A Letter to the Inspector General

Dear United States Postal Service:

Where are our Halloween costumes? Do you know? Someone in one of your Texas offices told us they would be here on Wednesday. Today is Friday. They are not here.

Can this situation please be remedied?

Sincerely,

Kind of Sad That Our Awesome Costumes Got Lost in Transit

Putting First Things First

Today was a really good day.

I've been thinking about cuddling lately. Specifically, cuddling my children. We're a pretty snuggly bunch. I'm not often concerned about making sure the small people have enough affection, because it feels like I'm always kissing the tops of their heads and telling them I love them. But a few days ago I was watching the boys play and I had the thought pop into my head, "I wonder how much longer Peter will let me hold his hand while we walk? Or give him hugs in public? Or ask me to come play trains with him? Or spend time with him at all?" He's only four and still loves these things, but the fleeting nature of time suddenly seemed very real.

Phoebe gets lots of snuggling time since it's integral to her feeding process. And she's a baby, so I can't help wanting to hold her as much as physically possible. I cuddle with Cooper while I read and sing to him before nap time everyday, not to mention that he will often come and give me a hug and a kiss without any prompting. Peter though, he's been left out lately.

That same day that I saw a mental picture of Peter as a teenager who refuses to hug his mother, I prayed that I would be able to make time to spend with each child, time to hold them and listen to them and just be close.

Today I was able to have time like that with each one of them, one-on-one. Phoebe had amazingly long naps (I'm not sure why, but I'm oh-so thankful for it). This meant that I spent a little longer with Cooper during our pre-nap routine. And then I sat with Peter while the other two were sleeping. I also made a conscious effort to go and play with them or see what they were building or drawing or doing whenever they asked. I have a bad case of the just-a-minutes. "I'll be there in just a minute, Peter." "Yes Cooper, just let me finish this first." Today, I paused sweeping the breakfast crumbs, loading the dishwasher, gathering trash. I went in and spent time with the boys as they played.

I need to figure out a way to store these moments, like money in a bank, putting them away now so that later, when they won't sit next to me with their head on my shoulder, I can withdraw my deposits. Something like saving for a rainy day I suppose.

Mutant Carrots

This is what happens when you don't thin your carrots.



The whole carrot crop, waiting to be peeled and sliced.

The Stash

Back in May our Bishop challenged our whole ward to gather a three-month supply by the end of November. I thought it was a great thing and was totally on board. Then we got a little bit sidetracked:

• We spent the month of July looking for a place to live
• We used up most of August unpacking and dipped heavily into the food storage we already had
• We had a baby in September and thought little about, well, much of anything not related to the baby

Guess what? We're now a month away from the deadline. I've spent most of October making lists of meals we eat, reading recipes, recording how much of each ingredient we need for all the food items we would eat during a three-month span.

In truth, I've gone a little food storage batty.

This site has been particularly helpful, especially the Excel worksheet for tracking ingredients.

One of the biggest impediments to our gathering has been our lack of freezer space. We have what might possibly be the smallest freezer ever. It is attached to a full-size fridge (or so it appears, although the fridge is freakishly small as well), but it holds very little. Bryan and I have gone back and forth on the whole should-we-buy-a-bigger-freezer-to-stick-in-the-garage debate. For the moment I'm trying to figure out how to replace all the freezer items on our list with canned goods. It works alright for tortillas (once I finally buckle-down and learn how to make my own), but not so well for cheese. Or fish sticks. Or french fries. Or zucchini or broccoli. Any ideas?

I guess I have a few weeks to figure that out.

Teaching Moment

We had a full Saturday. We turned our house into a sauna by making and canning more applesauce, cleaned various rooms, and put up curtain rods and curtains. (That last one was mostly Bryan.) During a break in the domesticity I went into the boys' room to play with Peter. While there, a lesson in prayer was taught.

Peter: Mommy, I want to find the black train.

Me: (turning toward the box of train paraphernalia) Well let's see if we can find it.

Peter: Mommy, do you want to know one thing you can do when you're trying to find something? You can say a prayer.

And he did. He stopped his playing and folded his arms where he was and offered a prayer asking for help in finding his train. I turned back toward the box, moved a few train tracks aside, and spotted the black train. I pointed it out to Peter. He smiled and pulled it out.

It's wonderful for me to see Peter learning and putting to use the things that we've been teaching. I think this is what the scriptures mean when they talk about having child-like faith. He had faith in the power of that prayer to help him find his train. He had faith that Heavenly Father was listening.

I'm glad that I was there for him to teach me that lesson.

For the Grandmas, Part 4

Peter told me he wanted to read to Phoebe, so I grabbed the camera.

Cooper To The Rescue

Cooper: Mom, Peter's my friend.

Me: He is, huh? That's good.

Cooper: (matter-of-factly) I'm going to save him.

Me: (slightly surprised) You are? From what?

Peter: From harm.

Cooper: From nap time.

A Word Problem

One sick baby girl

+

One mom who has sat up at night holding said baby girl for almost a week so she can breathe

+

Two big brothers that don't slow down, ever

=

One very tired mom

Time to Stop Believin'

Oh Glee, what are you doing to me? I love your fabulous musical numbers and think that many of your characters are compelling. But recently, well, you've been making some poor choices. Your inappropriate moments have started turning into inappropriate scenes. The bad is outweighing the good.

I'm so conflicted over this. I love show choir, I love Broadway, I love it when people break out into song. I do not love immorality or the celebration thereof.

And so, Glee, I'm afraid we need to take a break. Maybe I'll still check out your musical numbers on YouTube, but I don't think I can devote my time or brain space to you anymore. And that makes me kind of sad.

Brave

I took all three of them to Wal-Mart today and nobody cried.

Not even me.

Yeah, that's a win.

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Grower

Last week I kept having the thought that I needed to check on our garden. I'm afraid it's been severely neglected this year. On Saturday I stole away for what I thought would be ten minutes to see if we had any more tomatoes that were ripe.

I ended up being gone longer.

As I've said before, ours is one plot of many in a community garden. They're not locked up or closed off from the public. Anyone can walk through them that wants to. Sadly, someone walked through ours sometime in the last two weeks. Actually, they did more than walk.

First I noticed was that one of our Sugar Pumpkins was smashed. Then I saw that our tomato plants had been knocked over. The next thing I realized was that we were missing pumpkins. Nine pumpkins, all of them from Peter's miniature pumpkin vine that he had chosen to plant. In fact, none of his pumpkins were left. I spent a good deal of time searching through the vines making sure that I hadn't overlooked any of the small yellow squashes. I hadn't. It was only as I was leaving the garden that I realized my watermelon was missing too.

While I was bummed about my watermelon, I was much sadder about Peter's pumpkins. He's been watching them grow all summer, excited each time he discovered another one. As I stood in the garden, surveying the damage, I could picture Peter's reaction to his missing plants. I was sure there would be tears. I quickly picked all the tomatoes that could be saved, pulled all of our onions out of the ground, and steeled myself to tell Peter about the vandalism.

When I got home I told Bryan first. He agreed that we needed to tell Peter right away, so I called him out of his room and sat down on one of our dining room chairs so we were eye to eye. I took both of his hands in mine and I told him that someone had hurt our garden and that all of his pumpkins were gone.

At first he just looked at me with his big brown eyes. Then he asked a question I had no real answer for. "Why?" I told him I didn't know. He wanted to know if I had asked them why they had done it. He suggested telling them that we had been planning on making a pie. I said I hadn't seen the people that had done it, that I didn't know who it was, and that I had no way to ask why they had done that to our garden.

This is when I expected the tears to start flowing. But Peter is full of surprises. He was okay. He was sad, yes, but he wasn't heartbroken. And when I mentioned that maybe we could go to a pumpkin patch as a family to replace his pumpkins he got really excited. There were no tears, no consoling needed.

I think he set me a very good example.

Doting Big Brothers

Human Again

We have sick people at our house, hence the late-in-the-day posting. I'm the least sick and Bryan's the sickest. The three small people are all somewhere in the middle. Luckily, other than being mildly sniffly, Phoebe has been basically symptom-free.

One positive thing about Bryan being home sick is that I got to shower in the middle of the day and I now feel human again.

That's always a good thing.

False Advertising

Peter: (looking at the ads that came with Sunday's paper) Why are they selling kids?

Me: (in the next room and unable to see what he's looking at) What?! Wait...what?

Peter: In this ad. Why are they selling kids?

Me: Are you looking at the Toy R' Us ad?

Peter: Yeah.

Me: They're not selling kids. They're showing the kids using the toys. The toys are for sale.

Peter: No, right here, they're selling this kid.

And that is one reason Peter could never be a child model. He may be pretty enough, but he'd probably think we were trying to sell him.

Gotta Dance

Me: (watching as Cooper dances in his bedroom) What are you doing Cooper?

Cooper: Peter knocked over my toys, and so now I am dancing.

Well of course...

Miniture Golf by a Miniture Man

It worked! I'm pleased that the movie showed up on yesterday's post. Forgive me, but I'm going to try another one. This is a movie that Bryan took with his pho
ne way back in July. I had trouble getting this particular clip onto the blog before, so I'm going to try again. And besides, haven't you always wondered how Cooper played golf?



P.S. I have no idea why there's no sound.

Test

I haven't been able to post a movie on here for the last three months. This is a test post to see if anything shows up from the movie I took of Cooper.

Drawing a Blank

I sat at the computer for at least twenty minutes on Monday night, just staring. I had no idea what to write about. I spent time trying to find a funny clip to post from YouTube. Nothing.

I tried to access something from the far reaches of my brain that I've been pondering. Nothing.

I tried to think of something funny the boys had said recently.

Any guesses what I came up with?

That's right. Nothing.

I think I can officially state that I have a severe case of Mommy Brain. Mommy Brain is an off-shoot of Exhaustion-Induced Brain Fog. It hits hardest towards the end of the first month with a new baby. You still feel the euphoria of having that beautiful little person in your arms, but not enough to feel bright-eyed at 1am. And 4am. And 7am.

No, we haven't had another six hour stretch of sleep since Friday night. How could you tell?

It just occurred to me that this blog was started as a way to combat my last case of Mommy Brain. Cooper was almost two months old when I wrote my first post about needing to exercise my brain.

I am still committed to posting something every week day. But I can't make any promises that anything I write will make much sense between now and, oh, I don't know, January? March maybe?

Aren't you glad you read my blog?

The Can-Can

Yesterday my Grandma and I canned five quarts of peaches (in addition to the dozen we did last week). And we made and canned ten pints of applesauce (after Isaac cored the apples). And I made three dozen muffins.

Paige and Isaac took turns playing with the boys and I carried Phoebe in the Bjorn.

And now I'm really tired.

But our food storage is looking better.

Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles

Friday night something wonderful happened. Phoebe slept for six hours straight.

In her own bed.

And I slept for five of those hours.

It's shocking how refreshed I felt after only sleeping for one to three hours stretches for almost a month. She's been getting better about sleeping in her bed, but this is the longest snooze so far. And then, after she ate, she slept for another three hours. That's eight hours of sleep for this usually bleary-eyed mom.

I got up on Saturday and felt so good I went ahead and made a triple batch of waffles. Yeah, it was kind of overkill and I was pretty tired by the end of the first session of General Conference (although that has more to do with wrangling the big brothers than making breakfast), but wow, it was nice to have energy again.

Field Trip: Temple