Word made flesh

I was recently thinking about how much my religion is often as much about the tangible as it is the spiritual.

For example, religion asks that we not only have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. It also asks us to take bread and water each week.

It asks us not only to follow Jesus and keep His commandments but to put on a jumpsuit and walk into a font of water to get baptized.

It asks us not only to obey God's commandments and live the gospel of Jesus Christ but to make tangible covenants that show we really mean it.

It even asks not only for people who have died to accept Jesus Christ but to be baptized by proxy by living people in jumpsuits and fonts holding little slips of paper they printed out that morning.

It's as if religion says, "It's not enough for your heart to be in it. Your body has to be in it too."

I used to wonder about what there was about the nature of the water or the words that provided the transformative effect to cleanse us or endow us with power beyond what the Holy Ghost accomplished spiritually. But now after having three kids with very literal needs, I don't care that much about the metaphysical or symbolic. Maybe we'll find out someday that most of the tangible things we did were important only symbolically to keep our minds on the right track. Maybe we'll find out it was all literal. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

But I still think there's something to the idea that our body has to be in it just as much as our heart. I think of what Jesus Christ taught about baptism both in the New Testament and in modern scripture. I think about an entire Plan of Salvation that depended on us getting mortal, fragile bodies. And tonight, I think about a little baby born in to tired parents in a tired, confused nation. And I am grateful for his literal, tangible life.

11  And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.

12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

13 Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance.

I'll just leave this here for you

Hinges

"So what kind of hinges do we want?" Kevin asked the other night.

I was shocked. I had to have opinions about hinges? We looked through an online catalog and saw options like brushed nickel, satin nickel, etc. I had never cared about anything less in my life.

You know who does have opinions about hinges? Matthew. The other day he was eating a snack and suddenly had a full blown meltdown about hinges because he didn't want to crack. I mean, technically the song says "I've got to have hinges or else I would crack" but I guess he took it to mean hinges would make him crack and so we had to reassure him about 50 times that he didn't have hinges. Hopefully he won't crack when he learns that we chose brushed nickel hinges.

It's not like I don't have lots of opinions about homes. I have opinions about built-in bookcases (not appropriate for rooms you can see from the front porch), bathtubs (should have space on the edges for shampoo), microwaves (should not be above ranges nor in the island where the kids can reach), and balusters (should be spelled ballisters and should not be as expensive as they are). But at the same time . . . it would be nice to delegate all the decision making to the people with the most strong opinions in my life. My kids.

But that wouldn't quite work either. I asked Joseph which color the house should be and he said the color of his coat. I'm assuming he's talking about the royal blue part and not the orange part, but even that would be a bit intense. The interior paint colors would follow a similar color theme. And of course, if it were up to them each room in the house would primarily be a toy room.

So I guess the decisions are up to Kevin and me (and our moms, who tell us to "do what you want" but also will probably never visit if we choose the wrong paint colors). Windows on a garage. Painted or stained. Linoleum or carpet in the kitchen (just kidding, Mom).

I know that none of this matters in the long run. There are big important things to think about, and cabinets do not fall in that category. But it's still been valuable studying ways to make a house beautiful. It's been mind-stretching to use my imagination all the time, trying to create a space that will require as little thought as possible once it's done. It's a process of knowing when to have a backbone and when to be flexible.

All that said, if I have to think about hinges ever again I might crack.

Cake

Right now Kevin is in the kitchen working on his birthday cake. We started the tradition of making our own birthday cake years ago, and we have no plans of changing it yet. Every year I begin my hunt anew for the perfect treat, except for the time I accidentally made the same dry brownie cake I had made 2 years earlier. I've had a few things that were pretty close to perfect, but nothing is quite the holy grail of birthday desserts.

On the other hand, Kevin discovered a recipe for cheesecake with an Oreo crust and Snickers on top, and he's been fine with that since 2014. I don't blame him -- it is really delicious.

But I didn't think my family would be too interested in it since I didn't ever remember eating much cheesecake growing up. Nor did I think they would be too interested in the cheesecake that Kevin's parents had gotten while we were in town for Thanksgiving. It had gone untouched for days since we had so much other pie to eat, and I thought it might stay untouched if we took it back to my parents' house. But my mother-in-law insisted, so we took a big chunk of it with us.

The minute we showed my mom what we brought, she was really excited. "I love cheesecake!" she said.

"You do?????" I asked.

"Yes. Don't you remember? My friend Meg had a cheesecake party and I came home with her recipes and made a different cheesecake every month one year."

"Right . . ." I said as I tried to remember any cheesecake I had ever eaten in my own home. I guess I had filed it away with all the real Christmas trees my parents ever had (I only have memories for the fake Christmas tree).

"Later, I would make a cheesecake and have a fudge sauce and a raspberry sauce that we could pour on."

That I did remember, and I apologized for almost convincing Kevin to not bring home any cheesecake.

Anyway, I found this song a few months ago on lds.org and I'm wondering if I sing it over and over if the memory of all those monthly cheesecakes will come back.

I suppose maybe we should make another verse about "When Father bakes his own birthday cheesecake."

Bedtime

When we moved to Utah, one of the first things I noticed was how thoroughly our bedtime routine collapsed. For months it was a long, arduous affair like it had never been before to get the kids in bed and keep them there. We tried having the older boys in separate beds in the same room. In the same bed. In separate rooms. And every night it felt like it took at least 3 adults 90 minutes to make bedtime happen compared to the one person who did it in Connecticut while the other washed dishes.

So we got frustrated, we tried all sorts of consequences, and we kept on tweaking. And gradually, we've come up on some rules that have made things easier. As fun as it was to read library books on the main level, we realized that dragged things out too much so we said that reading books couldn't happen until everything else was done (like brushing teeth), and then we could only read books that were already in the basement (no going back upstairs for any reason). We made a rule that they had to sit on the couch while we read scriptures rather than playing with toys in the same room (and made that rule easier by scratching their backs while we read). We said that parents couldn't snuggle in bed with kids (there are full and queen size beds, so there was room for us, but it was dragging things out). We did our best to make sure Jacob wasn't hungry and was wearing a brand of diaper that didn't soak through. And while we didn't have an exact minute that bedtime started, we did our best to finish what we started in a timely manner.

To our surprise, the biggest thing that helped was switching Joseph to Matthew's room. We had put Matthew in a different room because he was keeping everyone awake, but when Jacob needed a bit of sleep training we put Joseph in with Matthew temporarily so that Jacob wouldn't wake him up. When Jacob generally started sleeping through the night (minus a few teething nights), we told Joseph he could sleep in his old bed again. But he wanted to stay with Matthew because the two of them would play with stuffed animals and transformers in bed for a while after we tucked them in. There have been occasional squabbles, but for the most part everyone goes to bed and stays in bed.

Most of my bedtime rules were pronounced in moments of desperation, but I see now why they worked. They gave the kids more boundaries and more intimacy. It's good to know where you belong rather than being spread throughout the house. It's good to have to sit on the couch, especially if you get a back scratch. It's good to know that you can still get all the cuddles you want but that your parents do not belong in your bed. And it's good to know that your brother wants to play with you a little bit after lights are out.

I guess this is what parenting is about. Predictability, security, boundaries, and love.

And teething. Always teething. Even the 6 year old.

Change and gratitude

I think about change sometimes. How do cultures change? How do people change? How do I change?

The first realization I had about that was that change usually doesn't happen until there's no way to avoid it. When I moved back home, I was surprised to see that, despite all the growth in the area, there still weren't sidewalks along the older roads.

Where the sidewalk ends

"They don't bother unless there's a new development," my mom explained. They had petitioned for sidewalks along that main road ever since they moved in, but no one had bothered because no one wanted to foot the bill. Compared to other projects, it was pretty easy to ignore. Something being a good idea didn't mean it was going to happen.

Something similar stood out to me as I read Hidden Figures. It was the World War II labor shortage that first caused people to reach out to African American women to work for NASA. Once they did, the whole country was blessed because of the brilliant women who solved some incredibly hard problems. And yet, without the original labor shortage, all of these women would have been an untapped resource for perhaps several more decades. All too often, change comes only when the usual options are exhausted.

Sometimes it is easier recognize the need for change than to create the change. This is often true for our own habits and mindsets. We may know that the usual options of coping and complaining aren't working anymore, but how do we make the actual change? There are books and podcasts out there, but it can be a chore constantly examining your thoughts and mindsets. It's even possible to listen to those podcasts and come away thinking of people in your life who need the advice more than you. How do you enact change within yourself?

Then the answer came to me: Change is hard, but gratitude is easy.

If you approach life with gratitude, so many problems can disappear. Perhaps you can't (or shouldn't) avoid all conflict, but its resolution can come without ill will on your part. When you live with abundance, there are fewer battles to fight. And best of all, personality flaws like laziness, impatience, and selfishness will melt away in the warmth of gratitude and a giving mindset.

How does change happen? I still don't entirely know, but I think it always begins with a foundation of gratitude.

Veterans and Voices

Most of my Internet browsing these days is based on house stuff. Cabinets, doors, windows, all of that. It's interesting to us right now, but it probably makes for boring reads for most people.

So here is some stuff I've read that doesn't have to do with home design. Most of it was today because I don't remember what I read further back, but oh well.

First, last night Kevin and I were talking about voices. I feel like a lot of people with big personalities also have big voices -- usually pleasant, melodic voices that really carry. So I looked up why some voices carry more than others and got a fun little lesson about vocal cords.

https://www.livescience.com/22191-loudmouth-voices-carry.html

Next, in honor of Veteran's Day, here are a few articles I read about World War I.

http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2008/07/31/jens-leslie-stevenson-called-to-serve/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II,_German_Emperor

So let's talk for just a minute about Kaiser Wilhelm. I know that people have a habit of comparing politicians to Hitler (especially Bush, Obama, and Trump), but I have to say . . . Kaiser Wilhelm definitely reminds me a lot of our current head of state. Hoo boy. Wonder what Wilhelm's Twitter feed would have looked like.

This next link takes you to an image of a lovely letter written to Major Brent Taylor's family. I am so grateful he was a light while he was in Afghanistan:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/maj-brent-taylor-s-family-gets-letter-afghan-military-colleague-n931911

I was especially touched by how he helped his colleagues value their wives and children more. I have really been thinking a lot about a slight variation of the 2nd Article of Faith: "We believe that women will be punished for their own sins, and not for Eve's transgression." For so much of the history of the world, women have been treated as inferior and some people look to Genesis to justify it. But we know that that is a wicked, false tradition. I still see the cultural baggage from it here and there (sometimes in places I think it least belongs), but overall I am grateful to be in a society that sees women as equals. (I also think the lack of drinking culture helps a lot with that.)

As for books that I've read . . . as always, I'm more likely to reread than read, so there haven't been a ton. But here are a few.

Warbreaker -- I was thinking the other day that I don't have all that much nerd cred, engineering degree aside. I mean, the last Marvel movie I really saw was Avengers in 2012, and I just saw that because everyone said you should go see a movie before you have a baby. So I think I'm going to try and catch up on all the Brandon Sanderson books because I've already got a good headstart. I think all I'm missing now is . . . each of his 1000+ page books. Sigh.
Anyway, back to Warbreaker. It was fun. It was clever. I guessed a lot of the plot.

A Gentleman in Moscow -- I'm only about 100 pages in, but so far I'm enjoying it. It's not a page-turner (except that I turn pages ahead to see if I'm right about my guesses), but it's still lovely. I read Warbreaker about as fast as I can eat a bowl of popcorn, but this is much denser. I'll do my best to finish it.

Educated  -- Read most of it (skipped a lot of the beginning because I didn't want to read about neglect and physical abuse). I liked it when she got to BYU and started learning about things like going to the doctor. I had some quibbles with it, but when I tried to write them down they came out wrong. So you can ask me in person if you care!


And last but not least . . . This xkcd really made me laugh. https://xkcd.com/2065/

Red Ribbon Week

This week at Joseph's school is Red Ribbon Week. This means that the trees have bright red ribbons tied around them, that the kids plant tulips, and that each day they're supposed to wear something with a certain theme.

Nothing this year is too hard to find. Yesterday was "wear red" day and today is "wear your Halloween costume" day. I've heard of schools where kids are supposed to wear camo one day or "dress as what you want to be when you grow up" day. In contrast, crazy hair day and hat day aren't too hard.

Even so, I've been a little bit annoyed at having to come up with outfits for each day. "What do any of these have to do with drugs?" I wonder. What do any of these have to do with the horrible, horrible things that happen because of drugs -- the physical and mental health problems that occur, the ravenous call of addiction, the children traumatized by having parents who can't take care of them, the difficulty in holding a steady job, and the siblings and friends devastated by the loss of loved ones due to an overdose? How can you teach kids about the horrors of drug cartels, about how dangerous borders have become, how much pure evil there is in those who want to enslave and addict anybody they can?

Well, you can't really say all that to a first grader. So you say what they can, and they understand what they can, and in the meantime you do crazy hair days and hold them as close as you can.

***

Halloween always puts me in a bit of a family history mood, so on Monday I gave a lesson for Family Home Evening about what happens after we die. I explained what we do in the Spirit World and then explained that we are resurrected. It wasn't the first time we've explained it, but Joseph understood it better this time.

"We get our bodies back? And they never get sick or hurt? That's so cool!" he exclaimed.

It's not always a doctrine that means a whole lot to me. Bodies are great, but I feel like living with God and families forever matters more than living with them with a corporeal body.

Still, as I think about so many people whose lives have been hurt by drugs, whose bodies and brains have been ravaged by their effects, and who die prematurely because of them, I feel a lot of comfort as I think of the resurrection. We will see our loved ones again, and because of the resurrection, we will see them whole again.

I the Lord have not forgotten my people

This week has been so horrible for so many families. Innocent people have lost their lives to domestic violence, racism, and anti-Semitism, and others have been threatened with bombs.

It is all horrific, but it is equally mind-boggling. How could anyone think another human being deserved to die?

I think I know one answer. As soon as you are unkind to someone, you start to hate them. You start to warp them in your mind so that they deserved what you gave them. This happens with gossip or turning someone into a punchline. It happens with an entire culture built around dehumanizing black people so that you can justify enslaving them. It happens with immigrants, with LGBT people, with people of a different political affiliation.

And today it happened to Jews.

Anti-Semitism is as old as it is bizarre. That a mere one percent of the world's population can be hated by more than ten percent of the world's population defies logic. These verses in 2 Nephi 29 in the Book of Mormon have always seemed to reflect both wrath and bafflement from God:

4. . . . And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?

5 O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient covenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. But behold, I will return all these things upon your own heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people.

7 Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth?

White supremacy has caused many problems in the United States, but I think it can end in this generation. We need to speak up. We need to cling to truth and insist on teaching it. We need to teach that any kind of hate speech (even the casual kind in our own homes) will poison our own soul and warp our own minds. We need to teach gratitude for people of all races and ethnicities who have contributed so much to making our lives better.

And we need to remember what God has said about all His children:

 33 For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.

Moons, Moonmoons, and Submoons

"A few years ago," the Smithsonian Magazine article begins, "an astronomer’s son asked the type of question only kids and genius astrophysicists come up with: Can a moon have a moon?"

I am here to testify that Moons can have Moons. Moons have been having Moons for generations. Furthermore, Moons can marry Moons, become Moon Moons, and have more Moons. Moons can even live with Moons while building Moon homes within a mile of other Moon homes. (According to the Smithsonian Magazine, this distance is necessary for the younger Moon residence to complete its own orbit but still be close enough to take advantage of the older Moon's gravity [or garden].)

Scientists wonder why moons don't have their own pet moons. I have the answer to that. First of all, children are not pets, so when Moons have baby Moons we don't call them pets. Second, Moons don't usually have pets because if they had pets they would have to be dopey wolves named Moon Moon to fit the theme of the family, and no one here likes big dogs.

Although no moons outside of Earth's atmosphere have been shown to have their own submoons, plenty of Moons inside of Earth's atmosphere have. Here is my photographic evidence:

As you can see, there are several Moons orbiting the Grandmoons. (Not to be confused with the other Grandmoons that live in Duchesne, of course.) These Moons or former Moons have all converged on an orbit that now only extends as far from the grandmoons as Arizona. The orbit used to include places such as Michigan, Connecticut, Alabama, New Jersey, Georgia, Costa Rica, and Spain, so the Utah gravity is definitely much stronger now!

Scientists have considered calling the moons of moons "moon-squareds." Kevin and I were of course the original "moon-squared" (see here), so naturally Joseph was called moon-cubed, at least for his first Facebook album. And these days he definitely likes three-dimensional objects, especially paper airplanes and origami animals.

Matthew is our little Moonito right now. He always wants to know how to say things in Spanish, and once when my sister asked how he said his name in Spanish, he said "pantalones."

Matthew also fits a lot of other criteria relating to moons of moons. According to the article, "In order for a submoon to survive, it needs to be small -- about six miles in diameter or less." And he is much, much less than six miles in diameter. But what he lacks in size he makes up for in volume.

Jacob is our mini Moon, and he is learning lots about gravity right now. For the past few weeks, whenever he got upset, he flung himself backwards and landed on whatever was right behind him. Luckily, he now checks behind himself when he's about to do that, and if the ground looks hard, he slowly lowers himself down backwards and then continues his mournful soliloquy.

Most of the time though he's pretty sweet and happy and very content to hug and nuzzle the pet moons we do have (stuffed animals).

Moon Moons. Submoons. Moons-squared. Moonitos. Mini Moons. Whatever science decides to call moons of moons, we're sure glad that our set of Moon babies exists!

Naming conventions

Matthew's got a very straightforward approach to naming his stuffed animals. For example:

"What's your white bear's name?"
"White Bear."
"What's your small black bear's name?"
"Baby bear."
"What's your bird's name?"
"Chick."
"What's your dog's name?"
"Dog."
"What's your other dog's name?"
"Cantalobis."

. . . It turns out there's a Cantalobos pet hotel animal rescue, so I suppose even that last name is almost as straightforward as the others.

Kind of.

Creativity

It wasn't that hard staying off of social media. Most of the appeal for me has been in interacting with friends, and as algorithms became more sophisticated at hiding my posts I felt less invested in sharing on Facebook.

What's been surprising is how little I have wanted to say. My mind isn't coming up with quips suitable for a general audience like it used to. I don't feel like making clever blog posts about our adventures. Honestly, I didn't even take any good pictures of my kids when I wasn't on Instagram for 10 days.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been creative. My mind is constantly coming up with classical pieces combined with Primary songs and hymns. I'm coming up with bedtime stories for the boys. And sometimes I'm still funny (though I don't know how to show that side around kids I work with at school or church).

Maybe in order to immerse ourselves in the bigger creative endeavors that make it onto bucket lists, we have to set aside the smaller creativities -- the tweets, the funny texts, the online communities that rob us of our energy. I know lots of people felt muted by the social media fast, but maybe there doesn't need to be as much talking in the first place.

Or maybe there are just times and seasons for everything, and right now is the time for me to be creative on the piano keyboard rather than the computer keyboard.

And in the meantime, there are always the archives!

I'm . . . not that glad I live in a world where there are Octobers

October 2015 (Michigan): I'm working at my desk on a Sunday afternoon when I look over and see a chipmunk run into the house. I don't remember why the door was open, but the chipmunk took advantage of it, at least for a few seconds.

October 2016 (Connecticut): I'm sitting on the couch looking at my laptop one evening. Kevin is out shopping. Kids are in bed. It's incredibly peaceful. Then all of the sudden, something furry darts out under my legs and scurries away. I realize that I just saw a mouse and stay standing on the couch until Kevin returns. And thus begins a long battle over the next several months. Several mice lose their lives in the battle, and I lose my mind every time I hear any sound.

October 2017 (Connecticut) : It's been a few weeks since the exterminator came, and we feel confident that we are finally mouse free. Kevin goes to Allerton, Illinois for 4 days. He tells me when he comes back that he killed a mouse the morning he left, but he didn't tell me then because he didn't think I wanted to know about it. He was right. But this still means the exterminator was not totally successful, so the war against the mice must continue.

October 2018 (Utah): After 4 months that only produced a half inch of rain total, we are blessed with a downpour of rain over the course of a few days. There is a pump outside the boys' window that is noisy in the night, and in the morning my mom and I investigate to see if there was an animal in the window well that was making part of the noise. There wasn't, so we open the window to get rid of the mustiness that came from the rain. I open my bedroom window a crack as well. It's cold so I close the boys' window pretty quickly but forget entirely about my window.

That night when we go in the room is pretty cold, so I finally close the window. As we're falling asleep I hear what I think is a scratching sound right behind my head where the window is, but I heard one the night before and it was a false alarm, so I'm sure this one is too.

Then at 2:30, I wake to a thumping sound. I open my eyes and see Kevin hitting the curtains. "I'm sure there's something in here," he says. We turn on the lamp and use his cell phone as a flashlight. We (or at least Kevin) search and search under the bed and behind the curtains. Nothing. We decide that we're just crazy but decide to look around one last time.

"There you are," Kevin says to the little brown thing hiding behind a shelf in the corner. And thus begins an epic battle involving shoes, shifting shelves, closet doors, and one terrified little rodent. At the end of the battle, we can only see its tail. The tail twitches for a few seconds, and then all is still.

The next few minutes are dedicated to cleanup. The next few hours are dedicated to trying to fall back asleep amidst fussing from a teething Jacob, trying to forget that an animal was right next to my head while I slept, fretting about other creatures who might have also entered the house during the 14 hours of easy access, and wondering if hantavirus is still an issue. But when morning finally comes, we find out it was a vole, not a mouse, and only voles fall into the window well and can't get out. So at least we won't get bubonic plague.

Maybe it's not a world with Octobers that's the problem. Maybe it's just a world with rodents.

But they sure seem to like October a lot.

Visions by night, again

In my mind's eye I saw a calendar with the church curriculum on it. On one day it said, "We will no longer be using the Teachings of Andrew Jackson in our quorum meetings." A few days down it said, "We will no longer be using the Teachings of Zachary Taylor in our quorum meetings."

Dream me asked my dream mom about it, and she said they were phasing those out when she was a young adult, and they weren't that uplifting.

General Conference better come fast because my mind is making up some pretty wild rumors.

Thy seed shall multiply

I walk Joseph to school most mornings. As we walk, we usually talk about math, though sometimes he wants to learn about different countries or science.

As we started our walk today, I asked, "What's six times seven?"

He was quiet for a little while. Then he said, "42!" I asked how he got it, and he said he added 7 six times to get it. I then asked what seven times seven was. Forty-nine.

Then I had an idea. What's six times eight? This one took him a while before I reminded him he could just add 6 to 42. Oh. 48.

"49 is right next to 48, and 7 is right next to 6 and 8." We tried again with 9 times 9 (81) and 10 times 8 (80). "81 is right next to 80, and 9 is between 8 and 10." He needed some help with 9 times 11, but by then he got the pattern.

"What is 10 times 12?" Easy, 120, he said.

"What is 11 times 11?" Our walk became quiet again as he thought about it. Then he said it slowly. "One hundred  . . . and . . . twenty-one."

Then that gave me an idea. I explained that 11 times 11 is 121. Then 111 times 111 is 12321. He then got that 1111*1111 was 1234321, 11111*11111 was 123454321, and 111111*111111 is 12345654321. By then he was happily skipping on the sidewalk, laughing about what a silly trick that was.

The crossing guard watched him skip and grinned at us. We crossed the street and walked along the long sidewalk to Joseph's school. "Everything in math has a cool trick to it," I told him as he headed for the door.

Someday math might not be as fun for him. He might get bogged down in adding fractions or graphing inequalities like I was. But for now, math is place of joy and discovery, and I'm glad I get to witness it.

Goodbyes and hellos

We've had a lot of fun things happen the last few weeks of summer. Here's a recap.

Goodbye to . . .

1. Temperatures in the 90s. It's still been an incredibly warm and dry month, but at least we're done with the major summer heat! The mornings are cool and getting cooler, but that means the afternoons are glorious.

2. Naps. Matthew has mostly abandoned his nap and Jacob generally takes just one nap a day. We can still steal a few minutes of peace during quiet time, but it's not quite the same. Rest in peace, naps.

3. Teeth. Joseph has lost two now! The first one he might have swallowed on Pioneer Day, so we forgot about putting a quarter under his pillow. The second one he put under his pillow but we forgot about it for a few days. So I sneaked in right before bedtime and put a quarter under his pillow and told him to check what the Tooth Fairy brought. "Ooohh!! Mon-ay!!!" he said.

4. Peaches. Despite initial appearances, there were in fact only a finite number of peaches on the trees, and they eventually were all canned or eaten. So far we haven't said goodbye to tomatoes or raspberries yet, but that'll happen soon.

5. Kevin's grandpa. Last weekend we went down to Duchesne to attend the viewing and burial of Kevin's grandpa. It was a really lovely service and it was great to hear stories about him we'd never heard. It was nice to see a lot of family that we hadn't seen in years.

Hello to . . .

1. Underwear! You know, I feel like there are about 10 steps it takes to potty train a child. The child has to like underwear, has to develop awareness, etc. With Joseph I felt like we spent several months working through steps 5-9, so it took a lot of work to get it done. With Matthew, I feel like we were stalled forever on steps 1-4.
But one day he finally decided he liked the feeling of underwear, and after several, several, several torturous days (it wasn't accidents making things torturous, fyi  . . . it was worse), he just up and decided he knew how to do it. So that was that. It's been mostly a good development, especially since he doesn't have accidents, but he's become really sensitive to clothes now that they fit differently on him, so getting dressed is an agonizing endeavor most days.

2. Grapes and apples. Bring on the juice and the applesauce.

3. School! Joseph started 1st grade and has been doing great! I've been walking him to school most days and it's been fun having telling him stories about the houses we pass or memorable walks to school I had as a kid. Matthew and Jacob also started a fun music class, too.

4. And speaking of walking, Jacob does it all the time now! He is so delightful to watch. And he sure knows how to move fast!

5. Music! My mom has been great about watching the boys a set time every day so I can transcribe/practice. I decided now is as good a time as any to get things in motion, so I have started taking piano/composition lessons, too.

6. Construction! I've been a bit coy about this on my blog (especially because it's been such a slow process), but we started construction on a house! We're excited. (And a little terrified.)

It's a little small, and when the snow comes we might get a bit wet, but other than that it's a great house!

8. Spencer! After two years of serving a mission in Spain, he's back! We were able to have the whole family up for the weekend to celebrate. (In total there were 19 people in the house . . . don't tell the TLC network.) It was a fun weekend of cousin time, family pictures, and delicious tacos. It's all good to be on the same continent again.

We're excited to see what the fall brings!

Visions by night

General Conference is coming up, and since last session had lots of changes, I've been preparing myself for a lot more. I guess my thoughts have seeped into my subconscious because last night I dreamed all about it.

In my dream, President Nelson got up and began to talk about new exciting revelations. "If you put a bobby pin on a light fixture, then you can hang things off of the bobby pin!" "Bobby pins have lots of other great uses, let me tell you about them." We all sat there riveted as he listed off more life hacks.

When I woke up, I realized that those weren't the kinds of revelations we normally get. And actually, you can't do any of those things with bobby pins.

But hey. If we don't get 2 hour church (with the expectation that another hour is spent at home studying with family), a significant restructuring of missions, or the merger of YSA branches into family wards, maybe I'll try the bobby pin trick after all.

Jacob's theme song

Climb every mountain,

Ford every stream,

Follow every rainbow

Till you find your dream.

Definitive infinitive

Matthew had lots he wanted to say during Sacrament Meeting today and when we tried to remind him to be more reverent, he yelled, "NO! I don't be reverent!"

Between his continuous commentary on everything and Jacob´s squirminess, we definitely get finitely less out of church than we used to.

But we´re still infinitely grateful to have them.

Free food

Over the years, Kevin and I have honed our ability to find free food. Today was a great example of how to shamelessly obtain free food.

1. Decide to go to an open house celebrating the wedding of a friend you knew in high school 11 years ago.

2. Drive past the park, then change your mind about where you park. Ignore the crying of the 3 year old who just woke up from a nap at 6 pm and the indignant whining of the 1 year old who can't believe he still has to be in his car seat.

3. Park on the shoulder of a busy road and try not to let the 3 year old automatically open the door that opens into traffic. Then wade through uncut grass to the park.

4. Get in line for food before realizing that you don't know anyone else, and you certainly don't see the bride and groom. Maybe they were at the pavilion?

5. Walk over to the pavilion. It's a psychology major get together. Never mind.

6. Walk back to the line, frantically checking your phone to make sure you have the date, time, and address right. Second guess yourself again when you see crockpots labeled "YSA 6th stake."

7. Finally ask someone else in line if they're there for the same thing as you. Yes. Proceed as planned. (This step can be skipped if you care more about free food than belonging.)

8. Obtain free food. Attempt to obtain it for your children, but instead watch as tantrums commence about the lack of chocolate chip cookies (????).

9. Spend 15 minutes calming the tantrum as the other attendees do their best to ignore you. They all have newborns. They don't know what's coming.

10. Realize that you are enough older than everyone else there that your husband might end up being their professor. Continue eating your barbecue pork sandwich to dispel that thought.

11. Say hello to the bride and groom when they show up. This step could have been skipped if you didn't know the bride and groom. Realistically, no one would have known that you didn't belong.

12. Eventually, once he's calm enough, feed the hangry child a roll. All the embarrassment and hassle of obtaining free food has not been in vain.

I guess we ought to scour the local wedding announcements to see if we can try this again next weekend, whether or not we know the couple.

A few good reads

I've read a few nice things lately that I thought were worth sharing. Here you go.

Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces -- I tried to listen to this devotional the day it was given, but I didn't have byuTV on my phone, so that didn't work. Then I tried to listen to it one morning, but Jacob decided that I didn't really want to listen to it. So I decided to wait until I could just read it. And then I did.

I know that when I've grappled with really hard theological problems, what's helped most is having people to talk to about it openly and safely and just hear things like, "Yeah, that is a really good question." or "That's a hard thing I wonder about too."

And yet . . . even with that firsthand experience under my belt, I still want to swoop in and throw explanations at people. I don't, but I sure want to sometimes! What do you think? When do you think it's actually helpful to go in and correct someone? And here's an unrelated question . . . If someone is behaving unkindly or in an emotionally abusive way and justifying it because they're in pain (and feel rightfully angry and betrayed), I think that they should be called out . . . but how? And by whom? Just stuff I wonder sometimes whenever I peek at the garbage fire called social media.

And speaking of social media, it's just not great.

A brief summary of the social media reform movement

I still miss the comments and validation I get from Facebook, but I think it's better to just plain not expect them anymore, which is why I'm posting here.

Becoming an Intentional Community -- I thought there were lots of interesting points here.

Marriage Laboratory -- another good post from Marriage Laboratory. Thinking about it, it actually ties in with my previous link. Becoming an intentional community means becoming close to other people despite differences. And, as this post states,

" . . . We are able to get close to each other only to the degree that we are able to not react to each other. The more people can regulate themselves, the closer they are able to get to others. Otherwise, uncontrolled and unbridled reactivity act as a roadblock to intimacy."

Sin -- I haven't read all of Adam Miller's Letters to a Young Mormon, but this one was available online so I read it. I thought there were lots of great insights in it.

Honestly, since I am a storyteller at heart I sometimes catch myself making up stories and narratives about myself (especially since moving back to Cache Valley). And I've discovered that when I become dissatisfied in my life, it's because I'm expecting my life to match a story or expecting others to be who I want them to be in the story. So I was struck by this quote:

When you sin, you sin not because you’ve failed to measure up to your story but because you’ve privileged your story in the first place. Privileging your story, you don’t treat others or yourself with the care life requires. By freeing you from your story, Christ frees you from your guilt. He saves you by revealing that even your own life was never about you. Bought-back and story-poor, Christ frees space in your head to pay attention to someone other than yourself. You don’t need rigid rules and expectations, you need Spirit. You need to be sensitive and responsive. Rather than filtering other people’s voices through the shame-making screen of your story, you must learn to be responsible for the work of caring for what you share with them.

Sensitive, responsive, and responsible. I think we could all work on that!


In terms of books I've read lately, I have started about 12 and finished 1 -- the newest Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, aka the most perfect description of air travel. Most of the books I've tried are YA fiction that's just boring me to tears or LDS books that aren't interesting to me right now. I also tried reading a little bit of Charles Lamb since my dad checked his essays out after we watched Guernsey Potato Peel Pie on Netflix. He said that he was the E. B. White of his time, but so far I like E. B. White about 60 times better. I'll let you know if I find any essays of his that I like.

Wake me up when September ends

Tonight Kevin and I saw a boat on a trailer attached to someone's car as we were driving home. We started listing various nearby lakes and reservoirs it might have come from. Then I thought about the work it took to get that boat to and from the lake and all the preparation that might go into a day boating. Honestly, right then, it seemed like a lot of work.

So does skiing, for that matter. Or biking. Or running 24 miles in the mountains. Or, for that matter, blogging most every night. (Okay, that one isn't that hard, at least not physically, but it's not quite as easy as just browsing the Internet.)

So why do people boat or bike or blog? Mark Twain spelled it out for us in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.” 

I realized recently that if I were being paid to blog or knew that I had an audience beyond family and friends, it would be a lot harder to do, and it might take the fun out of it. So I'm fine keeping it a hobby. (Plus, when it's a hobby it means I can keep posting in Comic Sans or whatever font I'm using right now because changing the layout would turn it into Work.)

I also realized that music isn't a hobby for me. It might seem like one since I like to just sit down and improvise, but I do feel a real obligation to do something real with it. So I've decided to stop treating it like a hobby, especially for this month. I am going to spend an hour every day transcribing music so I finally have something to share with people.

There is no way to turn transcribing into a hobby, so I'm not even going to pretend that it is. But it's important to get it done.

Point being . . . blogging might take a bit of a hit this month. Unless I desperately need it as a hobby to make up for the complete torture of transcribing. (It would be easier if I didn't have to hook my laptop up to an external monitor. My goal is to make enough money from transcriptions to buy a new laptop. Or at least pay for a domain name, haha.) We'll see.

And to keep myself accountable, here's my list:

• The First Noel (piano solo) [I want to get Christmas music done first] (update 9/5 -- 90% done with transcribing, but I still need to add dynamics and articulation)
• Silent Night (alto/bass solo with piano) (update 9/6 -- 95% done with transcribing)
• Our Savior's Love in the style of Brahms (piano solo) (update 9/3 -- 40% done)
• More Holiness Give Me in the style of Rachmaninoff (piano solo,)
• Popcorn Popping in the style of Debussy (piano solo)
• In Humility, Our Savior/Amazing Grace (piano solo  . . . and an interesting combo doctrinally) (update 9/6 -- 20% done)
• Finishing up Sunbeam Waltz transcription
• Cleaning up My Heavenly Father Loves Me transcription
• For All the Saints (men's part is written, but I need to do the accompaniment)
• The Lord's My Shepherd (vocal solo + accompaniment)
• I have some other mashups that I haven't transcribed which aren't priorities because they're not hymns/classical, but if I run out of things to do I could work on transcribing those.

And, if anyone is interested, here are a few more things I'm working on:

• Souviens Toi/Nearer My God to Thee (probably piano solo, but maybe duet)
• I Need Thee Every Hour in the style of Beethoven (piano solo)
• Something in the style of Mozart (not K535 or Alla Turca)
• I tried writing a few hymns a month ago, and now that I've let them sit for a month I'm going to be able to revise them more easily.
• I hope to have a website soon to put the music on. I've looked into a few options but will take suggestions.

Anyway, I'll keep this up to date as I finish transcribing. I think comments are working again so if you want to send me pep talks I'll probably need them!

(Of course, if someone wants to pay me for the privilege of transcribing resplendent music, I won't turn them down. I learned my lesson from Tom Sawyer, after all.)

Accents of wonder

Since coming to Utah, my mind has been drawn to unusual words. Each time I hear one, I ask myself, "Could this be a baby name?" The answer is . . . sometimes.

Two such names showed up in Joseph's homework. He's come back with simple worksheets about short vowels and long vowels, and the parent instructions include explanation of the diacritical marks which indicate the pronunciation of those vowels. I guess you indicate a short vowel with a breve (Ă) and a long vowel with a macron (Ā).

Breve and Macron. Aren't those just the most darling twin names? I'm sure some kids in France are named Macron but I bet we could make a fun twist on the name here, like Mackronn.

For that matter, perhaps we could incorporate the marks into the names themselves. If we ended up with twins we could name them Zeniff and Zeniff, just one with the breve and one with the macron. This would help the ZEENiff/ZENNiff feud Kevin and I have had over the past few years. We'd both be right! (I'd be more right, of course.)

Looking at an ASCII chart of diacritical marks, we could also have kids named Ogonek, Caron, Cedilla, Tilde, or Slash. Hard pass on Circumflex and Dieresis.

Who said first-grade homework was boring?

Work We Must, But the Peach is Free

Last night, as I was going to bed, visions of peaches filled my head. Each time I closed my eyes I saw myself blanching peaches, pitting peaches, and slicing peaches. It made sense since I had spent a good chunk of the day picking and canning peaches.

As I worked in the garden this week, I learned a couple things about gardening that probably apply to real life. I'll let you figure out the metaphors.

1. There is always something to do in the garden, and you should do it as early as you can.

Although I've been kind of helpful in the garden since coming here, it wasn't until this week that I had an active role in maintaining it. My parents were gone for several days, so I took over harvesting the vegetables and picking the fallen peaches. I realized it was best to just plan on spending at least an hour out there every day, even if that hour was interrupted by short naps ending and bees getting in the way. When the rain and hail came one day and the smoke settled in the next, I was glad that I hadn't procrastinated.

2. You will not keep most of what you produce. My mom said that she had to prune and then thin 90% of the peaches in April so that the peaches would actually grow. Then several of the peaches fell on the ground and became unusable almost instantly. Those that were still usable stopped being usable within a day, or faster if we put them in plastic bags instead of buckets. Then, of the peaches that still looked okay, some had bruises that we had to cut away. And so on.

And even so, there were so many peaches! 

3. When you have abundance, you will not mind throwing a lot away.

When you buy a peach from the store, you typically spend a lot of money on it, so you really, really want to enjoy it. If it turns out you didn't choose a good one or opened it before it was ripe, you still feel like you have to use it. Because you bought it!

On the other hand, if you have trees producing so many peaches that you're dreaming about them, you feel no attachment to any particular peach. You can throw away any peaches that aren't the right ripeness and focus on the ones that will make you most happy.

It would not have made me happy to try to pick this peach here.

4. Conversely, you can find a use for what is not ideal. The peaches that had been sitting for a day or more bruised easily, and we didn't want to use any bruised parts for canning. So we stuck them in the blender and made fruit leather (which we always call fruit bacon now, courtesy of Matthew). 

This . . . is not appetizing

This looks better. And tastes better.

5. The law of the harvest: if you didn't like peaches as a child, then don't be surprised when none of your kids like them either.

Even Jacob! We got a few bites of peach into him, but he was mostly interested in squishing them, not eating them.

Fleeing the scene of the crime

6. Many hands make light work, but there's always a bottleneck.

In this case, the bottleneck was not the bottle. It was the slicing. It was faster to have my sister and me there helping my mom than for her to do it alone, but it still can only go as fast as the slowest part of the assembly line.

 7. The most perfect form of peaches is in 3-ingredient cobbler.
Peaches on their own are delicious, but like most things they are improved with cake. And sure, peach pie is delicious, but in terms of result for effort expended, it's pretty hard to beat peaches, cake mix, and sprite. 

If it's not the most appetizing-looking picture, it's because I don't want you to be too jealous.

8. Work we must, but the peach is free. There is a lot of work that goes into any kind of gardening, but at the end of the day it isn't us that's actually growing the food. It's not like we're mixing the elements together and forming them into fruit and vegetables. All we do is make the conditions as ideal as possible for fruit to grow. And then, without any effort on our parts, it does.

And it sure is beautiful.

That class shrugged

I am teaching my new CTR 5 Primary class for the first time on Sunday, and I'm not 100% sure how I'll get these wiggly kids to care about this paragraph:

Explain that taxes are money we give to our state or country to help pay for things that benefit everyone, such as police officers, firefighters, roads, and schools. Briefly discuss what it would be like not to have these things. Explain that we have tax laws to make sure everyone helps pay for these things.

Also, for that matter, should I even tell the stories about shoplifting candy? I feel like it'll just put ideas into their heads they never had before.

At any rate, even though it's ridiculously relevant, I won't talk about current events. That can wait.

Kid vids

It's time for a little bit of video catch up! These days I'm more likely to put pictures of our adventures just on Instagram rather than here, but videos still work here pretty well so I'll keep putting them here periodically. I think my mom's been better at taking videos than I have lately, but I have a few good ones still.

Lots of giggling.

More giggling.

After we loaded the truck, we decided that Kleenexes made perfectly good toys.

Some early standing from Jacob. He would often stand up and then put his hands up in the air, and it was darling.

This song. Ugh. When Matthew decided he liked it better than "Let's Go Fly a Kite" it was a sad day. I think he's outgrowing it finally.

He eventually figured out how to climb up the bounce house slide.

The only messy babies I find cute are my own, so naturally this is the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Matthew has really liked asking what he was like when he was Jacob's age, so I was really glad that I had these videos easily accessible on the blog to show him. Here's his report.

I wanted to be sure I had a video of how fast Jacob could crawl before he abandoned it for walking. This boy sure could get across the floor fast!

I love when he babbles!

Cute sounds!

Joseph did a quick two week swimming lesson class, and it ended with a jump off the diving board. He did great!

Jacob and Matthew had birthdays! They were thrilled with everything they got.

It took a little while for Jacob to get the point of a birthday cake.

Matthew loved his Superman cake! I have watched this video so many times and it never gets old.

Stuffed animal adventures!

I haven't gotten too many dancing videos lately, so here's a little one.

Drum roll . . . walking!!! He finally stopped going on tiptoes everywhere and figured out how to walk! As of today he still prefers crawling, but only just barely.

Joseph wasn't in the mood to dance for a video, but he still knew how to make a funny video.

Waterslide fun.

Rain!!!!!! It didn't last long but at least we got a little wet!

Just a few more fun facts about the boys:

• Jacob loves to climb! He doesn't put much in his mouth anymore, so that's good, but he still needs constant supervision because he will climb on anything.
• He loves to smack his lips together when we ask him to kiss. Video will be forthcoming!
• He's the only one of my kids who's really taken to a bottle more than a cup. But any time he sees someone else with a cup he gets upset. And if you happen to take a sip and then dump the rest in the sink, it's like he's a man in the Kalahari desert who just watched someone throw water away for how upset he gets.
• He also gets really sad whenever someone closes a door. Even a fridge door.
• When we don't let him get into trouble, he collapses to the ground and cries. I guess we have 3 opinionated kids in the house now!
• He is so sweet!!!! He charms everyone he meets, especially at church.
• So far, 3 has been a good age for Matthew. I felt like for most of when he was 2 it was like 10 hard days for every 1 easy day, but now it's like 10 hard days and then 10 easy days. (I still feel panicked that I'm wrecking my kid when we're in the midst of a set of hard days, but then he comes out of it totally sweet and helpful again and I realize it was just a phase.) He doesn't screech much anymore and only growls when he has a reason to now. He and Joseph still shriek "Get Jacob!!!" way more than they need to.
• Even on his easy days, he is pretty sensitive to textures. Grass is anathema most of the time. But at least he has enough clothes he likes these days that getting dressed isn't the ordeal it used to be.
• He says a lot of funny things. He picked up "But why?" a few days ago and says it whenever it doesn't make sense. He also says "I guess" all the time. He can be a broken record sometimes, especially when he wants to watch something. Whenever I suggest something else, he pleasantly says, "Hmmm, I guess . . . we could watch Lego Batman."
• For a while when we moved here, he would throw fits about everything at breakfast, so we would take him to a bench on the porch to watch the birds and calm down enough to eat. It's still a happy spot even though breakfast is going better now.
• He is deathly afraid of dogs. Every time he hears a dog bark he freezes up and says, "The dog is eating me!" I eventually grew out of that . . .
• I find myself having more and more real conversations with him, and it makes my heart so happy. He's getting to be a real kid!
• Joseph is my reader! Most days I hardly had to do much to entertain him because he was swallowing Magic Tree House books whole.
• He loves playing games, especially with his aunts and uncles. If I ever want to beat him at chess, I better do it now because it won't be long before he demolishes me.
• We found some origami, paper airplane, and pop-up books and he's really liked doing those. He is happy that Grandma lets him use printer paper instead of scrap paper.
• He and I sometimes do piano lessons together. The flesh is willing but the spirit is weak on my part.
• He is pretty patient with his brothers for the most part. We moved Matthew into a different room because he was keeping everyone awake, but it wasn't long before Joseph said he missed having him there. We still kept them separate, but Joseph definitely loves his little brother! And his baby brother!
• He still likes to build stuff, but he said he doesn't necessarily want to be a builder when he grows up which is what he said for all of kindergarten. Maybe a scientist, is what he thought. He loves math a lot, too.
• He's pretty brave! He took to swimming lessons well and has been on some pretty wild water slides. I'm hoping to transfer some of the bravery to walking to school since I have all the same strong feelings about school dropoff and pickup that I did in Connecticut. (It's easier here, but still. Parents shouldn't have to walk their kids to and from school in neighborhoods like this.)

These are some fun boys, and we're glad to have them!

A naptime prayer for the child whose older sibling has school pickup again

Now I lay thee down to sleep
I pray that you will sleep sleep sleep.
When I get Joseph, you must wake
I hope a decent nap you'll take.

Needed

Since Jacob's birthday a few weeks ago, I've been cutting back on nursing quite a bit. While we still have the occasional night where he wakes up repeatedly wanting to eat and eat and eat (ugh teething), during the day he is mostly weaned.

Each time I've weaned a baby, I've noticed myself struggling with a feeling of uselessness. There is something satisfying for me in being needed for my baby's nourishment, and to lose that affects every area of life. You combine that with living (albeit temporarily) with parents and moving into a healthy, functioning ward and neighborhood, and the result has been has pretty intense this time around.

Today, as I was grappling with these feelings of not being needed, I had the thought, "This is a very normal, human feeling."

Then came the thought, "This could totally be warped into something incredibly unhealthy."

I kind of laughed at that thought, but then I realized how true it was. My need to be needed was about me. If someone had asked for babysitting or a meal, I would have swam across the ocean to make it happen, but I would have done it for my sake just as much as theirs. I would have done it to prove to myself that I was useful. And yeah, the occasional service like that is fine, but what happens when you sacrifice your physical or mental health to satiate your appetite to be needed? What happens when you limit the growth of those around you by not letting them learn how to fulfill their own needs?

Obviously, there is need all over the world. And there is probably even someone within a mile of you who needs something you can offer. But sometimes, much as you'd like, you can't be the one to fulfill those needs. And. That's. Okay.

We are not defined by how much we are needed. If God thinks we are full of worth no matter our age, income, intelligence, abilities, health, or any other attribute, then we should think so too. Our worth is found not in our ability to serve in the ways we want but rather in His love for us. And as we focus less on our insecurities and more on our love for Him, we will be able to see that, because of Him, we are enough. No matter how inadequate our efforts may be, He will always nourish His children.