blogging about nothing

I am sitting at the computer because it is the farthest I can get from Abigail's plantive cries of "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" This is Day 3 of the Nap Strike, and I finally got out her pack and play and put her in it, so she is stuck. Surrounded by toys, but unable to reach them. I haven't decided yet whether I will leave her in there until she falls asleep (I feel like I should just to prove the point that we take naps at naptime!, but I also feel bad about her spending the whole gloriously sunny afternoon in a 3x4 mesh cage). We'll see.

Today Neil and I decided that I would indeed accept a teaching position for summer, so I am hoping it goes well, but we both felt good about it when we prayed about our decision. I'm not really excited about the teaching every single day aspect of it, but it will be nice for Neil and Abigail to continue to have an hour together every day, and he will still be able to get in 40 hours of research a week, and he's planning to study for the area exams at night while I grade papers.

When we were talking about the adjustments we would need to make in order to accomodate my teaching in the middle of the day (9:50-10:50), I asked Neil if he would mind doing the grocery shopping one day a week during that time, and much to my surprise, he gleefully responded "YES!" I asked why he was so excited about it, and he said "That way I can buy all the things we're not allowed to get and spend way too much money." Translation: Oreos by the sackful.

Find your eyes!

Today at dinner, inspired by I know not what, I said to Abigail, "Look at your eyes!"

If you want to see something funny, say that to a two-year-old. It was about the funniest thing I'd ever seen. She rolled her eyes up, down, to the sides, swung her head around, propped her eyelids open with her fingers...it was great.

It was, truth be told, a rather lonely bright spot in the day. So far we are zero for two on naps this weekend.

hmm

my debate of the day is this: should I accept a teaching position for summer or not?

pros:

• not going insane from lack of organized responsibility. for some reason i function much better when there are regular times that i must be somewhere
• money (teaching one class pays for a year of Neil's fees, which unfortunately aren't covered by his research scholarship)

cons:

• summer classes are every day, instead of the tuesday/thursday schedule in which i have been luxuriating
• i will have to take Abigail to campus every day
• less time for Neil to study, since he will be watching Abigail
• fitting a semester's worth of grading into 4 or 6 weeks, depending on which module i teach

I must admit, one thing that motivates me to teach is not just the extra money, which is always nice to have, but the potentiality for buying things which we've wanted but can't quite fit in on student budgets, i.e the following:

• a stand-up BBQ grill to replace the wimpy $20 version from Smith's that has finally given up the ghost after 4 diligent years--I wanted to get Neil a grill when he graduated but the weensie one still worked at that point, and while we could get another little one I'd really like to get him a manly one
• a chest freezer
• curtains! the blankets that I've hung over our bedroom windows every night, while admittedly dashingly trendy, are a bit frustrating
• a mat for the front door (yes, I know this is pathetic, but it's not something i technically need, and i can always find another way to spend that $10)

that's all I can really come up with, which is a good thing.

almost finals

Today was a "nothing much" kind of day; that is to say, we didn't do much of anything too exciting. Neil spent most of the day studying, so Abigail and I worked on putting together the nursery. Last night we set up her "big girl" bed, so the nursery had all of the excess baby stuff in it that we moved out of Abigail's room to make room for the bed. So we got the crib back together, figured out where the dresser and rocker would go, etc. Fun stuff like that. Then we got out all the 0-3 month baby clothes (jumping the gun, but I knew the closet they were in had to be rearranged and they were inside a suitcase at the very bottom of a stack of suitcases, so I didn't want to dig them out again). I kept telling Abigail "one more box/suitcase/backpack/whatever and we'll get out the baby clothes!" For some reason, she thought this meant we would pull a baby out of the suitcase, so when I took out a big plastic bag of clothes and blankets, she started crying and asking "Where baby? Want baby!"

Anyway, we put the room together (and Abigail was so entranced by the mobile and crib bumpers that she decided she wanted to go "night-night in baby bed," so I'm glad we did this three months ahead of time so she can get used to the idea). Then we vacuumed and did some laundry before her nap, which she refused to take. Neil had accidentally moved his chair on top of my foot while I was vacuuming (he was trying to be helpful and move away from the desk and didn't realize I was there) and it did something to the nerves so that I had trouble standing up--anyway, the point of all of this is that he gave her lunch and put her down for her nap, which convinced her that it was now playtime with Daddy! We even tried tying her doorknob from the outside so she couldn't break out of her room and look for him, but gave up after an hour and a half. The three of us went outside and finished demolishing the remaining fence section, then headed off for a BBQ with some of the other new grad students who moved here this fall. It was a lot of fun, especially since we were at a playground, which made Abigail happy, and it was also nice to not be the one organizing it and get invited after all the legwork was done! Glad someone took the inititative--we had a good time.

Then we came home and Neil's been studying while I've sat here cutting out quilt blocks for Abigail's new bedspread. I couldn't find any bedding I liked, so last night I bought a bunch of different fabrics to chop up and sew back together--this should be an interesting and hopefully fun project! It definitely took a lot longer to cut up 6 yards of fabric into 6-inch squares than I was anticipating...

so yeah, nothing much happening around here. waiting for finals to be over next week so we can head out on our exciting trip to Indy (sadly, we will leave the day before the Indy 500).

a quick abigail note

I just spent the last however long time blogging about Neil, so this will be short, but I wanted to do a seperate post to tell my little Abigail how wonderful she is and how much I appreciate her too, since I'm saving all these blogs to eventually print out as a journal.

Here is how Abigail amazed me today: she uncomplainingly watched me try on and reject maternity clothes. For three hours. Driving twenty-five minutes each way to the mall. Lest you forget, she is two. An amazing two. To be honest with you, Neil would not have lasted half so long. Abigail helped me pick out seven shirts and two pairs of pants, and the only time she finally voiced her feelings about the ordeal was at the very end, when a plantive little voice came from the floor of the dressing room under a mound of clothes that said "Wan go home. Wan night-night. Yuv yoo Mommy. Done?"

I love that kid.

the awesomeness that is Neil

So I was reading a cyber-friend's blog, and I was so touched by this post she did about her husband and all the things she loves and appreciates about him. A lot of the things I write on this blog are about Abigail, because I spend most of my time with her (and most of you who read it are at least moderately interested in her doings), but it's Neil who grounds me and keeps me going, so this post will be entirely dedicated to him and all of the reasons why I love having this man around.



1) He is never too busy for Abigail (even when he probably should be). From the moment he walks in the door until she goes to bed, he is constantly playing with her, talking to her, and singing to her--he makes every minute count.



2) One of the things I appreciate most is/are the sacrifices he makes to ensure my happiness (and sanity!) For instance, he has carried Abigail half a mile to the bus stop every Tuesday and Thursday morning this year, ridden the bus with her to campus, and dropped her off with me after I finish teaching. It may not sound like a big deal, but this means that I can drive to campus in the morning rather than getting up an hour earlier to catch the 6:30 bus in order to be on time to teach my 7:30 a.m. class. On this same note, Neil gives up his precious research and homework time to take care of Abigail so that I can teach at the university. One of the things I love about this is that when we were discussing the possibility of me teaching this year he said, "I don't care about the money or the time. I want you to teach if it will make you happy to have something like that to do, and if it will, I'll do whatever I need to so that you can."



3) Continuing on the good daddy note, he has willingly learned how to put in Abigail's barrettes, match her tights to her dress, and pack healthy snacks.



4) He is romantic in his own special way. While flowers are generally a no-show in our house (the practical engineer in him says "They'll just die anyway" and leaves it at that), I have taken out the trash exactly twice in the four and a half years we've been married, a task which he knows I loathe. I similarly hate mopping the kitchen floor, a task which he has unflinchingly taken upon himself. He also never forgets to open my car door first, makes sure we have morning and evening prayer (even if he has to shake me awake to do it), and he still tells me I'm beautiful (almost!) every day.



5) He trusts my judgment and acts on suggestions I give.



6) On Saturdays and Sundays he sneaks out of bed to take care of Abigail so that I can get some extra sleep. When I finally wake up an hour or two later, I generally find the two of them either eating Malt 'o Meal in their pajamas, reading stories, or playing with Abigail's farm.



7) He works so hard. At everything. And he still puts us first. He always makes sure that he has time with both of us before he starts his homework, and the minute he walks in the door he picks up Abigail, comes into the kitchen, and asks what he can do to help with dinner, even if he knows he'll be up until 1 or 2 am doing homework.



8) He never forgets to call if he's going to be home late. I tend to be an incredibly paranoid worrying type of person, and rather than trying to change this, he's done whatever he can to assuage my fears.



9) When he is happy, he jumps up in the air and kicks his heels together (usually on Fridays).



10) If I've made an extra-special effort to clean the house during the day, he never fails to notice and tell me how nice it looks.



10.5) His engineering practicality comes out in unexpected ways. For instance, when Abigail was very small and would have one of her once-a-week Mt. Vesuvius-style blowouts, he would simply pick her up and plop her little bottom in the kitchen sink, then use the dish sprayer to wash her off. He considered it an excellent way to save on the 15 wipes it would have taken to clean her off, as well as combining diaper time with bath time.



11) He prays every day that Abigail will not only be safe and happy, but that "her language acquisition skills will progress." I think that's adorable.



12) He's my Answer-Man. Sometimes I feel like a five-year-old kid asking my parents something, but he is almost infallibly ready with an explanation of nearly any question I can come up with.



13) Similarly, he's Mr. Fix-it. If he tells me something will be okay, whether it's the bearings in the car all falling out when I backed out of the driveway or the fact that I burned the hamburgers, I believe him and quit worrying about it (he even ate the hamburgers, and they were really really burnt. So burnt that although I grilled them outside, the smoke alarms inside went off). We've never had to pay for a car repair: he has single-handedly fixed/replaced the fuel pump, front and rear brakes (twice), spark plugs, power steering pump, water pump, fan belt, rear bearings (and more that I can't remember or don't know the name of) on the Jeep. I'm confident in his ability to tackle anything, and I just bang the hammer where he tells me to.



14) He is convinced that he has the best-looking feet in the world (they are very nice feet). Every so often he'll look down at his feet and say something like "Wow, those are some sexy feet!" I think it's funny. :-)



15) He is an absolutely amazing skier, and has very patiently taught me. I'd never skiied before we got married, but once he finally convinced me to go his expert tutelage had me feeling confident enough to try a double black diamond trail on the fourth time we went. What means more to me, however, is what happened when I ended up not actually skiing it--I cried almost the entire way down and slid on my backside and he refused to leave me, even though one of his friends kept skiing by and saying "Are you guys still here? Neil, just ski ahead with me and you can take the lift up again and catch up with her." Instead, he carried my skis and poles while I slid down in my boots. This was a hill that he'd been waiting to ski all season, and he never once left me to ski ahead or actually enjoy it, and he didn't leave me when we got to the bottom either--we just went back to the bunny hill until I had recovered. Fortunately for him, on the seventh time we went I was able to handle the black diamonds, so his patience was rewarded, but I will never forget the way he comforted me rather than skiing down his very favorite trail in the entire world, and he never reproached me about it afterwards or told the story to anyone else.



16) And last but not least, he never fails to get out of bed when Abigail cries, and this is not at all a recent development. The poor guy is the one solely responsible for getting her to sleep through the night, as well as taking on almost every single night-time feeding after she began taking a bottle. He doesn't complain about it either.



So what makes you love the people in your life?

:-(

Here is what I don't like about going to the doctor--the weighing part.

When I gave them my starting weight, it was according to the scale at the gym. According to the scale at the gym, I weigh five pounds less than the scale at the doctor's office. Regardless of which one I should trust (and I'm lovin' the gym right now), the doctors think I gained five pounds more than I actually (hopefully!) did, added to which they have my starting weight a pound lower than it actually was. Although I haven't weighed myself at the gym in two weeks--is it possible to gain five pounds in two weeks? I devoutly hope not. I think I would have noticed if that had happened.

Regardless of all of this, I am still in a downward type of mood because I feel fat. Not pregnant, just fat. Argh. Oh well. At least I only have another 15 weeks to keep getting fat. I guess that's good.

Adventures

Did you know that bees happily make their homes in fencing?

Me neither. (I'm assuming you didn't.)

We spent another night tearing at the fence that the previous owners left us, and glory be! It's all down now. Not completely disassembled, because we were waiting for aforesaid sparrow-sized bees to die and it got too dark to work anymore, but it's mostly stacked up on our patio now awaiting its gloriously fiery end in our soon-to-be-dug firepit. We managed to salvage some of the pickets--Neil says he will find some use for them, I'm not sure what--but most were too warped and splintered to do anything with but burn, which I am fine with. I like fire, especially of the meat-roasting variety. :-)

Fortunately the bees were stunned by all the hammering, so they crawled out very slowly (very fortunately, since the first one appeared an inch and a half from my fingertips and six inches from Abigail's face), so Neil killed most of them with a hammer as they staggered drunkenly out of the boards. Several 2x4s had been completely hollowed out by these monsters, and all in all we found three or four nests. I felt sorry for them losing their lives and home, but I was also grateful that my child had not found the bees in a less fortuitous (for us, at least) situation.

Our internet has been down for several days, and I feel like my lifeline's been cut off, but nothing of much import has happened around here, other than realizing how many times a day I check my email. Sad. My main excitement today was babysitting four other little kids, two of whom were five-month-old twins. Let me tell you, they kept me hoppin'. They were all really good kids though, so I think this one morning a week babysitting thing may work (although it will be interesting to have a five-year-old, four-year-old, three-year-old, two-year-old, and the twins all running around together. I will either go crazy or develop superpowers).

I am ready for finals to be over so that...

• we can decide whether we love or hate the dining room color and finish painting
• we can take aforesaid color (whether new or old) and paint the living room, all the halls, laundry room, the half of the kitchen that's not red, the foyer, the master bedroom closet, and maybe the master bathroom--it's a really pretty gray, but the previous owners missed a few spots, so we'll see
• the painting will be done and I can put everything back in its place, like the dining room curtains and paintings--it is driving me CRAZY to have them in the nursery
• everything will be out of the nursery and I can put it together, on the offchance that this baby decides to make its appearance, oh, three months early
• I can have time to sew Abigail's quilt, curtains, dust ruffle, etc. (still can't find any in stores I like, other than budget-unfriendly Pottery Barn Kids) and can put together her cute twin bedframe and move the twin bed out of the nursery and into her room
• we can fence the backyard
• ditto for building the swingset and digging the firepit
• we can dig up all the sod, till the world, and plant the garden
• Neil can change the oil, the air filter, and fix the welds on the driver's side door of the Jeep
• we can make the really cute deck chairs we found in a magazine (Family Handyman--I love it! They have the coolest projects! It's like Martha Stewart Living for guys, minus the guilt factor).
• with the fencing out of the garage, we can finish the garage walls and put up shelves
• oh yes...and I can relax and enjoy my husband in all the spare moments we will be sure to have while finishing this list. :-)

Somehow, I feel much better after having written that all out. I think it's the whole having things nagging at my mind and not being quite sure what they all are...but now I know what they are. A lifetime's worth of work that will be finished either at the end of the summer or when we move. Hopefully those are not one and the same!

Mostly I just want my curtains back...

Musings

Here is what I like about being pregnant:

• I always remember to drink lots of water and take my vitamins
• My baggy shirts finally fit
• I have an excuse to buy new clothes
• Eventually, I will have a sweet new baby that cannot get away when I want to cuddle

Here is what I don't like about being pregnant:

• I have to buy new clothes that I will eventually despise after wearing them day in and day out for three months
• I get headaches if I forget to drink my water
• I look in a mirror and realize that I spilled something on myself (or leaned up against something wet or dirty) that is hiding on the downward curve of my stomach
• I have to surround myself with pillows in order to sleep comfortably
• Eventually, I will have a new baby that refuses to understand the concept of "soil the diaper when Daddy gets home, not before"

On the baby note, Neil told me something about Abigail's birth the other day that I never knew before. It may not be blog-worthy, but I thought it was interesting. We heard from my sister-in-law Tina that she had a new baby (congratulations, Tina and Tim!) and I saying how envious I was of the fact that her doctor induced her a week early, while mine refused to do so until a week after my due date.

Apparently, my doctor was worried about the size of the baby, since I never got very big (in Neil's words "I was hoping you would get huge and really look pregnant, but you never did," to which I responded "Why would you want me to be fat?" to which he responded "And you never had any cravings either--I was looking forward to going out and getting pickles at 2 a.m." to which I had no response and the conversation ended. I was mostly confused about why someone would want to be woken up at 2 a.m. and sent to the store, but apparently Neil felt cheated of some vital aspect of pregnancy. We'll have to see how it goes this time around. Actually, I made up a craving once a couple of months ago so that he could feel vindicated, and he looked at me and said "You're lying, I can tell. You don't even like (whatever it was)." So much for that). Anyway, the whole point of this is that I wasn't induced until a week over because they thought the baby was very small, and the doctor wasn't very eager to induce me at 41 weeks either, and right up until she was born the nurses were muttering about how they "hoped the baby made it to 6 or 7 pounds" and then she was eight pounds nine ounces. In other words, a fat roly-poly.

And here's the part I didn't know--the reason why I didn't get to hold Abigail until about an hour after she was born is that the doctors were checking her for diabetes, since they couldn't believe how big she was, and repeatedly assured each other that she must somehow be diabetic, and they finally handed her over to Neil and said, "Apparently she's just big. Sorry about all that."

Which just goes to show that I could have had that kid two weeks earlier and she would have been just fine, and I probably would have been fine-er after the whole experience. I am remembering this for this second baby--we'll see if it gets me anywhere.

But here is the plus of a big fat baby: they can sleep for much longer because their little tummies are bigger and thus can hold more food. Hurray!

"Mine helper"

I know I've blogged about this before, but it just cracks me up the way Abigail is so crazily into helping me out with whatever possible.

My favorite "heps" of the weekend:
1) Watching her trudge patiently back and forth from cement piles to wheelbarrow while we dug the cement out of the old fence postholes in our lawn--I kid you not, she picked up just as much cement as I did, and refused to concede defeat to pieces bigger than her head (we had a grand ol' time with the laundry afterwards).
2) Putting laundry away: she has taken it upon herself to put away all dish towels, bibs, socks, and Abigail clothes, while also naming each piece I fold and making sure it goes in the right place "Mommy shirt. Daddy shorts. Daddy sock. Mommy sock. Mommy sock. Ab-ee-dal padamas. Ab-ee-dal padamas in dwa-wah?"
3) Putting herself down for a nap! Last night was her first night in a toddler bed, aka her crib with the side removed, and she stayed in bed all night (one fall to the floor about half an hour after she fell asleep resulted in the strategy we saw when we checked on her an hour later--she was fast asleep next to the bars by the wall, holding tightly to the bars with one chubby fist). After lunch today she ran to her room, climbed up on her bed, and arranged her blankets over herself. She still isn't asleep, but she's at least staying put...
4) And this isn't really a "hep," but it was darn cute: we went to the doctor today for her annual checkup, and I tried to distract her by bringing her little doctor toys. It didn't really work, but after the nurse left and while we were waiting for the doctor she gave me a very thorough ear examination (which she gravely informed me looked "vewy nice") and repeatedly checked for a heartbeat in my throat and arm. I also bravely endured a series of shots and got an approving "good dob, Mommy!"

She is so much fun!

Happy birthday, Abigail!

Today was Abigail's birthday, and unfortunately our camera died after the second (blurred) picture. We will have to post those two later when we get more batteries. I am quite frustrated with how much this camera eats batteries--granted, it's a couple of years old, since we bought it just before Abigail was born, but still. Beware of the Nikon Coolpix.

Anyway, we had a fun morning together before Neil left for work. I made strawberry muffins for breakfast, and then Abigail opened her presents. The first one she opened was a book, and we had difficulty coaxing her to open another--she wanted to read the book through right then! She also wanted to put on all her new clothes simultaneously, which she decided to do while I was making freezer jam (when I cut up the strawberries I noticed some were getting squishy, hence, a quick half-hour batch of jam. I love the fact that you don't have to process freezer jam! Yay! I was all done by 9 am). Anyway, it was exciting trying to unwind dress sashes from around Abigail's neck while frantically stirring pectin...

Abigail's friend Mia came over this morning, and the two of them had a blast playing together. One of the gifts Abigail got for her birthday was a little Fisher Price doctor set, so you-know-who got to play patient most of the morning...appropriate that the blood pressure cuff is sized for an adult's arm.

It was a pretty good day. Abigail napped without complaint, we had fun with sidewalk chalk, Neil gave a successful presentation to Boeing, we made pizza for dinner, touched up the paint in the bathroom, took a long walk through some woods and fields to go look at ducks and geese, Neil mowed the lawn, I cleaned all the bathrooms, etc. etc. Kind of typical, but it's nice to be able to do something other than grade!

On a sidenote, I forgot how emotional I can become when I'm pregnant until I literally burst into tears at Neil's suggestion that we leave the windows in the dining room and living room open tonight. He very reasonably noted that it would save on the air conditioning bill; I tearfully said that it would be easy for someone to break in and steal Abigail and I didn't understand how he could suggest such a thing. It's a good thing I'm married to such a patient man.

Journal-type entry, dedicated to Jen

Last night when I was falling asleep, I started thinking--for some reason, I have no idea what, actually, now that I think about it it's probably because Jen sent Abigail the coolest birthday selection of books ever--about this road trip Jen and I took freshman year. And I thought, hey, I really should blog about that, because I never wrote it down in my journal and it was so much fun and I don't want to forget about it, so here it is in my surrogate journal.

First of all, I have to say two things. This will probably be long, since our neighbor is mowing the lawn and preventing me from taking the nap I have been looking forward to for TWO WEEKS, and secondly, I did write about it in our "trip journal" that mysteriously disappeared when we got back to our apartment. It was a very cool document that included pictures of muffins flying out the door when we for some reason opened the car door going 75 mph (warning: chocolate muffins experience rapid outward acceleration at high speeds. oh jenny--I love you!)

Anyway, our freshman year was the year of the SLC Olympics (2002), so BYU had a week off for spring break, and we decided to take that week and drive down to see Jen's family in Arizona. It was a good time to do it, since Bob left on his mission the Sunday that began the week, so we just left from his farewell and drove straight down (I think. I know we didn't take the time to wash the blowfish off the window and it got all gross and sandy, but when did we cut up the 2 lbs of cheese into little cubes? We must have stopped in Provo overnight or something).

This was not our first road trip--that honor belonged to the Thanksgiving Fiesta in LA, which I will also blog about at some point, maybe today--but we burned a cool new road trip CD in honor of the occasion. Perhaps Mrah #2? Not quite sure. But here were some of the highlights of the trip:

1) Going the first 100 miles in the first hour (Jen yelled at me when she woke up, with due cause, but it was fun).
2) Driving in Facundo, Jen's white Dodge Neon, so named by our erstwhile roommate Gretta for reasons none of us ever understood
3) Packing 2 lbs of cheese cut up in small cubes in ice cubes to keep them cold, and then accidentally dumping aforesaid melted cheese ice water into my lap while passing Lake Powell
4) Buying random turquoise jewelry on the Navajo reservation
5) Going to Jackrabbit--'nuff said
6) Sliding down on our backsides through the Little Painted Desert
7) Four-wheeling on the dikes! Coolest thing ever!
8) Ditto for suntanning on the rocks by the creek (we went back to Utah proudly and gloriously sunburned)
9) Seeing my first-ever high school basketball game
10) Going to Flagstaff and watching The Count of Monte Cristo and finishing off the evening with a sumptuous meal at The Flaming Wok
11) Visiting the Grand Canyon and taking pictures that looked like we were falling in (we upset a lot of tourists, I think)--and taking the infamous "arm around ____" picture, which was basically each of us with our arm around nothing so we could photoshop in our friends on missions and send them the pictures, except we were too lazy to actually do it, so Jen cut the pictures out and stuck them together a couple of years later
12) Stopping at Big Rock Candy Mountain to go to the bathroom, which was cool for no other reason than the fact that it had a really cool name (it certainly wasn't cool for the bathrooms, which I remember as green in a frightening way)
13) Sitting on frozen E-Z Cheese the whole way back to Provo in an effort to defrost it, then realizing neither of us wanted to eat it and squirting it out in the Macey's parking lot

oh, I could go on for years about my awesome Jenny. I miss you!!! remember the totem pole trashcan? and plum pants boy, whose picture I randomly came across last week (and one of the thank-you pumpkin as well). and dirty josh? and your spanish poem about your cup running over with knowledge on your way to the testing center? and how i would talk in french and you would talk in spanish and it somehow made sense? and the time the security guard at the temple thought we were runaway sister missionaries? and i had chocolate milk for lunch today and dedicated it to you.

books on tape!

For Christmas my grandma (Colleen) made Abigail one of the neatest gifts I've ever come across: she recorded an audio tape of herself reading stories and gave it to Abigail along with most of the books that she reads on the tape.

Abigail and I were listening to it today and I was just so touched by how thoughtful that was--Abigail absolutely loves listening to it and I sure enjoyed it too! We were listening to it while I made lunch and then while we ate and cleaned up afterwards, and lunch is usually a very stressful time for me, but it was so nice today because it was like G'ma was right there with us talking to me. :-) Very soothing and reassuring.

It was also interesting to listen to the Uncle Remus stories, which were some of the ones on the tape, and which I don't think I've ever read/heard since, but listening to G'ma's voice triggered all these memories of sitting there with her reading the stories to me, and I could totally see the pictures for these stories that I hadn't read in probably 15 or 20 years. Pretty cool! But anyway, I had to blog about that because I thought it was such a neat gift and we've both been enjoying it a lot today!

eek

so Abigail didn't take a nap two out of the last three days.

i am very disturbed by this turn of events.

also i am completely toddler-worn-out, so i will be going to bed now. before eight pm.

so incredibly indescribably unfathomably tired.

Precious moments

One of the thing I really love about teaching is Abigail's greeting to me when she and Neil meet me after class. The door opens and she hurtles in, screaming "Mommy! Mommy!" and giggling. She runs toward me as fast as she possibly can with her little blond fluff streaming out behind her and throws herself at my legs, wrapping her arms all the way around and burying her face in my pants, then insists on being lifted up for a kiss and a hug. (Then, of course, she wiggles down to go draw on the whiteboard with the dry-erase markers).

Another thing I love about being her mommy is sneaking into her room when I very well know better and getting her out of bed. I don't give in to this urge much, but I absolutely love picking up her little limp body and cuddling it as close to me as I can. She invariably wakes up enough to wrap her arms around my neck and put her head down on my shoulder, and we have a precious few minutes together before I put her back in her crib. When she was younger and would sleep in my arms (about eighteen months old), Neil would have to come in and make me put her back to bed, since I would just sit in the rocker holding her for as long as I could.

And lastly--I love putting her to bed. If you've ever been around her at bedtime, you know that she's just about the easiest child in the world to put down--she wants her blankie, her bunny, and one song, and she'll go right to sleep. But the best part is when she tilts her little face up for a kiss and a hug and says "Night-night, Mommy."

I just love that little kid, even when she's had an independent two-year-old day (like today), she manages to make it all worthwhile with that one night-night kiss. It's a good reminder that much of her "crankiness" actually results from just wanting some Mommy time--she was quite, um, creatively complaining tonight while I made dinner, while we ate, and while we were cleaning up until I finally left Neil alone with the dishes and sat down on the floor with her--it made me feel pretty guilty when she immediately stopped whining, climbed up in my lap, and put her head down on my shoulder and gave me a tearful smile. It's good to be loved.

Grading

I feel like all I've been doing lately is grading, so there's nothing much to report. Correction: all I've been doing during Abigail's precious precious precious naptime is grading. Talk about the supreme sacrifice. It's amazing how much more exhausting the day is when I don't have those hours to recoup. So this post will be fast, because I'm done with my grading for today and she's still asleep. As a matter of fact, I have graded thirty out of thirty-four papers (which doesn't sound like a lot until I clarify that these are the big long end-of-term research papers written by my engineers, so half of them are dense with equations and theorems and are clocking in between 12-30 pages), so I will finish my huge grading mountain tomorrow! Yay! And I am all caught up on entering grades and grading oral presentations, so the nightmare end-of-semester load is almost completely over with--now it's just kind of all the last minute things. Like those pesky finals.

But it has been nice forcing myself to get all the grading done during naptime, because it means that Abigail and I can still have comparatively normal days--although yesterday was absolutely insane. I kept waking up all night so I didn't go work out (Andrea is so patient with me! I feel really bad!) and ended up sleeping in, so I just felt rushed for the rest of the day. Getting up at 5:40 isn't fun, but it sure makes it easier to fit in the rest of the day...but yesterday was this sort of haze of grocery shopping, laundry, grading, etc., then I took dinner to two families and then we went to Menards and hauled home all of the fencing stuff we bought. It was a really long day and we didn't actually get home until 9:30, so it was 10 by the time Abigail was in bed and asleep, which wasn't very good for her.

Anyway, the cute Abigail-ism of the day: I got her some books for her birthday from Amazon (The Caboose Who Got Loose, Go Dog Go, The Cat in the Hat, and Green Eggs and Ham) and the Caboose book came today. So I opened it to see which one it was and make sure it was the right thing, etc., and then set it down on the top of the dryer while I took off my shoes. Now let me clarify something--Abigail adores this book. We read it at least once (usually much, much more) a day until the library forcibly pried it away from us.

So when she saw it, she yelled "Ba-doose! Ba-doose!" (which I thought was a cute way of saying caboose) and pulled it down, screaming in delight, and plunked herself down on top of all the shoes and began reading it to me. She did not get up again until she'd read the entire thing, and then she presented it to me to read to her, and I just didn't have the heart to take it away and wait until her birthday--so I think I'll just wrap it up the night before so she can have the fun of opening it. But we've read it several times already today...

spring fest pictures

Holding a turkey chick


We all thought the ducklings were the most fun!

These chicks were about an hour old, and more were hatching while we were there--Abigail was utterly and completely fascinated (we'll have to keep an eye on her around the egg carton in the next few days).

The "big bee" at one of the bug exhibits

Abigail thought the plastic grasshopper and spider were great

Spring fest

Today we braved the cold and rain (and later snow!!!) to go to the university's spring fest, and it was so cool! Actually, it would have been a lot more fun if it wasn't so chilly, but we still had a good time. Basically every department/college had some sort of exhibit or display or activity, so there was lots of stuff to do: we built super-duper paper airplanes in the aviation technology tent, played on slides and did the "cupcake walk" in the family sciences tent (and got a free Dr. Seuss book!), went over to the veterinary science building to see the baby animals, visited the poultry building to hold baby turkeys and ducks, watched a sheep shearing in the agriculture tent, etc. (can you tell whose two-year-old tastes we were catering to?)

I'll say this for the university: it has a very very very very big spread-out campus. We certainly got our exercise in today.

This weekend had been pretty busy. It's the first one where Neil hasn't really had much homework since he got sick, so we've been celebrating a bit. We watched two (yes, two!) movies on Thursday night (hurray for the $1 grocery store DVD rentals, since we had a lot of backlogged new releases we've been wanting to see but been too busy to watch) and then went on a really long bike ride for our date on Friday. The weather was nice for the first time in quite awhile, so we really had a blast. It was also nice to bike without Abigail, my sweet little dead weight who likes to alternate playful kicks from her child seat with swiveling around rapidly to watch everything that goes by.

Anyway, after our bike ride we went to Menards and made the purchase we've been putting off for six months: fencing for our backyard. They were having their big spring sale, so we saved quite a bit, but it was hard parting with all that money! We are really grateful that we'll be able to afford the fence, however, since we live on a corner lot with lots of people driving recklessly past, plus our neighbors seem to be running a Chihuahua breeding farm, the yippy products of which are not our favorites (added to which they also view our lawn as their bathroom and Abigail as their prey)...so a fence will be good.

And we also got paint--an enormous five-gallon bucket, which was the other purchase we've been putting off. We finished the bathroom (2 coats of primer and 2 of color, yuck!) and put a first coat of color on the dining room. Sadly, it's not the color we were expecting, so we aren't sure if we're going to paint everything else (living room, foyer, hallways, laundry room, master bedroom closet) that same color as we were planning. Not too exciting to contemplate shelling out even more money for paint, but we'll have to see.

Anyway, it's been a busy weekend, but I am officially more than halfway through grading all my research papers as of 5 this evening, so that's exciting! And I need to cut Neil's hair before I go to bed, so I better end this very long post now...

Workin'

I've had three job offers (or at least opportunities) in the last week. For some reason I find that really amusing--I'm supposed to be staying at home and stuff.

One I turned down (although sorely tempted--it was like $25 an hour), one I said yes to, and one I'm waiting to hear back on. It could be a busy summer...

...and speaking of busy, back to the grading. And let me just give a little hum of praise here to my amazing 421 students. Bless their little typing fingers, they LISTENED in class and wrote really good research papers (so far. I've only graded 5 out of 17). I love teaching engineers and scientists--they have such good work ethics.

Independence

Today I watched one of Abigail's friends whose mother just had a baby. After I fed the girls lunch, they started playing happily and dancing to some Primary songs, so I snuck out of the living room and into the dining room to sit down for a quick ten minutes of grading.

After about five minutes, the dancing noises stopped, and I heard Abigail say "apple, orange, banana." I figured they were playing with Abigail's toy food or something similar, and didn't think much of it. After another five minutes, the part of my mind that was still connected to reality (not reading about the effects of acetic acid on yeast fermentation in terms of ethanol production) realized they were being very quiet.

I found Abigail in the kitchen surrounded by the contents of the fruit basket. She had taken a bite out of each pear, one orange, and mostly devoured the sole apple. The bananas were ignored completely. Quite proud of herself, she offered me a bite of apple.

I laughed and laughed, then we cut up the fruit and topped off their lunches. It made me feel like somewhat of an incompetent parent, but I was also quite amused.

Speaking of parenting, I started reading a collection of essays last night that I found very thought-provoking. I read about this particular book, called Mommy Wars, in the Atlantic Monthly a few months back, so I was excited to see that it had finally made it to our tiny library. Anyway, I recommend it--it really made me do some soul-searching about the kind of mother I am and need to be. It was interesting to see that none of the women were advocated stay-at-home vs. working-mom, even though that was the focus of the collection. Instead, it ended up being a sort of "how do you adapt your circumstances so that you are the best mother possible, what does being a good mother entail, how can you 'do everything right' and still feel incompetent, how do you overcome that, etc." kind of thing. One of my favorite quotes thus far stated simply that "the currency of love is time."

It made me think a lot about how I am doing as a mother, especially since right now I'm straddling the working-mom and stay-at-home mom fences (if you can consider 20 hours a week working, which I do). But one essay made the point that just because you're home with your children doesn't make you any more invested in them, and pointed out that many of the SAHMs she knew actually spent most of their time getting manicures or shopping while their children went from ballet to piano to karate, which was a nice mental kick to me to stop trying to find "things to do" to fill our days and just enjoy being with my daughter. On mornings when we don't have anywhere to go or specific tasks to accomplish I sort of dread the empty hours rather than thinking "Hey! Extra stories today!" or something like that, and that's something that has distressed me and something I am resolving to change. It's a bit hard because I spent so many years micromanaging every spare second, but again, I need to focus on enjoying Abigail's company rather than looking around frantically for something to clean.

I also found it really interesting to read about all these women who are incredibly talented and ambitious and driven who have made the same choice that I am making? made? working to make? about staying at home. I admit, it was awful to finish grad school, move here, and stay at home while my husband started a Ph.D. program, and obviously I'm still working things out, but I felt like I had put quite a few years into educating myself and being at the top and suddenly I known around my house as the "Expert Griller of Cheese Sandwiches" rather than recognized around the department as the one who had just won awards for most distinguished (read: spending waaay too much time studying) graduate student and top 'o the line teacher.

So it was a very affirming and thought-provoking read, and one quote that I would like to share about the merits of both:

"Working moms might conceivably be grateful to moms who stay home and run our schools, our communities, a good chunk of our kids' worlds. And stay-at-homes might arguably appreciate the working moms staying late to get the big promotions, fighting to increase women's presence on company boards and the front page of The Wall Street Journal, campaigning to win elections. Without the money, the power, and the loudspeaker successful careers bring, women will never have the collective bargaining power to make the world better for ourselves, our children, and all the women who can't leave abusive husbands, the ones who wear veils, the moms who earn less than minimum wage cleaning houses and don't have choices about birth control or prenatal care or any other kind of care" (Leslie Morgan Steiner).

Books

Every day, Abigail wants to read the following:

Bread and Jam for Frances by Lilian Hoban

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss (renewed 100 million times from the library)

Are You My Mother by P.D. Eastman

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss

Today we managed to also read The Funny Little Woman, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, The Gingerbread Boy, etc., but I realized today that I was reading Are You My Mother with my eyes closed (and still turning pages). We need some new books around here, just in time for her birthday. And yes, we do have quite a few--she just has her favorites--so any ideas/suggestions/books people really loved as a child/love reading to their children?

Ab-ee-dal help!

Tonight Abigail was a big help in clearing the table. I kept nudging Neil so that he could watch her put away the hot pads in a drawer above her head, get out a dish towel to dry her hands, carry in salad bowls, etc. (all put away in the right place without prompting. Very impressive).

My favorite part, however, was when Abigail came running in with the tablecloth, which she put away in the bottom cabinet of the hutch. Neil turned to me and asked "Is that really where that goes?" I found it amusing that Abigail knew the exact location of every item but Neil didn't...

I guess you had to be there for it to really be funny, but I was just so entranced by watching my little almost-two-year-old take the initiative to help us clear off the table, while simultaneously being so neat and exacting about putting everything away in the right spot.

Another great Abigail "help" story from today: this morning while we were folding laundry I felt an insistent tug at my foot and looked down to see Abigail sitting on the floor attempting to put one of the clean socks on my foot. Recognizing it as Mommy's and knowing we needed to leave soon (we were taking Neil to school), she did her best to help out...

I need to end this, since Abigail is standing on the chair behind me pulling my face around so she can say "hi" and kiss me. Cute, but a bit painful.

Paean to Neil

Today I have to blog about my amazing, thoughtful, compassionate husband (after all, this is my journal).

This morning, for some reason, I was absolutely exhausted. We're talking the kind of exhaustion that completely incapacitates you. When the alarm went off at 5:42, I couldn't even begin to fathom how to turn it off. I felt okay after I'd been on the elliptical for about ten minutes, and then the endorphins kept me going the rest of the time I was at the gym, but when I got back home I really just wanted to crawl into bed and hide from the rain and my responsibilities. If Neil hadn't already made the bed I probably would have.

By the time I showered and finished the vacuuming, Neil had made an enormous skillet of scrambled eggs with cheese and ham, plus homemade whole-wheat toast. The three of us ate breakfast and read scriptures, and then I just collapsed--I was so mind-numbingly tired I couldn't function.

My sweet husband, rather than kissing me and racing out the door to make the bus, sent me back to bed (well, what was left of it--the sheets were in the laundry) and proceeded to do all the dishes, get Abigail ready for the day, etc. I napped for about half an hour and woke up at nine feeling like a new woman.

Needless to say, this threw Neil's schedule off for the day (especially since he folded the laundry before he left) but I cannot even begin to say how much I appreciated that extra hour he sacrificed for me today. I know it means he will have to work that much harder in an already long and dismal day, and I absolutely have the most wonderful husband I could possibly be blessed with.

And lest Abigail feel neglected, she was also very loving in her own way--I woke up to twenty-eight pounds of toddler hurtling against the bedroom door and frantic little hands scrabbling at the doorknob while she yelled "Mommy! Mommy! Where Mommy?" When Neil let her in, she climbed up on the bed, sat on my neck, and proceeded to stroke my head and pat my face very lovingly with her chubby little hands before curling up around my head to "snuggow."

What a great pair.

What will she be?

Tonight we went to Menards to price fencing and get a real idea of how much it will cost to run a fence around our backyard. Midway through, Abigail decided she was bored with the cart. After a few unsuccessful struggles with the child restraint straps, she smiled winningly at Neil, held out her arms, and said "Hug, Daddy?"

The point being, of course, that she would wrap her arms around his neck for a hug and then hold on tight when he stood back up so that she would be lifted out of the cart. This is a strategy that she tries more frequently these days (alternating it with promises of kisses) in order to get out of her high chair, get down from our bed, climb up into our arms, etc.--basically any time she wants to be moved without using her own power.

We're not sure whether to view this as a mark of a creative and ingenious brain who brilliantly works out solutions to her problems, or a little schemer who trades on promises and fails to deliver. Both, I suppose, are hallmarks of toddlers...

Easter

We had Neil's brother Caleb and his wife Juli and their four kids here for Easter, as well as Neil's sister Tara, her husband Dave, and their daughter Lena. Needless to say, it was a full house with six little kids running around, but they all had a great time, and Abigail discovered "canny" comes in chocolate bunny shapes. Lovely. I wish I had some pictures to post, but Neil and I were both in the kitchen getting dinner together during their Easter egg hunt, so we didn't take any--maybe I will get some from someone else and post them to later.

I can't really think of anything to post--I am still not feeling very well from this cold I contracted a week ago, so I can't think very clearly. Mostly just tired. I usually only need four to six hours of sleep to function reasonably well, but I got ten hours last night and I still feel groggy and ready for a nap three hours after I woke up. Fortunately Abigail is being Good Child today and is very patient with my general lack of energy and exciting ideas for things to do.

Circle of Life

My parents bought a bird feeder for Abigail when they were here last weekend, and since then, she's spent much of her time glued to the window watching the birdies. It's the highlight of her day, and so far we've seen starlings, red-winged blackbirds, tufted titmice, robins, doves, etc.

Today she was eating breakfast in her highchair while looking out the window at the birds as usual. Suddenly I heard a loud thump outside and saw the reflected sun from the bird feeder swinging wildly. Abigail was transfixed in chair, staring out the window with huge eyes. I ran over and saw that a hawk had knocked one of the birds to the ground and pinned the crumpled mass of feathers under its claws. The hawk took off with the bird, and Abigail turned her wide eyes to me and said "Birdie? Uh-oh?"

After a few stunned minutes, Neil said brightly, "Oh look! The big birdie gave the little birdie a ride! Wasn't that nice?"

To which Abigail replied (with seeming relief): "Oh. Wide. Wheee!"

Fam-bal-y (as Abigail would say)

This is my awesome family. I decided I need to put more pictures on my blog, since I am saving copies of it as my "journal" (kind of a cop-out, but more than I would do otherwise!) Anyway, I am going to start putting some more pics of family up in addition to just Abigail.

Anyway, here are my cute sisters Mary Beth, Ruth, and Elise at General Conference (Elise flew out for spring break, MB and Ruth are at BYU, respectively a junior and a freshman. Mary Beth has dark hair, Ruth is the blond, and Elise hasn't learned to close her mouth when she chews). Rosalind is also cute, but she got to hang out with us here and eat goodies all through conference while we watched it at home.





And here are some of the rest of my family, mostly from a vacation we took two years ago. Wow! I need some new pictures!




Mary Beth and Elise

Rosalind and Ruth

Mary Beth

Dad and Rosalind

Elise and Abigail

Elise

G'ma, Papa, and Abigail

Mom and Dad

Ruth

Rosalind

Mom and Abigail

Neil and I (probably 3 yrs old, but one of my favorites)
Dad and Abigail

!!!!

There is a severe weather watch right now for freezing temperatures. Yesterday it snowed.

My tulips are dead.

Why, nameless state? Why?!

One of those days...

This has been a morning where I have to remind myself about other (more productive and enjoyable) mornings. I woke up with a splitting headache and went in to find Abigail with a nose running like a faucet--two bad omens.

Abigail, to give her due credit, has been very cheerful, considering aforesaid nose. She cheerfully submits to having it wiped every five to ten minutes, and I found her holding her dolly down on the table with a scrap of toilet paper to its face, instructing her firmly to "bwow."

What really made the morning long was the fact that I am taking dinner to one of my friends tonight who just had a new baby, and I have been promising Neil chicken pot pie for a very long time, so I decided to just make a vat of the stuff. It ended up taking about two hours, and as chicken pot pie will (when you consider that you must cook the chicken, chop the chicken, chop potatoes and onions, cook the roux, add in potatoes, onions, chicken, veggies, etc., then make pie crusts and roll out pie crusts) dirtied the seeming majority of every dish we own. So that consumed most of the morning.

Again, Abigail cheerfully spent this two-hour chunk with her crayons, which really surprised me--she played in her room for a bit, but spent almost the entire time in the kitchen coloring. Actually, she spent quite a while lying under her play table singing to herself and completing a spirited crayon masterpiece executed on the kitchen floor, which I found when I moved the table back, but I figure cleaning up the crayon is a fair trade for two hours of cooking time and cleaning-up time (although the emptied bookshelves while I loaded the dishwasher were not).

Conference weekend

Abigail helping her grandpa to shave


Abigail with her aunt Rosalind

My parents and Rosalind came to visit this weekend, so we had a really great relaxing weekend just hanging out and watching conference. It was especially nice for Neil, since Abigail and I were occupied with my family, so he was able to get a lot more homework done than if we were hanging around waiting for him to be done. Abigail is quite hard to keep away from her daddy. It will be hard on her when they leave today--she is incredibly attached to my dad, and has also had a very hard time going down for naps and having to leave the fun. Hopefully we will be able to have a nice day together nonetheless.

Note to self: I still need to post pictures of our jaunt to the Children's Museum two weeks ago--Andrea and I took Elise and Abigail there during spring break and the two of them really had a blast.

Neil is all caught up now after his bout of pneumonia--if he can just get through this week things should be back on an even keel. We only have four weeks left in the semester, and I am really looking forward to the end! It is nice being able to teach and have an academic/intellectual outlet, but it's pretty exhausting trying to balance it all right now when the day starts at 6 am, especially since Abigail is so energetic these days.