Goodbye Co-sleeper

When Benjamin was five months old we moved him from the little co-sleeper to the bassinet part of the pack'n'play. Zoë's only four months old (which really is the equivalent to his five months because he was premature) and she's in the process of transitioning to the pack'n'play as well. Rolling just isn't compatible to a little sleeper like this.

We took a few pictures today so that we can put it away (sniff, sniff). Here's sweet little Zoë-girl, showing how big she is in her bassinet. Sure, she could still sleep in there easily (and she did during dinner) but she also gets annoyed by it when she's flailing her arms and they keep hitting the side and when she's trying to roll over and can't and so forth, so it's got to go.

General Conference FHE

General Conference is coming up this weekend and I'm pretty excited. I've been listening to conference talks in the morning while I pump and usually I can fill both bottles by the end of one talk. I'm used to this routine and Benjamin is used to this routine, which is nice because I feel like my life gets turned upside-down when a baby is born and it takes me awhile to get back into the swing of things like consistent scripture study.

Before Zoë was born I'd been reading/listening to the scriptures while I did my blood sugar biking. But then she was born and I wasn't about to hop on a bike. Plus there was the new baby to take care of. And then we went on vacation and our schedule got hammered further. So while I'd been reading things here and there, I didn't have a dedicated time to study anything. But now I do.

Sometimes I laugh at myself for listening to conference talks because it's something my Aunt Judy always did and I always thought, "Why does she submit herself to such torture?! Isn't it bad enough to have to sit through conference twice a year?"

And that just shows how immature I was when I was a teenager. But that's okay. I'll give myself license to be an immature teenager because who wasn't? I'm sure I'll look back in fifteen more years and think about how immature I was as a thirty year old. That's just the way life goes.

Anyway, conference is coming up and so I planned a little FHE lesson to review the apostles and we had so much fun with it. I made a little cards and hid them around the house as a scavenger hunt. We started with President Russell M. Nelson, which worked out great because I couldn't think of a clue for his name. He was the card we started with. After we talked about how he's the new president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, I shared a few facts from the "Special Witness" cards that were in the September 2014 issue of The Friend and then read the clue for the next apostle on the back of the card.

"This apostle's name grows..." I read.

Everyone stared at me. Crickets chirped. I fretted my game was a bust.

"What grows?" I prompted.

"Ah," Andrew said (at least he got it).

"PLANTS!" Benjamin screamed.

The Olden Days

Andrew suggested we have a family movie night tonight, which meant we needed a living-room-friendly meal. It couldn't be pizza because we had that on Wednesday night with the Elders. It couldn't be chicken nuggets because apparently we're out (that's what Andrew suggested when he got home and I was in the middle of baking cookies instead of making dinner (priorities, people)), so I suggested sandwiches, which was a good idea.

We watched Doctor Who, which was a less good idea.

The girls loved it.

Benjamin stood behind Andrew the whole time, peeking out every now and then to see what was going on. He didn't touch his dinner. And when it was over he said, "I didn't like that."

Anyway, we had sandwiches for dinner. Andrew was leading on the sandwich front while I was either feeding Zoë or working on those cookies (they're for an activity tomorrow and our Saturdays have been so crazy lately and tomorrow's no exception so I knew I wouldn't have time to bake then).

"Everybody needs to make a sandwich!" he called out. "Because we always finish each other's sandwiches."

"That's what I was going to say!" Miriam sang and then everyone sang, "I never met someone who thinks so much like me. Jinx! Jinx again!"

Miriam, still belting out the lyrics at the top of her lungs suddenly forgot all the words. "Our muh-luh-luh-luh-luh-luh," she fudged.

"Our mental synchronization can have but one explanation," I sang for her.

Little Bookworms

The girls ran into the house from the school bus rejoicing about fall intercession. No school for three weeks! Free at last! Wahoo!

The first thing they turned to with their newfound freedom was...books.

Here's Miriam with some Little Miss books that I dug out for her. Grandma Pat sent them to us years ago, when Miriam was a baby, and we used to read them all the time, but soon the children lost interest so they've been gathering dust on the shelf the past few years. But Miriam's teacher loves to read Roger Hargreaves' books to his class and Miriam has been writing a story about Little Miss Map. She was overjoyed when she saw these.

Benjamin behaves

Warning: The incidents I'm about to describe might shock you.

I took all four kids to school this morning for grandfriends day. Our goal was to leave by 8:00 and we were in the van by 7:59. That's shocking already, right? It meant I was able to pull into my favourite parking spot ("This is a good spot, by the grass, Mom, because there's no cars by it!" Benjamin observed) and get to the classroom in time to set things up before everyone got there.

We made it through the breakfast, where I was engaged in conversation with a young man who desperately needed conversation. His first question was, "Whose grandparent are you?"

"I'm not a grandparent," I said. "I'm just a regular parent."

"I thought you might be," he said. "Because of the baby. And because you don't look that old yet. Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," I said.

"Do you live in a tobacco-free environment?"

"I do," I said.

He sighed. "I wish I did!"

He didn't. I could smell tell. And there was no one there to take him to the book fair support him on grandfriends day. I didn't up and volunteer to do that like my friend Suzi, who took another little girl from her daughter's class to the book fair and let her pick out a book. But Suzi and her husband both have magical things called jobs, so that kind of generosity will come later, I'm sure. I also didn't want to even try to hit the book fair on double grandfriend day.

Word on the street is they managed to sell $4000 worth of merchandise in about an hour.

Yup. Glad I missed that craziness. But I'm also glad I got to talk a bit with that young man in Rachel's class, whose desk is a solitary island in the classroom. He's a bit of an acter-upper, I can tell. But sometimes I think those kids need a bit more attention, not seclusion.

Anyway, Benjamin kept wanting to go to Miriam's class but I told him we had to wait to clean up first so he walked up to a sweet grandma, grabbed her plate, and hustled to the trash can.

"There!" he said triumphantly. "Let's go!"

Buyer's remorse

This morning Andrew went to the girls' school for "grandfriends" day, which coincides with the book fair. What the school is really hoping is that grandparents, unfettered with the day-to-day business of raising children, will accompany their grandchildren to the book fair and spoil them. But we don't have grandparents here, so year after year we attend grandfriends day and so far have restrained from spoiling our children.

Last year Rachel bought a really cheap book (it was $2 or something; the cheapest thing there).

This year the girls had saved up their pennies (literally) and were aching to buy some books.

So we told them they could.

But then Zoë didn't sleep well and I was a wreck in the morning so Andrew ended up taking the girls to school for grandfriends day by himself. He had the girls count their money and then told them that he would pay for the books with his credit card and have the girls pay him since he didn't want to deal with the girls counting out pennies at the cash register.

Miriam knew exactly what she wanted to get: Who was Mother Theresa? and Who is Malala Yousafzai? Both books cost $5.99 (a bit steep, in my opinion (Scholastic books are such low quality (again, that's in my opinion)). Miriam only had $9 and some change to spend. Andrew advised her to buy one book but she started getting weepy right there in the stacks so he told her he'd "gift" her two dollars so she could get both, telling her that this meant she would spend all her money.

She was cool with that.

Rachel had birthday money to burn. She set aside $15 to spend, which I thought was a bit much, and then Andrew "gifted" her $2 as well. She ended up buying three books. And she's already finished one. Which is why libraries are awesome because what are the odds of her having purchased a book she's going to want to read over and over again? Pretty slim.

Knock, knock

"Knock, knock," Benjamin said.

"Who's there?" my dad asked.

"Boat!" Benjamin said.

"Boat who?" my dad asked.

"Boat! Can you come out to play?" Benjamin squealed with laughter.

The poor child cannot tell a joke.

Rachel had to clarify that he meant to say 'canoe,' which is, of course, a type of boat. Canoe come out to play?

"Knock, knock," said Benjamin.

"Who's there?" answered my dad.

"Salad!" Benjamin giggled.

"Salad who?"

"Salad! Um, can we come in?"

Again Rachel had to clarify that Benjamin meant to say 'lettuce," as in "Lettuce in! Lettuce in!"

This naturally set off an unstoppable slew of increasingly ridiculous knock-knock jokes. Benjamin ran out of actual jokes quite quickly (though he did manage to get the boo-hoo and whoo-whoo jokes in there) and started making up his own.

"Couch!"

"Couch who?"

"Couch, please open your mouth so I can look inside!"

Soon his jokes devolved into simply answering "Who's there?" with anything and then dissolving into giggles.

"Knock, knock," he'd say.

"Who's there?" my parents would say.

"Baby Zo! Bahahahaa! Knock, knock!"

"Who's there?"

"Mine eye! Hahahaha!"

It took several minutes for us to convince Benjamin (and his older sisters, if we're being honest, because there was a lot of joke telling going on) to end their knock-knock jokes so that we could have a decent conversation. It's always nice to Skype with my parents, even if the kids are being silly the whole time.

I'm Nobody. Who are you? Are you—Nobody—too?

Overall I enjoy motherhood. Sure, it has its ups and downs. It has its perks and its abysmal trenches of fluid-filled agony (anyone who's ever had the stomach flu pass through a household of children knows this). It can bring laughter, it can bring tears. It's rarely ever easy, but it's a station in life filled with so much joy. And I love all my children dearly.

But sometimes I wonder, "What am I doing with my life?"

And what will I do when they're all in school?

And what will I do when they all leave home?

Because goodness knows I'm not going to buckle down and organize my house.

I'm something—someone—beyond a mother. I realize that being a mother isn't something that ever goes away, but I was a person before I became a mother. I did things—cool things—before I took on a full time role of "walking kleenex" and "carrier of goldfish."

I like to think that I've done things—that I do things (cool things!)—as a mother as well.

But sometimes I feel like the "me" inside has been swallowed up by caring for others (or, more likely in my case she drowned in milk, because let's be honest...) and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing because I've stretched and grown so much since becoming a mother and I don't think I would ever chose to go back to being who I was before. But, still...I'm more than "just" a mother.

I had the privilege of lunching with a group of women from my ward. Some of us were young mothers. Some were newly weds. Some were divorcees. Some were on the road to being empty nesters. There was quite a range of experience at the table. Someone mentioned that a grown child was having a problem and they wished they could just put a bandaid on it and kiss it better...but that they couldn't because the problem was real and complex. Their child had outgrown momma's magical fixing powers.

Another sister (who raised quite the brood of children herself) said, "Let's keep things in perspective, though. Grown up children have more complicated problems but small children have constant problems. They need you all the time. They don't even let you go to the bathroom by yourself. And that's just exhausting, to be honest."

"It's funny," said another nearly empty-nester. "You devote years of your life trying to raise your children to be independent adults, and then they leave and you say, 'Now what?' You're just lost. You want to say, 'Wait! Come back! I don't know what to do without you!'"

And so, what am I doing with my life?

Not with my childrens' life.

I don't even know.

I went to that writing class today because I like to write and the idea of writing a book has always been jumping around in my brain. I enjoy writing. But I don't know how to write a book.

Anyway, I'm so glad I went to that class. The woman who taught it has six children and she didn't really start writing—with the goal of being published—until her youngest was two and she knew there wouldn't be any more babies coming along. She said she felt so addled by children that she couldn't do anything with her time but then she had that last baby and there wasn't another coming to further addle her brain and her head began to clear and she began to be able to...focus on things.

Part of me feels like that's really a thing that would happen because these sleepless nights—I tell you!—they really do addle your brain a bit, and while I think it would be nice to wait until that point in my life, I'm not sure that I need to necessarily. I mean, there's no harm in trying something now.

But the other part of me—the part of me that wants to curl up in a ball and sleep for a thousand years—is happy to know that if I fail I can always pick up again later when there isn't a tiny being 100% dependent on me draining away all of my brain power.

So, one day perhaps I'll write something more than the ramblings of my sleep-deprived brain, but until then at least I know I'm working toward my 10,000 hours of required writing practice.

All the way to Andrew's birthday

This little lady has been rather crabby lately. I feel like all I've done this week is try to make her stop fussing. I know that's not entirely true because we went to soccer on Tuesday, where, admittedly I spent my time trying to make her stop fussing (and I succeeded because she eventually fell asleep (and look how cute she is)).

I'm the crazy one

Recently Benjamin has begun starting a conversation of utter nonsense, insisting that we participate in the conversation, and then turning things on its head by acting like we're crazy for bringing up whatever random thing he brought up in the first place.

For example, we were driving to church last Saturday when Benjamin said, "Today is Valentine's Day! Look at the sky! It's filled with valentine hearts because it's Valentine's Day!"

"Oh, is it?" Andrew said.

"Yes, it is!" Benjamin said.

"Well, Happy Valentine's Day, then!" Andrew said.

"What?" Benjamin asked in a very offended manner. "What are you talking about? Why are you even talking about that, Dad?"

Because he's the crazy one, that's why.

For lunch one of the days this week Benjamin wanted a peanut butter and honey sandwich. No, jam. No, honey. No, jam. No, honey. No, jam. No, honey. No, jam. For sure jam.

I got out the peanut butter and jam.

"Aw, why that?" Benjamin whined. "Where's my honey?"

"You decided on peanut butter and jam, remember?"

"No, I decided on jam and honey. No peanut butter. Just jam and honey."

"I'm not making you a jam and honey sandwich," I said.

Because I'm the crazy one, that's why.

He ended up with a jam and peanut butter sandwich that day, but later on in the week when I was feeling much more generous I made him two half-sandwiches, one with peanut butter and jam and the other with peanut butter and honey (a compromise I will likely forever regret).

Halfway through the meal he picked up the rest of the sandwich and turned his plate upside down.

"Oh, Ben!" I sighed. "No! Don't do that!"

"Why not?" he asked innocently.

"Because now your crumbs are all over the table. I want them to stay on your plate."

Eager to please, Benjamin flipped his plate back over and started whacking it with his sandwich.

"Don't worry, Mom!" he assured me. "I can put more crumbs on it!"

And I'm the crazy one?