I neglected to take any pictures today, but basically we stayed home all day and recovered from life. I cleaned some stuff, gave Lydia a piano lesson, cooked with Lydia, spent a ton of time just playing with the girls and read another ton of books to them. We had FHE on the priesthood and talked about priesthood blessings (since we have all been so sick), and we ended by watching songs from Mary Poppins on Youtube.
In some ways, it was a delightful day because I got to spend so much time with the girls. On the other hand, I had the hardest time controlling my temper at Lydia, which makes me so, so sad. I hope she doesn’t grow up confused; one minute I will be hyperventilating trying not to yell (or I’ll just go ahead and yell) and the next I’ll be cuddling her, saying sorry, and asking her if she knows how much I love her. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just crazy or if parenting toddlers always feels this schizophrenic. I’m leaning toward the former, although I really don’t recall experiencing such fast and dramatic emotional swings before parenting. Maybe it was all suppressed before.
She did say some really cute things today which I can’t remember now. Yesterday when Abe came home he ran up the stairs and asked if all of his princesses were there. Lydia responded: “Yes, Daddy, you have lots of princesses here! There’s Mary, Mama, me, Puss and Tabitha (her two cats). We’re all your princesses.”
Mary said “bear” today after she brought me a teddy bear and we played “going on a bear hunt” for the next twenty minutes. Maybe we just need to make games out of everything to get her to talk. She was also in one of her “don’t put me down or pay attention to anything but me” modes for quite a bit of the day. Oh! And she slept in until 11 am this morning!!! I couldn’t believe it. I had to check a couple times to make sure she was alive, as that had never happened before. Usually the girls are up between 7 and 8. Between her cut lip, pink-eyed eyes, and out-of-the-blue-nighttime-wake, she must have been exhausted.
Anyway, I also started The Return of the King today, so I’m going to stop blogging now and go read that.
This morning I took the girls to the park for our ward play group.
Mary noticed her shoe strap had come undone. Also, the girls LOVE to hold hands whenever we go anywhere.Lydia helped fix Mary’s shoe strap while Mary’s negligent mother looked on and took a picture. Also, see Lydia’s hair? That took me approximately forty minutes this morning. I saw a girl with this hair do yesterday and really wanted to try it on Lydia. Next time I will make her hair more wet before I attempt it.Whee!
The rest of the day was spent feeding kids, napping, reading my book, and folding approximately five huge loads of laundry (basically the girls’ entire wardrobe and more than half of our clothes, too).
Anique and I did our soup exchange yesterday, which was the greatest blessing because I had no time to cook tonight.
Then I went to my Relief Society meeting. I’m on the humanitarian division of the committee, and so we picked which organizations we’re going to help this year.
I have to get up really early tomorrow, so just a quick post. I had the first part of my midterm today. I think I made my small dice carrots too small, and I had SERIOUS problems with my hollandaise. Grandma, you taught me to make hollandaise, and I’ve loved it ever since, but the thing is, when I make it at home, I make it in your double boiler. Making it in a mixing bowl over a big saucepan is much more awkward. I scrambled my eggs twice before I finally coaxed them into a sauce.
Abe blew it out of the ball park today at work and doubled his quota at the call center. He is super excited and feeling a little relieved. Today is the second day in a row that he’s surpassed his quota, and he’s feeling blessed and even happier (if that’s possible) to be at his new job. When I told the girls that Daddy had a great day at work, Mary raised both hands high in the air just like she does at the triumphant ending ofthe book, Potty (where the baby succeeds at going potty and gets to wear undies).
Here are today’s pictures:
Exhausted from feeding my children every two hours from morn until night, I announced today that there would be no meals between breakfast and lunch today. This is what ensued.A little later, they are happy as clams.Mary is demonstrating her mount/dismount move she’s been practicing non stop for the past two days (this set-up is next to my bed, which I have occupied almost non-stop for that same time). This is the first step of her mount.step 2.step 3.pivot to dismount.Off. We are ready for the Olympics.Lydia spent a solid hour coloring her new scripture. Memorizing it was a whole ‘nother story…Happily coloring Psalm 23 away.
This morning I took the girls to the dinosaur play area at City Creek. I told the girls I would bring them yesterday because Misty’s play group was meeting there, but then I started feeling tired and slightly sick that I had to renege on my promise. They had fun today, though.
Then I took them to church and dropped Lydia off at nursery while Mary and I attended a lecture from a BYU professor/Dead Sea Scroll scholar on the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was a little late, but what I heard was fantastic. This wasn’t his most important or emphasized point, but he did point out that a lot of Book of Mormon names which were completely unfamiliar to Joseph Smith and everyone else at the time of the translation of the Book of Mormon (some of which had been used by anti-Mormons to prove the Church was not true) show up in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For example, critics used to say that Alma, the Book of Mormon prophet, had the name of a South American woman; when the Dead Sea Scrolls were interpreted, Alma comes up as the name of a Hebrew prince.
The professor said he was going to give a lecture at 4pm today on the historicity of Job. Every part of me was DYING to drive to Provo and sit in on his lecture–to which he invited all of us–but, alas, that was not practical. So instead, we headed home, ate lunch, took long naps, and cooked food. Specifically, I spent two hours doing simple standard breading and baking to three eggplants. I streamlined the process as much as I could, and yet two full hours later, there I was, still dealing with the eggplant. Perhaps the fact that I was also feeding children had something to do with that, but still. It was ridiculous. I didn’t even make the rest of the dish; instead I told Abe to fend for himself for dinner and plan on having eggplant Parmesan tomorrow.
After dinner, I got my first real burst of energy of the whole day (it happened none too early at 8 pm) and cleaned the downstairs for the arrival of my home teacher from Chicago, Brother Richardson. He is flying in for Roots Tech, which starts tomorrow. While I was cleaning away, Abe was upstairs bathing and playing with the girls. Here is a picture he took:
Mary loves, loves, loves to brush her teeth…and tongue.
Abe and I were reminiscing just now about my old dog, Lulu. I got her as a six week old lab puppy four months before I met Abe, and Abe just now remarked what great preparation she was for having kids. During the time I had her, I never once got a full night’s sleep (usually she’d have potty runs around midnight and then again around 4am, and often would not sleep in between), and a bunch of my favorite clothes and personal items were chewed to death. I was constantly sweeping my studio apartment to keep the mess of dog hair at bay. The parallels are there, but then I remembered: I gave Lulu away. I would never, ever give my children away, but I guess the point is, it’s not in my nature to endure messes, chaos, and interrupted sleep without feeling kind of maxed out at times.
Today was a maxed-out day. Basically, I just gave up and spent the whole day reading in bed while my children tore apart the upstairs around me. They seemed to enjoy their activity, and even though now Lydia’s entire bed is colored on and I’m discovering toothpaste all over, it felt like what the doctor ordered. The craziest part is that I just can’t wait to get back to bed.
I did interrupt my self-imposed bed rest to feed the children multiple times, clean the kitchen multiple times, bake cookies with Lydia, and make another sweet potato souffle…but there are thirteen hours between when Lydia wakes up and when she goes to sleep again, and those activities aren’t that long in comparison. Basically, I’m not exaggerating when I say I spent most of today in bed.
Abe and I chatted while he ate dinner after the girls went to bed. It’s been so long since we got to talk over a meal, I’d almost forgotten what it felt like. He loves his new job and is so thankful to have work friends. He gets a whole hour at lunch to play games, socialize, read scriptures, call home, and eat. And he goes in an hour early and stays an hour late (on days when I don’t have cooking school) so that he can get everything done that he wants to. He hasn’t felt this healthy in eleven years. It’s a really thrilling career change for him, and it makes me SO happy to hear my husband effuse over his work situation.
Here are some pictures from this evening, when Lydia decided she wanted to learn how to jump rope:
Mary struggled a bit more to catch on to the concept…but she (clearly) had fun.
I dropped Lydia off at preschool this morning and then did a ton of errands with Mary. I lost my phone a week ago, so I have no way of taking pictures on the go (unless I want to risk taking my big camera and losing it too!). If I could have taken a picture, though, I would have taken one of Mary in Sprouts. The cashier gave her a balloon, and her wide-eyed fixation on it was so cute; her eyes got even bigger when she let go of the balloon and watched it float up to the ceiling. Another cashier felt sorry for her and tied a new balloon to her wrist, and she looked at nothing else until I wriggled it off of her an hour later.
Then at lunch I got curious and asked Lydia what her favorite things in the whole world are. These are her responses, in order: 1) coloring, 2) playing with her cat, 3) cooking with me, 4) playing with the letters on the fridge. Her responses were really quick, so I think that means they must be sincere. I hope they are, at least, since #3 warmed my heart.
I spent the rest of the day slightly irritable–just like yesterday! I was feeling pretty low when Anique called and asked if she could drop off some soup and tortellini. Seeing her made me happy, as did eating her food. But then I started feeling bad again because I had the HARDEST time being patient with Lydia. She ate six meals today, and between meals 3 and 4 she snacked continually. The constant catering and cleaning made me crazy, but I feel like I should feed her when she says she’s hungry because Abe eats all day long, and I figure maybe she inherited a need for continual nourishment from him.
Class tonight was great, though. I learned why food turns brown and about the effect of acid and alkili on different groups of vegetables. We also did a bunch of food safety videos because after this class, we get some sort of food handling permit (if we pass the test).
While I was gone, the girls opened a letter from my mom. She sent Lydia cat stickers and Mary a butterfly card. Apparently, the girls loved their gifts from Nana and spent a lot of time playing with them. (Lydia put cat stickers all over her coloring book, and Mary walked around with her butterfly card.)
Then I came home and saw this:
Lydia crafted this bird at preschool. She kept trying to show Abe her bird all evening, but he was on the phone with my mom and didn’t pay attention until after Lydia was already in bed. He hung it up because he felt bad and also because it was a great craft. I do all my best parenting after my kids are asleep, too. When they’re asleep, I always think of EVERYTHING I wish I had done better when they were awake. Oh, well. Guess I get to try again tomorrow.
Today I was kind of tired and grumpy from yesterday’s over-activity, but here are the high points of today:
Abe went to Jay’s to watch the Super bowl, so the girls and I had all evening to play. We played chase, played catch, read books, and played climb-the-chair and jump-on-Lydia’s-bed a lot.
Tom and Suzanne came by for a quick visit in the middle of the evening:
Then my mom sent me a biography she’s written of my beloved grandmother. I tried to copy and paste it into this blog, but the formatting was all messed up. When I have time to figure that out, I’ll paste it here.
When Abe came home, he brought me chocolate chip cookies his mom made. I had been craving chocolate chip cookies all day, so it kind of made my day to get them.
I was so awake last night that I crawled in bed and talked Abe’s ear off, even though he was already unconscious and couldn’t actually form verbal responses. Then this morning rolled around…and I wished I hadn’t been so talkative last night. Nevertheless, I rolled out of bed and headed to school.
While there, I tried to conquer my fear of frying by making tempura. My fears were realized when I: sliced a knife through one of my finger nails, permanently scarred my arm from bumping a burning hot metal spider, set some towels on fire, and got splattered with hot oil. I swapped in sweet soy sauce for regular and my dipping sauce came out bland (sweet soy sauce doesn’t have the same salt content, fyi), and my tempura was pale and soggy. I was scared of taking the oil temperature, so my oil went from being so hot that the chef lectured me on fireballs that happen when oil that temperature erupts into flames…and so low (because I was appropriately scared out of my mind by that lecture) that my tempura didn’t brown or crisp. Argh. But at least now I’ve tried frying foods, and I know with certainty that I hate it.
Then Abe, Balu, and the girls met me at school so we could go straight to Sundance, where Abe and Balu skied away. Well, actually first we went to Qualtrics so Abe could pick up the ski passes (free at his new job!). I loved seeing his office and how open, friendly, and fun everything felt. It made me happy to think of Abe spending happy, productive time in that positive environment.
THEN we went to Sundance, where we dropped off Abe and Balu.
Abe doesn’t have sunglasses, so he borrowed my sparkly ones.
The girls and I then headed to the BYU museum to see the Sacred Gifts exhibit I learned about on Wednesday. We had to go through the exhibit twice at a fast clip because Mary was antsy and didn’t like it when I stopped in front of a painting. Lydia was quiet, although tired and miserable because she had wet her pants right before and we didn’t have any extra pairs on hand. After viewing the exhibit, I made a quick tour of the rest of the museum before getting back into the car and going to Abe’s grandma’s house five minutes away.
We had a terrific visit full of family history stories. Here are some pictures I took to remind me of the stories:
This is Christina, Abe’s great grandmother, who immigrated from Greece. In Greece, her father was kidnapped by the Turks for ransom. Her family was well off and paid the ransom, but the kidnappers took the money and killed her father anyway. Her mother died of a broken heart.This is the husband of Dorothea, Grandma Darais’ Swedish grandmother. His brother saved up money for a ticket to America, and he loved his brother so much that he gave the ticket to him and stayed behind to earn another ticket for himself.
This is a picture of Abe’s grandfather, Alex Darais, with a piece of art he entitled, “The Song has Ended.”The original piece, which won an award, is still in the living room. Alex fashioned a paper canary to sing in “The Song has Ended.”
Norma’s father made this for her before her third birthday. He died when she was three, and so this is a treasure to her.A photograph of Alex Darais.Alex did not like this family photo, so he had the picture redone.This was his preferred version. Abe’s dad, Tom, is the second to youngest son in the picture.A portrait of Alex by Andrea, his daughter (Abe’s aunt). Her self portrait is on the left.Lydia recited her scriptures (1 Nephi 3:7 and 2 Nephi 2:25) and the first article of faith for Norma. That made both of them happy. (Lydia’s not wearing pants because of her accident in the car. Norma lent her socks for the ride home. They came up to Lydia’s thighs!)Mary got a kiss.The girls hugged each other a lot today.They loved the real cat outside.Playing in Grandma Darais’s toys.A happy shot.
After we picked up Abe and Balu, we all went to the museum again and took turns going in so that all the adults could absorb the exhibit. Abe and I just love how enthusiastic and joyful Balu is–he appreciates everything, from nature to art to food to awesome Qualtrics prize wheels. We were so happy to spend Saturday with him!
Then we ate pizza in our already trashed car and felt sticky, greasy and gross for the car ride home.
Our water heater turned off in our absence, so I have to wait until tomorrow to shower. Since I didn’t have time this morning or yesterday, it’s starting to feel like I’ve been camping…
Today started out strong, really. I deep cleaned the kitchen, did laundry, played with my kids, read to my kids, worked on reading with Lydia…and then came nap time. Mary is learning to sleep without her binky, so today nap time was severely truncated.
In its absence, I developed a pounding headache and by the end of the day I was in bed watching this (can you believe that the audience hissed at the premier?! This concerto–in its original 2 piano version– has been the equivalent of my musical comfort food since elementary school. I just can’t imagine a sound aesthetic where this seemed musically deviant!) while Abe tried to entertain the kids on speaker phone during his commute.
I had great plans to get all of my homework done today, but that will have to wait.
Here are today’s pictures:
Grandma, Mary played with those bugaboos you gave her a ton today. We literally played with them for an hour straight (all I did for 60 minutes was take them apart and put them back together again and again), and that was after she spent the whole morning wearing them around her neck.Lydia wore her tutu today.
The rest of the pictures are from FHE tonight, wherein Abe put on another puppet show about sharing. Per my request, he also threw in a skit about staying in your seat until you’re done eating. Grandma, do you recognize some of those puppets?
Abe got great feedback at work today and great feedback on the sermon he wrote for Jon and Shirley. It’s truly beautiful. If they allow me, I’ll post it after their wedding in May.
