Comparisons

I read a good blog post today by Al Fox Carraway about not comparing ourselves to others. One of the key phrases she said was "Comparison is a poison we choose to drink."

Considering that I spent a large chunk of February struggling with winter in New Haven because I knew just how much better it could be, that idea gave me pause.

But the fact is, we have to make comparisons all the time. I compares prices when I shop. I compare recipes when I cook. I compare mouse trap locations when we are trying again to catch the mice that we know are there but still can't catch. It's part of normal life.

Of course, the danger comes when we start comparing ourselves to others, or one child to another, or one winter to another winter. It's not just that is the kind of poison that cankers our souls, that makes us forget how abundantly blessed we are and how everyone has their own challenges.

It's that we're usually wrong.

There was a little while where I felt like I was a horrible friend because every time someone complained to me, my brain would automatically jump to a contradicting statement they had made earlier. For example, if they said, "My baby finally slept through the night for the very first time," my brain would immediately jump to the time they had told me the same news 4 months earlier. I wouldn't say it, of course, but I felt like my congratulations or commiserations got all weird because the premise was faulty to begin with.

And of course, I am guilty of this despite trying to have a really good memory. Even in my last post when I said Joseph only colored once where he shouldn't but Matthew does any time he can, well, I know of at least one other time it happened.

And even if all my facts had been accurate, would they really have told the whole story? Would things had been different if Joseph had an older brother that liked to color and left markers around? Definitely.

So if for some reason I was trying to make a case that one toddler is a lot more difficult than the other, this example would not really strengthen my case. There are too many variables to really draw accurate conclusions.

This is true for just about everything. My data scientist husband Kevin occasionally remarks that most studies are useless unless the people doing it have had as much statistics and math as he has. There are just too many variables to control for, too much variation within groups, and such large sample sizes required that drawing a real conclusion is almost impossible.

In that case, why on earth would we ever make comparisons when we have so little data to work with? We have such faulty memories that it's practically pointless to say life was better in some other place or an earlier time. We have so much limited data when it comes to social media that we can't really say much beyond, "She posts more pictures of X than I do."

All that said . . . I still think Ann Arbor is a nicer place than New Haven. But, if my memory serves me well (haha), I also had higher expectations of Ann Arbor, so I still had hard days. (And I know for a fact I lost my patience more a year ago than now, so that's been an improvement, whether or not it's based on the presence of a 3-year-old in the house or not.) So really, life is probably as perfect now as it will ever be.

Well, actually, I'll probably prefer spring.


See also: The Best is Yet To Be

Paper

I only remember one time when Joseph drew on something he shouldn't. One day I opened up an alphabet board book and found a bit of pen on the first few pages. "No no no," I told him. "We only draw on paper. Just paper."

After that, he would point to his pen marks whenever we read the book and say "No no no just paper" soberly. And that was the end of it.

Yesterday, I found Matthew taking a marker to the cover of that same alphabet book. I sighed as I took the marker away. It would wash off easily from that type of book, but my "no no no"s hadn't sunk in just yet.

He has recently become obsessed with coloring, yelling "Paper!"whenever he sees Joseph coloring and insisting on joining in. Even when Joseph isn't doing it, he still spontaneously finds the markers and paper so he can color.

Of course, markers and toddlers aren't a super great combination, especially once the toddler figures out how to open the markers. There's been nothing too serious, but I have definitely found some artwork on the floor that isn't supposed to be there. (It's always funny the moment you realize that what you are hearing is the sound of silence . .  . which is a pretty suspicious sound with a toddler.)

So, I tried my "No no no. Just paper," approach with him. He seemed to get it. "Just paper. Just paper." Then when I asked him to get a diaper he instead got a marker and scribbled on the floor again. "Paper. Paper. Paper," he said, pointing at it. He liked mopping it up with me, but didn't really seem to get it, so all the markers got moved up to the top shelf of the desk. (Except the ones I somehow overlooked. So that explains the board book.)

I started to suspect that his "Just paper" didn't mean the same thing as my "Just paper." It seemed like a lot more things fit into his definition of paper than actual paper, and the primary requirement was that it needed to have scribbles on it first. This was confirmed when Kevin was getting him out of his car seat this weekend. "Paper!" he said happily as he pointed to his leg. He had been scratching it a little bit and left a little design. Naturally, it was now paper.

So I guess he's been obeying me all along.

Making our own fun, outdoor version

Since my last post about what we do all day got a little long, here's the rest of the list of what we usually do each day.

Mondays are our "busy" days with institute lunch and gymnastics. There's not really enough time between when we get home from institute and when we have to leave for gymnastics (it's about 20 minutes away) for Matthew to get a good nap, so we just generally count on him being cranky the rest of the day. But it's worth it to have things that are scheduled! And Joseph is just the cutest, funniest little kid ever at gymnastics, and he adores every single part of it. So that has definitely been good this winter.

The rest of the week . . . honestly, there's hardly anything going on in the day with the kids! I know that I will be really jealous of this phase of life pretty soon, but it can get a little boring in the winter. Besides all the fake-homeschooling stuff I mentioned in my last post, here's what we've done on and off lately:

Joy School: I think it only happened once or twice in January before maternity leave started. It will probably start up again in the next few weeks, and hopefully more than one mom will return! That said, I haven't been the biggest fan of the curriculum . . . maybe it just felt like I was acting out those Deseret News articles on parenting by the Eyres I used to read. And maybe it's just this stubbornness in me -- if I'm going to be working even a little hard for preschool, I would rather get to use my own creativity for all of it, like I did last year when we did one letter a week for preschool. Oh well. Live and learn.

Library: free place with toys and books and temperatures above 64 degrees. What's not to like? (Besides the lack of technology, of course. None of the libraries have self-checkout, which I didn't like at first, but now I get to sort of enjoy/be embarrassed by Matthew scowling at the librarians every time we go to the counter.)

The one time we made it to story time (all the library branches around seem to require that you register for story times, and that just seemed silly to me) the storyteller forgot to show up, but other moms told me that there usually is a real storyteller there.

Baby signing time: this is just a walk across the street in student housing, and we've been consistent unless kids are sick. Both boys usually really like it, and I'm assuming my friend who runs it appreciates us coming since we are the only ones there half the time!

Parks: Overall, we've been lucky this winter in that it warms up pretty often before cooling down again. So if it gets above 40 degrees (usually once or twice a week), we try to go to a park for a little while. Sometimes we're not there very long, but at least we get out! (Obviously, I wish that we didn't have to go all the way to a park for my kids to play outside for 20 cold minutes [other than when they play on our sidewalk], but I'm almost used to it.) Usually we time the parks with other trips, such as gymnastics, the library, or errands.

Walking to the mailbox: Our new mailman has not accepted our outgoing mail the way our previous mailman did (standing up vertically in the box with the un-postmarked stamp clearly visible), so sometimes Joseph hops on his balance bike and I stick Matthew in the stroller and we walk over to the nearest blue mailbox. Exciting times, I know. Then if it's not too cold we keep going.

And, just so you know every other detail of our lives, here are the last few things I can think of that we do on a regular basis to fill the time. Not quite outdoor, but they at least involve moving around.

Exercise: On the rainy/snowy/cold/I just feel too wimpy to go out but still want to exercise days, I usually turn on some music or YouTube video and try to exercise with my kids. Because Joseph gets sad if I ever do it without him. Honestly, I'm sad if I don't see this every day. (Lighting was better in the kitchen, but that's not usually where we do it.)

They also get lots of wiggles out with the most useful Christmas present ever (even beating my new ouchless hair ties and Kevin's 2 copies of Hero of Ages). The best part is between 1:30 and 2:00.

Play dates: I've tried to be good about inviting friends over for Joseph as long as we don't have too bad of colds. So that breaks up the monotony! (And then some.)

Dinners: Now that I'm not nauseated, we've had a few people over the past few weeks. I like it because it's an excuse to get things clean and talk to adults on weekdays. Joseph and Matthew like it because they like to show off. One time Matthew kept running back and forth putting nativity pieces in someone's lap because he was just so excited to have company.

And honestly, I think that's just about it for the past six weeks or so! There are other various things I drag the kids along for in the daytime (visiting teaching, shopping, appointments, kindergarten junk) and some things I leave the house for in the evenings and weekends (Relief Society activities, presidency meetings, baby showers), and then the rest of the time we just kind of stay home. Sort of funny how much I call my mom and sisters and regale them with all our non-news!

It's not quite ideal, but we make it work! And soon spring will come.

ps: Unrelated, but in the evenings, I do try to do some bits of personal enrichment here and there. Not just whiny blogging. Haha!

Little thoughts from Little House

For all you history buffs out there, today marks 160 years since Almanzo Wilder was born.

Since we just finished reading Farmer Boy we thought this was another day worth commemorating. We never got around to drawing horses to celebrate, but we can do that tomorrow.

As I've mentioned before, it's certainly been enlightening reading the Little House books this winter. We just started On the Banks of Plum Creek and right there in chapter 1 they find out they have to live in a dugout. They live in the dirt! Poor Caroline!

In thinking about it, though, I think we have life way harder nowadays. Here are some examples:

• They never ran out of their favorite crackers.
• They never had to flip the circuit breaker when it tripped thanks to running two appliances at the same time.
• They never went 3 days with a broken water heater during a snowstorm.
• They never had electric baseboard heaters in a state where you pay roughly 22 cents per kWh for electricity.
• They never felt guilty about screen time.
• They never ran to Lowe's in the evening to pick up some mouse traps.
• They never had to stand up to get more tortilla chips when they ran out with salsa still in the bowl.
• Their kids never got grumpy after shots.
• They never had to scrape ice off the windshield.
• They never had to return books to the library that they wanted to renew.
• They never had to troubleshoot internet problems.
• They never had to take their kid's coat off before putting them in the cold car seat.

And so on. Talk about an easy life!

I'm joking of course. I really like having crackers, electricity, hot water, computers, stores, vaccines, cars, libraries, and Internet as part of my life, even when they lead to annoyance or don't work properly.

But I confess I've been a little jealous of the families as we've read the books. The way the books portrays things makes it sound like they always had lots of hard work but not much stress to accompany it. Things were routine for the most part, and they stayed too busy to realize it was boring. (Who knows if this is really how it was. There's a lot that was fictionalized.) For the most part, they seemed incredibly content.

And in contrast, well, you know me. I complain about only having one church-sponsored activity I can take the kids to each week (institute) compared to the six or so I had last year. And meanwhile Caroline Ingalls spent entire winters cooped up in her house! And they couldn't even make it to church on Sundays because of snow and distance. (Incidentally, that was part of why I complained yesterday. I was so sick of my house and so sad church was canceled due to another dumping of snow.)

So I've had some serious reflection about how they survived those long winters without any of the modern conveniences and distractions we enjoy. Right now I don't have much of a better answer than "They just did." Somehow they just gritted their teeth and got through it, and managed to enjoy it while they were in it. They didn't expect to spend their lives entertained, nor did they expect to fill their toddlers' lives with preschools, trips to museums and parks and zoos, or even trips to see family. And somehow they still managed to raise well-adjusted children more often than not.

Except for Almanzo's cousin. He really was a pill.

Making our own fun, indoor version

Tomorrow marks six months since the muggy day that we loaded up a moving truck to leave Michigan.

We've had quite the six months. There have been a lot of great things about moving here -- we've met some wonderful, wonderful people, participated in the Hartford Temple open house and dedication, and presumably been more of a blessing than a burden to our new ward.

But it has been very different from Michigan. One of the greatest challenges has been the lack of structure on a day to day basis.

Church of course is crazy. Since about the second week Kevin and I have been running around subbing, teaching, translating (him, not me), playing piano and organ (me, not him), doing scouts, organizing, conducting, and trying to keep track of kids with scarcely a moment to catch our breaths.

But the rest of the week is so quiet. This is a huge change from Ann Arbor, where I generally had a long list of things to look forward to on a weekly or monthly basis, including:

• Monday Time Out For Women institute class (always with treats)
• Morning Out play dates
• Zumba Wednesdays and Fridays
• Weekly preschool
• Friday lunches at the institute
• Monthly book club
• Various Relief Society activities
• Library story time
• Spontaneous museum/park invitations from a ward Google group
• Monthly Institute date nights
• Bad Movie Club nights
• Game nights with friends
• Ward choir
• Northwood events (Valentines activities, winter clothes swaps, etc)
• Talking to neighbors outside
• Joseph playing with friends at our house or theirs
• Voice lessons
• Piano lessons
• Rackham graduate school events
• Visiting teachers
• Baby showers

In contrast, while there's not nothing going on, things are a little subdued here. Here's what I've come up with:

• Monday institute lunch class
• Weekly gymnastics
• Monthly Relief Society activity
• Monthly Institute date nights
• Baby showers
• Occasional book club (none in December or January)
• Baby signing time
• Primary presidency meetings
• Joy School (all other participants have been on maternity leave for past few weeks/months though, so we've started going to the library)

One reason I share these lists is I'm just curious -- which list is closer to what is offered by your ward/neighborhood right now? I think Ann Arbor had a fair amount of social capital (and the number of activities even increased in spring and summer), but I feel like that number of activities wouldn't be out of the question in Utah either.

Of course, it's nice to keep to ourselves a bit compared to the craziness that we sometimes experienced in Ann Arbor. I really wish (especially this week) that there were more consistency here, especially regarding playgroups, but I guess in exchange for fun we get more sunshine in the winter, so I suppose that's okay. (Who am I kidding I complained plenty this week, even on the sunniest and warmest day yet.)

I also know that I didn't do as much in the community as I perhaps should have because I could keep myself happily busy with more fun things. (Also, it's hard to do things when you don't have a baby that sleeps through the night, especially in the early mornings.) So the emptiness of the schedule is a blessing here because it's made me think about things I could and should be doing. I have some ideas I just need to figure out how to implement.

But in the meantime, here is what we have done to keep ourselves busy lately. Since this post has gotten long, I'll focus on the calm indoor stuff for this post and show the active stuff soon. 

• Reading, Writing, 'Rithmetic

I don't really know what I'm doing, and we're not consistent about it, but we all have fun learning together! (This is probably Joseph-centric, but it is so fun to see what Matthew picks up on too.)

We like to do reading time with the white board. I think the watermelon gas station was made out of Legos, and there's probably a picture of it somewhere.

The day we learned about "ow." Pretty much the best story ever.

If you're going to teach about addition, you might as well make it look cool. If he's making pyramids out of Jenga blocks we talk about triangular numbers then too. We've gotten into negative numbers once or twice too talking about subtraction. Most of it probably doesn't stick but exposure counts for a lot.

The first book he read by himself. I'm not sure how much of it he had memorized, but it seemed like he was reading.

Very occasionally, he will pick up a book and try to read it. He got through a few pages of Horton Hears a Who!  I had to help with lots of words that he spelled to me, but it was so exciting that he tried it.

When we couldn't go to Chick-Fil-A because of the nor'easter on Thursday, we made our house into Chick-Fil-A. 

• Story time

If it were up to Matthew, we would spend hours every day sitting on a couch, covered by a blanket, and reading board books. He is so funny about so many books -- what he has to point out every time, what he has started calling a tauntaun thanks to the Star Wars book, how he has so much of Little Blue Truck memorized -- but it's funnier in person.

Joseph is fine with most any book right now. He likes to be there for the board books and he likes to be there for the chapter books. We are reading Ramona the Pest and just finished listening to Farmer Boy in the car, and it's amazing how emotionally invested he gets in the books. "I wanted you to skip that part!" is what he says for most any part that involves conflict of any kind.

• Building 

Both boys love to build, though one likes to destroy more than the other (much to the chagrin of the other). We cycle through Legos, puzzles, electronic snap kits, small Legos, trains, and blocks until I decide I'm sick of cleaning up that particular toy and hide it for a week or two.

The other day I went and did other stuff and he told me he built the one where "there's the thing that stores all the energy so the light doesn't work." "The capacitor?" "Yeah. I built the one with the capacitor."

He liked to build these puzzles on top of each other.

He also liked to build things on top of each other, which is how we discovered they had the exact same shapes.

It's mostly fun to break Joseph's creations, but he does like building his own stuff as well.

  

Most everything Joseph builds he likes to take a picture of. Our camera is full to the brim of various lego robots and airplanes and houses and block towers so that he can rebuild them when Matthew breaks them. He was shocked when I told him I wasn't really allowed to take pictures of my legos because it was a waste of film.

• Crafts and coloring

These are less frustrating than they were a year ago, so that's good. Matthew also really likes to color . . . almost as much as he likes to throw crayons when he's done. He says "mess, mess, mess" in agitated tones whenever he gets marker on his hands.

We still make birthday cards, but we've also been branching out to other sorts of crafts.

Rain maker. You can't let a good paper towel roll go to waste.

The groundhog can pop out of the slit in the paper. 

Monster Valentine love note box.

One day we drew things that we loved. "Are you going to draw me first, Mommy? Because you LOOOOVE me!!!" I did. And then he drew me. (I think my picture of Joseph was on the back, and that boy I drew was just a demonstration of how to not draw stick figures.)

We celebrated Laura Ingalls Wilder's 150th birthday with this log cabin. And by not having any hot water starting the next day. And being homebound for like 4 straight days. How did they stay sane.

Painting the snow. Laura Ingalls never had watercolors so she never got to do this with all the snow. Sad.

• Playing

And then there's just lots of playing. Lots of dancing, lots of acting out animal movements to a little magic wand we got for Christmas, lots of running, lots of hide and seek, lots of wrestling with Dad, etc. Kevin has had to help with one blanket fort so far this winter, and I haven't had to do any, and that's been just fine.

Everything cost like $8 at this store.

 

One of his cute customers who was also good at shoplifting. Couldn't blame him.

Lining up cars on the couch. He isn't quite as obsessed with cars as he was several weeks ago, but they are still his favorite. I find them lined up all over the place.

A box this big can't have anything more exciting than diapers in it, but luckily the box itself is its own fun.

So, we survive. I still go stir crazy, and I desperately wish Joseph had the same kind of friendships he had in Michigan so that he could play with someone who wasn't boring like me or too little like Matthew, but we survive.

And luckily, there's plenty to do outside the house, too. (to be continued)

Hudson River Valley

A few weeks ago, I was looking ahead at the weather and saw that Saturday was going to have warm, sunny weather (at least for January standards).

I began to make plans. We had to do something outside! We had to take advantage of it!

I first thought about going to New York City. We haven't made it there yet, and it looked like we could find a lot of fun, kid-friendly activities to do, especially around Central Park. I called my sister in New Jersey and we began to make plans. We decided against New York when I looked into the crowds that would be in the area that day.

So we did what I often do when I'm not quite brave enough to commit to the main cool thing -- find reasonable substitutes (see my Napping Bear Sandbox series, for example).

What did we want?

• Time with the Paulsons
• Time outside
• Places for our kids to run around
• Maybe some museums
• Food
• Not too much driving
• Mostly free stuff.

The zoo seemed like a pretty good option, but the only one at the halfway point was the Bronx zoo, which was more expensive than we wanted for this excursion. We found some things to do in Connecticut that weren't too far -- dinosaur parks, waterfalls, museums -- but they didn't quite fit the criteria of being halfway between New Jersey and Connecticut. Besides, being in nature in winter is kind of lame when there aren't mountains for scenery, even if the weather is good. At least, it's lame if you have to drive for it.

So we started looking for what was halfway between us that wasn't NYC. Just north of the city is the Hudson River Valley full of mansions, rivers, and charming villages. As I looked online for cool playgrounds in the area, it seemed parents rated playgrounds most highly based on their safety features, rather than anything actually cool . . . but then again, we were going with 1-year-olds who didn't care that much about coolness.

By Friday night, we had the itinerary mostly formed. All the cool mansions in the area fell off the list as we realized they were closed for the winter, and I had learned from visiting Versailles that paying lots of money to see opulence isn't my cup of tea. So that was okay. That's what Google Images is for.

The next morning, we set off with loads of sandwiches and snacks to see what the lower Hudson River Valley had to offer in the middle of January. Our first stop was a museum in Yonkers (yes, we talked and sang a lot about Hello, Dolly as we pulled in). Once the Paulsons arrived, we began our tour of the mansion attached to the museum. (I have much more patience for mansions that are not outlandishly expensive). Kaylie was good company, providing commentary on the elegance and details and wondering aloud if people actually read the books they had in their parlors. 

After that, we explored the rest of the museum. One of the hallways was full of dreamy landscape pictures of the Hudson River (the Hudson River School didn't get its name from nowhere, after all). Downstairs there were a few exhibits on the Civil War.

One room was full of paintings about the battles themselves. Some were a little gruesome (in almost humorous ways), which made us sort of wonder what kind of person would want that hanging in their front room. I mean, you should definitely have art depicting important events, but all the same I feel like it would be hard to find a buyer.

The little ones were getting antsy, so we wanted to find the toy room, but we first were sidetracked by the discovery of the cardboard art room and then the ecosystem room. (Who can really resist a room with buttons, even if they're just teaching you about erosion?) 

After several magical minutes in the toy room watching our kids instead of wrestling with them, we headed up to Tarrytown and adjacent Sleepy Hollow to see what they had to offer when the mansions were closed and the headless horsemen were hibernating.

The answer, of course, is that it had cute buildings, a park with decent playgrounds (that seemed safe enough, too), and more good company. 

They loved running around, especially when Kaylie was chasing them.

Joseph was happy to have his bike with him.

The pictures of these stone bridges were half the reason we even bothered coming. They were pretty fun for those on bikes or in strollers.

I took this because we didn't have many pictures together. I think I meant for the Paulsons to be in it too but we forgot.

When I took the picture just above, we were on different sides of water, and the only way we knew to reach each other was by climbing up and then down a flight of stairs. Derek was sure there was a better way.

When we decided we were hungry, we walked downtown, admiring the charming town as we went. After eating some forgettable pizza, we headed back to our cars and then headed our separate ways. 

If I'm being fully honest with myself, what I am craving most these days when it comes to recreation are things like movies, plays, museums where I don't have to push a stroller, and restaurants where I don't accidentally buy $4.99 quesadillas for kids who don't even eat them. (It's almost like I should find a babysitter in the ward or something.) But a close 5th is definitely spending time with family, especially my own siblings. I forget most of the conversations we have, but I do remember that we spend a lot of time laughing.

So this was a really good day.