Some reflections on motherhood . . .

. . . and oh, yeah, about our week. (I'll probably address the latter first, for those readers with short attention spans).

We don't have a lot to report that will be of interest to our readers. Dan celebrated his second conference of the month (luckily, this one was in Salt Lake and required no overnight trips) by getting up to campus before 7 to catch a ride up to the conference. This wouldn't have been too bad, except that it meant we had to wake Evelyn up to load the kids in the car, and the fact that Evelyn had been up 5 times between 6:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. (We think she's working on another ear infection).

This week has also been a busy one for me: we're interviewing prospective Writing Fellows for fall semester, and we have upwards of 50 candidates this semester (for approximately 20 spots).
While I don't have to do every interview (there are five members of our office staff and we do the interviews in pairs), I have spent a fair amount of time on campus this week, and a lot of time outside of that reviewing applications. It's been rewarding in a lot of ways: it's fun to meet so many bright young people. It also, sometimes, makes me a little sad, since I know that we won't be able to hire all of the students who are qualified. (And sadder still, knowing that I won't be around to work with those who do make the cut!). And in a few cases, the interviewing process brings out a curious streak in me: in the case of a few clearly over-confident students, I find myself mentally reviewing my own qualifications at that age and forcible suppressing the urge to explain to these few students why it is that I'm not impressed by them. In a handful of cases, though, I have been genuinely awed by the caliber of student that our program has attracted.

I know I've written a little bit before about some of my personal fears about moving, particularly the uncertainty about finding my place. But I've been doing some thinking lately, and I really think it comes down to some fundamental things I need to change about the way I think about motherhood. (Disclaimer: I should note that most of what I am about to write pertains specifically to me--it is in no means meant as a judgment of other mothers, many of whom grapple with the challenge of motherhood far better than I do. And I suppose I should also add that this post is partly an exercise in self-indulgence for me, an opportunity to write out coherently some things I have been thinking about with less coherence, and an opportunity to record what have been for me some fairly meaningful insights--what Elder Bednar has called "tender mercies of the Lord.")

When I think about leaving, in the midst of all the excitement that Dan has found a wonderful job and the prospect of owning our own home, there are two flies in my ointment. The first is having to leave a group of students that I really have come to care a lot about. (I'm pretty sure at some point this will entail crying on my part--it hasn't yet, but I think that's only a matter of time). The second one is a little more troubling: I think that subconsciously I fear that I'll never again find a position that offers me the same kind of intellectual stimulation and joy that this teaching/coordinating position has. There are two problems with this, both of which have to do with a lack of faith and understanding on my part.

First, this belief fails to acknowledge God's role in directing my life. If I believe (as I do) that I was led to this position in the first place, what leads me to believe that God will not similarly lead me in the future? The April Ensign has a wonderful article by Elder and Sister Oaks on the topic of education; in it, Elder Oaks quotes President Eyring: "The Lord knows both what He will need you to do and what you will need to know. He is kind and He is all-knowing. So you can with confidence expect that He has prepared opportunities for you to learn in preparation for the service you will give." To me, this means that I can (and should!) trust God to put me in places that will not only maximize my abilities to learn, but to maximize my abilities to serve, providing that I am humble enough to let him do so. Rather than seeing this current position as the end of my opportunities (which is silly, seen in black and white type), I should see it as perhaps the beginning of my training for future positions that God has in mind for me. (This principle means letting go of certainties and entering into uncertainties--but isn't that what faith is essentially about? The fact that I'm not very good at dealing with uncertainties certainly should not prevent me from trying.)

But the second problem with my fear (and the one that I really want to focus on here) is that it also seems to assume that the real work I am trying to do--to mother my children--is not challenging enough. Or perhaps I should clarify, is not *intellectually* challenging enough. (Motherhood is certainly challenging--some days it requires all of my physical and emotional effort, and even that doesn't seem to be enough!) But I think this belief is faulty: I think it really stems from a misunderstanding (on my part) of what motherhood really is. We are told in the Church that motherhood and fatherhood are the highest callings that any of us can have. If this is true, then it should follow that these are also the callings that will require the best and deepest efforts we can give. In the Marriage and Family Relations manual (and, perhaps not so coincidentally, in the lesson we studied today), Elder Holland talks about the importance of motherhood. He cites a letter from a young mother, who was struggling on three fronts: feeling she didn't "measure up" to the model of motherhood portrayed in idealistic church talks; feeling that the world in general expected her to raise miraculously brilliant children; and feeling patronized by many who failed to recognize the "mental investment, the spiritual and emotional exertion, the long-night, long-day stretched-to-the limit demands that sometimes are required in trying to be and wanting to be the mother God hopes she will be" (manual p. 44). When I read this, I was also reminded of a story I read on lds.org a while ago, about a woman who, like me, had some experience with a career before she gave it up to have children. She found that, contrary to her expectations, motherhood required an intellectual commitment on her part above and beyond anything her career had demanded--but at the same time, motherhood also provided surpassing fulfillment.

It's not that I don't think motherhood is important; I do. It's that I think I sometimes fail to appreciate motherhood's capacity for creativity, intelligence, and tenacity. Reading these talks provided me with a much needed reminder that I do NOT need to somehow stifle my talents in raising my children; rather, done right, raising my children should amplify those talents beyond (I hope) what I am currently capable of. I know this sounds idealistic--but I'm not so naive as to think there won't be days that are exhausting and mind-numbing. My mom likes to remind me of days she spent as young mother where she had to remind herself who she was, that she had a master's degree, that she had some identity beyond "mommy." But what I'm hoping--trusting--is that the overall journey will be worth it. This week, in our interviews, I interviewed a young man whose family I know somewhat (I was at school with two of his sisters; another brother was in my mission). He comes from a family of eleven children, almost all of whom were presidential scholars at BYU. I couldn't help but reflect that his outstanding resume (and it was outstanding) was in large part a tribute to a mother who put significant time and resources into his education.

What all of this means, I suppose (besides a very long post!), is that I am still learning about who I am and what kind of woman (and mother) God wants me to be! But also that I'm slowly becoming more reconciled to change. And besides, who wouldn't want to spend more time with these?




Just one note of explanation: Evelyn has started doing this funny squinty look where she wrinkles up her nose and tosses her head. I've seen her brother do it hundreds of times, but on her it's acquired her own unique twist. I've been trying to catch the look on camera and this is the closest I've come so far.

Adventures in WondERland

The end of this week was exciting, but not in a "we're having so much fun now!" kind of exciting--more of a "I could do without this" kind of excitement. Late Friday night (about 11--late for us!) Andrew woke up with a coughing fit that quickly turned into an "I'm trying to retch" fit. He stumbled into our room crying that his stomach hurt, and writhing around to prove it. We tried several things to help him feel better: Dan tried to help him throw up (by sticking a finger down his throat) with no success; we remembered that he hadn't eaten much at dinner and thought maybe he was hungry, so we fed him some bread. That helped, temporarily, and he went back to bed. Only to get up five minutes later crying desperately that his stomach hurt. This (putting him to bed and then having him scream) happened a couple of times before we finally decided maybe we should take him to the Emergency Room. In retrospect, I think we probably didn't need to be so alarmed--but Andrew is usually pretty stoic about pain (except when it surprises him, like banging his head), and he'd never done anything like this before. Plus, the pain had seemed fairly consistent, since he'd complained about it that afternoon, and he wasn't showing any typical signs of a stomach bug, etc. Anyway, to make a long story short, I volunteered to take him and Dan stayed home with Evelyn.

And that is how Andrew and I came to spend two hours (from midnight until just after two) in the ER. I know this is shorter than the average ER stay (they warn you it usually takes at least 2.5 hours), but in the middle of the night, with a three-year-old who--in between bouts of pain--was unnaturally perky, it was pretty grueling. And of course, ten minutes into our stay, Andrew finally did throw up, which not surprisingly made him feel better. A nice nurse gave him a popsicle, and then I spent the next hour or so trying to keep Andrew occupied enough to stay in the room. I was exhausted (fighting off a cold on top of a late night), but Andrew's three hours of sleep before he woke up seemed to have refreshed him. This is how most of the stay went: "Mommy, what's that helicopter outside for?" "Where does it go?" "Why?" (And after I'd explained it, he'd start the round of questions again). "What are all those people doing here?" "Why?" "Who's sick?" "What do the nurses do?" "Why isn't the doctor here?" And on and on. Finally I turned the lights out in the room and insisted he lie down--he didn't got to sleep, but at least he wasn't bouncing around as much. The doctor ran a strep test (negative), felt Andrew's belly and determined there was nothing too worrisome, so I brought him home wishing we had never ventured out in the first place.

Andrew seems better today, although he spent most of yesterday complaining intermittently that his stomach hurt. (It was almost funny--he would play and run around like normal, but if he stopped for long enough, he would remember his stomach hurt and start writhing for thirty seconds, before getting distracted by another toy and running off). We kept him home from church today, just in case--and he slept the entire three hours he would have been in church.

Of course, our ER visit meant that none of us were at our best Saturday morning--Dan had to be up early to go judge BYU's Spring Research Conference. Andrew initially woke up at 5:30 and thought he was going to get up--luckily, Dan finally persuaded him to stay in bed, so he went back to sleep until 8:30. And because we were all tired and/or sick, we didn't do anything very exciting. (Although I did get to go shopping with my mom, which was fun.)

Other highlights of the week: um, actually, neither Dan nor I can remember much of anything, so there can't have been much excitement in our lives in the early week.

It has been remarkably warm, though, so we've been outside a lot. (Although I hear it's supposed to snow tomorrow!) Evelyn is finally big enough to sit up in our little wagon--she grips the sides in her tight little grip and braces her feet against the opposite feet. Watching Andrew pull her in the wagon is one of the cutest things I've seen recently; unfortunately, I keep forgetting to take a camera outside when he does this. In other news, we also got Andrew's little red Radio Flyer scooter back (I had thought it was stolen when we initially found it missing a month or so ago). It turns out that the neighbor's granddaughter, who'd been over to play with Andrew before, knew where the scooter was and borrowed it one time and forgot to bring it back.

Aside from that, we live boring--if busy--lives. We're heading into the final stretches of the semester, and next week is interview week for me--we're heading into our hiring season for new Writing Fellows. It's always a lot of fun to meet so many bright, interesting students, but it's also pretty time consuming . . .

Anyway, hopefully we'll have something more interesting to say next week.

We'll close instead with some pictures of Andrew and Evelyn playing in the tub together. I wanted to get a picture of Evelyn with her tongue sticking out (she does this adorable thing where she plays with her emerging front teeth with her tongue, and it ends up sticking out the left-hand corner of her mouth), but got these intead:

Hammerheads

Andrew and I had an illuminating discussion this morning. Last night, I got out a bunch of his new short sleeve shirts now that the weather has warmed up. Among his things, I found this shark hat (you can't see it very well, but that's a hammerhead on the hat). Andrew insisted on wearing it this morning atop his pajamas. But when I said, "okay, come over here Mr. Hammerhead and let's get you dressed," he responded: "Hammerhead sharks don't walk. They swim." Followed by, "Hammerhead sharks don't wear clothes. They don't wear pajamas either."* Followed by his rapid disrobing. With some ingenuity, I managed to persuade him not to remove his underwear too, by finding some gray colored underwear and convincing him that shark *could* wear this, because it would match his coloring.


Here are some other facts you should know about Hammerhead sharks (I'm typing more or less verbatim what Andrew tells me):

They don't have dollies. They sleep by themselves (accompanied by a callous discarding of Andrew's beloved dolly. Although she's back now.)
Hammerhead sharks swim. And they jump. And they like to have lots of fun with their families. But sometimes their daddies say that everyone (the mommies and daddies and grandmas and grandpas) have to go away. And the hammerhead shark was sad. He was very sad.
Hammerhead sharks can't move when they're cold. So they walk into bedrooms and get a nice blanket (said as he drags his own blanket across the kitchen floor).

I love that Andrew talks about himself in third person! As a Hammerhead shark no less!

*I have to admit that part of what I found so funny about this conversation was remembering my freshman year at BYU, when someone had decided on a theme of "Cougars Don't Cut Corners" (i.e., living honestly). But unfortunately this lead to all kinds of clever riffs on the topic: when little chains were posted at the corners of the grassy areas to prevent trampling, some smart aleck went around and cut the corners off of all the signs. Someone else went to great trouble to print off pictures of real cougars, accompanied by slogans like, "Cougars don't go to class." "Cougars run through the forest naked." Etc.

A long day's journey into night

This has been a long, hard, busy week. Not only was it the week of Daylight's Saving (which, by the way, I detest), which meant that the kids sleeping schedules were all off, but Dan was gone the better part of this week. I don't mean to complain too much--I know lots of women (especially single mothers) have it much harder than I do. I suppose it's more that I fail to realize how much I depend on Dan until he isn't here, and everything--particularly bedtime--seems to take so much longer to do solo. I suppose I could have called in the cavalry (my parents were within calling distance most of the time), but I was trying to hold off on that until I absolutely had to. (I have this absurd characteristic--can't imagine who I inherited it from!--that makes me try to do everything myself. Silly? Masochistic? Yes, but it's hard to unlearn.) On top of all this, since we were coming off a conference last weekend, I was behind in my grading and class prep. All of which is to say, Dan is home, I've finally caught up (until next week, anyway) on my grading, and I'm glad this week is over!

It wasn't without it's moments. Andrew continues to be as active and as independent as ever. He had one confrontation with his grandma this week that was particularly memorable (well, honesty compels me to admit that Andrew had confrontations with *everyone* this week, but this one stood out). My mom, who was watching Andrew at the time, told him "Andrew, when I say 'no,' I mean 'no,' and you will NOT do this!" Andrew, in typical Andrew fashion, responded, "When I say 'yes,' I mean 'yes,' and I WILL do this!" Thus speaks my willful little boy. I wish someone could tell me if this is normal three-year-old behavior, because Andrew sometimes seems awfully articulate and strong-willed for his age. I'm hoping that maturity (and better coping skills on the parts of his parents!) will improve his disposition.

Still, he does make us laugh on occasion! My mom showed him a beautiful Belle dress she made for his cousin Eli, and asked if he wanted to try it on. He said no--but not because it was too girly, for those of you who were hoping he'd outgrow his princess fascination. He said no because he didn't have hair you could "tickle," like his dolly (seen here as a damsel in distress, in all her bedraggled glory.)

We held an information meeting for Writing Fellows on Thursday, as part of our efforts to recruit new fellows for next year. My staff got just a little goofy (they did the same thing last semester--I'm not sure what it is, except perhaps that they really do like the program so much), but we had a lot of fun talking to a bunch of smart students. I have to confess that the whole thing made me a little sad, however--much as I'm looking forward to having our own house and meeting new people (okay, this last part isn't really true), a part of me is going to be really sorry to leave these students I work with.

Dan came home Friday night after the kids were in bed, and seemed nearly as relieved to be home as we were to have him. He said his stay was probably a full day longer than it needed to be, but his presentation went well, and he did have the enviable opportunity of having dinner with our good friends the Paxtons, who are now living outside Chicago.

Saturday was, as always, a busy day. I had plans to meet my friend Karin to go to a consignment sale in American Fork. Dan came with us to play with Andrew at a local park, and generously offered to watch Karin's son Ezra as well. Andrew and Ezra had a lot of fun playing with each other. So did their moms. We didn't find lots of stuff at the consignment sale (I found a few things, but they didn't have much for little boys), but we had fun hanging out. Our shopping was cut short just a little by a phone call from Dan: Ezra is in the middle of potty-training and just as Dan was starting to scope out their bathroom options, he realized it was too late for Ezra. Luckily, Karin came prepared, so we went back to the park, took care of kids (Ezra got changed and Evelyn got fed) and went to lunch at a local bakery.

After all the excitement, the kids came home and napped and the rest of the day was pretty leisurely by comparison. This morning, we hung out, reading books with Andrew and playing with Evelyn until it was time for church. Although I'm not a huge fan of the afternoon schedule (it wrecks havoc with naps, for one thing), it *is* nice to have that slow time in the morning. If nothing else, it gives me time to finish up my lesson prep and take pictures of my cute kids.


I love the way Evelyn slips further and further down in Andrew's energetic grip.



I don't know what Andrew was doing or thinking in this picture, but he looks uncannily similar to Ben Stiller's Derek Zoolander. Or maybe it just seems that way because Dan watched part of Zoolander on TV last night. At any rate, this picture cracks me up.

My favorite shot of the morning: Miss Evelyn, looking pretty.

I've been trying all week to catch Evelyn in motion on video. She isn't quite crawling, but she's mastered the bum scoot in hilarious ways. It really is incredible to see how far up on her ankles she can go when she's motivated to move. Here she and Andrew are rocking out with some pans and spoons--watch her scoot in to join the action.

Finally, a video of our budding maestro. Andrew *loves* anything to do with music: listening to it, making up his own songs (vocal and otherwise), pounding on drums, playing the piano, dancing, watching dancing. . . . Here he is playing one of his own compositions (obviously). At the end, you can see him stand up. If you can't catch what he's saying, he's telling me he wants to listen to a CD. This is when I realized that he had crammed more than one CD in his daddy's CD player and abruptly shut off the camera. When I finally got them all out, there were four CDs in my hand. . . .

Countdown

Dan left town for a conference in Chicago approximately 128 hours ago. We now have 12 hours (or less!) until he gets back. Can you tell that we're excited?

a clean bill of health

Some of you may know that when Andrew was about five months old, he was diagnosed with a mild case of pulmonic stenosis (a narrowing of the pulmonic valve that creates a murmur in the heart. I think). Anyway, after getting an echocardiogram at the local hospital (one that had to be completed over two consecutive visits, since the first time took too long and Andrew was absolutely undone), we were sent to Hershey medical center, where they looked him over, pronounced it a mild case, and recommended that we take him in for yearly updates to make sure his heart condition wasn't getting worse. So, last year we took him up to Primary Children's hospital (where they have the nearest pediatric cardiology unit). And we took him up again today.

Andrew was actually surprisingly good. He held still for the echocardiogram (it helped that the TV was on cartoons above the technician's head). And he was mostly good in the doctor's office, although, at the end of a two hour visit he was understandably restless. Both the doctor and the intern let him borrow their stethescopes to listen to his heart (or his belly, since that was where he pointed the end). He thought he was hot stuff.

At the end of it all, the doctor told us the good news: she couldn't hear any murmur in his heart, and the echocardiogram was clear. Apparently, Andrew has outgrown the condition, and no longer needs to go in for his visits. This was, of course, good news for us. But I can't help feeling a little bit guilty at all my good luck (knock on wood!): if we were given a clean bill of health, there were only too obviously other children at the hospital this morning who desperately need the medical care they are getting.

Week in Review

This last week has been really busy--Andrew's incidents included! Thursday morning, both Andrew and Dan went to the dentist. This was Andrew's first trip, but he actually did surprisingly well. (I think it helped that we found a Dora book at the library about going to the dentist--we only read it half a dozen times between Tuesday and Thursday.) Of course, we "sedated" him with our portable DVD player while he waited in the lobby--it's the only way to keep him from amusing himself in non-child friendly spaces (otherwise he tries to climb on and/or get into things he really shouldn't).

Friday afternoon, I and one of my students went to Fleet services to pick up the two minivans we'd reserved for the weekend. Then, Dan and I and our kids, plus seven of my Writing Fellows, drove down to Cedar City. The trip down was pretty uneventful--Evelyn cried (but then, she almost always does on long car trips). We checked into the hotel (because I was acting as chaperone, I had to stay at the hotel with my students; Dan and Andrew stayed at Bubby and Poppy's house) and arranged for dinner--the students at the conference, me with the other Writing Center directors in the region (we had dinner at the Garden House--it was pretty nice!), and Dan and Andrew on leftovers at Bubby and Poppy's house. (Although Dan confessed later that he ordered a pizza and ate the whole thing by himself after the kids were asleep).

I was surprised to find that I actually recognized some people at the dinner, aside from BYU's Writing Center Director, Penny Bird (who incidentally trained *me* as a writing tutor when I was an undergraduate). There was a girl who was in Writing Fellows with me as a student, who had gone on to direct UVSC's writing center and who has since moved on to part-time outreach work. And the Bishops (from Bubby and Poppy's ward) were both there. After talking a bit with Kyle (who teaches in the English department), I feel more optimistic about my chances of teaching for the English department, should they ever be able to afford to hire anyone new. At any rate, I got to meet some new people and had a pretty nice time. Then I went back to rescue Evelyn from Dan (more probably, vice versa) and took her back to the hotel with me, where we both passed a pretty rough night. When she finally woke up at 5:45 and refused to go back to sleep, I decided we'd both had enough and might as well go see what Andrew and Dan were up to.

So, I gathered our things together, put my coat on over my pajamas, and headed out to the car. Where I was stopped by at least 8 inches of snow that had fallen overnight (and was still falling). So much for the "light snow" the forecast had predicted. When I finally got the van loaded with our stuff and Evelyn strapped in, I had to dig the van out. This was complicated by the fact that a) the only shoes I had were flat dress shoes; b) I couldn't find a scraper anywhere in the vehicle (it turns out I'd put my bag on top of it while I was still half asleep); and c) I lost one of my gloves. But we finally made it to Bubby and Poppy's (it's a good thing not many people are on the road at 6 am Saturday morning) to find Dan already outside shoveling. So that was exciting.

The rest of the day was filled with me alternating between conference sessions and feeding Evelyn; Dan did his best to deal with both kids, but I think he was glad when everything was over and we were on the road back to Provo. We got back just in time to put the kids to bed and then Dan spent the rest of the evening packing; he left at 5:30 this morning (4:30, really, because of course we haven't adjusted to daylight savings time yet) to spend most of the week at a conference in Chicago. And then, I hope, we will be done with conferences for a while.

Sometimes, even cute isn't enough

(I apologize for all the posts about bodily functions, but really, that seems to be Andrew's theme for the last couple of days).

As if deciding that yesterday's finger-down-the-throat weren't enough drama for the day, a couple hours after that incident, Andrew decided to one-up himself. Once more, he disappeared into the bathroom to take care of business. When I went to check on him, he told me he wasn't done and to "go away, mommy." So I did. A few minutes later, he appeared proudly in the room beside me, sans pants and underwear, and scampered off in the direction of his chest-of-drawers, apparently in search of new pants. Only then did I realize that he had left the bathroom without wiping (or being wiped). Horrified, I ushered him hurriedly back into the bathroom. There, an even greater horror met my eyes. Andrew needed new pants, apparently, because the old ones had poop on them. So did the toilet seat. So did his step-stool. So did the floor--precise little brown footprints across the linoleum. Out came the toilet paper, the clorox wipes, and clean pants. Andrew's just lucky that I was already late leaving for school--as it was, I left him sitting in time out, but that's mild to the revenge I might have wrecked had I stayed home with him . . .

And of course today he managed to pee all over his Bubby's floor (don't worry Bubby! Dan cleaned it up!) and puke all over our bed at bedtime. (Not on purpose this time, but from drinking his milk too fast). Which reminds me, I better check the laundry . . .

Lucky for you, you're cute

I've often thought that children's inherent cuteness is an evolutionary adaptation--i.e., if they weren't so darn cute, their parents would be more likely to strangle them at an early age. About fifteen minutes ago, Andrew reinforced this idea for me. He went running to the bathroom to take care of business, and, since he usually does so on his own, I left him alone for a couple minutes. When I heard him yelling my name, I went in to see what he needed. Was he done yet? No. Apparently he'd called me for no other reason than the satisfaction of yelling. (Typical.) So I left him again, promising to check on him in a minute or two. A little while later I heard him coughing. I didn't think much of it till I went back to the bathroom to find him standing by the side of the toilet with puke on the toilet seat, his stool, and on the floor.

"Andrew! What happened?" As a concerned parent, I was wondering if he had a stomach bug.

Says my smiling little boy, "I puked because I stuck my finger down my throat."

My concern immediately vanished, to be replaced with a considerable amount of irritation. All I could think was, it's lucky for you that you're cute and that I love you, or this kind of shenanigan could land you in serious trouble!

We are the friendly face of the love of letters

A Writing Fellows reprise. My Assistant Coordinator posted this picture on facebook, and I couldn't resist transferring it here. I really do work with such a great bunch of students--here they all are!

But I'm talking to myself . . .

Some days I think life feels a little like this picture--like I've taken on too many things and instead of being productive, all I'm really doing is sitting in a big basket. Sigh. But at least the kids look good doing this!

I ought to apologize, I guess, if the tone for this week's note is a little off--I'm tired from running just a little too hard and long (metaphorically, of course!) this past week. All good things, but now I'm just tired.

Anyway, Wednesday, as mentioned was our long-awaited (by me, anyway; long-dreaded might be a more apposite description for Dan) family photo shoot. I thought it was fun and I'm hoping that we have at least one good shot of our family, Dan being notoriously unphotogenic. After photos were done, we stopped by Sarah's house and then took her and the girls to lunch at what Andrew persists in calling "Little Red Robin." Good food, good times. Then of course, it was back to Provo just in time for naps for both kids and Dan posted up to campus to make up for lost time.

On Thursday, incipient signs of Spring made their presence known, so I took the kids to the park to play before going up to campus. The day was beautiful and Andrew had fun romping around. Evelyn mostly stayed in her stroller, but she did discover the joys of the swing, which made her laugh delightedly. The park was our resident duck park--when Andrew found out where we were going, he scoured the fridge for bread for the ducks (I had to dissuade him from bringing loaves we're still working on). Unfortunately, the winter fence was still up around the pond, making duck-feeding a bit difficult, particularly for a three-year-old who can't throw over the fence yet. (Although on second thought, perhaps it's a good thing that the fence was still up). The only fly in our proverbial ointment was a large, apparently unattended dog who persisted in haunting the playground making all of the mother's nervous. One mom finally called Animal Control, but of course, the dog was long gone by the time someone finally showed up.




On Friday, my friend Karin and I met up at the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving point. This is reputed to be the largest dinosaur museum in the U.S., and while I'm not quite ready to believe that, it was a nice (albeit pricey) museum, and Andrew loved it. So did Evelyn, when she got out of her stroller.

Evelyn's newest admirer--Karin's one-year-old son, Nolan.

I think Andrew barely saw the towering skeletons of Tyrannosaurus Rex and the sauropods, he was so busy running after Ezra (and vice-versa). But his favorite part, hands down, was a children's exhibit that let kids play in water and sand. This was closely followed by sand pits where the kids could uncover "dinosaur bones." When we finally got him home for a nap (which he didn't take), he trailed sand across my bed and was promptly consigned to new clothes.

He looks quite mild here, doesn't he? Who would have thought that a few minutes later I would be approached by another mom, who asked me if I could keep Andrew on the other side of the water/sand circle, as he was playing a little too rough for her girls (aka he was throwing sand).
Unfortunately, removal proved to be the only real option for getting Andrew to settle down at that point. I have to admit, though, that I was rather affronted when this woman approached me--partly, I think, because her request suggested that Andrew was poorly behaved (which he can be, but in this instance he was mostly just excitable). And partly--it must be said--my pride was hurt because the whole incident reflected poorly on my parenting skills (which admittedly need work where Andrew is concerned).



Friday afternoon, we headed down to Cedar City, both to visit Dan's parents before they head out of town again and to look at houses. House hunting has been a mixed experience for me. It was pretty heady, at first, to look at all these homes and imagine ourselves in each one. But as it ceased being more theoretical and started to be more real, it suddenly wasn't quite so much fun. It IS a big responsibility. And a lot of money. And we have never owed more than a couple hundred dollars in our lives. Now we're looking at a couple hundred thousand. More than that, though, looking at real estate has driven home the reality of the current economy: at least half the homes we've looked at were short sell homes (meaning the owner is desperately trying to sell the house before it goes into foreclosure). And we got a handful of unsolicited messages about other houses for sale, all delivered to Dan's parents by acquaintances who had heard Dan had a job and that we might be looking for a house. . . . I'm realizing anew that one of my character flaws is the desire to please people. And I'm afraid that, in buying a home, we can really only make *one* family happy, much as we'd like to be obliging. (I have to remind myself, too, that I can't pick a house based on the need of the current owner!) Negative thoughts and impressions aside, we may--just may--have found a house we like that's in our price range.

In between house-hunting, we took the kids to one of the local parks, where Evelyn sat around looking pretty and Andrew ran blissfully from climbing apparatus to climbing apparatus.



Saturday night, after dinner at Bruno's (us), and dinner with some general authorities (come down to release Poppy from the university stake presidency he's been serving in) for Bubby and Poppy, we had a nice lemon cake/custard that Bubby found in Cook's Country magazine. Dan made it, and while it was pretty time intensive (three hours for prep, cooking, and cooling), it was a big hit. (I graded papers while Dan cooked).

We came home this afternoon, after a split church attendance. Dan, Evelyn, and Bubby went with Poppy to his stake conference, where he was formally released. Deeming that Andrew probably wouldn't do very well sitting through a stake conference on the front row, I took Andrew to Bubby and Poppy's home ward, where he enjoyed his stint in Primary instead.

In between all of this, of course, I've been trying to grade papers and orchestrate travel plans for seven students at a conference in Cedar City (again!) next weekend. The whole process has been needlessly complex, but I think it's finally working out. Now all I need is another weekend.