The Glorious Symbol of Motherhood

Twice a week, I and six other widely assorted people gather for a Spanish class. Our teacher is really great--she's always well-prepared and very patient with our mistakes. (Although last week she just about gave us all heart attacks when she told us she had invited *real* Spanish-speakers to come talk with us.) Anyway, I've been wanting to write about this incident from class for a while...

A couple of weeks ago our teacher asked us all to come to class the next time prepared to talk about our jobs. As part of this assignment, we also needed to bring one object that symbolized our jobs. A nice fellow student in her 40's swiftly commented, "Oh, so like if you're a mom you could bring a diaper!" "Si," said our teacher. (Upon which I process for a minute...Ah yes, the diaper, glorious symbol of motherhood!) 

Now, I will not deny that being a mom means dealing with poop. Moms deal with literal and figurative crap from their children quite a bit. In fact I will boast here that at least the literal variety of defecation doesn't really phase me anymore, as long as it's coming from my own children. But would I choose a DIAPER to represent my career choice? Absolutely not! A POOP RECEPTACLE is not an appropriate symbol for MOTHERHOOD.

In fact, just before this incident happened, I had just written down some of my motherhood goals to give more purpose to my life.* Nowhere on my list was anything relating to diapers. So...what did I bring? I chose to bring a pack of ABC flashcards. Then in class, in my best Spanish, I explained how I am a teacher. I am a teacher because I am mother. I teach my children many things. I teach them reading, writing, cooking, and to speak Spanish. I teach them about morality, finances, gardening, to enjoy nature and traveling and about various school subjects. At times, my job is difficult, but it's also interesting and rewarding. And that's where my vocabulary ran out.

I like being a mom. It's not my whole life, but right now it's a lot of it. And it's not a poopy job.



*My Motherhood Manifesto

Teach them to love books
Teach them to love learning
Teach them to love the outdoors
Teach them to work hard
Teach them to eat healthy
Teach them to handle finances well
Teach them another language
Teach them to love the scriptures

Book Club Blues

I love my library. I love that it's 90 seconds from my house. I love that it's pretty and huge. I don't love the librarians, but the children's librarians don't seem to hate kids, so that's a nice start. Anyway...my friend is starting up a book club. I love books. I love getting together in small groups. I would probably love a book club. And yet, at the thought of joining a book group, (club sounds so 12-year-old-ish to me, like the Babysitters' Club), what do I do? I panic. Is joining a good idea? Can I handle a once-a-month commitment? Are the other members going to be a bunch of crazy conservatives? (I can't remember if this is the friend who compared Obama to Hitler on Facebook.) Is this club going to be an excuse to snoop around each others houses and impress each other with our snacks and feel bad about ourselves when we don't compare well? What if no one likes the book I pick?

 

Lame.

 

Me, I mean. Why am I such a worrier? Tonight I went to the first session of a Spanish class at the local rec center. I haven't been to a real class in a while, so last week I was stressing. What if the teacher is scary, what if I can't remember any Spanish, what if I'm the only one there and it's awkward, etc. Then I took some time for a re-think. I love learning. I love the first day of class when the teacher talks about logistics. I love a clean notebook and a fresh pencil. I really want to learn Spanish.

 

This is called "shaping your narrative." The way we tell stories about what has happened, is happening, or is about to happen changes the effect of those happenings. For example, the other day my siblings and I were up at my parents' house talking about epic road trips, in particular the epic-ly bad family road trips we have been on. These included trips with puking, portable toilets, leaving the vehicle to try and hitchhike home, gross hotel rooms, being rained out of camping at 3 a.m. and spending the next day sitting in a laundromat, etc.

 

We could have told these stories with a conclusion that family road trips are a bad idea and we will never do them with our own children. But we shaped our narrative with a humorous twist, and as a result, fondly look forward to similar character-building experiences with our own kids. (I think.)

 

So back to the Spanish class, I shut down my worrying. I changed my story from "Lady who hasn't been to school in a while timidly attempts to learn" to "Lifelong student gets chance to pursue passion."As I admitted to my husband, I was walking down the hall to Spanish class and had these frantic last minute thoughts of "Why did I think signing up for this was a good idea? I don't like new things. I would be happy never trying a new thing in my life," but it turned out really well. The teacher was a nice woman, not a pretentious know-it-all RM, the class had six students, the perfect size for me, and I was one of the better speakers there so I didn't feel dumb!  

 

I read somewhere recently that as immortal souls, we fear becoming stagnant. Motto for the new year: I will try new things!

 

 

 

Burning the Kitchen Down

 

 

 

 

Let me preface this by saying that I've never liked gas stoves. I know professional cooks prefer gas stovetops, but perhaps professional cooks have never experienced the joy of cleaning a flat stove top over gas burners. Or more importantly, considered THE DANGER OF HAVING OPEN FLAMES IN YOUR KITCHEN. !!!

 

I always thought that people who burned down their kitchens were idiots, but now I'm having to reconsider...perhaps they all just had gas stoves.

 

So here's what happened. You know when you turn the gas to a stove burner on, and the lighter doesn't catch for a sec? So it goes *click*click*WHOOSH and flames shoot out when it finally catches because of the extra gas that has come out? Yesterday that happened as I was starting some water boiling. No big deal. I grabbed some salt for the water and looked back at the stove.

 

Apparently, the *WHOOSH had ignited one of those highly flammable plastic bread bags that was sitting on the countertop by the right side of the stove. Aaah! I started pouring salt on the flames jumping around and trying to flick burning debris off my beautiful wood (!) countertops onto the stove. Then the flames ignited my crumpled bacon grease-coated paper towels I had just wiped the stove off with... (I'm sure I was just about to throw them away.) Thoughts: Not the wood countertops! How flammable is the varnish they're coated in?

 

The flames were dying when I glanced over and saw the large roll of paper towels that was sitting on the back burner of the stove halfway covered in flames. Agh! Maybe people who burn down their kitchens are idiots. Why did I put a gigantic roll of fire-starter on my stove? The girls gathered to watch and Cici gave dramatic high-pitched shrieks as I grabbed the towel roll and ran over to the sink, blasting the flames with water. Still holding the salt, I ran back and sprinkled the smoldering bits of paper towel and bread bag on the stove.

 

Then I just stood there for a while and gazed at the post-apocalyptic scene on my gas stovetop...mounds of burnt salt and charred remains floating ashy bits into the air. Cici came over to comfort me.

 

Cici: "Do you need a band-aid? You look like you need a band-aid."  

 

Thank you, Cici.

 

 

*I told Austin I lit our kitchen on fire. He was nice enough to ask if I was okay, but I know what he was really thinking was: Are the wood countertops okay? The answer is yes, only the salt I poured on the flames got burnt and not the countertops. My white cabinets weren't damaged either. It's a Christmas miracle.

 

 

Kitchen Reveal No. 1!

Okay, here's a quick review of what the kitchen looked like when we bought it...

 

 

note tile and lighting...

as well as funky cupboards and absence of upper cupboards...

 

hot dog sink still baffles me...

and finally the butler's pantry.

 

Much later...

 

*By the way, I would have to say that Austin really impressed me in the interim with what he figured out how to do in the kitchen. Recessed lighting, electrical, installing countertops, plumbing, undermount sink, etc. Underneath his suave exterior lies a rugged handyman.

 

Ta-da!

Hey, a real kitchen!

 

With lovely custom walnut countertops that everyone said was a bad idea... 

 

a classed up butler's pantry,

 

with the old chimney brick exposed for character. And for memories of the toasty bird skeleton.

 

This is Kitchen Reveal number one because there is still more to do. Backsplash behind the stove and kitchen sink, open shelving on the wall by sink, and definitely baseboards. Just finishing touches. Still, I think of the people without homes in the Philippines and can't be anything but grateful. Especially for a sink and a stove. Until you go without those two things for a month you don't realize just how nice it is to have them.

 

Fully Operational

I'm pretty sure that tomorrow my kitchen will be fully armed and operational! We got the countertops and sink put in on Saturday and will put the stove and dishwasher in tomorrow. Then...pictures! So, what have I been doing without a kitchen sink, stove, or dishwasher for the past month or so?

When we decided to just bite the bullet and move into our work-in-progress house, I had visions of me using my crockpot, toaster oven, and electric griddle to whip up home-cooked suppers, doing dishes in the bathroom, and spraying pots and pans clean in the hose outside. Glamping, remember?

Well, I still haven't found the box my toaster oven is in, and my griddle, which I did find, is missing its cord, which is probably in that same undiscovered box. These are just excuses, though. The truth is that I've had no time, energy, or desire to make homemade meals and wash my dishes in my bathtub.

People ask what I do without a kitchen, how I manage. My answer depends on who asks. Okay, to everyone but my mother I tell the truth: we eat out a lot. Like every night. Normally I feel guilty about eating out if we're not on a date or something. I wasn't raised that way. I think I ate out with my family twice before I left home for college, not counting McDonalds on road trips. I know that home cooked meals are cheaper and much more nutritious...and yet, we still eat out and use disposable dishes for the rest of our meals. That is how we are managing. I do feel guilty because it's not healthy or cheap, but also not guilty because hey, I don't have a kitchen. So, a breakdown of our daily menu:

Breakfast: Mini-Wheats or Oatmeal in microwave plus gummi vitamins
Lunch: Ham sandwich or Peanut Butter and Jam sandwich, chips, and carrots

(Do I ever get tired of eating the same thing for breakfast and lunch? Not really. I like consistency. In college I ate Malt-o-meal every morning for an entire semester.)

Supper: (Criteria are, can't be too pricey, too hard to take kids to, or too far away.)

Little Ceaser's Pizza (Austin used to hate their pizza. Mysteriously it has grown on him and he now likes it. Plus it's really close to our house.)

Wendy's (Really like their new pretzel hamburger thing, which is a little pricey but so good.)

Cafe Rio (Anything pork. Starting to get expensive though now that the free kids quesadillas aren't filling up our kids.)

Panda Express (Orange Chicken and Sweet Fire Chicken)

Arby's (Roast beef sandwiches for the girls and I, and then Austin has a strange infatuation with their chicken strips.)

Annnnd that's pretty much our rotation. To tell the truth, not having to cook supper or do any dishes for a month has freed up a lot of my time to work on the house and do things with the girls. It's been kind of fun. But it's gotten to the point where we're really sick of eating out. Really sick of it. Too much of a mediocre thing, I guess.

Wonder Woman

 

Some days I feel like Wonder Woman.

Some months, actually.

This past month especially, because in October I fought the good fight each and every day.

I've introduced my kids to the joy of raking up leaves and jumping in leaf piles. I've thrown together a birthday celebration, complete with homemade cake. I've sewn and put together Halloween costumes. I've drywalled, I've painted, I've laid flooring, I've taken kids to swim lessons, I've spent time with family, I've kept my house clean, written in my journal, volunteered at school, been social with other moms and church members. I've shopped for Christmas, walked my kids to school almost every day, gotten up with multiple kids multiple times on multiple nights, gone visiting teaching, sent letters to missionaries, etc., etc., etc. This month, my kids have called me the best mom in the whole world, and the worst mom in the whole world. (That's how I know I'm doing my job right.)

 

About the only thing I feel bad about is that I haven't gotten a good nap. As soon as the renovations are done (next week?!), I'm for sure getting that done. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                 

   I still have a plywood floor. My kids still don't sleep at night. I still only have time to wash my hair once every four days. But I am...Wonder Woman!                                

                                                  

 

Little House on the Prairie

 

 

New playhouse in backyard. Note Welcome Bear by front door.

 

***

 

 

Here we are, having breakfast in our lovely new kitchen. Note the classy wood floors and custom "stacked wood" countertops. I find the hand textured wall treatment particularly fetching, as well as our trendy café seating.

 

Here's the other side.

Yes, we are a long way from done, and we are still living in a construction zone.

Still, I think it looks much better. I just might be turning into an optimist.

 

Lately Sammy and I have been reading Little House on the Prairie. I love it. I don't remember reading it when I was little, but it's an interesting look at real pioneers, and it's really helped me with our move last Saturday into our ongoing renovation. I would compare our life right now to luxury camping, (glamping) but we're indoors and it's not luxurious. It does feel like camping though. You'd have to come visit to get the full picture. However, whenever I get discouraged about not having a kitchen sink or countertops or a nice bathroom, and I look at all the work left and start to feel down, I just think about how Laura's family just picked a spot in the middle of nowhere and started putting log walls up. No windows, no door, dirt floors, etc.

 

They would have loved to be in the house that I'm in now. They would have loved having a microwave and fridge, indoor plumbing, sturdy walls with a door and floor, and a fluffy Persian cat wandering their backyard instead of a circle of wolves. You know, pioneers are awesome, even if just for serving the purpose of making me feel good about my cushy life.

 

I really want to enjoy this time close to family and fun activities now, and not wait until my house is perfect to have a great life. It's definitely a balancing act between working on the house and taking care of the three girls, too. I made the goal this year to be more flexible, i.e. not always have to do things my way, and I think a new baby, move, and renovation are really helping me accomplish this goal. Humans are hardwired for struggle, and when we are stretching our capabilities we are really alert and living life despite dealing with difficult things.  

 

 

Charlotte is flexible. Her favorite activity--playing with her toes.

Destroying a Very Large Purchase



 

It's very stressful to renovate a house. We spent a lot of money to buy a cute little house then promptly started to destroy it. WHAT HAVE WE DONE?? 

Our living room (before)

Our kitchen (before). Hey, it actually looks pretty good in this photo. It could be the dim lighting...or the devilishly attractive female with the screwdriver.

 

But in the cold light of the flash...it's another story.

 

The other side of the kitchen. Note that one of the sinks is the size of a large hot dog. Who does that? 

 

Relaxing in our new kitchen

 

Laundry room off the kitchen

 

 

Demolition reveals a boarded up chimney that contained coal remnants and a toasty bird skeleton that Matthew relished showing Kellie and I.

 

So our first priorities are the kitchen and the floors. Those two things seemed good to get out of the way before we actually moved into the house. The floor refinisher starts tomorrow on the hardwood throughout the house, so that's one thing out of the way. Then we need to level the kitchen and dining room floor and pick an engineered hardwood to put down. We spent days getting up the Spanish tile, which was grouted to the cement board which was glued and screwed to the plywood underneath, so we might hire someone at this point to do the leveling.

 

The kitchen is interesting too. I think the chimney connected to the original kitchen stove, and the original kitchen was what is now the laundry room. I'm putting cupboards in the laundry room that match the new kitchen and taking out the sink behind the door and making it a pantry closet, basically turning the laundry room into a butler's pantry. Actually I just like saying "butler's pantry." I'm not sure if my laundry room qualifies as one. I'm a little nervous about the kitchen.

 

The basic idea

Except I don't like farmhouse sinks, or faucets that are hard to clean. Or those door pulls. Austin wants to go with white subway tile, but I worry that it's too much white. Plus everyone these days is doing a white kitchen with white subway tile. Too trendy?

We have a lot of decisions to make...any input is appreciated.

The Return of the Blogger

Here it is! I call it our new old house. In my mind I wanted a cute little brick bungalow, but this cute little brick colonial revival cottage definitely fit the bill. It was built in the early 1900s and built to last. We're close to Sam's school, three parks, church, BYU, and other fun places in a neighborhood that's full of life and diversity. However, our cottage needs a lot of work, and is slightly overwhelming in that everywhere you look there's something you could fix up. The huge backyard needs tree removal, chicken shed pulled down, a gate, landscaping, new fence sections, a new garage, a built in trampoline and a play cottage. The inside needs new floors, a new kitchen, new bathrooms, wall touch up, trim touch up, paint, new wiring, and a less creepy basement. And oh yes, did I mention it needs a new roof and a paint job?

It was definitely livable when we bought it, but livable like a cheap hotel where you don't actually want to live there, just stay there for one night. Not that it's decrepit. It just needs some TLC, which I am fully prepared to give. Because Austin loves me and knows I want the house, he too is prepared to throw in some TLC. We bought the house exactly a week ago and have dived into renovations so we can actually move in and let my parents have their house back as soon as possible. We're staying with them while we complete the two projects that we thought it would be hard to be in the house for: Floors and Kitchen. That's its own post, so more on that later. So far its been really stressful, a little bit fun, and good bonding time with family members.

More to come!

My Worst Nightmare

Goodbye, house!

 

A couple weeks ago, we decided to sell our house. My parents had some bad news about their health recently so we want to be closer to them, but also we have been wanting a change of pace and we both felt good about our decision. Anyway, we talked to some realtors who live up the street, decided the price they suggested sounded good, and told them we wanted to list it. That was on a Saturday.

 

Monday I started cleaning my entire house, spurred on by the thought of a professional photographer coming on Thursday to post photos of every corner of my house on the internet for hundreds of strangers to see. Actually photos aren't too bad. At least just the outside of things has to look clean. What really motivated me was the thought of total strangers coming into my house and poking around, starting Friday. It's like my worst nightmare to have someone walk into my bathroom and see how I really live when I haven't cleaned for a few days. Austin didn't really get why the fridge had to be cleaned out and my bathroom drawers cleaned and edited, but I watch HGTV, and I've been house hunting myself. People like to look in the fridge. They like to open bathroom drawers, they like to see what's in the closet. House hunting is an unprecedented opportunity/excuse to see behind the scenes in other people's lives.

 

When you sell a house, you should sell more than the actual home. You should sell the myth that if you live in this particular house, your fridge and bathroom drawers will be magically clean and organized, there will be no fingerprints on the walls and windows, and because everything is so clean, you will have plenty of time to sit on the artfully staged patio out back. 

 

In order for me to sell this myth along with our home, I basically ignored my children for four days as I painted the pink room back to the same color as the rest of the house, deep cleaned every corner, obsessively painted over chips in the walls, and packed up a lot of our less-used belongings. With my husband complaining that our house was like a museum where we weren't allowed to touch anything, we took off down to Provo and moved into my parents house while they jetted off on their adventures. It was perfect timing. We stayed there for a week and had a ton of showings back at the house. I didn't have to keep things clean or rush my kids out of the house. We came back Friday, took the best of the offers we received, and moved back in. So awesome.

 

My favorite moment of this experience came as we were sitting down at our kitchen table to sign our acceptance of an offer. As we were about to sign, we looked out our window and saw two people get out of their car and stand by our sign looking at the house. Our realtor saw them and jumped up and ran outside shouting back over his shoulder "Don't sign that offer yet!"

 

I think it was meant to be that we move now. Everything came together so nicely. We haven't really figured out what we're doing on the other end yet, but I'll keep you updated!

 

 

The Way of the Chicken

My parents are very law-abiding people. However, when it comes to chickens their moral fiber turns a bit soluble. The flock has grown to illegal proportions and shows no signs of decreasing.

On Saturday I was shown The Way of the Chicken by my dad as part of my house-sitting duties. We all know I don't get along with chickens, but I felt like I could give it another shot for my parents. They seem to really like these chickens as they keep adding more of the stinky buggers. Anyway, as Dad described it, chicken care seemed fairly straightforward. Water, feed, lock them in coop for the night, let them out in the morning. Repeat for a week as my parents bask on the deck of an Alaskan cruise ship.

On Sunday I woke up with a start to the incessant and uproarious bawking of the massive flock. They also woke my baby sleeping by the window, but I left her crying, threw some clothes on, and dashed out to the backyard. In the midst of putting three kids to bed, I had forgotten all about locking the chickens up the night before and making sure they were fed and watered. Thoughts of wild animals attacking the coop, starving chickens collapsing, and angry neighbors phoning to complain about the noise all ran through my mind. I made it up to the chicken pen, threw open the gate, and....nothing. The chickens magically stopped their fiendish racket and wandered around idyllically scratching in the dirt. I checked their coop. Nothing. I checked their food and water. Full. Annoyed, I threw some grain on the ground for them so I could feel like I had done something. They dutifully ignored it and went back to their chicken business. Apparently they simply desire a human presence at 6 in the morning.*

I wearily went back inside and surveyed my new black flip-flops coated in chicken leavings, thinking about how much cheaper and easier buying free-range chicken, organic, non-muck coated eggs from the store would be then running this chicken coop. Raising your own chickens should be placed in the same category as wearing Spandex, posting about bathroom trips on Facebook, and throwing fruit into green smoothies without peeling it. I call this category, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."




*I later confirmed this with my little brother Joseph.

The Two Methods of Packing

 

 



Last night, Charlotte slept from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. for the second time this week. If she keeps this up, soon I won't have to choose between sleep and blogging and you'll be hearing more from me. More importantly though, I'll be able to tell other mothers with a smug sense of superiority that my baby sleeps through the night at 3 months old. (I always thought these mothers were lying but it turns out that maybe these mythical babies do exist.)

 

The girls find wands to play with and bless Charlotte with gifts of beauty, song, etc. 

 

So in the interest of practicality, I thought I would talk a little bit about travel. We just got back from another fun summer trip to Nana and Poppy's house on the lake, and while there were ups and downs to the traveling process, I would definitely do it again. (Up: Seeing the beautiful mountains near Vail, Colorado for the first time. Down: Austin's incessant quest to kill a bug in the car that woke up my sleeping baby.)

 

As far as roadtrips go, now that I'm a mom and can't listen to music and sleep the whole time, my favorite part has definitely become packing. I love packing. I like the process of gathering everything together, for a brief time on the road having everything you really need within arm's reach, and the sense of victory when you realize you didn't forget a single thing--one of the true marks of a master packer.

 

I don't think I've become a master packer yet, but Austin's parents still like to talk about the time Austin and I did Europe with a backpack apiece. Like a school backpack, not a hiking backpack. It's nice to be portable when you travel.

 

I've decided there are two styles of packing, Kitchen Sink Packing and Survivalist Packing.  

 

Kitchen Sink Packing: This is where you hold up an item and think, Will I possibly need this on my trip? The answer to this question is usually "Yes." Of course you could possibly use some bandaids and a straightener and your winter coat and that big bottle of lotion and a beach towel, etc. etc. This type of packing results in a lot of luggage. (I call it Kitchen Sink Packing because my dad literally brought a sink with us on one memorable camping trip where the scout motto of "Be Prepared" was taken a little too far.)

 

Survivalist Packing: This is where you hold up an item and think, Is there any way I can go without this on my trip? The answer to this question is usually "Yes." Do you really need that mini first-aid kit, could you wear your hair in a ponytail instead of straighten it, maybe borrow a jacket from your host if you get cold, run to Walmart if there's not lotion at your hotel, etc. etc. This kind of packing results in a sleek, streamlined bag that is easy to tote around. Unless you have kids, in which case you really do need all that stuff...



 

 

Sand is awesome!