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General Conference Sunday was a pajama day for everyone but Abe, who had to drive to Idaho an hour after the afternoon conference ended. Since we can watch conference from our computers (could not get our television working, sadly), we didn’t have to leave the house. We did go to the park after the second session of conference, but everyone except Abe was in pajamas, and it was with great reluctance that I even donned a bra. I am still wearing what I was wearing when I went to bed last night, only now I’m decorated in food smudges and cookie crumbs. Perhaps after I blog I shall shower and change into a fresh set of jammies.

Except that there is something more I want to do, and that is: research culinary school. Abe called me up during his drive to Idaho, and he was very excited about a certain daydream we’ve had for a couple years. Up until now, it’s only been a day dream, but he seems to think it’s an actual possibility. Who knows…we are always thinking up new life plans, and but after our conversation this evening, I think culinary school is at least worth looking into.

So let’s do another day in pictures, shall we? Only first, can I just say that I kind of loved the talk wherein the speaker compared spiritual fitness to physical fitness?  I want to recommit to certain areas of spiritual development (family history, in particular) so I can become more masterful and spiritually fit. If you aren’t LDS, you might think doing family history is a strange way to become more spiritually fit, but in a Mormon paradigm, I think it makes perfect sense. That talk also made me want to just delve into the scriptures for hours every day, or at very least meditate with more regularity and discipline.

I’m sad General Conference is over, and I’m even more sad that I missed so much of it this weekend. Hopefully I can watch some of the talks I missed during the girls’ naps this week, and I can not wait until the conference issue of the Ensign comes out.

Okay, enough blabbing. Here are today’s photos:

I am taking a break from having children. I mean, I want more eventually, but right now, my cup runneth over at two. Last night I got up multiple times to attend to hungry/poopy/crying children, and this morning Lydia wet the bed at 6am (Abe got up that time. Thank-you, Honey.). Just as I sat down to blog, Lydia ,who was still awake because we didn’t think to stick her mattress cover in the dryer until right before bedtime, freaked out and poured her full potty all over the white carpet in her bedroom.

Sigh.

Shall we just do this day’s post in pictures? That sounds nice to me.

We went over to Dan’s parents’ house for the second session of General Conference.

The next bajillion shots were taken by the incredibly generous Preethi. I read an article a while back about this one mom who did not want photos taken of her post-baby. She then had this epiphany that her kids needed pictures of her being with them so they could look back and see how present she was in their lives. It was a really pretty article, and ever since I’ve been thinking I need more pictures showing that I am present in my kids’ lives. The only problem is, I, like the author, abhor my post-baby body fat and have a slight aversion to cameras. But I am so glad Preethi took these photos because one day Mary will grow up and probably not want to be around me all the time, so I will have these to remind me what a cuddly relationship we once had.

Here are Mary and Kina together.

Also, Nat was so sweet and took Lydia’s hand to lead her to his gym.

Since I was busy doing errands and getting distracted by cuteness, I only heard conference in snippets. The talk that I am most sad I missed was President Uchtdorf’s talk.

Everyone is talking about it, and from things I’ve heard and read, it was a great sermon on allowing every one the right to worship or not worship according to the dictates of their own conscience. He emphasized how we should not judge those who choose to worship differently than we do or who abandon our beloved religion (and perhaps break out hearts in the process). Wouldn’t this world be better if we all decided not to judge each other? Sign me up!!!

Today we had a really special play date with our friends, the Harbucks, who are in town from D.C.. Dan was angelic and babysat the children all morning while I got to make waffles and chat with Preethi. I follow her awesome blog with devoted regularity, and when I met Kina (her baby who is one week older than Mary), I honestly felt like I was meeting a celebrity. If you check out her blog or scroll down on this blog, you will see that Kina is a stunning child, but trust me–she is even better in person. And I always have Nat in mind when I pray daily for God to prepare a good husband for Lydia. He gave me a sweet hug at the end of the play date, and that about just made my day.

All of our play dates are Lydia centric, and so the result is Mary doesn’t interact with kids her age very much. In other words, she lacks friends. I was SO excited to see her play with Kina, and oh my goodness, I about had a cute heart attack seeing these two together. I can’t wait until they get to play again (tomorrow!).

After our wonderful play date, I took an actual nap while both kids napped. It was delicious. Then they woke up and I realized it was almost dinner time and I did not know what we were going to eat. After frantically thumbing through several cookbooks, I settled on a vegetarian chili recipe from a cookbook Dan and Preethi gave us when we got married. (They created the cookbook themselves, so we not only had a play date with them, but we ate their chili tonight, too!)

After dinner and bedtime, I raced around cleaning the house because my wonderful home teacher from Evanston arrived tonight and will be staying with us this weekend. This weekend is our church’s General Conference, which is basically like Salt Lake’s Mardi Gras for Mormons. Everyone converges upon the city and it is prayers and parties galore for two straight days.

We’re looking forward to it tomorrow!

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!