Liquids

Today I realized how much of my life revolves around liquids.

(This isn't going to be a gross post, fyi.)

Before I went to Utah, I wrote a book for Joseph extolling the virtues of water in making him strong so that he'd want to drink more. I often think about if my kids and I are hydrated enough.

When I was in Utah and came down with mastitis, I had a one track mind -- I needed to get that milk out of me. Even without mastitis, it's on my mind much of the time. Is it time again? Which side? Am I ready if he breaks the latch and the milk starts spraying?

I spend my days changing diapers and sometimes changing clothes (both Jacob's and mine) because of soak-throughs, blowouts, and spit-ups.

I have never been one to give daily baths, but I still have to look at my kids each day and decide if they need one or not.

When I came back from Utah, I came back to a family with nasty colds, so I've spent my days wiping runny noses.

These colds make my kids crankier, so I also spend time drying tears. (Okay, I really just let them dry on their faces, but it sounded like a good mom thing to say.)

Then of course we don't want to spread germs so we wash our hands a lot. Matthew loves to wash his hands. He has a red chair he stands on to turn on the water and wash them, though it's rare that he bothers to turn the water off. So that's always on my mind too. (Especially because he left the water on so long one time that it began to leak through the basement ceiling onto a computer downstairs . . . that was a fun thing to come home to the day after Jacob was born haha.)

I see a fair amount of drool from Matthew, which combined with many other symptoms (including shirt biting, pickiness, and screeching) makes me wonder if he's teething. And then I check his mouth for 2-year-old molars and there is nothing. Nothing. Nothing. He has certainly taken the gaslighting approach to teething the past 20 months.

One liquid I haven't had to deal with this week is vomit. That's because Kevin took care of that this morning, which was really nice of him. It was 4:50 am when I heard Joseph sob. It didn't quite sound like a nightmare sob, so I knew. He threw up. A lot. Mostly water. Thanks again, Kevin. (In case you're wondering, he didn't make it to his second day of kindergarten. And thankfully, he didn't throw up anymore, either.)

So, yeah, lots of liquids all the time.

But Houston has a lot more.

And there a lot of people who probably disagree with the title of the book I wrote for Joseph. So here are a few ways you can help them:

https://www.redcross.org/donate/hurricane-harvey
https://www.ldsphilanthropies.org/
Amazon wish list

And someday, someday we'll get all those liquids under control.

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