were the gold standard for future friendships. Adam’s first weekend visit to California to apartment hunt, he met Jeff and Patty. He said, “They might turn out to be our Mindy and Bill.” They did.

Jessica is almost exactly a year older than Braeden. Because of her status as an older child, Braeden acquiesced to her. Braeden was timid and Jessica…um…wasn’t. Once they came to our apartment…which was the exact replica of their apartment except ours was always more cluttered and messy. Jessica, who I absolutely loved because of her spunk and big personality, (I’ve always loved strong women!) yelled at Braeden, “This is MY apartment.” Braeden went to our kitchen and curled himself up in a ball on the rug in front of the sink. Poor Braeden.

He did like Jessica though. They had a grand time playing together in the innocence of toddler-hood when it doesn’t matter if you are a boy or girl or have the same interests or not. Also, Jessica was creative and very bright. It had to be fun to play with her.

I remember Jessica was always dressed with panache. I loved everything she wore and when Emma was born, I’d plop hats on her head until she was too old to let me because Jessica always looked so cute in hats.

I also loved Jessica because of the trouble she gave her mother. Now I loved my friend Mindy, but I never ceased to be entertained by Jessica taxing her mother’s soul. If for no other reason, seeing the frustration of motherhood mirrored on Mindy’s face was reassuring. Some days Jessica insisted on yellow rubber boots and there was just nothing Mindy could do about it.

We had other small Connecticut friends who are still in my heart. Do they realize a woman in Washington still thinks about them sometimes? Thinks about how old they are now and what they’ve “grown up” to be? Will my children encounter them some day at BYU or on missions and possibly remember how they rode in strollers and celebrated their birthdays together in New Haven, Connecticut?

When we left Connecticut, Jessica and Davis were 4 and Thom was 6. Jessica’s little brother, Jackson was an adorable roly poly little 2 year old and so was Davis’s little brother Ryan. Nick, Olivia, Martin, another Jessica, Zach, and Quinn have joined their families now and I wish we could all celebrate birthdays together still.

So yes, Jessica. I remember you and the others. I always will. Because I love your mothers.

This Tiger Can’t Change Her Stripes

I remember one summer I was in Nevada, home from college, and helping my friend Marie shop for her upcoming semester abroad in London. It was an exciting time and we went to Elko and JCPenney. If you needed clothes that was the best you could do. Other clothing stores were over 100 miles away.

She was looking for a raincoat. She had in mind exactly what she wanted. This is something I always admired about Marie. She was determined to get what she wanted. She expected it. And she was patient and stubborn enough to get it. She tried on a few coats. They weren’t just right. She tried them on again. Nope. Not good enough. We left the store without a coat. She would find one somewhere else.

I am just not like that. I am not patient. It’s not in my make-up to procrastinate. If it had been me, I’d have tried on the jackets. Found them not quite right. Tried them on again. Then picked the one that was the least not quite right. It’s just how I am. And I wish I were different.

I don’t want to be a person who just settles.

So Adam’s taking us to London…Emma and Braeden and me. Again, since I can’t procrastinate and want everything decided yesterday, my mind immediately started buzzing with travel plans. What were we going to take? What clothes did we have that were suitable? What did we need to add?

I decided that I need a pair of good comfortable walking shoes. I am not a shoe person. I’d rather be barefoot. I have sandals I wear every day all summer. In the winter I stick to my black mules. They more or less go with everything but I wear them even if they’re not “quite right”. They are comfortable enough--and most importantly—easy to slip off my feet the minute I’m indoors. What they aren’t is great for walking long distances which I plan to be doing in the rooms of the British Museum (I can’t WAIT to show my kids mummies and the Rosetta stone and Greek pottery…)

So I determined that I would buy some new shoes. Some good, lasting shoes. Shoes that would be comfortable and QUALITY. I like quality but I rarely have the patience to save for it and I am a sucker for a bargain. Really, the bargain is usually more exciting than whatever I buy.

I called Janet. Janet the fashion plate. Janet always looks fabulous and pulled together. Janet would instruct me in the art of shoe shopping. She told me the good brands and I made a list. Janet knows me though. “They’re not cheap shoes,” she warned.

I readied myself and got online. I found a darling pair of Earth brand (one of Janet’s recommendations) mary janes. Mary janes are the cutest possible shoe so I was happy. Then I saw the price. $130! When I really splash out for some expensive shoes I may spend $30. Yikes. I was in over my head.

I tried to hold the image of Marie and the raincoats in my mind. I tried to remember what Janet had told me about the pair of Dr. Martens she’s had since college.

I still couldn’t spend that much on shoes! I decided to compromise. I’d go to the outlet mall. Maybe I’d find what I was looking for—at a lower price.

I talked to my dad on my cell phone as I drove. He asked me where I was going. I told him I was going to buy some expensive shoes.

He said, “So you’ll find some shoes that you like but you’ll see that they’re not expensive enough so you’ll say never mind?”

“Yeah,” I said, “Something like that.”

I wandered in and out of shoe stores. I was proud of myself as I passed up anything that was not what I had in mind…brown leather mary janes.

Then I got distracted. I went into The Children’s Place and bought Emma three shirts that were under $3 each. I was thrilled by the bargain.

Focus, I thought. Focus. Think Marie and the raincoat. Janet and the Dr. Martens. You can DO this.

I passed up some comfortable and comparatively inexpensive Naturalizer shoes. They weren’t “quite right.” I was SO proud of myself.

Then I got tired of the whole exercise. Done shoe shopping. I was ready to just get the first thing I saw. I went into the Bass outlet. I found some brown leather mary janes. They were on the clearance rack.

Did you hear the angel choir singing or was it just me?

I tried them on. They SEEMED comfortable. They were cute. And $39!!! I was happy. And tired of shopping. I bought them quick before I could dwell too much on the comfort system I’d read about on the Earth website. How Earth shoes correct your posture and are so Good For You.

As I drove home I felt disappointed in myself. I didn’t feel like I’d held out for the perfect shoe. I just didn’t have it in me.

Then I got home. I tried on the shoes again. They really are pretty good shoes.

And I can’t be something I’m not.

Easier Than a Ladder?

Adam's method for taking down the Christmas lights.

Happy Birthday Braeden

Today Braeden is eleven. Which means I’ve been a mother for eleven years. It’s something to think about. In some ways I can’t believe he’s eleven already. How could he grow up so fast? On the other hand, I barely remember life without him. It seems like that wasn’t real life.

I didn’t take to motherhood easily. I thought I would. When I was about 14 I remember thinking I was ready to be an adult, ready to be a mother. I wasn’t ready then though, because I wasn’t really ready at 23 either. It was Hard. A big part of why it was hard was because of post partum depression, which I didn’t realize at the time. I thought…and I think Adam thought--though he was kind enough not to tell me…that I was just a really terrible mother. The only thing that overshadowed my anxiety about being Braeden’s mother though, was how much I loved him. I would sit for hours and stare into his navy blue but soon to be brown eyes. I would contemplate things like where he’d just been and what he would be someday.

And I wondered why I didn’t get anything done. Maybe it was all the sitting and staring into his eyes.

I didn’t appreciate it then but I look back with such fondness at what Braeden and I have been through. He was with me when I flew to Connecticut for the first time. The uncertainty of it all may have engulfed me if I hadn’t had him to be in charge of. He was with me when I got lost every time I left our Connecticut apartment those first few weeks. He was with me on perfect autumn walks in crunchy leaves on Prospect Street. He was with me when Emma arrived. He called her Be Emma (be for baby) and loved her.

He’s been with me for every move we’ve made except for the one when I was pregnant with him, but I guess he was there then too. He decorated boxes with crayons while I packed them and he offered me his blanket when I sat on the floor and cried when we moved to California and our incompetent and crooked movers had broken lamps and dishes.

I wonder how many times Braeden and I have driven around together on errands. How many stories have I read to him? I wonder how many times he’s made me laugh or helped me or understood me when no one else did. I wonder how many times I’ve been too hard on him, angry with him when I was really angry with myself. I wonder how many times he’s forgiven me.

Nothing makes me feel more loved or undeserving than the three children I’ve been given. I think of all the mistakes and missteps I’ve made. All the times I wasn’t kind enough or patient enough or let them down.

So I pause at this eleven year anniversary of motherhood. I want to be a better mother. I want to appreciate these three souls that have filled my life with so much wonder and laughter and tears and anxiety and plain hard work. I want to do better by them.

Happy Birthday Braeden. Thank you for making me a mother. Thank you for understanding when I’m not so very good at it. And thank you being the wonderful kind of boy that makes me think maybe I did one or two things right.