Week 26 - Motherhood, there is no dignity!

Ninety-nine days left to go.  Yes I know I look huge, these last three weeks I have nearly doubled :)  We are down to three months here people.  First my birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Dr. J's birthday, Christmas, and then hopefully this little bundle of joy will make an appearance!  Oh motherhood, you fill me with joy and yet you have led to so many embarrassing situations. Where is the dignity?  Where is the humanity?  I no longer shower alone.  Potty time usually involves an audience.  My last pap smear was witnessed by all three of my children!   Just this week I found myself covered in multiples of my own bodily fluids.  How is that even still possible!  Apparently a full bladder, throwing up, and a baby in between was just too much to handle.  Dr. J made me a nice sandwich for lunch but apparently it just didn't sit well.  I ran to the bathroom to kneel at the porcelain throne.  With every heave a little bit of pee would sneak out!  That's right, I PEED MY PANTS!!!!!!  So then I had to walk upstairs with vomit speckles all over my shirt and pee on my pants.  Yes I did want to cry!

Odds and Ends

 Fly me away!  How I love a box of sidewalk chalk.  So many different things you can do.  Just a day later Peach put a tiny monster on almost every one of the little bricks of our back patio.  Hours of fun, for so little money. 

 In our house pants are optional!

 We've had a huge influx of crickets and grasshoppers this year.  The kids have had a good time collecting them in jars, watching them for a day, and then letting them go.  This sucker was so strong he actually rocked the jar with his jumps!

My mom planted these sunflowers with my kids in Utah and then we brought them home in the van.  I didn't think any of them would make it, they were so straggly but five of them took hold and grew up tall and beautiful.  The kids love them and I was surprised by how gorgeous a live giant sunflower head could be.  We will definitely be planting some more again next year.

 These are two of Peach's most recent art projects.  The one at the top she did at home.  I love how she used almost the whole paper.  The one below is from nursery.  All my kids love the feathers!

 So my daughter is a mini fashionista.  She loves these skinny jeans and these boots were the perfect style to go with them.  Imagine her dismay when she found out she couldn't wear them at school.  They have a tennis shoes only policy!  She was devastated.  "Mom," she cried, "If I can only wear them on Monday no one will ever see them."  Yes she does frighten her father!

Captain E has been losing teeth like mad.  These two front teeth are my favorite.  While for his sake I hope these teeth come back soon, I can't lie that if they aren't in by Christmas we will definitely be recording a video song :)

GiGi's 1st Day of School

How did I miss posting about this? This mom is having all types of problems keeping up. Last month Gigi started preschool. She picked this outfit out special. The girl does love her horses. Apparently the first few days were a little rough.  She apparently did not have any interest in her teacher showing her how to do things.  She's a go to, do it herself little girl.  Apparently things have worked themselves out since then.  She is quite happy and we're pleased with how much she is learning.  I used to dread the start of school for her.  Gigi didn't say anything before she turned three.  Learning her colors was a challenge.  While she was blessed with many other strengths I had started to worry that maybe school was just not going to be her thing.  But she has caught up.  She loves her letters now and has a good time sounding out words.  Reading is one of her favorite activites.  She also loves art.  The picture below is from one of our stamp days.  Originally I thought her face was getting red on it from her fingers, then I saw the actually shapes.  Yes my daughter was stamping her face.  What can I say.  I was the girl who used ot write all over my arms and legs with markers and pens.  A different life and I probably would have wanted to grow up to be a tatooed lady :)

Sunday Confessional -Today was a mom flop, but my son deserves some credit....

In our church the children are given the opportunity to give talks about Gospel topics in front of each other. As the mother of a shy child it isn't something I particularly look forward to. Last week one of the primary presidency members came in to nursery where I was hanging out (I've been in there a lot lately. It is a fun place to talk to my favorite friend out here and you can eat to your hearts content without worrying what other people are thinking) to tell me that my son had a talk the next week. They said he had told them no he didn't want to do it, but they'd managed to get him to take the sticker with the topic so they were hoping he'd change his mind. I was hesitant about it, but knew this Sunday would be one of the few Dr. J would actually make it to church and hoped that he could get him excited about it. I told Dr. J when he got home. Then we both promptly forgot about it. Friday we had a ward activity and the primary president mentioned the talk when she came over to chat with me. "Oh yeah the talk, thanks for the reminder!" And then I again promptly forgot. Sunday I'm sitting in nursery when one of the girls mentions, "Did you remember Captain E has a talk, he's sitting up at the front of the primary room?" Talk about bad mother of the year! I ran from the room and briefly scanned the church for Dr. J, hoping I could pawn this mess off on him. When I didn't see him, I ran into the primary room and sat next to Captain E. When it was his turn he went to the front of the room, and I whispered promps on a scripture story about Amman. Some how he managed to pull it off. He finished, moved back to his seat, and I left the room still sweating bullets. After church I asked him what his plan was before I came in. He said, "Well I didn't want to give a talk, but I knew it was something I needed to do, so I was just going to make myself do it!" High fives to my son! As he's started to grow older, this is something we talk about often, that there are things that needed to be done in life that can be distasteful, that frighten you, or just seem downright dull. Part of growing up though is learning that just getting it done and out of the way is the best policy so that you can move on to what you really want to do. I'm glad to see my little man is starting to internalizing some of these lessons and I'm so proud of him for being willing to face his fears. Now if I could just become a better mother....we'd be set.

You know you've been watching too many English dramas...

when you start thinking in English swear words.  Yesterday we were at Menards and I turned to Jason and said, "These bloody politicians are driving me crazy."  The man had a look of shock and then started laughing.  "You do know that is a swear word right?"  And I started laughing because while I realize that is true in England, in our country I just think it is funny.  Which made me start contemplating on what makes a swear word.  The word itself?  The context?  The intention?  The understanding of the meaning?  If it is a swear word in one country but the meaning is totally different in another does that really count as a swear word?  When I was a child my step sister's mom wouldn't let her use any substitutions for swear words, Frick, Freaking, Jeez  Gosh, Oh my Goodness...anything that was taking the place of what may have been considered a swear phrase was forbidden.  Then I had my college roommate whose family made up their own family versions.  Like when she dropped something on the floor she'd yell out "Judas!"  Our mom ran in the center.  Swear words were forbidden but she rarely said anything about swear word substitutions.  I find myself asking myself, would she mind that the term Bullocks runs through my mind at least twenty times a day?  It might be time to cut down on some of my BBC channel consumption :)

Second Shift Perks

Dr. J is finishing up his last few days in the ICU.  He's enjoyed the variety, the excitement, the opportunity to actually do procedures.  The only off putting bit has been the night shifts...or has it?  I mean I'm not going to lie...I miss my husband at night.  I'm the kind of person who sleeps better when I have someone to cuddle up next to.  As for Dr. J, sleeping in the day isn't the best way to stay well rested.  That being said there are some major perks to the night shift.

The typical day shift for Dr. J: waking before the sun comes up, eating alone, leaving the house before anyone else wakes up, work, work, work, comes home somewhere between 9-Midnight, eats alone, pokes a fight with me for the fun of it, off to bed, tries to fall asleep so he'll be ready to do it all over again.

The typical night shift: Eat breakfast with wife and kids, run son to school, nap while wife runs errands and household, catch up on outside chores (ie mow lawn, wed, paint, whatever), help son with homework, eat dinner with family, go to work.

The major perks, eating meals together, actually having time for kids and dad to interact, being able to have family prayers as a family, getting to those pesky joint household chores.  My own personal perks, being able to watch Kitchen Nightmares in bed instead of another martial arts movie.  No one saying anything when I decide I want a snack at 11 pm at night...thank you preggo belly.  I'm not going to say I'd want to night shift always, but with the schedule Dr. J keeps they've actually turned out to be nice little welcomed vacations.

Sunday Confessional - Ten Years Later, Today I Want To Remember

September 11th, 2001.  That morning when I woke, how could I know I was about to watch the world change?  I had no idea that I was about to witness a catalyst that would lead to two wars, to my father being called up to Iraq, to my cousin's husband dying in Afghanistan, to the changing of thousands of people's lives both here in the United States and abroad.  Ten years ago to the day, I was just up getting ready for school.  It was still dark when my neighbor came pounding into our living room.  He turned on our TV and said, "Look".  What we were looking at?  It took us a few seconds to realize it was one of the twin towers in New York, black smoke billowing out of the top .  "An airplane flew into the tower," he told us.  How had the plane gone so off course?  How were people going to get out out of the building?  How did this happen?  We'd only been watching for a few minutes when the second plane flew into the south tower.  We knew now it was no accident.  Did anyone leave their living rooms that day?  We sat in front of the TV watching the towers burn, smoke filling the sky, endless speculation swirling about what was happening, who had perpetrated these acts, how the US would respond.  Half an hour later the Pentagon was hit.  The reports were now switching from Washington to New York.  We watched stuff falling from the towers only to realize with horror it was people falling, jumping, dying.  Almost an hour after the South tower was hit we watched it collapse.  Did we gasp?  Did we scream?  Of all the things I remember of this day, that I can't.  I just went numb.  How else does someone deal with their heart breaking?  We heard reports that hijackers had taken over the planes.  We heard about a man who called home to tell his wife his plane had been hijacked.  His wife told him about the Towers.  Passengers on this plane call love ones multiple times.  They had been told there was a bomb on the plane.  At some point they realized they were the bomb.  They decide to act and we heard of a plane going down in field in Pennsylvania.  That day I watched thousands of people die, mothers, fathers, people's children. There were all types, corporate bigwigs to waiters, people who worked there everyday to rescuers who were just there for the day trying to help people out of the flames.  In the following days we'd find out that nineteen hijackers carried out the actions of that day.  We'd learn their names, how they entered the country, how they hijacked the planes.  They would ultimate be responsible for the deaths of 266 people who died on the planes, 125 would died in the pentagon,  2596 people who died in the towers, including 23 policemen, 343 firemen, 47 port authority workers, and 37 port authority officers who rushed into the buildings after the attack trying to save people.  Planes would be grounded in this country for over a week.  The airline industry would make sweeping security changes.  Violence against Muslims went up in the weeks following the event as people used it as an excuse or maybe an outlet for grief and hatred.  Our President used it as a reason to start two offenses, ones that ten years later we are still involved in, that have resulted in the deaths of almost five thousand US soldiers and the deaths of hundreds of thousand of civilians of these countries.  It set back Muslim/American relations in ways that still affect us.  I sit in awe here today, thinking back on the lives and innocence lost, the fact that such a relatively small group of people could bring so much evil to the world.  I remember the sacrifices made on that day and the days following.  I'm grateful for the people who showed humanity, who took care of their fellow man, who made the ultimate sacrifice.  I have hope that we can use this remembrance to catalyse our own changes for good.  That we can be a little better each day, try a little harder, love our children just a little stronger today, release our anger to God, and ask him what we can do to improve this world.  After all if such a small group could have such a huge influence for bad, why can't a large group have a much greater influence for good?

Sunday Confessional - Today I got a major craving for....

Fruit Loops.  I was standing with Peach in the hallway at church when the desire to eat Fruit Loops hit me so strong, I started checking the immediate area to see if there were fruit loops present because I believed only a smell could have triggered such a strong reaction.  I saw nothing.  Which leads me to the question, why was I craving fruit loops?  I grew up in a non sugar house.  My mom made claims that sugar gave her gas and knocked her out (turns out there is actually a condition that causes this, it is a problem where people lack the enzyme to digest sucrose and it cause a very similar reaction to lactose intolerance which she also has.  My only problem with her claim, she eats tons of maple syrup and says that doesn't cause her any problems, but maple syrup is full of sucrose.)  Anyway this is neither here nor there and really maters not, except in the fact that we almost never ate sugared cereal as children.  We were the kids who grew up thinking that Cheerios and Corn Flakes were a treat.  The only exception to this was Christmas when my mother would give us each a box of sugared cereal as a gift, but even then she always gave me Cinnamon Crunch because she liked doing cereals that started with the first letter of our name.  I had a sister that always got Fruit Loops, but the sugar cereal was a coveted gift and so never shared.  As an adult I guess I could have eaten whatever cereal I wanted but out of habit, or preference, or just common sense I've stayed away from the super high sugar cereals.  Oh sure my kids gets sugar cereal a heck of lot more then they should.  Gigi almost exclusively chooses Mini Wheat's.  Captain E likes Raisin Bran.  Oatmeal Squares are my favorite type and when I'm feeling particularly naughty I like eating Craklin Oat Bran but there is something about the obnoxious unnatural hues of some cereals, the fact that they don't even pretend to be healthy, the fact that my kids beg for them when we walk down the aisle that just make them totally inexcusable for me.  Captain Crunch I'm talking about you, Apple Jacks, anything with Pebble in the title, or Fruit for that mater, Trix, Lucky Charms, Cookie Crisp, and yes Fruit Loops you are most certainly included.  And so that's why this craving was crazy, and why I'm glad there didn't happen to be a toddler munching down on a bag just a few feet away from me, because I'm pretty sure in the state I was in I would have knocked that kid over and stole their treat!