{"id":1267,"date":"2013-11-06T05:21:42","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T05:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abeandlily.darais.com\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2013-11-06T05:21:42","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T05:21:42","slug":"self-actualization-smorgasbord-i-e-a-selfish-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/2013\/11\/06\/self-actualization-smorgasbord-i-e-a-selfish-day\/","title":{"rendered":"self-actualization smorgasbord (i.e., a selfish day)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, after scriptures and a run on the treadmill (thank-you, daylight savings!!), I knocked out Mary&#8217;s birthday thank-you notes. Lydia helped. The evidence of her help can currently be seen across the whole floor, which is covered in stationary and envelopes. I haven&#8217;t had time to pick them up, because right after we did the notes, I took Lydia on my lap and we watched a ton of piano performances on youtube. I called up the the PianoForte Foundation and got details on their May 2014 amateur piano competition, and I think I&#8217;m going to enter.\u00a0 Lydia and I watched many videos in an attempt to try to figure out times of various piece combinations for different rounds.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1269\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1269\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4919.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1269\" alt=\"During the thank-you note marathon, Lydia asked me to take a picture of her. Um, of course!!\" src=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4919-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1269\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">During the thank-you note marathon, Lydia asked me to take a picture of her. Um, of course!!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Obviously, I&#8217;ve gone off the deep end in the self-actualization department. Cooking school, piano competitions&#8230;this, I think, is what happens when you finally start getting somewhat consistent sleep at night after almost three straight years of deprivation. All of the sudden, the world is my oyster! I can do whatever I want, because I have ENERGY! And my babies can entertain themselves, so I have TIME!! Wow. I feel like I&#8217;m in front of a smorgasbord of possibilities, and I want to do it ALL. Because, you know, eventually I will have more babies, and then it will be back to square one (counting the shower as my major accomplishment of the day&#8230;um, ugh.).<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, after watching the videos&#8211;and eventually, Lydia got bored and slid off my lap to play with her magnetic doll while I stayed riveted in front of youtube&#8211;I decided to get a head start on dinner. Once again, Lydia was happy to help, and we made some delicious challah together. (Of course, there were tantrums along the way, and I spent the rest of the day feeling like The World&#8217;s Worst Mom for yelling at her.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4926.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1272\" alt=\"Lydia helped braid that!\" src=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4926-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<dl class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" id=\"attachment_1272\" style=\"width: 650px;\">\n<dd class=\"wp-caption-dd\">Lydia helped braid that!<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<p>Then it was lunch time. After lunch, the girls played upstairs together while I practiced. There was a talk in General Conference a while back where one speaker shared the story of how his infant son died because he aspirated a piece of chalk while the parents were in a different room. This talk plays in my head continually while I practice, and so every couple minutes I call up to make sure everyone is still alive and breathing. I would love for the girls to play in the same room as the piano, but there&#8217;s no door between the piano and the stairs, and so when they&#8217;re in the room with me, I am <em>constantly<\/em> running to the stairs to make sure Mary doesn&#8217;t take a tumble. It&#8217;s pretty annoying. So this is the best I can do, for now.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1271\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1271\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4923.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1271\" alt=\"She LOVES those stairs. And she loves being chased up them--usually she climbs slowly until she hears me coming, and then she shrieks with delight and goes up the stairs as fast as she can.\" src=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4923-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1271\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">She LOVES those stairs. And she loves being chased up them&#8211;usually she climbs slowly until she hears me coming, and then she shrieks with delight and goes up the stairs as fast as she can.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I let Lydia skip her nap today because I could tell she wasn&#8217;t tired, and so instead she entertained herself while I practiced some more.<\/p>\n<p>Then she helped me prep some squash for roasting. After that, I finally took the time to read some books to her; she hasn&#8217;t left the house for two days and was begging to go to the library today&#8230;sorry, but since it snowed, the closest I wanted to get to accommodating her wish was reading her the books we checked out on Saturday.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1270\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1270\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4920.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1270\" alt=\"Wistful. A beautiful, white world, and Mommy won't let her leave the house.\" src=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4920-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1270\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wistful. A beautiful, white world, and Mommy won&#8217;t let her leave the house.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Then we traipsed downstairs where I fed her dinner, and then I tried to feed Mary dinner.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1274\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1274\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4929.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1274\" alt=\"Lydia ate dinner in my shoes and my mom's make-up. Sorry mom! (No, she did not get beat up today; that is mascara on her forehead and under her eyes.)\" src=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4929-e1383715224842-682x1024.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"960\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1274\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lydia ate dinner in my shoes and my mom&#8217;s make-up. Sorry mom! (No, she did not get beat up today; that is mascara on her forehead and under her eyes.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Mary refused to eat anything I put in front of her, so finally I just let both kids scream for forty minutes while I finished cleaning the kitchen and prepping the rest of dinner. Abe&#8217;s arrival home made all of us feel better, and after we ate dinner (again), I practiced the piano again until bedtime. Then it was clean the kitchen time (which meant I ate the equivalent of dinner #3 while picking up).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1268\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1268\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4931.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1268\" alt=\"We used up some of that cheese in fondue tonight. This is Abe's dinner #1 and Mary's dinner #2.\" src=\"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_4931-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1268\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">We used up some of that cheese in fondue tonight. This is Abe&#8217;s dinner #1 and Mary&#8217;s dinner #2.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Tomorrow Abe is going to teach preschool because&#8230;I have my orientation to culinary school!!!! I can&#8217;t wait!!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, after scriptures and a run on the treadmill (thank-you, daylight savings!!), I knocked out Mary&#8217;s birthday thank-you notes. Lydia helped. The evidence of her help can currently be seen across the whole floor, which is covered in stationary and envelopes. I haven&#8217;t had time to pick them up, because right after we did &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/2013\/11\/06\/self-actualization-smorgasbord-i-e-a-selfish-day\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">self-actualization smorgasbord (i.e., a selfish day)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}