Lessons from the pizza delivery guy

Note: this is a continuation of my Proclamation series.

By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.

-Family Proclamation, 7th paragraph

Things operated a little differently when Mom was gone. Suddenly, lists in her handwriting would show up on the fridge, detailing all the activities we needed to be at. Meals would either be tacos, waffles and scrambled eggs, or pizza pockets -- if we had home-cooked meals at all. (Okay, we kids probably could have cooked, too, but why not let Dad run the whole show?) Normal chores would take lesser priority, replaced by making sure every wooden surface in the home was covered in Orange-glo. "It will be so nice for Mom to come back to this shine," Dad would say as we scrubbed chairs and cupboards. And he would always have us go do something fun. Matinees, swimming at the USU pool, or miniature golfing.

One time when I was 14, my mom was gone for the evening. So, my dad decided to take us miniature golfing.  As we pulled up to the course, we saw a pizza delivery guy getting out of his car with a bunch of pizza boxes, probably for some party at the golf course.

"You know, you'd have to be really strong to carry all those pizza boxes," my sister Kiana remarked.

"Yeah, and smart!" my dad replied. "I mean, you have to know how to find your way around to deliver all those pizzas!"

"And brave," he continued. "For all you know, when you ring the doorbell, the person could just punch you in the face and take the pizza."

"Yeah!" we agreed.

"You know what? I'm going to go tell him what we think of him," my dad said and he walked over to the pizza delivery guy. The rest of us stayed put, laughing in embarrassment.

"Excuse me, sir," he said as he walked up to him. "We (pointing back to us kids) just wanted to let you know that we think you're strong, smart, and brave." I had turned away with my face bright red so I didn't see what the guy's response was. Probably confused but flattered.

After we finished miniature golf, my Dad continued his "fun dad" routine and ordered pizza. When the doorbell rang, I started running to the door to answer it. My dad beat me there.

"Well, if it isn't that same strong, smart, and brave pizza guy!" he said. I was so mortified that I dashed into the kitchen and ducked under my mom's desk until he was gone.

What does all of this have to do with the Family Proclamation? Well, we know that fathers are supposed to preside, provide, and protect. That is, they need to be like the pizza delivery guy -- they need to be strong to preside, smart to provide, and brave to protect. Or maybe it's smart to preside, brave to provide, and strong to protect.

Okay, it doesn't match up perfectly. At any rate, what really matters is the ability to embarrass your kids. But I think that comes naturally.

Mother's love

Note: this is yet another post in my Proclamation series

Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.

-Proclamation, 7th paragraph

The other day, I was looking at a blog post I wrote back in February. In that post, I talked about my fears about motherhood and nurturing as well as the conclusion I came to -- nurturing is part of our divine role, even if it isn't part of our personality. We can develop those feelings of love for our children, at least, that's what I hoped.

And what have I found? It's wonderful and complicated. I think I can sum it up like this: Love is a gift, and love is a choice.

What do I mean by that? Well, let's start with "love is a gift." Think back to your first major crush. Do you remember the wonderful, terrible feelings of infatuation that filled you with such joy that you could hardly stand it? Do you remember the thrill of holding hands for the first time with someone you really really liked? Those wonderful feelings -- I think they're a gift. The feelings of romantic love are a gift from God (probably manifested through hormones) to bring us joy and make us want to commit to another person.

And what I've found is that mother's love is the same in several ways. When Joseph first came out, I didn't suddenly love him, nor did I expect to. My thought process was this: Well, whaddya know, someone was in there all along. Then: he's huge! How did he fit in there? Then:  See, I told you all that he'd have hair!

And then they handed him back to me, all clean and tiny and wriggly.

"Here. You should do skin-to-skin and nurse him."

Abject terror. What were they thinking, handing me something so precious and fragile?

Luckily, we both survived the encounter. Over the next few hours and days, I really grew to love this little guy. When we got a few minutes alone at the hospital, I would tenderly pick him up (still somewhat terrified that I would drop him) and whisper, "Hi baby . . . I love you." (We didn't have a name for him yet.) I didn't really feel like those tender feelings came from me -- they seemed more like they were bestowed from an outside source.

Joseph at about 5 hours old.

And they grew. Even though I was incredibly sore for the first little while, I still looked forward to nursing Joseph because I knew that I would get a sudden rush of oxytocin that would fill my body and fill me with this overwhelming love for my baby and for everyone. I feel like that sort of love is a gift  from God, given to make us happy and to encourage us.

But love is also a choice. A few weeks ago, a lot of people were asking "So, what's it like being a new mom?" and I was having a hard time answering. "It's . . . hard. It's . . . fun."

We were past the zombie days and nights, the 15 dirty diapers a day, the 5 outfits a day, the arc de triomphes, and the worst of the crying. Why did it seem so much harder now?

There are a few obvious reasons. I moved across the country, away from all of my family. Suddenly Kevin had a bit more of a schedule so he wasn't there to help. And Joseph had a few colds which made life no fun.

But there was something else that made it hard -- the high from being a new mom had worn off. Although the mother instincts and hormones are still there, I feel left to my own devices a bit. That is, I feel like loving Joseph is more of a choice.

It surprised me. Goodness knows how many times I had heard from parents and church leaders and books that romance fades in marriage and that love becomes an action word. I hadn't realized how it would be the same for parenthood. But you know what? I'm grateful it is. I'm grateful that it doesn't always come as naturally and easily as I anticipated. It makes it so much more personal. It makes me comprehend that my capacity to love is indeed growing each time I consciously choose to love. And it makes me realize how much we need to choose to turn to God to "borrow" His love.  I believe that one of the major reasons we are set up in families is to experience that transformation from instinctive love to Christ-love.

As C. S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce:

"He wanted your merely instinctive love for your child (tigresses share that, you know!) to turn into something better. . . . You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God."

Wholesome recreational activities

Note: This is a continuation of my proclamation series.

Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.

Proclamation, 7th paragraph

Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun growing up. We went to Bear Lake a lot. We floated down rivers and canals a lot. We would go mini golfing and sledding and cross-country skiing and see the occasional matinee.

But there were lots of wholesome recreational activities my parents put us through which focused a lot more on the "wholesome" than the "recreational." Like the death marches we went on, bushwhacking through the mountains behind our house, or the terribly long car rides we went on where my parents would choose the "scenic" route on the way to southern Utah.

But what first came to mind when I thought of "wholesome recreational activities" was the games we would play together. Board games and running games and hide and seek games.

Most every Monday night, we would have what we called Family Night. Each of us would be assigned something to do to participate. At one point, I remember the sequence to be opening song, opening prayer, business, talent, scriptures, lesson, activity, closing prayer, and treat.

The activity we chose most often was a game my dad called Gadianton robbers. It consisted of one of us (usually him) hiding somewhere in the house as if he were a Gadianton robber hiding in the mountains of Central America. Then the rest of us would be the righteous Nephites hunting down the robber. So, kind of a reverse hide-and-seek.

But there was a catch. You didn't always want to find the Gadianton robber, especially if it was Dad. It wasn't good for your heart.

I remember one time looking for my dad. I checked the pantry. Not there. I checked in the hall closet. Not there. I slowly opened the bathroom door and tiptoed in. I carefully pulled back the shower curtain and

"AAAAAARRRRRRGGHHH!" my dad roared as he lunged at me from the bathtub.

This little Nephite warrior screamed and jumped about three feet and ran back to the safety of Zarahemla before the Gadianton robber could catch her.

And yet week after week we would want to play this game, and we would always want Dad to be the Gadianton robber since he was a lot more fun to find than the rest of us. At any rate, it beat the activity Mom always chose when it was her turn -- laundry. Now that is not a wholesome recreational activity if you ask me.

(To be fair, maybe that was her way of making up for the lackluster lessons us kids would give when it was our turn -- boring lessons we put together in Primary or the bizarre lessons I made up. For the record, I still think my lesson on 3 Nephi 8:8-10 was one of my best. I spent the afternoon making construction paper replicas of the cities Zarahemla, Moroni, and Moronihah. When it came time for my lesson, we put a match to Zarahemla, drowned Moroni in the sink, and had my baby brother sit on Moronihah. I don't know that we learned much that night but it sure was fun. And probably followed by laundry.)

The missing word

Note: This post continues my Proclamation series

True or false: The word "communication" shows up in the Family Proclamation.

Answer: False! It doesn't show up once!

You might be thinking, what? Surely it shows up as one of the principles on which successful families are established! Nope:

Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.

How could this be? Every lesson I have ever heard about happy marriages talks about communication. Without it marriages crumble. What were they thinking?

I've thought about this the past few days, and here are my conclusions.

1. That list isn't exhaustive. I think communication would be a nice addition to that list, as would trust, kindness, and a sense of humor. We don't have to be told everything that we ought to do.

2. That said . . . perhaps communication isn't the golden key to happiness that we sometimes credit it to be. Let's suppose that the definition of communication is expressing feelings and words to another person so that they understand exactly what you are trying to say. (That seems to be the definition given by marriage books.) Well, what if what you were communicating was, "I don't like you anymore. You are dumb and ugly and lazy. I am constantly disappointed in you." Yeah, you've just been an effective communicator, but that's not going to heal any marriages any time soon.

More important to a happy marriage, I believe, is respect and compassion. If you have this as a basis for your marriage, then I feel like a marriage can withstand a bit of miscommunication.

Story time. That silly story in my last post reminded me of another time that I didn't enunciate very well. It was soon after we got married since I remember that the living room was full of boxes. I don't remember what I said, but I think Kevin gave me a courtesy laugh. Then I thought about what I said and how dumb it actually was. In disgust, I said, "You've got a weird wife," and then stomped over to the other side of the room to unpack another box. Kevin didn't say a word but instead sat there in cold silence with a shocked look on his face. Because he didn't say anything to make me feel better, I felt like he secretly thought I was weird, so I felt a little hurt. We spent the rest of the evening uneasy around each other.

That night in bed, he spoke carefully. "So . . . you think I've got a weird laugh?"
"What? No! I love your laugh. Why would you think that?" I responded.

Then I realized that "laugh" sounded like "wife" and that he must have misheard me when I snarled, "you've got a weird wife."  No wonder he seemed so hurt all evening -- he thought I had made fun of him! When we both realized our mistakes and misperceptions, the hardness in the room dissipated. We both laugh now every time one of us brings it up.

On the surface, this is a story about communication. And it is. If I had spoken more clearly or if he had asked for clarification, we could have enjoyed that evening a lot more. But I think the real problem was that we didn't yet have foundations of respect and compassion. Since we hadn't been married long, he didn't yet know that I would never have spoken so cruelly about his laugh, or anything about him. Likewise, I didn't know that had he actually understood me, he wouldn't have let me sulk in silence and self-pity.

What am I getting at? Communication is important, but just spouting words back and forth isn't going to lead to a successful marriage. They need to be kind words and backed up with kind actions and feelings. They need to be words of repentance and forgiveness. They need to be words of love.

Still working on it . . .

Okay, so my Proclamation series is sort of at a standstill at the moment. I wanted to talk about fatherhood, but then I couldn't organize my thoughts about that the way I wanted to. I wanted to talk about motherhood, but I've had so many thoughts on that recently that it's all still a mess. And I wanted to talk about those before I talked about equality and stuff, so that's on the back burner too.

Wow. Writing is hard. Especially with a baby. And a messy house.

So instead of a proclamation post today or yesterday (or maybe even tomorrow), I'm going to share two quick, great things with you.

First, this.

Second, while Kevin was in the kitchen making breadsticks (talk about equality, right!), I called out to him, "Hey, I just read an article that said that too much microwave popcorn can cause lung disease!"

"Really?" he asked.

"Yeah, because of the diacetyl in it," I replied. He seemed sort of confused but just let it be.

Then ten minutes later, he called out to me for clarification,

"So popcorn really causes lyme disease?"

bahaha. This is a lesson about miscommunication in marriage. Which is sort of related to the Proclamation. Yeah.

Children of the Most High

Note: for the next few days, I'm going to be doing a series on the Family Proclamation. This is the first post in the series.

ALL HUMAN BEINGS—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny

-Family Proclamation, 2nd paragraph

I'll be honest -- sometimes I got tired of hearing that we were "children of God." Every week in Young Women's, we would recite "We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him" in a singsong voice. And sometimes it would become trite. People would talk about how much they loved the song "I am a Child of God" and I just didn't get it. (For whatever reason, I didn't like the picture associated with it in the Children's Songbook.) Why did we make such a big deal about this? Why did it matter so much to Mormons? I had a friend joke that the reason drivers in Utah were so aggressive was because that we knew that "dangit, I'm a child of God, so I deserve to get where I want to get as fast as possible." Was that all our divine heritage was good for -- a sense of entitlement?

Then the other day, I realized something while reading a C. S. Lewis anthology which contained his "signature classics." (While devouring it, I came to a sad conclusion. Much like pizza-flavored Goldfish or tortilla chips with hint of lime, a little C. S. Lewis is good, but you just get sick of the taste if you have too much.) In Mere Christianity while talking about the Lord's Prayer, Lewis says,

"Its very first words are Our Father. Do you now see what those words mean? They mean quite frankly, that you are putting yourself in the place of a son of God. To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ. If you like, you are pretending. Because, of course, the moment you realise what the words mean, you realise that you are not a son of God."

This hit me like a ton of bricks, though he had been saying things in a similar vein for several chapters. I understand what he was saying -- that we are nothing like Jesus Christ with our fallen, imperfect natures. We are not perfect like He is and has always been. And in a sense, I believe that praying is sort of like "dressing up as Christ" (that's why we end our prayers with "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen"). But we are still children of God, "children of the most High" (Psalms 82:6). That is, God is the father of our spirits, the part of us that lived before our bodies were formed and will live when our bodies die. In some small, embryonic way that I can't comprehend, we are of the same race of God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ.

Now, thinking about that for more than a minute makes me feel very, very small. (And it doesn't make me feel inclined to speed when I drive.) I can somewhat understand what Moses was feeling when he had talked to God (in this case, the Son of God, speaking for God the Father through divine investiture), been called "my son" several times (v. 4, 6, 7 and later 40 in Moses 1), and seen God's mighty creations. He said quite plainly, "Now, for this cause, I know that man is nothing, which thing I had never supposed" (Moses 1:10). And yet, at the same time, it fills me with such a sense of belonging, such a sense of hope.

So what does all of this have to do with the Proclamation on the Family? Well, if we're literal offspring of God, then that means we're all part of the same family! That's why families are so important to Him. It's not just a matter of families being the fundamental unit of society, not just a matter of family dinners leading to lower crime rates, not just a matter of socioeconomic solutions. The family is the fundamental unit of heaven. If we understand and truly believe that God is our Father, then we can better see the patterns He sets forth in the scriptures of how to be a righteous parent. We can achieve greater happiness in this life and the next.

The best thing I learned in my prenatal class

Okay, before I begin my proclamation posts, I want to share this story in the hopes that it may save some frazzled parents some night.

Last night, Joseph was screaming. And screaming. And screaming. And screaming. He acted like he wanted to nurse, but he would pop off. So we would burp him, but that didn't calm him down. Sing. Bounce. Rock. Diaper change. Pacifier. Restrain. All the normal stuff we would try when he was overtired. No luck. We even just let him scream for a few minutes. Nope. If we played the games with him that usually make him laugh, he would laugh . . . and cry or scream at the same time.

So I sat on the rocking chair and held him as I sang, hoping that this time would calm him down unlike the other times that night. (They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right?)

As I rocked, I looked at his sleeper. He had been staring at the footie part of his pajamas earlier that evening. They had little dogs on them, and Kevin and I thought he was looking at them because he was wondering where his toes had gone. (He has a fixation with his feet right now, and it's adorable.)

Then I felt his feet. They were kind of squished.

And suddenly, my mind was back in Provo at my prenatal class. Dani the nurse had gone off on a tangent and was talking about how her little boy wouldn't stop crying one night because his sleeper was too small around his feet.

It's worth a try, I thought, and I whipped his sleeper off and threw a blanket over Joseph for him to play with. Just like that, he stopped crying and started to grin.

Kevin came in to investigate the silence. "Is this all he wanted?" he asked, looking at Joseph's eyes sparkle as he tried to eat his blanket.

"Yup. Just wanted out of that sleeper." And the blanket didn't hurt either, since he loves to wrestle with blankets these days.

And that was that. We replaced the blanket with a footie-free sleeper and he fell asleep like normal (which means it still took another 15 minutes, but at least he wasn't screaming).

So if your baby ever screams and screams, check the feet. The sooner the better.

Joining the Celebration

When the Proclamation on the Family first came out, I was 5, and I thought it was boring.

I don't remember the night it came out, but I do remember all the adults talking about it at church over the next few weeks. The next thing I knew, we had a framed copy in our family room.

And I didn't get the big deal. I would stare at it, but it simply wasn't at the level of the American Girl books I liked to read so I comprehended very little. Even when I understood the words a few years later, I didn't understand the implications of the words.

Well, I've both read and lived a lot longer now, and I know that the Proclamation says a lot of true, important things. I really feel like it was written for my generation -- written then so we could grow up with it and let it help shape our views on the family.

Because I think it's so great, I've decided to dedicate the next few posts to the Proclamation. I noticed that throughout  the Mormon bloggosphere , a celebration on the Proclamation is going on this week. While I am by no means one of "those" bloggers, I figured I might as well join in the fun!

So you can look forward to insights about our divine heritage, fatherhood, motherhood, children, and any other ideas which happen to be floating past my cerebrum these days.

Enjoy!

Tau Beta Pepsi

So ever since the Church clarified that caffeine wasn't proscribed by the Word of Wisdom, my newsfeed has lit up with petitions, statuses, pages, and links all about putting caffeinated drinks on BYU campus.

I don't really care one way or the other. We all know that caffeinated drinks aren't good for us, and neither are soft drinks of any kind. And neither are fruit juices, at least, not as good as they pretend to be (they're pretty sugary). So I try to limit my consumption of all three and have limited my consumption of caffeinated beverages to the point that I've never actually had any. But I don't really think you're a bad Mormon if you do drink caffeine. I mean, I still eat chocolate.

Anyway, I guess there are a lot of vocal people who want caffeine on campus. Fine. But just because a few people are vocal doesn't mean they reflect the majority. And the people who are answering the polls are usually the ones that are passionate. So I don't believe the polls.

Here's my experience that makes me hesitate to believe that people really want caffeine. In April, I went to a Tau Beta Pi barbecue. The drink options were Sprite, root beer, and Diet Coke. And guess what? Maybe 2 people touched the Diet Coke. That's all. In fact, since they ran out of Sprite and root beer so fast, Kevin and I just had to share a can of Sprite. And we weren't the only couple who did that.

So if BYU does put caffeinated beverages on campus, I'd say, don't bother putting them in the engineering building.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Restrooms

I guess I was spoiled at BYU. All the bathrooms I regularly used had couches in them. Granted, I didn't have Joseph til I was done with classes, but it was still nice to have a couch to nap on. And then once I had Joseph and went up to campus occasionally, it was nice to have a couch to nurse on (unless someone was napping on it . . .). But as we traveled across the country, I found no couches in bathrooms. None. I've been so disillusioned.

It reminds me of when I was 4 or 5 and was at a restaurant with my family. I was tired, and I told my parents I wanted to lie down and rest.

My grandma just heard the last word. "You want to use the restroom?"

A rest-room! What a wonderful idea! I conjured up an image of a rest-room in my mind. It had beds and couches, and probably even a table with cupcakes on it. I eagerly agreed to go see the rest-room.

She and my mom took me there, and what did I find when we opened the door?

Toilets. And a sink. What was this madness? Why had they brought me to a bathroom?

"There's a rug on the floor. You could rest on that," my mom said.

"No, I wanted a place to lie down, like a couch!" I said.

"Oh, you wanted an American restroom!" they said. Even all these years later, I'm pretty sure that's what they said. I have no idea why an American restroom would have couches, because I've seen a lot of American restrooms and they do not have couches.  Maybe they meant a BYU restroom.

Anyway, I don't remember if I ever got my nap or if I just ate my food at the restaurant. But I've been disillusioned about restrooms ever since. More so since I actually use the couch for the intended purpose now.

Oh well.

Joseph top to bottom

Oh goodness. There is so much I want to say. Not just about him, but just thoughts I've had lately, stories to share, and adventures we've had. But I guess I ought to start somewhere, so let's start with Joseph. As a warning, I'm kind of obsessed with him these days, so if you get a hint of proud mama, that's why. (Doesn't help that I misplaced his baby book the other day so I feel like I have to record it somewhere. Might as well record it online!)

So from top to bottom, ready, set, Joseph!

Hair: If you look from the top, he still has a lot of hair. But he is going a little bit bald on the sides. That's probably because he keeps rubbing his hair off. And how does he rub it off? Well, here's one way he does it:

Yeah, it looks like he likes the hardwood. (It is growing on me . . . it's just weird not ever wanting to sit on the floor anymore.) We noticed that he was able to rotate beginning about the middle of July, when we put him on a blanket to sleep at my parents' house. He would wake up facing a different direction. But over the past month and a half he's refined this skill to get . . . a lot of places. It's fun.

Face: Moving down his face, he has very expressive eyebrows:

and some funny faces.

Mouth: He can be quite vocal, and has learned how to scream like a little girl. But most of the time he's just content to jabber away in a more pleasant range:

Neck: He can basically hold his head up now. I was surprised by how much easier not having to worry about supporting his neck so much made things.

Hands: He likes to use his hands to touch and scratch things: the side of the crib, the couch, books, and basically anything he can get his hands on. It's so fun to see his motor skills improving. He still can't reach out and grab things (other than my hair), but he's getting closer every day. He also has discovered how to put his hands in his mouth. He's not so much of a thumb-sucker yet; more of a pointer finger-sucker or multiple finger-sucker. It's good for his immune system, right?

Torso: I love to watch him stretch/try to roll over. It kind of makes him look like a contortionist.

Legs and feet: He has very strong legs. And very cute feet. He likes to raise them high in the air.

He also loves to look at himself in the mirror, which is why I propped him up like this

There's a part of me that could go on and on and on about how awesome he is, but I think I'll just call that good for now.

Except . . . one more video. Just because.