Month: January 2019

On Friday I felt in a celebratory mood, and so after school I took all of the kids to The Museum of Natural Curiosity. They are the perfect ages for this museum, and they all had so much fun. Ammon and Lydia did the ropes course together while Mary stayed close to Clarissa and me. She loves Clarissa so much and always tries to help take care of her whenever she gets a chance.

Clarissa was a wonderful sharer in the baby section. At one point, she leaned down and picked up a ball that another girl had dropped. I thought she was going to keep it and that there would be crying, but instead Clarissa stood up and handed it right back to the girl who had dropped her ball. That made me so happy.

In the evening we ate the beef and barley soup I made on Thursday, and we inspected our new basement floors. They looks so great! It makes me want to do something special with the space.

Then Lydia and I left for her harp lesson. She needed to pee the whole lesson long, and I guess that feeling made her totally crazy. She acted completely out of control the whole lesson long. I was so thankful that our normal lesson time is at 6:30am, because if this is how she would behave for evening lessons…wow.

Then, despite her lesson behavior, I took her out to Crumbl to get some cookies. I then let her stay up until midnight reading Harry Potter, which was a bad idea because by midnight she was practically drunk with fatigue. But I do have so much sympathy for her when she gets so into her book and doesn’t want to put it down. It’s hard for me not to indulge that.

Pictures:

 

 

Ammon pooped in the potty today! Afterward he donned a superhero cape and “flew” around the house on a rolling pin. He was a superhero!! The guys who are redoing our basement floors after the flood thought that was pretty funny. Ammon also spent the rest of the day referring to himself in the third person as “the superhero.”

E.g.” The superhero pooped in the potty!!” and “The superhero wants a snack.” etc. It was so funny and cute.

I also took Ammon and Clarissa to the park this afternoon. Ammon, of course, wore his superhero cape there. The first thing he did was fall and get, in his own words, “soaking wet!”, but he still kept the cape on.

Lydia is also reading so much these days! She is blasting through the Harry Potter books. She is almost done with book three and spends almost all of her spare time reading.

This is the third day in a row that Abe is not coming home until super late (or, in Monday’s case, he didn’t come home at all). As much as I miss Abe and am always so happy to see him come through that door, I actually really enjoyed doing it all myself today.

Normally I clean while Abe does the kids’ night routines, but since he’s here, I do the night routines. And I really sank into appreciating my kids and enjoying how delightful they can be. We still had hard music practices, but that was a discrete hour in an otherwise very happy, peaceful evening.

I didn’t feel that well this morning and so I spent a lot of it curled up on the couch watching art history documentaries and working on a photo book for 2017. I couldn’t actually relax that much because Ammon demands that I accompany him every time he goes potty, and because he’s terrified of pooping in the potty, he’s constantly running to the potty because his body actually does need to poop, but then he gets freaked out and hops right off. Three minutes later we do the exercise again. But since I didn’t work out today or yesterday, I just counted these potty trips as my exercise. There’s a lot of deep knee bends involved in helping him in and out of his pants and undies (he also believes he needs to be naked from the waist down in order to go potty).

I wish I had taken pictures because Clarissa was in the best mood all day and was SO CUTE. But my phone was dead in the morning and then in the afternoon and evening, life is on super speed and there wasn’t a moment to take any photos.

On Tuesday Lydia got her retainer put in. She already sees a speech pathologist, but with that retainer, the poor girl is really struggling to speak. But she was very good and diligent about brushing her teeth and retainer so carefully, and I think she feels proud to have one in.

Abe came home late at night while I was binge watching Victoria. We sat on the couch and he told me all about the sales kickoff. It has been a really hard year for Abe, and Tuesday night was the awards ceremony. It was humbling and difficult for him, but when he tells me about his feelings, I am always so amazed at what a magnificent soul he has. He recognizes his own weaknesses so clearly, and he has such a gracious, intelligent, spiritually sensitive approach to the challenges work is presenting to him.

After watching Victoria, I am a little terrified Abe going to die of something like Albert did. I guess we’ll probably steer clear of typhoid, but with all the stress Abe is under, I am concerned he going to have a heart attack or get cancer or something. When I see love like mine depicted in books, television, or any kind of media, it always seems like it ends in someone dying. Even in Up, after the couple has lived a full and happy life together, Ellie’s death feels like a tragedy. It makes me cry, every time!

I know it’s so morbid and stupid to anticipate that tragedy, but honestly, the happiness I feel in my marriage feels unbelievable. When I think about it, I can’t help but feel like it’s not fair I get to experience it, and I have this dark suspicion that life will balance the scales by killing Abe off.

What a way to end the post. An aboutface: I guess the point is, I got lucky in love!

On Monday Abe left for sales kickoff in Salt Lake. Since the meetings start early and end late, he spent the night at his parents’ house and the kids won’t see him again until Thursday. So to make the absence a little easier, Abe stayed home until 8:15 in the morning so I could go do a full yoga session.

The roads were so slick and crazy! I spent forty five minutes driving to yoga, and then it took me the same amount of time to get back. By 8:10 I had already been on the road for an hour and a half. But I was grateful to have the chance to do yoga. With our treadmill out of commission and our local rec center under construction, and with the slippery roads and sidewalks, yoga is really the only exercise I can do. To make up for the days of exercise I missed this past week,  I did hot pilates before my regular bikram yoga and almost had a heart attack afterward, but once I recovered I resolved to try to do that combo every week. It felt very effective (as long as I don’t accidentally kill myself. As I lay on the floor pouring buckets of sweat for a full five minutes after it was over, it did occur to me that this exercise combo might actually do me in).

When I got home I was so hungry, but I promised Ammon if he peed in the potty we would go play outside in the snow. He immediately peed, so I delayed breakfast and went outside to play with Clarissa and him. Clarissa was so funny! I kept thinking she had fallen down and couldn’t get up because of all of her snow gear, but instead she was just lying on the snow licking it up. That happened a lot. And Ammon was so happy making angels, playing with snow toys, and running around. Our yard is now the only one in the cul de sac that doesn’t look pretty with unbroken snow…but we did have a great time.

Doesn’t Clarissa look like she’s stuck in the picture below?

But she’s not! She’s just licking the snow. Look at her happy smile:

During Clarissa’s nap, Ammon and I did a beautiful insect puzzle together and I folded a million loads of laundry. Then Clarissa woke up and we all went to pick up the girls from school.

I don’t know what it is, but when we pick up the girls and I have four kids instead of two, I morph from being a fairly patient, kind parent into this horrible monster who’s so deep in fight or flight mode that I literally can’t think of simple vocabulary words like “plate,” “shelf” or “socks.” I start talking/screaming and then I can’t finish a sentence because my brain can’t think of words like those. And wow, the girls’ practices are just insane. I feel highly stressed and irresponsible because I can’t see Clarissa, who has now learned how to climb on tables and is always attempting to scale the stove. Since our TV is no longer in our basement, I can’t sedate Ammon during the girls’ practice anymore, so he is a chaotic, free-roaming agent who might, at any minute, pee or poop on something. And if those two things aren’t stressing me to the point where I’m a yelling, crazy mess, then trying to get Mary to focus or Lydia to learn something new makes me INSANE.

So basically I was a total disaster for several hours and spent the rest of the evening after the kids went down feeling sad and guilty, binge watching Victoria, and buying Lydia her wishlist of Scholastic books because I felt so bad about her harp practice.

This is Abe again. I’m trying to help by blogging on the weekends. Lily gets pain in her wrists from all the typing she does, plus,  I just want to contribute. This blog will be such a treasure to look back on when we are older. I value it so much and want to make sure I’m pitching in.

Due to the new year, there were a lot of first today. I will list them below:

1. Church now starts at 9:00.
2. Ammon is now a Sunbeam in primary (no longer in the nursery).
3. Church is now only two hours long
4. We started the new suggested home curriculum by reading the parable of the sower over dinner.

Overall it was a good Sunday.  Lily and I substituted for Mary’s primary class which was a lot of fun. I absolutely love kids and their innocence. It reminds me of the simplicity of my own childhood.  I’m not sure if we taught them anything, but we did try :).

When it was time to pick kids up from class, I wondered where Ammon’s new classroom was as I started through the hallways. Then I heard two boys yelling in a steady “ahhhhhhhhh!” unbroken for maybe about ten seconds. I followed the sound and found Ammon with another boy just standing and yelling. Ugh. Poor teachers.

On the positive side, Ammon’s potty training is going INCREDIBLY well. He didn’t have a single accident. Major kudos to Lily who had the guts to initiate the undertaking. I was definitely intimidated.

I had financial clerk stuff for about two hours after church and enjoyed talking to Moroni Hair. The new schedule is great because Lily puts Clarissa down as soon as she gets home so it’s not too crazy.

Lily and I have felt quite daunted by life lately, and we both napped to catch our breaths. She made a beautiful grill-cheese, tomato soup, roast cauliflower and spinach salad dinner.

Afterwords, Lydia led the most wonderful family home evening that she prepared. She wrote out three gospel stories that taught principles about forgiveness, tithing and prayer.  Lily and I so grateful she led out on our family home evening.

Lily and I retired early tonight. Winters can be hard on us feeling cooped up with all the kids messing up the house over and over and over again, and not getting as much sunlight.  But all in all, things are going very very well.

Below are pictures of Clarissa at church. She was so darling in her cloak!

(This is Lily editing Abe’s post. On Sunday night Abe discovered the girls playing a game of “owls.” They had started off by playing board games but ended up fighting, so they made up this owl game where they pretended to build a nest in Mary’s bed. All of their socks were mice that they gathered for food in the bed. They begged to sleep all night in their “nest,” so Abe caved and let them. Here’s the picture he took.)

I’m also temped to call my title “A Lazy Saturday” for the following reasons:

• The day started for me after getting about 11 hours or sleep
• I left the house only once for fifteen minutes to get carpet cleaner from target for Ammon’s accidents.
• At Target, I was in my slippers, shorts, a t-shirt and my sports goggles (my actual glasses broke and the new ones are on the way, and I hadn’t troubled yet to put in my contacts). I’m sure I looked amazing.
• I “got ready for the day” at 7PM after Ammon and Clarissa went to sleep
• After “getting ready for the day” I sat on the couch with Lily, Mary, and Lydia and watched Harry Potter 2 while binging on cookies and popcorn (we went through three bags).
• After the movie, Lily and I started watching the TV series Victoria (very good).

But I decided NOT to call my title “A Lazy Saturday” for these following reasons:

• With 4 young children, lazy days are physically impossible.
• Lily was proud of me showering and putting on nice clothes at 7PM and “never saying die”
• Lily did back-to-back classes of pilates and hot yoga, went into some kind of systemic shock and replenished at Aubergene until she felt better.
• I got an hour or two of work done.
• I had a wonderful scripture study focused on the Savior’s sermon on the mount.
• I and (mostly) Lily cleaned the entire house in the morning.
• Ammon made major progress potty training.
• I made the kids steel cut oats in the morning and a very nice lunch.
• Lily and I did music practice with the girls.
• We had a dance party.

I actually quite liked today.  It was a nice blend of lazy, irresponsible and replenishing with doing the responsible things that (hopefully) mattered the most.

Here is a video of our dance party. Below are two more pictures.

Below is a picture of lunchtime:

 

 

 

 

It was very hard to come back to work this week. I genuinely love the people I work with, and I love the work, but I got very accustomed to a slower pace.  So even though this week was only three work days, I was so ready for it to be over.

This was especially the case since Thursday night our baby (who has been getting up at night more than normal) slept perfectly, BUT ALL THREE OTHER CHILDREN WOKE UP…and it seemed they were perfectly spaced out to make sure that Lily and I didn’t get more than 1-2 hours of sleep at a time.  Additionally, Mary had her 6:30 AM piano lesson, so sleeping in was not an option for me.  Lily got a little extra rest, which she deserved because she was much more responsive during Lydia’s midnight nose-bleed, Mary’s 2AM announcement that she wet the bed and Ammon’s 4AM nightmare screams (or whatever order it was actually in).

About Lily’s day: She was still working on potty training Ammon, which has been a major challenge. He seems scared, almost traumatized to go the bathroom at the beginning of the day, but once he does it a time or two, he gets happy about all the adulation and gets on a roll and does better the rest of the day. Still, I think he regressed Friday, so Lily was doing a lot of cleaning of messes I think. Lily did get a nap which was a blessing considering the night of low sleep she had and how nuts it must have been with the kids at home with it too cold to go outside (it’s been so cold!), with no basement to play in because it’s not fixed from the flood, with half-naked Ammon running around making sporadic poo or pee messes and then making dinner, probably also fitting in Lydia’s harp practice somewhere in there. She amazes me.

On my end, I had a very intense day at work that included a lot of e-mail, 4 one-hour territory planning sessions with different direct reports, a one hour prospect demonstration, and various other activities.  I was running on fumes from the lack of sleep. Lily and I exchanged love notes during our crazy days and agreed that our love for each other was helping us through our painful days.  I am so in love with her :).

I came home a bit early so Lily could take Lydia to harp. I served up a delicious pot pie that Lily cooked during the day. Mary protested because it wasn’t one of the very few foods that she likes, but everyone else loved it (Lydia just didn’t like the crust). Lily came home and helped to wrap up the night routine.

Then, at about 7:30 PM I lay down just to catch my breath, and I literally woke up around 7:00 AM Saturday. Lily stayed up and watched Harry Potter 4 with the girls.

One of my favorite moments of the whole day was seeing how thrilled Clarissa was about the light-switch that she’s been learning about. The video is below:

Clarissa with the light-switch

 

 

On Wednesday Ammon had a poop accident and a ton of pee accidents. He is really scared to poop in the potty. After all of the laundry I did, I wasn’t in the mood to cook dinner so the kids and I ran through In-N-Out. Sigh.

But after that we went to Costco and joined Abe to “help” him pick out new glasses. The girls were so enthusiastic about this that they were picking every pair off the shelves and demanding Abe try them ALL on. So I ended up taking the kids around Costco and ate samples.

Then we came home, ate dinner, took baths, and got ready for the temple. Eliza Freestone came to babysit so Abe and I could go experience the new feminist changes that have been made to the temple ceremony. I felt so grateful these occurred in my lifetime! I thought changes like these would probably take decades, at least.

We bumped into the Blosils while we were there and ended up chatting with them in the Celestial room. It was fun to hear their insights into the ceremony. We got to drive home all together, so the fun continued.

Then Abe and I collapsed in bed, only to be woken up all. night. long. by every child except, ironically, Clarissa. First Mary came at 2am and told us she had peed everywhere (we are trying to put her in undies at night again). Then after we cleaned her and the bed all up and had barely fallen asleep again, Ammon woke up screaming from a nightmare. It was probably about potty training. Then after I went into him and tried to go back to bed, Lydia came in hysterical because she had just had a giant nose bleed and there was blood everywhere. And by that point it was almost time to get up for Mary’s 6:30am piano lesson. What a night!

On Wednesday, for the first time perhaps in a year (or maybe ever?), ALL FOUR KIDS slept in. As in, it was 7:30 and Abe and I just happened to wake up peacefully. Well, not that peacefully since Abe is supposed to be at work by 7:30, but still. It was better than usual.

Who knows how long they all might have slept if I hadn’t idiotically made the exact same mistake I made last year and assumed that school started again today. I did the exact same thing last January 2nd! I was so mad at myself. I woke up the girls and Abe drove them to school, only to discover it was closed and now he was more than half an hour late to work. He was so sweet about this, but I felt stupid.

It was really nice to have the girls home, though. They have been enormous helps in potty training Ammon. Honestly, they have done a lot of the hard work. On her own initiative, Lydia runs him to the potty, makes sure he wipes, flushes and washes his hands, and she cheers enthusiastically for every bit of progress he makes. Mary is the self designated sticker dispenser, and Ammon runs to her for stickers each time he goes. She loves giving them out. They have been amazing.

I also cooked dinner for the first time in forever. I made a curried lentil soup, heated up some Finnish pastries, and roasted some curried carrots, onions, cauliflower, and currants. Then I cut some grapefruit for dessert since this is supposed to be our year of health.

After dinner we all went to Ammon’s room for scripture, and then Abe and the older girls and I all watched the 4th Harry Potter movie together. Lydia is very conscientious and was very concerned at its PG13 rating. Abe and I explained that we were providing the parental guidance, but in retrospect maybe it was a little too scary? The girls seemed fine, though. Hopefully we didn’t make an irresponsible choice.

After that I gave the girls their nightly massages that I started giving them about a month ago. And then Abe and I studied scriptures together. It was a great day, and I just wish I had a picture to go with it!