Today was non stop. Abe ran to clean the church while I bathed the girls, made popovers, blew dry Lydia’s hair (a must with her new hairstyle, so said her stylist), and got everyone dressed.
I don’t know why these aren’t at least as normal as pancakes at the American breakfast table. They take approximately the same amount of time as instant oatmeal to mix together, they’re portable, and they don’t make a crumbly mess!
After I shooed them out the door to Lydia’s dance class, I read scriptures and looked up witch costumes online.
Then I hurried to the Primary program practice, during which I really struggled to feel like I was contributing.
Honestly, I’ve traced this eczema back and really feel like it was a stress reaction to my calling. I have never had eczema before, and I remember when I got the calling feeling like I was having an allergic reaction. Then all of the sudden: eczema! (without me knowing what it was). Yuck. I daydream every day about asking to be released, and then I feel guilty and decide to keep doing my duty. I heard a talk the other day about the different reasons why we serve (in order worst to best): to show off, duty, hope of eternal reward, and love of God. I do love God, but I am having trouble connecting serving in my calling to that love. I’ll think to myself, “Think of all Jesus did and does for you! This is NOTHING in comparison! Just serve out of gratitude!” and when that doesn’t work, “It could be worse! Think about all the other callings that you would hate even more!” ..but somehow I just can’t get my heart right. Sorry, God! You’ll have to fix up my heart since I just can’t seem to get it in the right place by myself. I’ll give You more time.
Then I picked up Lydia, took her to the Farmer’s market, the fabric store, and Trader Joe’s. After that, I came home and whipped out two little, very poor quality witch costumes. But the girls love them, and you can only see my sewing mistakes if you stand within a foot–or five–of the girls. Anyway, Grandma, what do you think? The girls are going to wear these for the Wee Witches night at Gardner Village this weekend.
I made the necklines waaaay too big on both capes, but I think I can fix it with a safety pin. Also, the skirts are ridiculously unprofessional, but from a (long) distance, you can’t tell, right?
Then we went to the library, the park, and two more grocery stores before heading home for dinner.
Outside of the library doing “tricks.”
Some random stranger came up to Abe at the park and raved about Mary’s hair. I was in the car reading some cookbooks I’d just checked out from the library, but when Abe came back and told me, I felt so happy! Shallow, I know, but I cut her hair and have felt guilty ever since, especially since my hair cutting skills (HA!) are…searching for the right word…nonexistent. But yay! Someone likes the cut!!
Grandma, I am so sorry to hear that you went to the hospital today. The girls and I immediately stopped and said a prayer for you, and during dinner Lydia wouldn’t let me finish my prayer until I prayed for you. We love you and hope you don’t have to deal with pain. We love you so much!
I forgot to take pictures today, so Abe took a bunch before putting the girls to bed:
Mary is now allowed to have her binkies in her toddler bed. She occasionally loses them underneath the bed, and she searches for them thus.
As I blog, Abe is kindly picking through each strand of my hair for nits again. Thank-you, my wonderful husband. I love you.
We just stayed home all day. I’m pretty tired from the lice situation. Mary was lice-free until she napped, and then she woke up with a bite on her neck and some nits around her ear. My heart dropped when I saw that.
Other than that, I spent the whole day cooking, reading to the girls, and cleaning.
Here are the pictures!
Lydia and I tried to turn challah into brioche today. I should have just googled a brioche recipe; the challah didn’t convert that well.After being trapped inside all day, Mary really wanted to go outside and read books. After all she’s been through, I happily aquiesced.
We had pot pies in pumpkins tonight. Mary thought it was novel.After dinner, the girls sang a song before FHE. Lydia made up the words and Mary was her chorus.
We got part of the song on video! You can see it here.
We had a FHE lesson on reverence. Abe had the girls play a game like Stop and Go! wherein the girls danced and acted crazy when Abe called out, “Crazy!”, and they knelt and acted reverent when he said, “Reverent!”. This is them kneeling.Crazy!Crazy again!
Did I neglect to mention in my last post that after we thought Mary was the only person with lice, Abe discovered a ton of nits in my hair Friday night? Yeah, I thought so. Between that time and now, my hair has undergone: RID (scary, ineffective pesticide treatment), multiple sessions of nit comb-throughs, LiceFree! Spray, three blow-dry treatments (so hot and long that I thought my scalp would burn off), two tea-tree oil shampoo washes, a priesthood blessing, and right now: I have soaked 1/4 cup of pure tea tree oil into my scalp. Tome gave me an 8 ounce bottle, bless his heart. Oh, and I’ve laundered my sheets every day since Thursday.
From Amazon, arriving soon are these three exciting products: A Robi comb (a battery charged comb that zaps lice with electricity so that they die on contact), a Terminator comb (best lice comb on the market!), and a giant VAT of tea-tree oil shampoo.
All of last night’s dreams revolved around picking lice off of my head. Do I sound crazy and obsessed? That’s about how I feel. Poor Abe just wants a break, but every time we have a spare moment, I hand him a comb and order him to get to work on my hair. While he does that I pore over the Amazon reviews of different lice products and read them like it’s therapy. Most people write their terrifying lice stories into their review and send words of encouragement and support to the review reader. The reviews make me feel like I have a global support group.
When I am not actively combating lice, I perform tasks in a distracted state and have several times thought I might be losing my mind. Case in point: Yesterday, after forgetting a bag of groceries at the store, I went out and climbed back into the passenger seat of the car and sat there for a minute before I realized the car wasn’t going to drive itself back to the store.
Okay, enough about lice (even though, honestly, that’s basically all I think about). Today was General Conference! A welcome, uplifting, four hour distraction. One of my favorite talks was Elder Holland’s about caring for the poor. I also liked Elder Bednar’s talk on missionary work. He pointed out that the reason we do missionary work is because we have felt that power of the atonement in our own lives and desire the same blessing for others. That’s kind of how I feel about LiceFree! Spray and tea tree oil–I want to share the info with EVERYONE so no one else has to go through the panic and icky pesticides I used before figuring out which products worked. Oops! I wasn’t going to write more about lice…
I’ll just cut to the pictures:
Lydia and I made this plum cake today. I needed a pick-me-up. I should have taken a picture…but guess what? I have enough plums to make it again tomorrow, so maybe I’ll just do that since this one disappeared. Also, doesn’t my hair look like a perfect home for lice? I would chop it all off, but no salon can legally do that for me until this ordeal is over, at which point I will probably reconsider.
I discovered Mary reading Each Peach, Pear, Plum while the plum cake was baking.Abe must have taken this one.Tom and Suzanne came over for dinner. Tom gave Abe a blessing afterwards.Tom reading to the girls.I love the mountains in the background. Of course, I also find the little girl in the foreground quite endearing as well.
Also, here’s a daily dose of Too Much Information: After I spent all that time in the hospital with my friend Andrea, who had to deliver her stillborn daughter, I decided I wanted to get pregnant again. Maybe it’s because I wanted the baby to be alive, or maybe it’s because I love spending time in Labor and Delivery (really, I love that floor of the hospital), but I emerged from that experience wanting, for the first time in two years, to be pregnant again. Didn’t happen the first month (which was really about two weeks before my period came), and now I have soaked my hair twice in pesticides, so I think I’ll give my body another couple months to get these chemicals out of its system before trying again. Sad.
On the upside, I have a couple classes left on my Bikram yoga pass, so I can at least use those up now! (I can’t while trying to get pregnant because the heat isn’t good for in-utero babies).
Oh my goodness, I haven’t blogged since Wednesday! Whoa. I have a lot of pictures from the missing days, but I am so sleep deprived right now that I can’t really recall the details of what happened. On Thursday we found out that Mary had lice, and basically my world ended right then. Since no salon cuts infested hair, I had to cut Mary’s hair off myself.
I given exactly one haircut in my life, and the person went straight to the salon afterward to get what I did fixed. My heart drops a little bit each time I look at my shorn little Mary.
So all I’ve done since The Bad News is comb out everyone’s hair with a nit comb a million times, wash every single piece of clothing, bedding, and any other loose material I can find in the house, and fold a TON of laundry. We listened to General Conference today, which was the bright spot in this sad time. Oh, and I had Abe give me a blessing yesterday, which also helped.
Here are some of the pictures I have (dating back to Thursday):
Lydia and Audrey holding hands on the play ground at preschool (they’re the two little girls in white shirts). I spy on them before I pick Lydia up.On the way to the doctor’s office, before I found out Mary had lice.Lydia fell asleep on the way to the doctor’s.Lydia getting her hair cut. She didn’t have lice, but we cut it anyway.
Abe took Friday off, which was a HUGE blessing considering all the work we had to do around the house. We took a break in the middle of the day and took the girls to the park.
I did get my camera fixed, though! Abe went crazy and took pictures during last night’s dinner to celebrate:
Some of the laundry that we did. All of this is now folded and put away. This wasn’t even all of it.Mary was so exhausted after everything that she fell asleep like this.
The rest of my pictures come from our outing to the park today:
You can see Lydia’s new haircut. I actually LOVE Lydia’s new hair, so that is a little consolation.You
You can see what a terrible job I did on her bangs. No salon will fix it until two weeks after the treatment. 🙁 …But she’s still adorable! Here she is giving me some pretend food she cooked up at the playground.
I have thirty something pictures of today, so let’s get to it!
Mary woke up to see her new bicycle in the room. She climbed right out of her crib and went to it.
She couldn’t reach the pedals.Abe solved that problem this way.
It was raining, so we went to the aquarium instead of the zoo.
Then we came home and had pizza for lunch.
Mary finagled her way out of pizza and into a cookie. Funny how that happened, but it’s her birthday, so I couldn’t say no.
After lunch, Mary refused to nap. She didn’t want to miss a minute of her birthday! Instead, she ran around the house in the bugaboo necklace you gave her for Christmas, Grandma!
She also played the piano…
…and she played with Abe.
Abe took the girls outside to jump in puddles in the rain.
Then I made dinner, and we celebrated Mary’s birthday with Tom, Suzanne, Clark, Swathi, Balu, and Mom.
We had Mary’s favorite foods: Macaroni and cheese, squash, and salad.And cake!Cake!
The inside was scrumptious but skiwampus.
Then, gifts!
A Minnie Mouse dress! Thanks, Nana!!
Grandma, the girls adore their new suitcases! Thank-you so much. It meant so much to Lydia to have a gift on Mary’s birthday. Also, thank-you for the garlic case you sent me–I LOVE it!!
Mary zipped and unzipped her suitcase for an hour. Thanks, Tom, for assisting patiently that WHOLE time!With all of her gifts. Happy birthday, Mary! We adore you!
Today I baked Mary’s birthday cake, made dinner, folded laundry, and did some errands. It was so, so wonderful to have my mom around during the day. That made everything feel like a celebration.
Mom and Mary in their nightgowns.The girls watched their new favorite Disney movie, Snow White, while I baked Mary’s cake.The roses outside. Our wonderful landlords were here doing yard work during the morning. They love my mom and were so happy to see her.
Abe’s work team. They all got to celebrate today because everyone met their quota! They celebrated by zip lining through Provo Canyon for two hours. Abe said it was really fun and beautiful because all the colors are changing.That’s not Abe, but it is the zip line!
We had dinner with Clark, Swathi, my mom and Balu. We tried to go on a walk afterwards, but we got caught in a torrential downpour. Abe and I decided to take the girls on some last minute errands, so we did that instead.
And now…happy weekend, and happy early birthday to Mary!!!
Today we mainly ran errands–with my mom! It is so wonderful having her in town. As if that weren’t enough, Clark and Swathi just arrived tonight. The only thing that would make it better is if you were here, Grandma!
Mom and I took a bunch of pictures on her iPhone.
On our way out the door and ready to go drop Lydia off at Challenger for Western Day. I put Mary’s 12-18 month size vest on Lydia, threw boots on her, and called it her Western “outfit” (the kids were supposed to dress up as cowgirls).Mom wanted a picture of the two of us in front of Challenger.I’m pretty sure my mom took this picture for you, Grandma, so you could see what Lydia’s school looks like.While Lydia was in school, Mom and I did errands with Mary.
Mom wanted to get a picture of Mary’s curls.During our afternoon errands, Lydia slept.But Mary was awake! She showed Nana pictures from the books and kept saying, “Nana, wook at vis! (“Nana, look at this!)”“Nana, wook at vis!”
I forgot to say a thank-you to Mom for watching the kids while I went to lunch with my visiting teachee, Andrea. We had a really fun lunch, and it was only possible because my mom babysat. Thanks, Mom!
Grandma, we wish you were here. Thanks for lending us Mom!
The day kicked off with Lily today with a play-date with her friend Kim. I’m not sure what happened after that since I didn’t talk to Lily much during the day, but I know she cooked because I came home to the best egg-salad sandwich I’ve every had (super fluffy home-made bread and perfectly seasoned egg salad.)
Lily left early for school tonight because she has her final exam for her European cooking class. She’s been in my thoughts because I know she was nervous. She isn’t back yet, but I’m excited to hear the report.
Isabella came over early to babysit so Lily could leave. Then, shortly after that…..
Georgia arrived!!!!!!!! It was so wonderful to see her. As if having her in town wasn’t gift enough, she came baring gifts for everyone. Some are gifts that I won’t mention until Mary’s birthday, but she also brought some super cute bug suitcases for the girls from Grandma Cullen (Thanks Grandma!), fudge for everyone, new plates and bowls, flashcards, a coloring book and well, you get the idea, lots of great things for the family. It’s so great to have her around for a few days. I got to catch up with her quite a bit, and Lydia spontaneously burst out to me, “Daddy, I love Nana.” In her night prayer she also said (unprompted), “Thank you for my beautiful Nana.”
Because Isabella is amazing, she wanted to stick around even after I got home and her babysitting gig was over. She proceeded to play chase with the girls for a very long time. Tonight is one of two times in my life when I have seen Mary worn out from playing so hard. Nice work Isabella!
On a quick note about work. Qualtrics was just valued at over $1 billion and received $150 million dollars in venture capital funding. The funding is to help us run faster and grow quicker. It’s an exciting place to be right now.
Today I got up at 5:20 am, when Abe always gets up. Since I was awake early, I had time to read scriptures, write in my scripture journal, do yoga, make popovers, shower and get the kids ready for the day.
Today Lydia had preschool, so Mary and I spent a lot of time walking around Sugar House. It was a beautiful morning, and the leaves are just barely starting to turn colors. We walked to the post office, Barnes and Noble, and the Sprage branch of the Salt Lake library. We also went to Tony Caputo’s to pick up some Dine O’ Round lunches for a picnic we had in the park with Jen, Natalie, Laddie, and Spencer. Sadly, Tony Caputo’s messed up my order–I discovered when we got to the park that my sandwiches were full of lunch meat. Gross. We skipped the sandwiches and just ate cake instead.
Jen was so fun and inspiring to talk to! She’s planning a bachelorette party for a friend, and she is really trying to make the party fun and appropriate. So tricky, but I was impressed with her efforts to keep the party elevated.
Then we came home and napped. After I woke up, I cooked for three hours. Abe came home and played with the girls while I finished cooking.
Then we had dinner (finally!), FHE and a treat.
For sharing time during FHE, Lydia told us all about her owl. Also, we realize she needs a haircut. Hopefully we’ll get around to that soon.Mary also wanted to share about the owl.Abe taught the girls about prayer using a sandwich. We frame our prayers with the “bread” of “Dear Heavenly Father” and “in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” Afterward, we practiced saying a prayer and filled our “sandwich” with all sorts of thank-yous and blessing requests.Post FHE snack of giant toasted marshmallows.
And now Abe and I are going to finish The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. We are both tired, so hopefully we can stay awake!
Then we went to the library, the park, and two more grocery stores before heading home for dinner.
