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.

A brave and willing sort of chap

I'm pretty sure "Come Thou Fount" will make it back into the hymnbook.

I'm pretty sure this song from the "Music from the Friend" section of the Church Music Library won't.

Well, I could have told you that

From Providence and Her People, page 220, we learn:

Dinosaurs are . . . maybe not the worst things ever?

Just as a recap, when Jurassic World came out in 2015, I compiled this list of why dinosaurs are the worst things ever:

10. They eat people. Straight out of their cars.
9. I spent most of school learning that dinosaurs were cold-blooded, and then I learned in high school that they were actually warm-blooded. I asked how long people had known that and my teacher said since the 70s. So I was getting fed inaccurate information all along. Why was I even learning about dinosaurs, come to think of it? Also, how would they even know? (Incidentally, I just googled it, and the consensus is still out as to warm or cold blood. Take that, science in schools.)
8. For some reason, if you ever mention a brontosaurus people correct you. Because a rose by any other name is just unacceptable.
7. Most of the names are hard to pronounce. How can books full of words like that really promote literacy?
6. Birds are so much better. (And don't try to tell me that birds are dinosaurs. I already discussed that for several bus rides home in middle school.)
5. Land Before Time sequels exist because of them.
4. They ruined Fantasia, and also Stravinsky.
3. At my school, 2nd graders got to go to the dinosaur park in Ogden. But I skipped 2nd grade, so I never saw them, and people rubbed it in. Which shows they weren't really that cool to start with.
2. Fossil fuels smell bad.
1. Littlefoot's mom dies.

Some of those reasons don't matter so much to me (I sort of believe now that birds are dinosaurs, but I don't know if I could ever say that out loud), but some are just as important as ever. Especially #8. Joseph went to a birthday party at the Peabody Museum back in March, and there was a plaque all about how brontosauruses might have actually been real after all (which they obviously care about since the original brontosaurus skeleton was on display in that room). I pulled out my phone and confirmed the accuracy of the plaque with this article. But when I was trying to figure out whose dinosaur head belonged to whom the tour guide confused me more by saying brontosauruses still weren't real. What's the point of talking about brontosauruses when everyone's just going to correct you no matter what you say?

But that's not really what I want to talk about. I want to admit that maybe I am think that this terrible lizard might not be so terrible after all. Here's why:

3. If dinosaurs are so terrible, then why am I letting my children watch Dinosaur Train, Thomas the Train with anachronistic dinosaurs, and even old Barney episodes? As long as the dinosaurs have good manners and whine less than Caillou, they can't be that terrible, right?

2. My kids still look cute in dinosaur pajamas.

1. The other morning I tried to get my kids to eat more breakfast by reading a book about dinosaurs to them. After each dinosaur name there was a pronunciation given (still not convinced about ankylosaurus, but whatevs) and also its Greek or Latin name.

And so I realized, hey! I can turn dinosaurs into an etymological adventure!

So not only were my kids nourished by the additional bites of cereal they ate in the style of various dinosaurs, but they now also know some Latin and Greek. As do I.

My heart with raptor thrills.

(But don't tell anybody. I still don't ever want to go on a dinosaur museum field trip.)

Two last things

Lots of little blog posts in a row tonight! I promise I'll be done after this. I just keep reading great things and realized I should share them. I probably won't do my behemoth "articles" blog posts anymore but I might try to get in the habit of sharing uplifting things I read every few days.

1. Marriage Laboratory. This is such a great website! I'd rate it 11 out of 10. And I thought today's post was very insightful. It is so empowering to stop blaming anybody else for your feelings or bad days, and I'm trying to become better at it.

2. This old Conference talk also has a good story. I think we could use an opposite rain story these days.

Annnnnnnd I'm ready for bed now.

The phrase I hear every time I try to do anything these days

"But, wait . . . what was your maiden name?"

Registering Joseph for school. Calling the dentist. Church.

I did make it through the new faculty dinner without having to answer that, but that was probably because the people at the table weren't paying attention when someone asked Kevin about his father-in-law with the same last name.

On the bright side, people have been good about pronouncing my first name right.

But I feel it close around me as I pray

We moved Matthew to a different bedroom because bedtime has just been a slog for the past few weeks with 3 boys in the same room. Tonight it was nice to chat with just him at bedtime. We talked a bit about a few gospel topics (a testi-mony means you give Jesus money, according to Matthew my publican son). Then we talked a bit about Heavenly Father and how we pray to Him.

"But I don't see Him," he said. "Where is He?"
"He's in heaven," I said. "We can feel Him in our hearts. Do you want to pray to Him?"
"Yes," he said and said a cute little prayer about all the things he did today. Then at the end he asked, "Is Heavenly Father closer now?"
"Yes," I said.
"But I don't see Him!"
"Can you feel Him in your heart?"
"Yes!" Then Matthew looked down his shirt. "Oh! I think I see Him in there!"
I didn't quite know what to say.
"Oh, I guess actually He's gone now."


Okay, one other quick story from tonight. I changed into a dress for Kevin's new faculty dinner, and Matthew was in there with me. He asked, "What do you look?" (he meant how do you look?)
I asked, "What do you think?"
He said, "You look . . . pretty." Awwwwwwwwwwww. "You look like a different girl."

Thanks, bud.

Julian and Augustine in July and August

Yesterday I read a few more chapters in The Christ Who Heals by Fiona and Terryl Givens. I started it back in May when we were out house hunting, but I hadn't done much with it in the months since. The book discusses many early Christian philosophers, some which agree with Mormon theology and some who don't. As I was reading I recognized the name Julian of Norwich. A few days earlier I had been hunting around on hymnary.org to see if there was a good hymn about Isaiah 49 (since it's such got such lovely imagery and ought to be in the new LDS hymnbook someday) and found some hymns based on Julian wrote about the chapter. She really has a lot of lovely ideas about God, such as the Sacrament being like breastfeeding (the one time I nursed a baby during the actual Sacrament I realized how similar the two were). I'd heard her name before but now seeing it twice in the same week meant I know for sure who she is.

Then there also was Augustine. Him again? I thought, even though I know that you can't really talk about early Christians without talking about him. He got a few pages to himself in How the Irish Saved Civilization (which was a fun, probably mostly historically accurate book). He showed up in Speaking Into the Air since he had thoughts on communication. And of course he showed up in The Christ Who Heals. I think he had more good ideas than bad, but unfortunately some of the bad ideas seemed to have the longest shelf life in Christian theology (such as original sin).

Anyway, two takeaways from seeing these names over and over again are:

1. I don't know why I keep reading philosophy books. It just keeps happening on accident. Yet the only fiction books I've read since getting here that aren't rereads are the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. That's what I've been reading these days --Socrates and Greg Heffley.

2. It's always bizarre to me that any one person's voice can be so influential. Like, why have so many unhealthy traditions been propagated just because of two or three verses in the Pauline epistles? Who decided that Augustine's ideas were more correct than Julian's?

If Augustine were alive now, this xkcd comic is probably what would have happened instead:

Any suggestions for September-y named philosophers?

Switcheroo

10 Studio C cast members are leaving.

10 MCU actors are leaving after Avengers 4.

To be honest, I don't know any more details because I only saw the headlines.

But if I had to guess, I can tell you where the cast of Studio C is headed next!

Receive

A few days before we moved from Connecticut, I turned on the old Charlotte's Web movie for the boys. Almost immediately a rare rush of emotion came over me. During the first few minutes, I found myself a little misty-eyed here and there.

If someone had asked what was wrong, I had an arsenal of answers ready: The animation was just so lousy! Many of the voices didn't fit the characters. The lyrics were clever but too complex.

But really, it was because it was Charlotte's Web. I've had a special place in my heart for that book ever since I listened to a narration by E. B. White himself. For such a gentle story, it deals with some heavy topics -- Wilbur narrowly escapes death in the first two minutes of the book, and the rest of the story is about protecting him at all costs. Each time I read the book, the story strikes my heart with more force. Fern loves him. Charlotte loves him. His job is to just receive that love.

It can be hard to receive love. I felt that all throughout the move from Connecticut. Friends watched my kids when I had no chance to repay them. Friends moved boxes a day early because of the threat of a thunderstorm and came back other days to help arrange the boxes. Friends showed up to help us unpack. The night that we loaded the truck, I picked up my kids and came home to find that one friend was still there tenderly cleaning a bathroom. Everything was shining, even the pipes under the sink. I watched him for just a second before I had to turn away lest another rare rush of emotion overtook me. As I saw the bathroom transform from a mundane little closet into a sacred space, I felt a strange tugging in my heart. I looked around our empty apartment and felt the tugging even more strongly. It was as if my heart had to open up a bit to make room for all the love that we had just received. It was beautiful, but it was also uncomfortable.

It turns out that receiving love can be uncomfortable for a variety of reasons. Often it's because it just doesn't come how we expect it to. Right before the move I listened to a podcast by Jody Moore about friendship, and one of the points she brought up is how we need to "drop the manual." We can't just have a list of expectations that we want our friends to meet in order for the friendship to stay strong.

But wait, I thought. If there aren't certain criteria met is it still a friendship? I thought of what I wanted out of friendship, especially long-distance friendship -- checking in periodically, texting me things that might make me laugh, remembering my birthday, reading some of the same books, visiting sometimes, and posting pictures of their kids on Instagram. Then I realized, those are what I consider friendship because those are things I'm good at. But to expect those of other people transforms friendship from a delight into a chore. As John Durham Peters noted in Speaking Into the Air,

If nothing but reciprocity governed social relations, life would be a monotonous round of quid pro quo. Social life would be a cycle of payment, rather than of gifts . . . Reciprocity, crucial as it is, needs other principles: hospitality, gift giving, forgiveness, and love. To live among others is necessarily to incur obligations; to be mortal is to be incapable of paying them all back. (pg 56)

Maybe, just as I could never pay back all the service and kindness I received, I didn't need to expect reciprocation from my friends either for my less tangible tokens of friendship. I thought of aspects of friendship that others use to connect at more intimate level that I struggle with -- hugging, social crying, and even eye contact (I'm sorrrrrrry). I've known many people to overlook my shortcomings and become my close friends. If they could do it, perhaps so could I.

So I began to look at friendship differently. Instead of secretly wishing that friends or family would reach out the way I wanted for myself or for my kids, I started to ask, "How are they showing love? How can I receive it?" I began to see not only small kindnesses everywhere but also big, foundational gifts that elicited the same kind of heart-tugging that had defined our move. When you realize just how much of it there is, it can be overwhelming to receive love.

And maybe it needs to be overwhelming sometimes. Maybe love needs to knock us down, catch us off guard, and force us to come face to face with the possibility of never paying it back. True, we might be able to pay money or babysitting back, but to be rescued in a moment of vulnerability can never be repaid. It's in moments like these that our hearts can be cracked open to the divine. In Tracy McKay's book The Burning Point, she described her encounter with this kind of love. "I knew with a quickening of my soul that God had not forgotten me. God was reaching out to me with not one, but with a hundred different hands---beautiful, tender hands made of flesh and bone and sinew. That day my sisters' hands reached me, and were the hands of God. . . . God didn't abandon us. He cleared the space so blessings from others could overflow (pg. 256-277)."

It can be hard, uncomfortable, and overwhelming to receive love. But it is why we are here on earth -- to ultimately learn how to receive all the love God has for us. And that, as Charlotte says, "is in itself a tremendous thing."

Solomon and the Sour Patch Kids

16 Then came two brothers unto the father, holding the last Sour Patch Kid.

22 And the brother said to the other, Nay; but the sour patch kid is mine, not thine. Thus they spake before the father.

23 Then said the father, The one saith, This is my candy, and the other saith, Nay; but the candy is mine, not thine.

24 And the father said, Bring me a knife. And they brought a knife before the father.

25 And the father said, Divide the candy child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.

26 Then both protested over having to share, but the father did it anyway.

27 And the brothers ate their candy halves, and they were much disappointed.

28 And the wisdom of the father was lauded throughout the land.

Sure to outlast this catastrophe

Some say the world will end in fire

Some say in ice

Some say in Fire 'N Ice

Or Aussie Rose

Or Sassy Z

Because LipSense will stay on til the end of the world.