Moving & Christmas

Yes, we moved into G&P's basement mid-december. It's been rough for us, especially me. But I'm grateful for a supportive family and great in-laws. I'm especially grateful for Pmc's patience in learning how to live here.

Christmas was fantastic. We are so grateful for everyone's kindnesses to us. We loved watching our boys open presents, and they have spent many imaginative hours with their new toys.

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2010

You'll want to pause the music before pressing play!

We are so grateful this year for each of our wonderful family members and dear friends. We have sure made some new amazing friends this year, and become ever more grateful for the family that supports us and keeps us strong.

Most of all this year, we are grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We are grateful to know that we can overcome our faults and return to live with our Father in Heaven, because He loved us enough to send his Son to atone for us.

Merry Christmas!

Overload on Thoughts and Pictures

Seriously? How can I possibly play catch-up? It's like a joke these days to find the motivation to journal our happenings. Nothing is happening, while at the same time so much is happening. Things are constantly up and down, it's hard to even know where we stand. But at the same time, we know exactly where we stand, and that's what's getting us through. We have the gospel of Jesus Christ. We know that no matter what happens now, if we keep obeying the commandments, we will be just fine.

So for those of you whom we haven't updated, Pmc got an interview with a company that he desperately wants to get into. Furthermore, the job location was in Oakley, Utah. Now to some of you this may sound crazy, after all, the population of said town is less than 1,000. However, it was basically a dream location for us. We really do want to live a much simpler life than the city. I'm not sure that we were quite ready for that small of a town though, a transition might be better. Anyway, he didn't get the job, and we were pretty heartbroken. But the good news is that Pmc finally feels like he knows exactly what he wants to do. He's always been really interested in teaching high school, but felt like he couldn't support a family that way. But to work for a private school, where there aren't the limits on the classroom structure, and especially working with troubled teens - let's just say he's become quite passionate about it. So therapeutic boarding schools, we want to know all about them. We want any leads, anything that anyone knows. Pmc is willing to do whatever it takes!

Well, for now that means that we are moving into his parents' basement. I have to admit, I'm really nervous. I have been on my own for nearly 10 years now (yeah, my high school 10-year-reunion is this summer! agh!). I've become pretty independent and I'm nervous about my ability to deal with not being the household manager - but hey, I can do hard things. At least I love my in-laws like crazy, something not everybody can say right?

I'm mostly dealing with all of this really well. I think it's because I recognize where we've come from, and can see the wonderful, amazing lessons we've learned - and I'm so grateful to have come this far. This is NOT the way I would have chosen to learn some lessons, but when I think about it, I'm pretty sure there is no other way we would have learned these lessons - and we NEEDED them. I cannot tell you how much stronger our marriage is, how much more firm our faith is, and our determination to do the right thing no matter what is solid. I have never felt quite a spirit of CHRISTmas like I have this year. We have next to nothing, and we just feel so giving. We thought we were really good at budgeting, but as it turns out we still had improvements to make! We are also SO MUCH better as using our time wisely. We are still working on the planning of our time, but even though we don't have that down, we're still waste less time than we used to. Our priorities are in great shape! So, when people ask me how I'm dealing with this rotten time - fine, really. I'm so grateful for it. I only hope that in the future I can have such a good attitude about trials. Oh, and for future reference - this does not mean I haven't broken down or cried my eyes out, multiple times. I think those are healthy ways of dealing with things.

By the way, we had THE most awesome church Christmas party ever. The whole thing was created to make you feel like you were actually in Bethlehem on the night the Savior was born. I felt the spirit from the moment we walked into the church parking lot. I am not going to go into the details, but I've never enjoyed a party so much. I'm grateful for people with vision who can pull something like that off!

Now, onto details about the kids. Cdc has been SUPER clingy, which is totally cute, but also frustrating. He wants me to hold him all day long - which I'm super okay with 'cause I love him. But I don't have an awesome baby carrier (I've decided I don't love the Bjorn - I need something where I can carry him on my back. I'm coveting a Beco!), and so there are only so many things I can do before I need to set him down. Also, I never realized how bad it made people feel when he's just not interested in being with anyone but mom. He has however become a SUPER-SPEEDY crawler. He can go nearly as fast as Cpc walks. Oh, and these two are serious buddies. Their favorite game is for Cpc to walk back and forth behind Cdc's highchair and to laugh whenever they catch each other's eyes. They can do this for 15 minutes straight, laughing every single time. Cdc desperately wants to walk, but he is also happy to take it at a pace where he can be confident. Cpc was so determined that he didn't much care if he fell a thousand times. Cdc, not so much. He wants to be ABSOLUTELY sure that he has his balance before letting go, and then he'll squat down pretty quickly to make sure he doesn't start to wobble. He is totally a momma's boy, but his personality is so much like his daddy's! In the past few days he's decided that daddy is pretty cool too, and he doesn't scream when daddy takes him from me. But he'd still rather be in my arms. He still only likes bread and bananas, he's even given up Cheerios. He'll go for yogurt, applesauce, mac & cheese and a few other things - but he insists that he get either some bread or banana at every meal. He will literally scream until you give him what you want. I never thought I'd cave so easily, but I'm seriously tired of that scream. I had NO IDEA how easy I had it with Cpc and food. Cdc's sleeping is generally pretty marvelous too. He still has occasional periods where he wakes up a lot, but mostly, he's a thousand times better than Cpc was.

Speaking of Cpc's sleep, that's going pretty well these days as well. He mostly stays in bed when it's bedtime, and I don't even have to stay in the room until he falls asleep. He is pretty proud of himself about it. He still gets up in the night sometimes, but he's mostly caught on to our teaching him that when he wakes up he shouldn't scream or walk into our room, but just roll over and try to go back to sleep. As long as he doesn't have a night terror, he's doing great at that. Those night terror's still surface occasionally though. I hate them, they put me in a bad mood for at least 24 hours. There is nothing worse than waking up to a child screaming bloody murder, which quickly turns into two screaming children, a husband who somehow blocks it out in his sleep, and feeling so groggy I can't figure out how to deal with it calmly. But hey, at least they are not nightly anymore. Why they grow out of them? I don't know! But I am very grateful. We're getting pretty good at addressing Cpc's sensory needs too. We watched the movie "Temple Grandin," and even though Cpc certainly is not autistic in any way, much of the sensory stuff from that movie is very real to us. We read an article recently on a study they did on a large sample of gifted children. Turns out about 33% of gifted children have SPD, and it sure hit home for us. One of the most common thingss we hear from people when we tell them Cpc has SPD, is "but he's so smart!" Well, being smart and having special needs are not mutually exclusive as it turns out. I already knew this, because my aunt has Asperger's, and she is one of the smartest people I know. But I never realized it wasn't common knowledge. Anyway, Cpc's favorite activity is doing puzzles lately. His favorite puzzles are the ones for kids on lds.org. He will gladly spend an hour at a time doing those puzzles, and he needs no help getting back and forth between them. He insists that we have the sound on so that he can hum along to the primary songs. But he also loves to do any others we can find. He will even gladly attempt to do the 100 piece puzzles as long as I coach him a little. We are learning to pay attention to little things. We cannot have the dishwasher running, or music playing while we're eating. He simply cannot focus if this is the case. Also, we've learned that eating at the counter in the kitchen works really well, because then he's not distracted when we get up to go to the fridge for more milk or water or something. We also came up with a little chart for him on the fridge. We made little magnetic pictures of things he does during the day, and if we simply put 3-4 pictures in order of the things we're going to be doing next - wa-lah, no meltdowns over transitions or having to stop doing things he loves. His enthusiasm for helping with chores has returned, which is a big feat. We also hear the phrases "watch movie" or "do puzzle on computer" a lot less when we're diligent about the chart. It's not complicated, takes hardly any extra time, and we save time because we're dealing with far fewer meltdowns. I'm so grateful to Temple Grandin for helping us to understand that our son literally thinks in pictures. It's simply not good enough for us to tell him what we're doing next. He needs to see a picture of it, so that he can picture it in his mind. No wonder he has always LOVED books so much. We have been diligent about getting books from the library lately, and we've spent hours and hours reading. I have felt so much more successful in my parenting lately, and feel like I am simply creating the proper atmosphere for his own strengths and curiosity to thrive! Now if I can just figure out how to get the picture in his mind of not hitting/pushing his brother, or anyone for that matter, anytime he/they get in his space. He has a real thing about personal space. I am also grateful to Temple Grandin for helping me understand why Cpc simply cannot handle physical comfort when he's having a meltdown. It is such a natural tendency as a mother, when your child is crying to try to cuddle them. This only aggravates Cpc. He loves hugs and kisses most of the time, but not when he's in need. Oh, and one other thing I wanted to mention. This week I took Cpc to story-time at the library. For a while now, Cpc has been hanging back when he's around other kids. He's realized that having too many kids around him creates too many opportunities for people to get in his space, which he can't handle. Well, after about 10 minutes of listening to stories while sitting on my lap, he finally got up the courage to go sit by the other kids. Granted, he sat in a spot where he had some time to really notice if someone started getting too close to him, but of his own accord he choose to get close a whole big group of kids. I can hardly express what a big improvement that was and how proud I was of him. He's also doing a lot better in nursery at church. I'm proud of him for recognizing his own limitations, and figuring out how to deal with them. Oh, and this week Cpc also finally got into finger painting. He kept at it for 15 minutes, and only made me let him wash his hands 3 times.

My apologies for all the details. But around here, these things are a big deal right now. There are simply so many little things that Cpc is affected by, and they add up to a big deal for us. It's so hard to explain what SPD is like, because so much of it is typical childhood things....that's why people are so skeptical of it. Everybody has different little sensory issues, things that you avoid. But when it is affecting every little detail of life, it becomes all-encompassing and very difficult. So, that's why I'm so proud of Cpc for all of these little accomplishments he's making. For him, they are giant steps. I am so grateful for the advice I've been given from my best NY friend JH, and her husband!

And now it's past my bedtime, so here's the pictures. We're finally updated, and now I'm going to make a desperate attempt to write little things in throughout the week, so that writing a post at the end of the week isn't so daunting! My sincerest apologies at the low quality of most of these pictures. They are mostly taken with our phones, I have nearly forgotten our amazing camera lately, which really is a shame. But I am so glad to have our phones for those special little moments! Besides that, I didn't really take the time to do much editing. If I do, I'll never ever get caught up. There are just some things that you have to let go right? My goal is before the end of the week to get our Christmas Card up. So, since we missed it, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Let's keep our hearts full of THANKS all year, and our minds focused on CHRIST too!

Ruts & Houses

I've been meaning to post about this for a while now, but we just keep coming up with new analogies/parables, whatever you want to call them. I guess rough times are good for that? Anyway, we have two that have been pretty meaningful to us recently.

The first being Ruts. Yup, like this:
This is a set of ruts, carved into stone from Pioneer wagons. Can you imagine being in the very last wagon to cross the plains and realizing how many had gone before you? It was just kind of obvious which way to go by then.

Well, we've been working on recognizing that we (Pmc and I) can create/change ruts for ourselves, as well as for our children - with just about everything we do. There are some places where there just aren't any ruts. There are some places where we are going to make deeper ruts. And there are some places where we need to create new ruts because the old ruts are too worn to be useful or headed in the wrong direction.

For example, we both strongly believe in having Family Home Evening each week. Let's say there is a place along our weekly path that is called Monday evening. At that location each week, we have a choice, either we can follow the rut that is pretty well carved out that goes toward FHE, or we can follow the rut that is a little overgrown that goes towards other things. We're doing pretty well at following the FHE rut. However, we've realized that we can be more prepared to make sure we follow that rut by preparing a lesson for FHE during the week before Monday. And, the earlier we start preparing that lesson, the easier it is to choose that direction when we get to that choice.

There are also a lot of personal ruts that we can work on, and both Pmc and I have really come to appreciate this picture coming into our minds when we make decisions. We think "which rut do I want to be the deepest, and therefore easiest to follow? Which rut to I want my children to be in?"

Next, we're going to talk about houses. I'm going to sum up the article I found which you can read here. Don't worry, even though the title sounds worrisome, I'm madly in love with Pmc, and haven't been considering leaving. I don't remember how I found the article. But it has totally worked for us. Especially since I came up with a description of my own house in conjunction with this idea.

So, essentially a man has a house, and each room in his house is for one of the roles he takes on. So there's an "employee" room, a "church calling" room, a "going golfing" room, a "watching/reading about sports" room, a "husband" room, and whatever else you can think up. Each is a separate room. When he is in one room he is totally focused on what is in that room. So, when a man is in the "husband" room, he is totally devoted to his wife and gives his full attention. So he feels like he is being an awesome husband, 'cause he is really good at that role, and he's really good at his other roles like employee and church calling because he's totally devoted to them and does the best he can - and that makes him a good husband too. Totally logical right?

Well, not exactly to a woman. A woman doesn't like being relegated to just one room. She wants to be integrated into every room, which creates emotional bonding. Pmc decided the best way to visualize this was to put a big-screen tv in each room with a feed of the wife. This way the wife has influence on the man in everything he does, they make decisions together, and the wife is emotionally satisfied.

You may ask, but men don't really want the wife in every room, that the wife will take over entirely. However, there is a safety net provided in this relationship, with no visual. Husband and wife are to come to an "enthusiastic agreement" on every decision. That way, each decision is discussed until BOTH are satisfied, and the husband feels much better knowing his wife his happy, while he's still happy too.

I'm not very good at this. Just read the article. However, after deciding that we liked this analogy, I got to thinking "what about my house?" Well, as I thought about it, I felt like my house was one big room. No walls, no privacy, just husband, kids, and homemaking. Sure I have lots of projects that I want to do, lots of goals, and creative ideas. But I felt like I was constantly trying to find a corner to hide in to give "me" some time of my own to do things. Trouble is, without some walls, I could never find it, especially with kids. So I expressed this to Pmc and he kindly suggested that it was high time we put on an addition. So now I have my nice cozy little room full of my projects and things that I want to do, with a feed of Pmc in the corner of course! This addition looks like "about an hour and a half" of time to myself each week with the car, some money, and no children or husband. Boy howdy have I made progress on myself. Furthermore, I am not hiding in corners throughout the day anymore! That makes me feel like such a better wife, mom and homemaker!

Change. Or not so much!

It's amazing how things can change without changing. Still jobless and broke. But more hopeful than ever. People can think what they want, but we've never been happier! It's not very easy to explain either. There is one thing we can say for sure. Our perspective is growing.

Atec has been begging Pmc to take a hike for - um, our entire marriage. Actually, I'm pretty sure the begging started while we were dating. (No, not that kind of hike! We're still smitten with one another!!) Well, the begging finally ended because Pmc made it happen this week. And it was just as good for us as I'd always hoped. In fact, Pmc even wants to go on hikes more consistently, which will be a little tougher now that winter is arriving.

Sidenote: Cpc is sitting in the hall on a chair (because he will willingly choose to sit on a chair in the hall at bedtime even if he won't lay in bed) snorting. It's hilarious. When he has a stuffy nose, it bugs him SO MUCH (sensory processing!), but he still can't figure out how to blow his nose half the time. I love it, we're dying from holding in our laughter right now! He sounds like a pug!

Lest I digress - our perspective. So this is what we saw from the "Stone Chairs" hike, also referred to as "The Living Room."

I have yet to learn how to make that into one nice beautiful panorama, but is that not GORGEOUS? Minus the smog of course. Pmc brought up how we took a walk back when we were living in my old neighborhood, and the hike was basically straight up the hillside. It seemed so steep and difficult at the time. However, from our perspective at the lookout on our hike, that area appeared relatively flat. It made us think about all the struggles we go through in life, and how if we can get a glimpse of God's perspective, what seems like a steep trial is actually quite small when we have an eternal perspective.

We're glad we took advantage of the last bit of warm weather, as it looks like snow is coming Tuesday. Good thing Grams and Papa's garage got done! Speaking of the garage - Pmc has been gone a lot working on that garage. We're so grateful G&P had a job for him so that we can still provide ourselves some food. But it's definitely been hard at the same time. It's taken a lot of time, time which he needs to be job-hunting. But we're really hoping that the hunting is over - there's a position that we're desperately trying not to get too excited about. We might as well admit our emotions, we REALLY want this job!!! That might be an understatement! Everyone say a prayer for us, and knock on wood now that we mentioned it.

And, that about sums up our lives right now. No, actually we can't sum up our lives without mentioning our two handsome kids.

They had a Halloween party with their Cundick cousins this week. If you want them to come trick-or-treat to your house let us know, they are stinkin' cute in their costumes!

I think I forgot to mention in the last post that Cdc has his two front bottom teeth. His smile and his laugh are so sweet these days. He really has the crawling down now, and he is thrilled with himself. He seems to be struggling a little with reflux again, spitting up more often, and arching his back a lot. But he is still eating tons and growing a lot. He weighs over 15 pounds finally, so we have stopped worrying about that (which I admit, even though I tell myself my kids just hit a skinny phase around 6-9 months, the way doctors respond does make me worry!). Cdc's favorite activity is sticking EVERYTHING in his mouth that is smaller than his fist. It's not really a choking hazard, as he seems to have no interest in swallowing them. This kid will always prefer mints to gum! Cdc also enjoys crawling after mommy and sticking his face in her hands, rather than crawling far enough to get her hands under his armpits so she can pick him up. He still loves to cuddle, although he has also started to enjoy the rough and tumble play daddy has been waiting for! Here he is hanging out with his friend AH.

Cpc just makes my heart melt. He is such a sweetheart, and wants to be good. I've been much more patient with him as I've done a better job at playing "pretend" play with him. I'm learning a lot about what is going through his mind all day, even though he still isn't speaking very clearly. He sure has an imagination. He loves hippopatamus' and tigers. He LOVED it when Momsey and Grandpa Don took him to the zoo this week (we'll get pictures from Momsey soon I hope!). His favorite activity is playing with cars, building roads for them and having them talk to each other, like in the Cars movie. He knows that when he does things he's not supposed to that he needs to say sorry and give hugs and kisses (like mom & dad ask him to do - we're working on helping him to see that's not necessary with his toys, a dog, or a complete stranger - he doesn't care if they're totally weirded out!). We're working on the "don't do it again" part, but that's coming a little more slowly. One of his very favorite activities is laying on top of his brother - which at first Cdc thinks is hilarious, he nearly busts a gut laughing. However, Cpc takes that as an invitation to go three steps further and smash his brother to smithereens. Cdc doesn't like that so much. Not at all actually! We also went to the Pumpkin Patch with the Tec & Jbc family this week. Here's Cdc with his cousin Cac, and he did have fun even if he doesn't look too pleased!

P.S. The first song is totally FOR ME! This is my absolute favorite music group Time for Three playing one of my favorite songs from my Suzuki days. The second song is the real song for the week!

Pictures, and Lots of 'Em

And in no particular order...

Hanging with cousins at the pool

Hanging with Aunt Cse

The bride and groom!

Brothers

All the boy cousins

My Little Charmer

Aren't we a cute family?

Seriously, I didn't make him pose...he just does these things.

Isn't he a sweet baby?

These two played so well together!

As did these two, especially when it came to driving the golf cart.

Love Bear Lake on stormy days.

He falls asleep this way quite often

Uncle Hdhe's ordination day

Ring around the rosie

Me and my sis and her three kids (yes, one is in the oven)

The Greene part of the reunion.

These two are awesome cousins. They are both so weird in their own way, which makes them pretty good playmates.

Cdc with his namesake's - our mission President and mission Mom.

Go Utes!

My friend Aw's wedding - it was so good to see my dear friends from High School Ensemble!

Right before we moved - Cdc with his friend Fc from across the street - we miss you F&HC!

Cdc sleeping on the LOOOOOOOOOONG drive across the country! Both kids did AWESOME!

That's our random assortment. I've been awful at taking pictures for a while. And I would have been even worse had I not gotten a camera phone! I like the phone, it takes decent pictures, although I'm not bragging about them. It's just easier to capture fun moments!