The day before kindergarten

Today, Joseph wanted to exercise with me. It quickly turned into this:

And then, after I cleaned off the smudge on the lens, we got this:

Can he just stay like this forever?

Triplets game continued

I'm back from my trip, so it's time for part two! (I actually meant to publish this while I was out for the wedding, and some of my family got to guess, but I forgot to publish it for real.)

So, now that you can compare babies, can you tell which one is which?

Whale

Blue Striped

Frog on couch

 

Frog on towel

 

Mommy and me

 

Yellow

 

Dinosaur (I know  . . . but there really is a way to tell them all apart!)

Oh to grace how great a debtor

Yesterday morning I went to city hall to get Jacob's birth certificate. When the lady at the desk asked for my ID, I reached into my purse and pulled my wallet out to show her my driver's license. A thought suddenly popped into my mind.

"You're going to leave your wallet here."

Or, more precisely,

"If you don't put your wallet back in your purse right now, you're going to leave it here."

No I won't, I thought. I'll be careful! It's on my mind now so I'll pay extra attention to it! Besides, there's no point putting it back since I'll just have to pay with a credit card that'll I have to put back in my wallet and then back in the purse.

While I waited for the certificate, I took Jacob out of the stroller since he was fussing and walked around with him, keeping an eye on my wallet and purse on the desk the whole time. When I went back to the desk to move the stroller out of the way for another man, they told me the certificate was ready.

"That'll be 20 dollars," they told me, and I reached for a credit card. "No, we just take cash," so I pulled a bill out instead. They handed me the birth certificate and I was overcome with a flood of memories as I saw the name of the doctor, the time of birth, and Jacob's weight at birth. I put him back in the stroller, debated whether I wanted to put the certificate in an envelope or leave it unfolded (I opted for the envelope), and walked the half mile back to where I had found free parking.

Later that day, I claimed a free baby jumper on my ward Facebook page. The owner texted me asking when I'd like to pick it up. I offered to come at 6:30. She offered us s'mores when we came. I offered information that the eclipse was peaking right then, not 6:45 as she'd heard. And then, hours later, as she and her husband were offering us seats at their firepit, I had a thought. Look for your wallet.

And so I did. It wasn't in my purse, but I figured it was in the house, so there was no reason to worry. We had a lot of fun chatting with them and watching kids run around as evening turned to night. Finally, we headed back home only to find that the wallet wasn't there.

"But I had had my wallet on my mind! I was thinking about it that whole time at Vital Records!" I told Kevin. But as I retraced my steps through the day, I realized there was nowhere else it could be but there.

"Well, it's not the worst place to lose a wallet," I thought to myself, but we went through and froze accounts anyway just to be safe. I went to bed feeling incredibly sheepish but also incredibly grateful that I had noticed my wallet was gone. I had no immediate plans to go shopping or even driving, so it could have easily been days before I noticed it was missing. I imagined discovering my wallet was missing at an airport desk and the ensuing panic that would have caused.

Last night and this morning I would glance at the clock and think, "10 more hours before the moment of truth." "25 more minutes before the moment of truth." I called right when Vital Statistics opened, but since it was just an automated message Kevin dropped me off there to ask in person.

"I think I left my wallet," I said, and the woman at the desk smiled and nodded. Within a minute I had it back with all contents untouched. I dropped Kevin off at work and that was that. No harm done.

And it all felt like a miracle to me. It was miracle enough that nothing had been stolen, but I was even more amazed that I had felt prompted to look for the wallet. I didn't deserve that thought, I kept thinking. I didn't deserve my mistake to be covered like that.

Of course, it's strange talking about deserving anything in this context. If cash or credit cards had been stolen, would I have deserved that because of my carelessness? Of course not! But I wouldn't have been surprised by that either depending where the wallet had gotten lost. Regardless of what I deserved, once I made the mistake the outcome was out of my hands.

"This is grace," I kept thinking. "Don't think about it terms of 'deserving.' I didn't deserve either prompting about my wallet. I don't deserve a missing wallet. I don't deserve a stolen wallet. I don't deserve a safe wallet. This isn't about deserving anything. That's not what grace is about. It's just about God giving you something good, about covering your mistakes."

I thought back to Sunday, when Kevin had had to run home last minute to get bread for the Sacrament. I had been cranky all morning for pretty much every reason a mom of 3 little kids whose husband was at a lengthy ward council could be cranky for, and this bugged me too.

"Doctrine and Covenants 27," I whispered to Kevin before he left. "You don't have to go home. We could use animal crackers from the nursery."

He smiled and headed home anyway. I sighed. I was tired of Kevin (and sometimes me) picking up the slack for so many things. I resented the idea of grace if grace meant that people cover other people's mistakes.

However, by the next evening, I was so grateful that grace could cover mistakes. I had lost my pride about my organized mind, and now I remembered that I was just as human as others when it came to forgetting things. Any traces of former impatience ebbed away as I realized I was relying on others' goodness now to get out of a bad situation. It was grace that allowed a turn of events where I was able to sit still for long enough to think about my wallet again, and grace that brought it to my mind again. All I could say for myself is that I had listened.

But what if I hadn't forgotten the wallet? What if I had remembered it even without the prompting? Would grace have mattered then?

I still think it would have. There is always a gap between reality and perfection which can only be filled with grace. When things are running smoothly, it's easier to forget about the grace that's keeping the machine running in the first place, but it's still there. However, sometimes we need reminders to bring it back to the forefront. That's why we we're taught in Ether 12:27 that God gives us weakness. We are expected, even designed to fall short sometimes so that we can feel that sense of helplessness, that realization that we aren't in control. It's in those moments that we have no way forward except to pray.

And that's when we find that God's grace really is sufficient. And He likes to give us good surprises.

Triplets

Do you remember two years ago when I had a game with pictures of baby Joseph and baby Matthew and you had to guess which was which?

Well, I just reverted all the posts to drafts so you can't cheat and use them today for this year's version of the game. After all, I only have so many pictures of the boys in matching outfits and poses so I have to reuse some.

So, without further ado, can you figure out which pictures are of each boy?

As in years past, we have the

Whale Outfit

Blue Striped

Frog on couch

Frog on towel

Yellow

Mommy and me

 and, keeping it tricky as always,
Dinosaur

Happy guessing!

The Hunker-Down Year

Today marks one year since we turned in our keys and left Michigan.

It's been a good year. We've had a lot of fun experiences while living here -- visiting Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, and New York; participating in the Hartford Temple Open House; seeing a few church history sites such as the Johnson farm on the way out and Harmony, PA in May; getting to play at parks in New Haven and surrounding cities; attending church and Institute activities, enjoying the art museum, concerts, and bell tower at Yale; getting Joseph involved in gymnastics and soccer; working with the kids and youth in the ward; making lots of new friends; and getting to see Kaylie and Derek in New Jersey pretty often. (And having a baby, who is still very cute.)

All in all, though, it's felt like a really quiet year. Although there were playgroups and play dates, for the most my boys just played and fought with each other day in and day out. Joy School gradually faded away by the winter time, and baby signing time disappeared after one bad snowstorm. I didn't teach piano lessons or take voice lessons. We had people over for dinner a few times but not as often as in years past. We didn't even really get to know our neighbors all that well (language barrier plus we never saw most of them), and honestly any efforts to make our complex look lived in (such as chalk or hanging door wreaths) were shot down by the property manager (in the case of the door wreaths, he rescinded permission after 10 months when I was a very emotional 39 weeks pregnant).

Of course, a lot of the quiet is my own fault, and a lot of that is because I was pregnant and oh so tired and oh so shy for oh so much of the last year. And a lot of the time I preferred the quiet to the constant stream of activities in Ann Arbor. In general though, I've found that I prefer that I prefer exercising, learning, working, playing, etc. in a group. So here's to trying harder to get a bit more involved this year! (Kindergarten should help.)

Here are a few things I discovered this year:

• Sometimes it's just okay to be a warm body. If I look back at the times I was most useful this past year, they were all when I was just at home not doing much and available to do some hardcore babysitting. Those times it didn't matter how much school I've had or how many years of piano lessons I've taken or how good I am at writing long detailed emails. What mattered was that someone had a medical emergency and I was able to watch kids in a moment of crisis. I definitely prefer using those other skills to babysitting (and really, I didn't actually babysit that much this year) but it was still nice to be able to help babysit when those other skills weren't being actively used.
• Similarly, being a warm body was the most important thing I could do at church. There were some crazy Sundays when hardly any adults were around so I played organ last minute, taught a class, taught Sharing Time, taught Singing Time, played piano, and took care of irreverent children. (Not all of those the same Sunday, but as many of those as was humanly possible.) It was good to have the knowledge and creativity to fill those roles, but being a warm body was what mattered most.
• Years ago when I was a Primary pianist one of my biggest problems with the calling was that I wanted to be consulted more -- help choose songs, be asked my opinion about reverence and room setup, be included in decision making, etc. Now that I've served in a Primary Presidency I know that being consulted still doesn't mean you get your way. Haha!
• I became of even firmer opinion that people should check their email each time they look at their phone and respond to most things within 24 hours. And respond. Oh, respond.
• The bigger your family gets the easier it is to just do things with family. Even having two kids has made it that much easier to not worry so much about your kids playing with friends. I still feel bad for taking Joseph from a neighborhood full of friends, but at least he has had Matthew to play with him (ie wreck his stuff).
• I don't have any plans to homeschool, and a lot of that is because it would probably turn into unschooling. But it was really fun coming up with activities on the fly with Joseph and Matthew, and it was nice to have lots of books to learn things from. I guess the anatomy book we got from a yard sale actually came in handy.
• I just read an article about a reformed white supremacist who said, "I believe that people become radicalized, or extremist, because they're searching for three very fundamental human needs: identity, community and a sense of purpose." To be honest, I felt like I lost a bit of all three of those this year with only my family and my Primary calling to fill my time. (Of course, this has been a rough year regarding identity anyway -- what happens when anything you happen to agree with mildly somehow puts you in the same camp as extremists who feel the same?) At any rate, it's been important to discover that I need at least one other serious social outlet in order to feel whole. (Contenders right now include volunteering at school and figuring out how to share my hymn arrangements [which I've conceded will involve other people]).
• This has kind of been a hunker-down ward in that callings were spread thin enough that most non-essential callings weren't filled (or insufficiently filled, like Cub Scouts, haha . . . I still have such strong opinions about that). On one hand it really reminded me of what my bishop said at BYU -- his number one job was to make sure everyone got to take the Sacrament each week. This happened every week, and that's really what matters most. On the other hand . . . man oh man I've missed ward choir and scheduled playgroups and Zumba. I don't think church necessarily has to fill a ton of social functions, but it nice to have them in addition to the more important spiritual functions.
• I still don't like shopping and don't like going on the freeway to get to the grocery store. But I'm used to it. Which is a big deal for me.
• Perhaps the most important thing I've learned this quiet year is that even though things are quite different from Ann Arbor in a lot of ways, I'm much the same. The same things that bug me here bugged me there. The same things I liked there I like here. Even if I lived in an absolutely perfect place with perfect friends and perfect proximity to stores and parks, I would probably still find things that bugged me just because of my own personality. So, you may as well learn to be happy where you are. And it's always possible.

Especially if there are mountains to hike.

Easy and hard

How is it with three?

This has been my best and speediest recovery yet (even with the same tearing as the other times) . . . which is just what I needed those first few days to balance out a rather disappointing postpartum stay in the hospital.

Jacob is my sleepiest baby yet . . . which is just what I need while Joseph and Matthew squabble over everything.

Jacob is already a smiley baby . . . and yet his wakeful times are still fussy and getting him down for naps is still tricky.

Everything is easier, and everything is harder. It's easier to nurse because I know how and harder to nurse because Matthew wants to be on my lap too. It's easier to get out of the house because it beats being in the house and harder to get out because there are just that many more bodies to buckle in. It's easier to stay calm because I've done it before and harder to stay calm because there's so much at stake.

So I laugh and lower my expectations and let myself enjoy things as much as possible.

And since these boys are easy to love, it's not too hard to have three.

Two heroes

Two babies

I love how they love each other

Jacob's birth story

"This is the best thing I've ever read," I thought to myself after reviewing Matthew's birth story a few weeks ago.

"There is absolutely no way I'm doing that again," I thought immediately after that. If the hour of transition hadn't been bad enough what with my moaning and dry sobbing through endless, continuous contractions, then the ten or so minutes of pushing through a crown of fire and thorns certainly sealed the deal. I was not going to have pushing like that ever again. I was getting an epidural.

That is, I was, if I ever started having regular contractions. I began having contractions early Sunday morning but I knew from previous labors that they didn't quite hurt enough to count, nor were they consistent enough for me to count. I scheduled an appointment for myself Monday morning (my actual due date) to see if they could do something to turn my self-diagnosed prodromal labor into real labor. Although it was a bit disheartening to learn that 30 hours of irregular contractions had only dilated me to 2 cm and 50% effaced, the visit was worth it to watch the nurse watch my tummy for a good 5 minutes during a stress test. The belts were a little tight so the baby in me did all he could to kick them off. For most of the stress test he was sticking his elbows and knees out to create visible bulges across my abdomen and rolling around to create ripples across my tummy.

The nurse stood there just staring for several minutes. "I've been in labor and delivery for 5 years, and I've never seen anything like this," she said. I had spent several nights enjoying this gymnastics show for the past few months, but this particular routine combined with her reaction made me giggle. After she left, the doctor stripped my membrane and I hoped for the best.

But it was not to be. The rest of the day was uneventful until my parents pulled up in their minivan which was filled to the brim with canned goods, boxes, and even a bassinet. They had made their long trek across most of the United States to help us for almost two weeks. It was as magical as it sounds.

The next few days we showed them around parts of New Haven -- the food trucks, bits of Yale, some parks, etc. My mom did an excellent job scouting out several of the grocery stores and filling our home with their contents.

But still no baby. Still no baby.

Lady Antepartum

 Then one afternoon that began to change. Although my contractions never made it to my back (which I had used to distinguish real contractions from fake ones for my last two labors), they became more uncomfortable and more regular as afternoon turned into evening. While Kevin and my dad watched Spiderman (now joining Big Hero 6 as one of the worst movies ever because I was exposed to it during labor) I timed the contractions until I was convinced they weren't going away.

"I'm going to call the hospital, but I'm going to time it so that they hear me try to talk through a contraction," I announced. At this point the contractions were about 6-7 minutes apart, so when it seemed like a good time I called. They assured me the doctor would call back soon. When the doctor did call, the timing was off.

"You sound awfully cheerful," she remarked. Rats, I thought. "You should wait another hour," she said.

"This is my third baby," I said, but it didn't change her mind. So I started throwing random items into the hospital bag and then sat around waiting for Spiderman to end. Once it was done Kevin and I headed to the hospital. Although I was grateful that I didn't have any contractions in the car, it made me worry. What if this didn't progress? What if all my contractions hadn't helped move things along? Luckily, once we arrived at the hospital, the contractions came every other minute so I stopped worrying. Then it was just more of the waiting game, bracing myself through the "internal organ hugs" (to quote Bunmi Laditan) and losing all traces of my previous cheerfulness with each hug.

Eventually the doctor showed up and checked me. "You're almost at 7 cm," she said, which wasn't too much of a surprise. Kevin and I walked with the nurse over to the delivery room where I made it clear I wanted an epidural. "Pushing hurt a lot last time. I don't want that again." She agreed heartily and the anesthesiologist showed up soon after.

When he stuck the needle in my back I flinched pretty hard, so when he told me "You're the best patient of the day," I didn't believe him, and I told him so. "You say that to everyone."

"Wow," he responded incredulously.

"He really doesn't," the nurse promised. "You're doing awesome."

The anesthesiologist kept me distracted from the rest of the epidural process by talking about Gordon Hayward and the NBA in general, and then before I knew it my thighs were beginning to feel numb. Hallelujah! I was laid down onto my left side to get it all numb, and then the doctor showed up with some residents and med students.

"We're going to break your water, and that will probably speed up labor quite a bit." Once she had done that, she said, "If I don't hear from you I'll come back in 2 hours. But . . . I'll probably hear from you before then."

I then lay down on my right side to get that side numb so I could take a quick nap. I could tell I was going through transition, but the epidural had numbed the pain on my left side and taken the edge of the right side so it was a lot more bearable. Within about two minutes of closing my eyes, I felt something.

"I need to push," I told Kevin. He pushed the call button and the doctor came back in. The baby had descended further into the birth canal, but it still wasn't quite time. She left and I settled back down to take a nap.

Within five minutes, I felt the urge to push again. I didn't care if I was crying wolf. I needed to push! The doctor came back in and said she would stick around until the baby was born since it was definitely happening soon. The resident checked me and I had gone from the -1 station (according to the doctor's measurement a few minutes earlier) to the -3 station (that is, the baby had gone back up the birth canal). The doctor made kind of a funny face at that impossibility but let it slide. "We'll give it one more minute and then you'll be good to push."

"I don't know if I want to push," I said. "I don't think the epidural has kicked in enough."

"You should be numb there, so don't worry."

And then the pushing began. I figured out pretty fast that I wasn't numb in that region, and I also figured out pretty fast that it hurt. I let out the same primeval wails of agony and wordless roars as I had almost exactly 2 years earlier.

In moments of lucidity, I had the same thought over and over. "Seriously? Seriously? Seriously? I got that needle in my back to avoid this and I still feel it? Seriously? Seriously?"

I reminded myself that as soon as it was done it wouldn't hurt anymore. Soon a baby would slide out and all would be good. I just had to get him out! After 11 minutes of fire and thorns, he came out clutching his umbilical cord and screaming up a storm.

And then, oh, sweet relief! That's a big baby!" the doctor announced. "Do you want to guess how big?"

"8 pound range," I said conservatively. After I cuddled with him for a few happy minutes, the umbilical cord stopped pulsing so they cut the cord and weighed him. 8 pounds, 8 ounces. Big enough, that's for sure.

And absolutely perfect.

We sure love him!