Author: lilydarais

On Saturday I went to hot pilates and yoga…and I couldn’t make it through yoga. I thought I was either going to throw up, pass out, or both. So I ended up leaving early and spent the rest of the day virtually immobile in bed. Poor Abe, who has been on the verge of a meltdown, had to take care of the kids all day–with the exception of his morning run, which he reported was amazing.

I basically did nothing all day. Every time Abe tried to join me in bed a kid needed help, a neighbor would ring the bell, or he would get a call that required him to get up and move around. It was very sad.

Lydia also was immobile the whole day, but she was on the couch. She slept on and off all day, had a fever, and had a sore throat. We felt so sorry for her and let her watch as much Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and The Olympians as she wanted…which meant the other kids watched too.

In the afternoon Abe decided that even though he was about to break, he also wanted to get out of the house. So he took the kids to the park. We have pictures:

On Friday we had Clarissa’s well-check in the morning. She is in the 95th percentile for height and 59th for weight. She is perfectly on track for her physical development, although her vocabulary is on the edge of normal. The doctor advised me to read a book a day to her, so we came home and I read fifteen. The problem is Clarissa doesn’t sit through books like Lydia used to. I could read to baby Lydia for hours, no problem, but Clarissa will sit through one book–maybe two, but the rest of the time I’m reading to her as she zooms around the room, climbing on tables and spilling water deliberately all over the floor. She’s just too busy for books, I guess.

Then in the evening I had book club and we discussed The Age of Innocence for two hours. I absolutely LOVED this book, and was thrilled to participate in such a great discussion about it. I have grown to adore the ladies in my book group.

On Thursday Abe started shaking from anxiety in front of his computer, so he booked a massage and tried to stave off a panic attack by getting one right away. Work is actually going really well, he says, but it’s so intense, fast paced, and action packed that Abe is basically on the verge of a breakdown.

In the meantime, I was having a pretty peaceful morning at home cleaning the whole house, doing laundry, and reading to the kids. I also made chicken enchiladas for dinner and they were, if I do say so myself, pretty yummy. I also spent a lot of time rereading Harry Potter. I just love this series.

On Wednesday I totally lost it after school. Wednesdays are hard because we try to squeeze in dinner, homework, harp and piano, and dance outfit changes in before dance at 5:30pm. If the kids are being slow eating, I get very stressed out at the thought of ALL we have to do before our hard deadline of dance practice.

Anyway, the kids were being slow and I started screaming my head off about how nobody listens to me and how I wish they would just do what I asked the first time instead of ignoring me so that I repeat myself over and over and over until finally I give up and start YELLING, like this:

I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I WOULD DO IF YOU KIDS WOULD JUST LISTEN THE FIRST TIME!!! IT WOULD BE SUCH A SHOCK THAT I MIGHT JUST HAVE A HEART ATTACK AND DIE OF SHOCK ON THE SPOT!!

…At which point Lydia, who was sitting glumly by her harp, replied, “Mom, that’s why we never listen the first time. We don’t want you to have a heart attack and die!”

She is hilarious, that girl.

Honestly, I spent the rest of the evening in a deep state of penance, letting the kids stay up way too late, and just mourning the fact that I can’t be a reliably calm, sweet mom all the time.

I don’t remember what happened on Tuesday but I do have this picture of a creation Lydia built. We were sure Clarissa would destroy it right away, but it survived a full three days before we finally disassembled it ourselves!

Today I went to both hot pilates and bikram in the morning while Abe managed to hold down the fort at home. He was exhausted so they all watched Lilo and Stitch and were about to start lunch when I got home.

I helped Lydia through another difficult practice and then drove her to a friend’s house for a play date.

Then I showered, Abe took down our Christmas lights (we’re early according to our normal standard, which is, um, May), and we did the pretty jigsaw puzzle again. We accidentally put it away before Mary saw the finished product, so I spent most of Clarissa’s nap happily and hurridly re-assembling it.

After that I helped Mary practice. During that time Abe did an AMAZING job cleaning the house. Afterward we drove to Barnes and Noble to get the rest of the books in Lydia’s new series, Percy and the Olympians. We also got her a book of Greek Myths because she is learning about them in school and loving them in her new series. I got Mary two little books too because she feels left out a lot.

Then we stopped at Trader Joe’s, put the babies down, and now I’m blogging and Abe’s working. It was a very relaxed day (practices and almost dying in my workouts aside…).

On Friday we went to the Blosils’ house for a pop up restaurant that their son, Alex, put on. They had completely transformed their home, and their whole family and some friends were working the house like a restaurant. It seemed the entire ward was there, along with a lot of other people.

When Abe and I got there, we were seated a table with Craig and Shannon Young. We spent the next two hours enjoying great food and the lovely company of the Youngs. Nic Blosil played Un Sospiro on the piano, some of the ward young women serenaded Randy with a cappella singing, and it was an all around delightful evening. We enjoyed it so much.

We came home and watched some art history documentaries together, which we love. It was a great start to a THREE DAY WEEKEND!! So needed, so needed.

We forgot to take more pictures than this one of the grilled cabbage course. But this was super delicious and makes us want to grill cabbage from now on, like maybe every day.

On Valentine’s Day I still felt bad, which was so sad because I love celebrating this holiday with my family.

I took the kids to the library in the morning, though, and then I did some errands even though I felt like death.

We came home, I put the Clarissa down for a nap, and then I can’t remember what I did after that. I probably did laundry or took a nap myself.

Then we picked up the kids and I took them all to the new Crepery restaurant in the Riverwoods. I was going to make crepes for Valentine’s Day dinner, but since I had no energy, we just bought some instead. There was a really nice older man there who happened to be the dad of one of Abe’s coworkers. He really took to the kids and talked to us a lot while we ate our crepes.

Then we took our leftover crepes home and discovered Abe had come home early! He brought a big beautiful bouquet of flowers home and was puttering in the kitchen. We did piano and harp practice with the girls and then had chocolate fondue with strawberries for dessert with the kids.

Afterward Abe was so wonderful and talked with me and listened to me until I actually stopped feeling so ill. It was very healing to just enjoy the loving presence of my amazing, wise, infinitely kind husband. I love him.

Then we watched It Happened One Night, because we have a goal to work down the list of best romantic films of all time over the course of our future Valentine’s Days. This film would have been great but the misogyny in it was honestly disturbing. I’m so glad I’m alive now and not back then. Happy Valentine’s Day!

On Wednesday I decided to forget the fact that I STILL feel so sick and sat down at the harp with Lydia. We have not done proper practices for a while, so we squeezed a painful one in before ballet and jazz.

I don’t remember anything else that we did all day. I know that I wanted to go the library in the morning but literally had no energy, so mostly I spent the morning sitting on the floor watching Clarissa and Ammon play. They bring me a lot of joy.

On Tuesday Abe had to do the stake finance audit and I wanted to attend my friend Jill’s training on emotional health, so we got our neighbor to babysit our kids at the last minute before we both ran out the door to church.

Jill did a wonderful job training us all to feel our feelings and sort between what is circumstance and what is a thought. Sometimes we confuse our opinions for circumstance. For example: “When someone compliments me, I feel good.”  That is a thought, but it seems so true that at first you might think it’s just a circumstance. But, in fact, we can choose how we think about EVERYTHING, and how we think determines how we feel. So somebody else’s compliments don’t necessarily translate into a good feeling–it’s just how we think about those compliments that determines our feeling.

The audit went well for Abe, except for the hilarious fact that the only check without a receipt was one he had written to himself for the Father and Son’s campout, for over $200! Thankfully all he has to do is find the receipt, which he has, and turn that over. But we thought it was pretty funny that on the audited the only detail that was majorly wrong was him writing a check to himself without a bishop’s signature or receipt. Now all of our financial problems, Abe jokes, are solved. He can just write himself checks from the church and voila! Haha.