dreaming

on days when i feel particularly haggard, i like to picture my life seven years from now. at that point, i will have a 16-year-old, an almost-14-year-old, an almost-12-year-old, a 9-year-old, and an almost-7-year-old. most importantly, all my children will be in full-day school, and i will be left to myself for about 6 hours on school days. i realize that by the time i am actually in this situation, my responsibilities will have shifted gradually, and maybe i won't want to do the things i want to do now, and other things will of necessity fill the time. however, i have been meaning to make a list of things i wish i could do but can't because i would have to bring small children with me. so, in no particular order, here is a non-exhaustive list of what i like to picture myself doing when i am in a situation to do so:

• take a class or two at the community college. someday i would like to be able to help my kids with their math homework when it gets beyond arithmetic and geometry, and that would involve finally conquering my fear and loathing of calculus. also, someday i would like to learn how to program. but both of those ideas are if i want to challenge myself by leaving my comfort zone. if i don't feel like doing that, i would take german classes, art history, linguistics (doesn't a masters in linguistics sound like fun?!), maybe sewing or a cooking or nutrition class. that list is only the tip of the iceberg.
• find an orchestra or wind ensemble to join. i have a feeling most of these would rehearse in the evening, which might make it prohibitive, although i'll have teenagers who can be home by themselves...
• get a massage, manicure, pedicure, haircut, facial...
• learn to play the oboe or cello, and practice piano and flute. how different my life would be if i had started on the oboe instead of the flute. but at least i could practice something without interruption if nobody were home during the day.
• volunteer in classrooms of my children, chaperon field trips, actually go to PTA meetings. sometimes i feel pressure from other moms at the school. i'm sure it's all in my mind, because if i ever vocalize the guilt i feel for not even having a desire to be involved in the PTA, i get incredulous looks and "but you have three other kids to worry about!" kind of comments from my friends who are on committees and volunteer weekly in the classroom and go on field trips with their kids. so, my time will come. i have great memories of my mom coming on field trips with my classmates and me.
• keep up with laundry and ironing. i don't know why this is an aspiration of mine. i hope that by the time i have a 16-year-old, they will be doing most of their own laundry. but right now, i don't really have a system, and i feel like i can't ever take a day and actually catch up because somebody needs to be fed or watered or cleaned or i need a nap more than life itself.
• go on lunch dates with friends. just a meal out in the middle of the day, and having until 3 to do it. awesome.
• take a nap at 10 am.
• go to movies, shop, run errands. probably the novelty of being able to do the things i already do right now but without any children will wear off eventually (although i don't go to movies in the middle of the day with children right now). that's probably what i dream about the most.

now, lest ye think that this is all i think about all the time and make myself miserable because it's such a drag to do anything with children, i don't.

i love my life right now and i enjoy my kids. grocery shopping with a two-year-old is sometimes more fun than going by myself (at least my current 2-year-old), and even going places like the post office or the mall for something specific is fine with kids in tow.

and i'm sure i will miss the mayhem that surrounds me most of my days right now. for example, my two older boys were just chasing each other with nerf guns (the younger one had a fake pistol and the older had a machine gun--go figure), and the younger was down here, hiding behind the counter for cover, waiting for the older to come get him with his giant gun. while he waited, i heard a small crunching sound and looked over to find him snacking on an errant frosted mini-wheat. you can't make this stuff up.

i know they will grow into themselves and be creative in other, maybe less messy ways than they are right now, but there is a purity and sweetness to the yogurt-covered countertop and grapenut sprinkled floor after breakfast, the absolute disorder of a lego-covered bedroom floor, and the half-finished art projects on the kitchen table, complete with tiny shapes cut out of the exact center of a piece of cardstock. someday they'll eat with spoons and know how to pour cereal without spilling, remember to put the milk back in the fridge and even close the door. that may not be until they're married, but i'm doing my best to train them now, future wives of my little men. someday they'll be responsible for their own laundry, have some semblance of order in their bedrooms (even if it's a mystery to everyone but the occupant(s) of said bedroom), and do dishes without being asked. at that point, i'll wonder where i fit in and have a whole other set of problems as a mother, i'm sure.

but some days, slogging through yet another load of stinky laundry because somebody wet the bed or pooped in his underwear, having walked to the school three times with my very pregnant body and stuffing a squirming screaming toddler into the stroller three times, operating on 6 hours of not-awesome sleep, and looking around the house and seeing an utter disaster at every turn because i haven't had the energy or time or will to do anything to maintain the order that probably once reigned (for seventeen seconds), and trying to figure out what i can make for dinner in 25 minutes that dwindles to 15 while i make a space in the kitchen to cook and then change a diaper and argue about why someone isn't finished with his homework, 6 hours to myself sounds amazing!

fridays are fun

ok folks. i sure do love the fact that friday is the day right before saturday.

but let me tell you my current schedule with kids and school.
(today is extra special because my husband is out of town.)
so here's the deal:

it is approximately .6 mi from our house to the school.
i am approximately 27 weeks pregnant and 30 lbs heavier than my not-pregnant, svelte self.

i have a preschooler whose class starts at 8 am. 

i have a first- and a fourth-grader whose classes start at 9:44 am on fridays.
my first- and fourth-grader don't appreciate getting up and ready before it is absolutely necessary.
then my preschooler is done at 11:20 am.
my older boys are done at 2:50 pm.

normally, my husband takes our preschooler to school at 8 and then i go around 9 with the other two (and the 2 year old) to drop them off, so they have time to grab a snack at the weekly bakesale and play a little before school starts. my original plan was to get everybody ready and just go once at 8. but i'm so nice i just couldn't do it. plus my oldest really needed a shower. so i came home at 8:15, and then left again a little after 9. but i had to rest after so much walking! so it was about 10 when i got home. then i got to go back to school at 11:15 to pick up my preschooler! yay! 3.6 mi walked in 3 hours by a pregnant lady and an unwilling toddler (it took her a couple blocks to reconcile herself to the stroller each trip).

and in exchange for babysitting my friend's one-year-old, i don't have to go back a fourth time to gather more children to my house.

meanwhile, i got a grand total of one load of laundry washed, and a basket overflowing with folded bedsheets and towels (most of which have been sitting in that laundry basket since last thursday) put away. and i crashed on the couch for almost an hour after lunch because i really didn't have much choice.

so it's the kind of day where you just congratulate yourself that you got people where they needed to be and got them back home again. that was my job today. anything else was a bonus.

i love fridays.

a few strides in my journey

i think this all started with the group of women trying to gain entrance to the priesthood session of general conference last month. i was frustrated that there were so many women who felt slighted or "second-class" within the church because they were female--and i realized i had never felt that. i remember being curious as a young woman about why men were ordained and women were not, but i just filed it away under "things i will understand later," along with other thorny issues people like to bring up about mormons that i honestly think are not important enough to lose one's testimony over. the fact is, there are things that matter in our day-to-day existence, (faith, repentance, becoming like Christ) and they are enough for a lifetime of work. the Lord who loves us doesn't keep things from us to taunt us or make us feel inferior. He just knows more about our finite minds (and what we can handle, and what we really need to know to keep going) than we do right now. but that is another discussion for another time.

back to women and men. i observed a wonderful example of an equal partnership in my parents, and i have read enough and heard enough from the prophets to know that women are valued equally with men. i'm not saying my parents never disagreed or that there was never any tension in our house while i was growing up, but i think they exemplified what it means to hold your covenants as a higher priority than who was right or who should take the blame for a parenting mistake. i knew my parents counseled together and made decisions together, and that they love each other and enjoy being together still, and that is enough for me. thus, the fact that women are not ordained to the priesthood hasn't been something that has plagued me. my mom was just as important as my dad, at home and at church. but i was disturbed by what i had read, mostly by the number of comments identifying with these women who wanted the priesthood.

i had all of this on my mind when i went to the temple the last time, and by the end of my visit, i had a very sweet and powerful witness that women are not just valued equally, but we have power and we are vital to the plan set forth by our Father in Heaven. i wish i could communicate that feeling of peace and validity as completely as i felt it to anyone who has a question about where she stands as a woman in the gospel. 

so i was on this women kick, feeling good about my spiritual stance, but having kind of bad body thoughts about my pregnant love handles and thighs, and then i got an email with a link to this website and i started reading and reading. it's a website dedicated to the proposition that women have more to offer the world than their looks. which is obvious when you think about it, but how often do we really analyze how often we think about what we're offering the world? how much value do we put on how we look versus what we are able to do? the authors are twins who recently got their PhDs and are on a crusade to educate women on actually believing that they are more than their bodies and being looked at. i have really enjoyed every article that i have read on this website, and i feel more and more settled in myself as i continue to read them. not to the point of just up and not caring about my appearance at all, but trying not to react to what i see in the mirror the same way. trying to think about what i do more than how i look all the time.

so here are some of the questions i'm asking myself after reading about several topics like photoshopping, bmi, mothers and daughters and body image, and fitness that really does have more to do with what your body can do rather than how many inches or pounds or dress sizes you lose. 

1. if i don't consider myself, in my little life, to be oppressed or neglected or marginalized or sexually harassed, why does this line of posts have such pull? why am i drawn to it and why do i feel so vindicated when i read these things, if these are concerns i don't remember having to voice or really grapple with?

2. how much do i really care about my appearance? what are my real reasons for anything in my regular beauty routine?

3. how do i truly rid myself of the desire to look like the absolutely unattainable-because-it's-practically-a-cartoon-drawing magazine cover? how long will it take before i look at those pictures and my true first reaction is, oh my goodness, look what they did to her! how ridiculous! instead of, wow, my arms are so fat? 

[i think ever since i saw this video my mind doesn't go immediately to i wish i could look like that, but i'm not disgusted enough yet with the magazine covers i see]

4. why is feeling beautiful so important? why am i so much more confident when i have a new haircut that i love or a new pair of jeans or a new bra that really fits? what is it about looking good that gives permission for that version of myself to come out, and what is it about looking like a slob that keeps that version in a basement, tied up and gagged, and insists that the whimpering, insecure version comes out to snivel?

i feel a sense of urgency about becoming secure in my body image and where i stand as a woman both in the world and in the gospel, because i'm going to have my second daughter soon. i want to have a healthy respect and love for my body so that my daughters will too. i know that because i am their mother, my girls will consciously and subconsciously use me as their template for who they want to be as adult women. i want my children, including my sons, to know that their mother was healthy and well rounded and was not a slave to the scale or the latest fad diet or fashion, because she had a deeper understanding of who she was--and to look for that and foster that in the women they meet in their lives. i want to be an example to my girls that my body is a gift, and i love everything about it--including the stretch marks and cellulite and wrinkles--and what amazing things i can do with it.

i'm not there yet, but i feel like i'm getting a good start. knowing is half the battle, right?

guess i'll go eat worms

do you ever have one of those days when it seems like you get called out on each not-so-fine moment you have? i had one of those today. i was at the park with my 2- and 5-year-old children, chatting with other moms i know. my children don't normally need close supervision at the park, but today i guess my daughter was in a mood. i heard crying, so i looked over to where she was and it was not my daughter crying, but a little girl in very close proximity to my daughter. i walked over there to figure out what had happened, and the other little girl's very helpful and observant father said, "she pushed her down--twice." i wasn't looking at his face as he said this because i was trying to get my daughter to apologize, which she wouldn't. so i removed her from the swing area and got her to do something else. before i even left that scene, the other little girl had stopped crying and was quite happily playing on the next swing over--obviously no damage done, except, apparently, to her father.

later, right before school pick-up time, this same daughter (the 2-year-old) was bringing our pumpkins from the porch to the couches inside. i told her to put them back on the porch and then continued to prepare myself to leave by getting my youngest son to get his shoes on and get his scooter, etc., and checked my email. then from outside, i hear, "excuse me?" i walked over to the front door, which was open, and see a couple who had pulled over. they were bringing my child to me. "your child was in the street. the middle of the street." in that tone that says, i don't think you are fit to bring life into this world. how dare you inconvenience me by willfully allowing your child to go into the street and make me stop because of your incompetence. i could have misinterpreted the father at the park--maybe he didn't mean to sound so severe and i just took it wrong. but there was no misunderstanding this woman. she gave several sighs of disbelief that i could be such a bad mother as she went back to her companion, muttering under her breath.

now, i'm not trying to say that i was completely without fault in these instances. i could have paid closer attention to my daughter at the park--i could have followed her around the whole time and held her hands down, even. i could have bolted the door this afternoon and she probably wouldn't have gotten into the pumpkins in the first place. or i could have followed her out the door to place the pumpkins that she had brought inside instead of staying inside and checking my email. but i didn't.

i think i handled these encounters the best way i knew how. all i said to the disapproving woman was, "thank you," because i did appreciate that she was there, saw my daughter, pulled over, and then tried to find the right place for her rather than leave her in the street. or call the cops. she kept trying to bait me though. i had a feeling she almost wanted it to turn into a full-blown altercation about whether i was a fit mother. i had a few responses forming in my head as she walked away, shaking her head, but i didn't say anything else.

of course, here i am blogging about it, so clearly i haven't completely been able to let it go. i just wish these encounters had either a) never happened, or b) happened in a way that i could have felt some understanding rather than judgment. sometimes i feel that people "help" with the intention of maybe showing me how it "should" be done, and if i were as enlightened or evolved or something as they are, that i wouldn't be in this situation in the first place, endangering these poor innocent children. and if you are going to "help" with that attitude, whom are you helping? are you trying to make yourself feel superior? do you really think you have everything figured out and the hapless mother whose child is in the street is probably on drugs or something? i don't know the answers to any of these questions. i'm just trying to sort this out in my head so that i can continue to try my best, and move on knowing that i'm the right woman for this job of raising these particular children who have been sent to me. i don't think i'm alone in feeling a little shaky in that belief sometimes. right now i'm six months pregnant and i have four other children to take care of. and i'm just tired. and that makes me a bit overwhelmed some days, which means i might not make the most optimal decisions all the time. i'm human. i'm not asking for pity, or complaining that i don't have a live-in nanny. i love being a mother. but the fact is it does take a village. the village just wasn't that kind to me today.

there. the end.

childhood foods and pregnancy

i have very happy memories of food in my childhood. since growing up and getting married, i have learned a lot about cooking for myself and others, and expanded my palate a bit. but whenever i am "in a family way" (someone literally said those words to me today! how cute is that!), i find myself wanting things like hamburger helper and american cheese and white bread and cottage cheese with applesauce. these are not necessarily pregnancy cravings, i don't think, but i am more willing to act on them because i am pregnant. or maybe i'm just kidding myself. either way, there are lots of familiar food items in my kitchen right now.

there is a danger, however, in buying things i haven't had in my kitchen for years, and that is that they won't measure up to my memory. for example, one time i bought some campbell's tomato soup and was so excited to eat it. i had the taste in my mouth that i remembered from when i was a kid the whole time it was heating up on the stove. and then we sat down to eat it, with lovely grilled cheese sandwiches. i even had plans for the leftover soup. and then i took my first bite, and it did not taste like i remembered. i checked the can and it was some low sodium abomination. ugh! what a disappointing dinner. but get this--i went back to the soup aisle to rectify this horrifying mistake the next time i went to the store and i couldn't find any original tomato soup. what? the whole world is on a low-sodium diet now?

my latest weak moment in the grocery store was a jello no-bake cheesecake. i bought it because we had talked about baking a cheesecake (like with cream cheese and an oven and everything) and it was on my mind and i remembered making and loving the jello ones when i was a teenager. so i bought it. and then it sat in my cupboard while i tried to resist making it, allowing buyers' remorse to set in, like when i give in and buy treats and then don't give them to the kids for a while because i feel dumb for bringing them home in the first place. anyway, i finally made it and we ate some today. and it tasted good! i enjoyed it. but i wouldn't call it cheesecake. it was the first cheesecake-like dessert i had in my life i think, and so my tastebuds have had a journey going from jello no-bake to cheesecake factory to homemade cheesecake and then trying no-bake again. and the jello no-bake is not cheesecake. it's not. it's more like a...whipped jello...something. like a custard with a lot of air beaten into it. and pie filling on top. very tasty, as i said. but a cheesecake is an entirely different thing.

i will admit to being a snob in the past. and maybe i will be again once i'm done incubating this baby. for now, i am of the opinion that everything has its place. i also live in organic-everything-or-we-will-assume-you-don't-love-your-children-or-indeed-your-own-body-or-future land, so maybe my return to more processed food is something of a backlash against that. i'm not saying i have stopped buying fresh fruits or vegetables or cooking altogether. in fact, we went to the farmers' market today and cooked the eggplant and corn we bought there for dinner tonight. (i also made this sauce with farfalle pasta--did you know "farfalle" means "butterfly'? way prettier than a dumb bowtie--and everyone ate some. it was really good.) but i do think that the occasional canned soup and grilled cheese dinner is perfectly acceptable, and so is a hamburger helper now and again. so there. :) 

i must add here as a post script that i have managed to find campbell's tomato soup that made no mention of health on its label, and it was very much as i remembered it. exactly what i wanted at the time. 

summer

i think all my life i have had mixed emotions about summer. on the one hand, i love the lack of a schedule. on the other hand, i hate the lack of a schedule. come the end of may, i always start making these starry-eyed plans about everything i'm going to do over the summer that i just don't have time for during the school year (except for those years when i wasn't bound by a school schedule, during which time i had starry-eyed plans pretty much all the time and continued to have a lack of structure and love and hate it at the same time), and then summer is actually upon me, and i end up wasting almost every day.
last summer was possibly the longest summer of my life, not because there were more days (in fact there were fewer) between the last day of second grade and the first day of kindergarten and third grade, but because i didn't know what to do with myself or the kids and i was alone with them a LOT. my husband went on a long bike ride (long, as in, from the golden gate bridge all the way down to santa barbara) with the young men from church, so i was home with all four for five days. this was not the first time i had been alone with all four for longer than a 2-day trip, and i thought that what i needed to do was make sure to have something to do each day. but i learned from the failure of that week that i need my friends to be with me, as well as have something for the kids and myself to do. otherwise, i become the shrieking monster that nobody wants to be around.
so i have one more weekend and then one and a half days of school to get my summer plans in order, and then see how it goes. so far i'm concocting a mix of field trips (hopefully with friends), home science projects, chore time (hopefully with little whining--ha ha ha), and story time with the boys. i was reading the Ensign yesterday and there are some good ideas for fostering spiritual growth as a family that are starting to steep in my brain. i know there will be much movie watching and quite possibly struggles with other media, but i hope that we can all still like each other by the time school starts again. :) i also hope the boys will get creative and do things i have not planned on at all.
stay tuned.
here's to a great summer that will make me long for summer all school year!

soy sauce snobbery

i don't know how this happened. perhaps i can reconstruct my life up until this moment and look for clues.

my husband loves all foods asian (except those with shellfish in them, which make his body blow up), and over the years we have made many a stir fry and dumpling. our kids have grown up with daddy making sushi on occasion, and we even have those cute little dipping dishes they give you at sushi places. do you ever look at the soy sauce they have at chinese, japanese, or vietnamese, restaurants? it's almost always kikkoman. it's available in grocery stores, too, and that's what we normally have at home as well. soy sauce is made with wheat. my little sister has celiac disease, so she can't eat wheat without causing problems in her body. there are other brands that manage to make soy sauce without wheat, so we've bought another brand to have on hand in case she comes over to eat with us and we happen to be making something asian (this was far more likely and common a few years ago when we lived closer to each other, but we still have this other brand around). anyway, we have two brands of soy sauce in our pantry.

so. this weekend, it was our anniversary, and i thought it would be fun to make sushi and some pot stickers for dinner (it's also a way for me to actually not have to cook, because my husband makes the sushi and even gets our boys involved in the chopping). for some reason my sushi chef grabbed the non-kikkoman soy sauce to eat with our meal. and because it was sushi, and you actually dip each bite in the soy sauce, you can really taste it.

before this meal, i thought all soy sauce was the same, just different packaging. but let me tell you, it is not. this other soy sauce slaps you across the face!

now, in our house, we try to get our children to be responsible for their own dishes, and sometimes one or two of them neglect their dishes after dinner, so i leave them there until the next morning and make them clear their dinner dishes from the table before breakfast. anyway, the morning after this sushi meal, there were a couple of dipping dishes remaining on the table, with soy sauce still in them. and do you know what had happened overnight?

magic! there were salt crystals forming from this other brand of soy sauce! whaaat?

i think i might need to do some experimenting to see whether i'm being unfair to this other brand and too favorable towards kikkoman. like maybe i should leave a half a teaspoon of both brands out in a dipping dish overnight and just see whether salt crystals form in both or just one. but regardless of the salt-crystal-forming properties of either brand, i am confident when i say that a) i can taste a marked difference and b) i vastly prefer kikkoman.

so there you have it. i am officially a soy sauce snob.

also, i am waiting for kikkoman to contact me and maybe send me a check. ;)

a good day

all right, fans.

today my kids totally blew me away. my oldest is a Cub Scout, and as part of the Family Fun requirement he had to plan a family outing. he chose a hike! and i'm not saying i expected it to be horrible, but i kinda thought it would be hard to motivate the kids to keep moving the whole time, shall we say.

but those kids were superstars on the trail today! we walked 2 and a half miles, as a family (baby in a hiking backpack, switching between parents--and totally happy the whole time), and nobody really complained until we were less than half a mile from the end! we even sustained a bee-sting with nary a whine. i couldn't believe it.

the rest of the day was wonderfully peaceful and lovely, with some work in the yard, baby giggling on the swing, and then listening to Prairie Home Companion in front of the fireplace after dinner (i promise, we don't live in Stepford).

it was a good day, not because i was escaping from responsibilities that seem too large for one person, but because everything felt really good. i watched the different personalities of my children play out a little more, and just was able to enjoy being their mother. they are real people, with lots of differences and similarities with me and their dad and each other. and the firelight provided the golden glow that the norman rockwell scene needed to be complete. i'm not saying there were no harsh words spoken by anyone all day, or that each child would report this day as the best day ever; it was just one day i want to remember because i felt comfortable and right in my place in the world.

hooray for good days. :)