Author: Lily

Today I vacillated between periods of extreme inertia and not-quite-as-extreme activity. After Mary’s morning nap, I took the girls to a school playground. We all had fun sliding down the double slides together, and Mary was beside herself crawling up the stairs on the playground equipment. In her excitement, she detached her binky, and so I returned to the park to retrieve it. When I went back, some kids were in recess and one mischievous boy was trying to sneak out of the park. I guess I have a much more effective glare now than I ever did when I actually taught; he took one look at me and scampered right back towards the playground. My immense self-satisfaction after this incident was slightly ridiculous.

After the park, we headed over to Misty’s house for a play date. Misty kindly listened to me rave about my favorite subject, Martha Stewart. Something interesting about Martha (since you asked) is this: The only time she ever seemed brusque was when I started expressing to her how much of a fan I was. All she said was “That’s nice,” and changed the subject. I wonder if it’s strange to have someone you don’t even know appropriate your identity through intense fan worship. Whatever it was, I was impressed that Martha was so humble and didn’t need to hear someone else tell her how wonderful she is. That is part of what makes her so wonderful.

The girls fell asleep on the way home from Misty’s, so I put them to bed and proceeded to lounge on the couch for the next three (yes, three) hours. Way to go, children! I was in such a great mood after that, my children probably did not even recognize me.

When they woke up, I toted them to the library where I sat Lydia down and read to her for an hour straight in order to pay off my very large library fine. Our library has this awesome policy that says you get a dollar off of your fine for every ten minutes you read to your child. Since I had two children, my time counted double, and by the end: voila! No fine, two happy children, and the evening was almost done. My good mood preserved!

We came home and Lydia wanted me to read her the books we had brought home from the library (funny), so we did that until Abe came home and we ate yesterday’s pizza for dinner. Well…Mary mostly ate cookies, but every so often she gnawed on the pizza. I am a great mom, I know.

And yet, I still felt good despite my children’s terrible dinner diet. I gave them a bath together, vacuumed the upstairs, folded some laundry, put everyone cheerfully to bed, and pranced downstairs to blog about it all.

All that’s left is to post these pics, clean the kitchen and shower. So close to bedtime–yippee!!

 

Today was a great day. The girls woke up late, so I actually got a chance to study my scriptures and write in my scripture journal before they woke up, and wow–what a difference that made. I wrote down everything that bothered me about yesterday and realized that I get frustrated at Lydia because I am profoundly confused. I don’t always know what to do to help both girls feel loved and protected, and things happen so fast that in the moment I just give up and get mad. Since my own confusion is the real problem, I decided that today I would just make a point to remember that during tricky situations. Remembering helped me be calm(er) and made it possible for me to end this day with no keep-me-up-at-night regrets.

Also, preschool went really well. I rummaged through the house last night and found these oval shapes: an Easter egg candy, a ring, two spoons, a lemon, a teething ring, and my kitchen radio. The kids seemed to enjoy pulling surprises out of my bag and sorting the ovals from the squares. And later today, when I was reading a book to Lydia, she pointed out an oval! That made me feel good.

Just as our last preschool friend was pulling away, who should show up but Anthony, Malika, and Emil! I was so excited to see them, especially because they live in Switzerland, and so an in-person visit with these friends is a treasure. Knowing Anthony and Malika, I just knew Emil would be a special baby, and he was. He was so calm and cuddly. I got to hold him for a moment at the end, but he much prefers his mama, and really, with a mom like Malika, he can not be blamed.

As soon as they left I ate lunch and cleaned the house. I had the preschool kids eat their snacks right next to the closet where I keep the vacuum, and as I cleaned I congratulated myself on that excellent foresight.  I also internally debated whether I should follow through on my plans to accompany Abe to Moab tonight. Since Arches National Park is probably shut down from the government furlough, I decided against going.

Abe still came home for a little bit, though, and that made it possible for me to run some flowers over to the hospital where our friend, Jill, just had a sweet little baby, Griffin. I got to hold Griffin, and I could not believe how calm and alert he was. The whole time I had to fight back tears because Jill’s husband is being deployed for six months starting this Sunday, and Jill has three other little kids. I do NOT know how she does it, but I admire her so much. She is so strong, calm, and kind–and also, I just have to say, did not even have the slightest hint of a postpartum belly. I want to be more like Jill!

After that inspiring visit, I dashed to the grocery store and rushed home to start some pizza. I kind of messed up the dough, and I should have caramelized at least twice as many onions, but the pizzas were still tasty. Only I know that, though, since the girls got hungry before the pizzas were done. I won’t tell you what they ate instead. It’s simply too appalling.

Then I had a magical time feeding and rocking Mary after her evening nap. (Her schedule was wacky today on account of preschool.) It was SO wonderful to cuddle and play with my baby, although in the back of my mind I still couldn’t shake the bad-mom guilt; that time was bought by allowing Lydia to burn away her chance for normal vision by watching…the iPad.

When I couldn’t stand the idea of Lydia staring at a screen any longer, I came down and coaxed her upstairs, where I gave the girls an early bath together. Then we read and played for the next two hours until bedtime. I then showered, cleaned the kitchen again, and am now blogging.

[break in blogging] WHOA! I just ran upstairs because Mary was crying and discovered that she had pooped so much that her diaper came off. I gave up cloth diapering a couple months ago because the incessant laundry (with our machine in the basement, no less) was too overwhelming, but after this incident, I am rethinking that decision. My goodness!

Here are today’s pics:

Lydia gave me plenty of opportunities to practice my resolve to be more patient!

Ugh. I hate when I lose my temper at Lydia. I kept trying to control myself and give her second chances all day long, but finally, right before bed, she started melting down because Mary came near her books, and I lost it. I said some things I really hope neither of us remembers, and then I refused to read her bedtime stories (aside from the first couple pages of I Feel My Savior’s Love…oh, the irony).

Ten minutes later I heard her sobbing and pleading for tissues, so I went in, rocked her and sang to her until we all calmed down.

 Sometimes Most times, I forget that the poor thing is only two years old, and I should really cut her more slack. She is sweet and kind hearted, and there is nothing more adorable than watching her be kind to Mary. But nothing grates on my nerves more than Lydia’s constant meltdowns–usually about nothing. For example, in the time that it has taken me to write this blog to this point, I have had to interrupt twice to go to Lydia because she starts crying in bed over crazy things. It is 9:45pm, and since the kids got up at 7am, by now I am just plain snappy.

I also have yet to do the prep for preschool tomorrow.  I am the host mom tomorrow, and I have to review letters A, B, C, D and teach the kids about ovals and squares. Squares are pretty straight forward–but ovals? If you have any oval shaped objects lying around, let me know, because I’m pretty sure I don’t. I was going to do a simple category activity for the shapes part, but the ovals are throwing me. I am so jealous of the mom who got to do circles.

The pictures are from today when we went with Balu (Swathi’s cousin) to the mall and to dinner. He took amazing pictures of the girls with his iPhone.

Maybe some inspiration about ovals will hit me while I’m cleaning. Here’s praying.

When I returned home yesterday, Mary took one look at me and started screaming. She actually turned purple from yelling and kicking so much, and she would NOT let me hold her. I know she had not forgotten me because Abe leaves for many days at a time and Mary always remembers him. She was clearly upset at me for leaving her (we had been kind of inseparable until then), and she wanted to let me know.  Before bedtime, I renewed my efforts to get back in her good graces, but she would have none of it. Instead of responding to my overtures, Mary screamed, raced over to Abe and embraced him tightly while glaring at me.

I said a prayer this morning that Mary would forgive me because Abe is going to be gone for a bit, and I did not want Mary to scream the whole day. We got off to a rocky start. When I tried to hold Mary this morning, she screamed bloody murder, jumped out of my arms and crawled as fast as she could to Lydia, who freaked out because she was trying to go potty and Mary was practically diving into the toilet trying to get away from me.

But breakfast provided two opportunities. 1) Mary was hungry, and only the only way I was going to let her eat was if she let me feed her. A start. 2) I play this game with Mary where I kiss her feet and play peek-a-boo with her while I’m cleaning the floor. When I did that today, her heart softened and we were friends again.

Hallelujah. I have my baby back. (Except that also means I have to do everything one-handed, but listening to her scream all day is the less desirable alternative.)

Aside from scrubbing both toilets, vacuuming, doing/folding (part of) two loads of laundry, playing with the girls and reading to the girls, I finally stepped out of the house at a healthy 5:25pm this evening. I was in the mood for sushi–maybe because Martha Stewart told me she loved Japanese food?–and took the girls with me to the sushi place we went on Saturday. Abe had car issues with the rental car company he’s using for this trip, and so he arrived approximately 40 minutes after I got to the restaurant. His presence was welcome, because before he came I was super busy fishing goodies out of soup, tearing up sushi for the girls, and trying to make sure their clothes stayed clean (big fail there).

But the plus side of all that work is, I have nothing to clean now! No mess in my kitchen or anything, so after I post these two pictures, I can happily tuck myself in bed.

Except for Jesus, there is no one in the history of the world that I would rather meet than Martha Stewart. That is not an exaggeration. It is a dry fact. Today, I got to do what very few people on the earth have ever done; I lived out my wildest, most fantastic dream. I met Martha Stewart.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Not only that, but I spent the day with her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was.

I ran out of words. How can I convey the bliss? I think I just might name my next daughter Candace, after my friend Candace, who toted me along on this amazing adventure. Candace Martha Darais. What do you think?

We baked biscuits with Martha. We ate the most delicious meal I have ever had (that Martha cooked herself) with Martha. We got our make-up done by Martha’s make-up artist. We toured Martha’s farm several times, once with Martha. We helped set up for Martha’s party. We attended Martha’s (Audubon) party. We picked apples from Martha’s espaliered apple trees. We met and pet Martha’s dogs. And horses. We saw Martha’s grandchildren, Kevin Sharkey, and Ryan (her head gardner). We walked around Martha’s house and poked around her basement. We ate ourselves sick at the party.

In short, the day was unbelievable. And Martha in person? Is even better than on T.V.. So natural, gracious, straight-forward, hospitable, interesting, funny, beautiful…Let’s just say, I left more convinced than ever that Martha is a demi-God. And she even made jokes at the party about her imprisonment. What a woman.

She also almost lost her temper when she found out our trip was short and no one arranged for us to tour her New York offices. She told us we are welcome the next time we are in New York to see her offices, and her assistants pulled us aside afterward and renewed the invitation. We are stoked.

Also, this is a link to the blog of my friend, Candace. She is going to post her much more detailed account of what took place (along with her pictures) once she gets home.

Today was Mary’s birthday! We are going to celebrate a month late, but I can’t believe that one year ago I was just meeting my sweet, adorable little girl. I still remember how beautiful a day it was, and how happy we were after the whole process of introduction. She is a joy and light to our lives.

I feel a bit guilty being away on her big day, but I am comforting myself that she doesn’t know. In the meantime, I had a great day! I got my hair done, walked for hours around New York, and toured the Cloisters.Here are some pictures of my touring. So far I have tried meditating at/on: the airport, the airplane, the subway, clark’s apartment, the hair salon, and The Cloisters. I am so glad I started meditating because meditating at The Cloisters is an incredible experience I shall never forget (especially since I am writing it down!).

Then I met up with Candace at the airport and a car brought us to our hotel, in Greenwich, CT:  The Homestead Inn. We feel fancy.

But we arrived here hungry, and the restaurant is ridiculously expensive (think $16 for a humble bowl of oatmeal), so we ordered a pizza from town. Candace bravely did the walk of shame in front of the maitre’d (who had all but commanded us to eat at the hotel) carrying our extra large pizza up to our room.

I am all in a tizzy because I did not think to bring a basket for the gifts we have for Martha, nor did I write a note. What was I thinking??!!!! But I think we have a short term solution, so maybe all is not lost. I also did not bring a copy of Martha’s latest book to sign. Again, I am kicking myself.

Here are some pics from Abe’s day back at home. Lydia had two play dates today! Aria kindly babysat her in the morning, and then Abe babysat Espen while Aria did yoga. Then Anthony, Malika and Emil came over and had another play date. From the pictures Abe has, it looks like he took the girls to Coldstone at some point. At the end of the day, Abe and the girls headed over to Tom and Suzanne’s so the girls could open some presents. ( Today was, after all, Mary’s actual birthday.) It looks like it was a fun day!

I am in New York City! It feels a bit strange because the last time I was here, we were all so jet-lagged, sleep deprived and together. Now I’m here with my lovely brother and sister-in-law; we are all deeply engaged in our electronic devices, and the apartment is quiet. Very different from the soundtrack Lydia and Mary (and, let’s be honest and include me in that group) provided the last time we were here.

I just realized, I forgot my toothbrush! Normally, (TMI!!) Abe, the girls and I are gross and share in this scenario–which seems to occur every time we travel. And even though part of me is tempted to sneak into Clark and Swathi’s bathroom and steal one of their brushes, I will spare them if only because I like them so, so much.

How did I get into this predicament? Well, you see, we were supposed to leave the house at 9am to get to the Salt Lake airport in time, and at 8am every single member of our family was still in bed. So in one hour, I had to pack everything for this trip, tidy the house, disinfect the bathroom, cook up some eggs, and get myself dressed.

Meanwhile, back at home, Abe was busy taking care of the girls. His best friend, Anthony, along with Anthony’s wife, Malika, and their little boy, Emil, are in town. They all ate dinner together and had a great time. I can’t caption the pictures because I wasn’t there, but it looks fun!

My house is a pigsty right now, so in the interest of time, this post will have no pictures. I’ll just record my temperature for a quick second before I board a plane tomorrow and head to New York to meet the woman of my dreams, Martha Stewart.

Here’s my temperature: I am excited! Grateful! …and a little stressed out. I know I just complained about how I can never get away from my girls, but I don’t know how I’ll handle being away for days. I already miss them.

So a quick update on today, because I feel committed (at least for now) to recording these precious days of life.

Lydia had her preschool in the morning, during which I took Mary to do some visiting teaching. One of the ladies I visit teach has a wonderful garden, and she loaded me up with goodies–including a gorgeous, big pumpkin!

Then I fed the girls as fast as possible and put them down for quiet time/naps so I could lie down and waste time online before a babysitting marathon. One of my friends has a son who needed to have surgery today, so she dropped off her two kids for the afternoon. They were little angels, and I have photos on my camera that I wish I had energy to share here.

Then I ran out the door to do some Bikram Yoga, after which I had an awesome conversation with my Sunday School teacher/ yoga buddy. She introduced me to the concept of meditation, and I am so excited to start the practice. She told me that meditation can help clear negativity from the mind so that all that’s left is compassion and love. I want a mind like that!!

Then my friend, Candice, came over to say good-bye because, sniffle, she is moving to Saint George. I detained her way too long because a) I will miss her a lot and b) so she could act as my fashion consultant regarding what to wear when I meet Martha. (One of the things that makes Candice special is that she always looks like she walked out of an Anthropologie catalogue, and she pulls that off even as the mother of the most energetic–sweet!!–two year old on the planet. People like me need people like her in their lives.)

And now it is time to clean the, um, entire house. Can I please eat another cookie first?

I did not post anything yesterday because, honestly, I was feeling too low.  I felt trapped by the fact the only way I can get away from my (darling) daughters is to have someone (usually Abe or my mom) do me the favor of watching them.  I mean, I love spending time with them and I would not want to ever HAVE to leave my children to go to work, but sometimes the around-the-clock mommy thing gets a little tiring.  Happily, Abe and my mom are always, always happy to help in any way. The result  is I can actually get away almost anytime I want or need, but still…I hate having to be so dependent.  I intensely dislike having to be the recipient of service.

Also, Mary is almost one and I am still at least (depending on how you calculate) twenty pounds overweight. (This despite the fact I have gone MONTHS at a time without a single sugary treat, worked out multiple times a week–many weeks–on very few hours of sleep, and I cook relatively healthy food with equally relative regularity. Is life super unfair or what?)

To top it all off, yesterday I finished reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist. By the closing sentences, wherein the reader is left with a sense of impending doom offset by only the faintest of hope glimmers, I was done. Not only does my emotional landscape look bleak, but the world is a wreck too. Where’s my bed?

Thankfully, Abe gave me a blessing this morning. It literally felt like someone extended a hand and brought me out of the dark into the light. When he started pronouncing the blessing, I was practically catatonic, but by the end (it was the looooongest blessing I have EVER had in my life), I felt full of light and thankful for my life. I had a great day, and every time I did an internal scan to see how my heart was feeling, I came to the same conclusion: I felt happy!

Since I was so stressed out yesterday, I kind of lost my mind and cooked meat for the first time in two years. (I have a weakness for lamb.) I also made plum/apple/thyme turnovers because I am crazy. Mary basically cried any time I put her down, and if you know how puff pastry works, you know that to make these suckers I had to put her down. I repeat, I am/the process of making these was crazy.

http://apt2bbakingco.blogspot.com/2012/09/plum-and-apple-turnovers-with-thyme.html

So enough whining about yesterday! Today Misty called to tell me she was going to Costco and kindly invited me to come. She even waited an extra hour so Mary could wake up and come too (even though I am sure this compromised Sophia’s nap). Did I mention how much I love Misty? Also, she completed a sprint triathlon this weekend, and it feels to me like she JUST gave birth to little Max. (She placed 4th in her age group.) I told you she was cool.

After Costco, I pumped Mary full of Tylenol and put her down for a nap. It worked. My awesome visiting teacher, Erika Bowen, came over with her two kids, and Mary slept through the entire visit. I should have taken pictures because Erika’s kids are a.dor.a.ble., but I was having so much fun chatting with Erika that I completely forgot.

When Erika left, Lydia and I stayed on the front lawn and raced each other (at times, I sat on the stoop and convinced Lydia to race, um, the clock) until Mary woke up. At which time, I fed Mary dinner #1. Then I cooked our real dinner, fed everyone again, and hightailed it to DSW for some stuff I need for my Martha Stewart trip this weekend. (I know. I am ridiculous for complaining about anything ever at all. My life is actually perfect and I am just a whiner.)

We match! Abe said Mary should have worn ALL black, though. She was waaaay too sad today to be wearing yellow, although she loves the camera and mustered a smile for it in spite of herself.

 

Not much happened today. We went to church, played with our kids, ate food, and, right when I was about to consign the day to oblivion (even thought that exact thought as I glanced at my camera and decided NOT to bring it with me to the park), a memorable thing happened.

At the park, the wind was whipping up a storm. Abe jogged Lydia over to a family flying kites, and out of the blue they let Lydia fly a kite! For the next thirty minutes, Lydia held tight and stared wide-eyed at her big kite aloft in the sky. A grinning Mary even held out her hand and grabbed the string. It was magical, memorable, and…not photographed.

Oh, well. Before I lost steam, I did take some other pictures during our lazy day.