Claireisms

Vacationing in California. Hiking the hill to the cross. Claire moans and groans up the trail. "Claire, do you need me to carry you?" "No. [grunt and cry] I do it!"  

I carry her on my shoulders down the hill. "Wow," I say. "Daddy's going fast." She thinks I'm sad he's going faster than me. She pats my head, "You're going fast too, mommy."

An Adventure

I haven't written here for a long time. Like. A year. More than a year. And it's not because of lack of material. You know. I still have four kids. Adorable, hilarious, mischievous kids.

But I've been busy. Like everyone is. We built a house. (You remember that.) And then Brad and a friend started a business. And then in December 2014, I started teaching voice lessons four nights a week from 3:30-8:00 at a local dance studio. I also taught a musical theater class there. Grace and Claire were there with me and took dance lessons (for free, since I was staff). They developed a real love for dance. Brad was able to be home with the little kids usually. But we never ate dinner together except for weekends. 

During the day, I edited photos or worked on the website or took clients for my photography business (www.essentiallychicphotography.com). That business was also crazy busy. During the summer my partner and I photographed soccer and softball. During the school year we took yearbook photos for the charter school and local preschools. And then of course we were shooting the usual weddings, families, babies and seniors. 

And then I was busy at church. 

And then I was still homeschooling. Because if the kids went to school and right afterward I went to work at the studio, I would never see them. To facilitate this, Aside from my kids' schoolwork, I hosted a 6 family homeschooling co-op at my house once a week. So homeschooling was busy. 

And then I had a house to take care of. It probably should have been at least tidied once a day. If I'd had time for that kind of thing. And there was the yard that was just under an acre. With 40 trees that needed to be watered. And a dog. A dog who had two large litters of puppies (25 puppies total) last year. 

And finally. Brad's work started changing. Instead of doing construction work around town, Brad's business started hiring electricians and working on big electrical contracts in other states. So Brad was taking monthly (or more) business trips to Colorado. And Kansas. And elsewhere. And because I was still teaching voice in the evenings, I had to find someone to babysit my youngest kids while I worked. 

We were busy. 

One night last year I remember coming home late after voice lessons. It had been a particularly stressful week. Brad had been watching the two youngest kids and Grace and Claire had come home from dance with me. I pulled into the driveway and Grace and Claire hopped out of the car. I watched them run into the house. And I sat in the driveway. Just sitting. For a minute. Because there was no other time to sit. I saw Brad walk out of the house toward my car. I grabbed my purse and got ready to get out of the car because I assumed that he needed help getting the kids to bed. He opened my door, and reached in and hugged me. And he just hugged me. For several minutes. It was like coming up for air. We were both so stressed. 

If I were to sum up life in one word, that word would be: stress. 

And I know that a lot of you do this life. Every day. And you're still able to discipline your children and make dinner and have family time and scripture study and mop your floors. Props to you people. You have my undying admiration. And envy. I wish I were like you. But I have learned that I am not great at multi-tasking. I have tunnel vision. And it is very hard for me to focus on anything else if I have a deadline. So sometimes the most important things didn't get done because I was focused on work. Or I was focused on the next appointment or business meeting. 

One day Brad and I were sitting around talking about what to do with our lives. We do this a lot. outcomes of this meeting are life goals like: move to Alaska. And build a climbing wall in our backyards. You know. Important stuff. Brad had been gone 15 days that month. And. Well that just stinks. And maybe with that on the brain I just said, "what if we bought a trailer and lived in it and followed you around?"

And it sounded about as probable as moving to Alaska. Except we couldn't stop thinking about it.

Two weeks later Brad brought home our new home. 

I know there will be problems with living in a trailer. Many of my friends have told me that I will go completely crazy. And my sister has mentioned that most families spend their lives working to ensure that their family WON'T have to live in a trailer. 😂 True. But we've just finished up our first week in a trailer. We haven't even left our city yet. And it's pretty awesome--I'm not gonna lie. 

A Public Display

On this Valentine's Day, I am going to post something that I started on Valentine's Day, 2012, but never had the guts to post. Because I try to avoid PDA. On the internet. Kissing in public is totally okay with me.

But, in the spirit of the day, I will divulge the half-baked tid-bit I wrote three years ago:

I don't know how to talk about Brad. I have been trying all day and I can't. Anything I try comes out too cheesy, too personal, too braggy. I write strictly humor and misery. I do not deal in joy. And so I have no tools to convey my feelings.

So I will just say this: 

When I started to date, I remember being advised to "date someone that makes you want to be a better person."

I didn't realize that as a guilt-addicted perfectionist, my drive to be a better person was already--by itself--enough to propel me through several lifetimes of improvement. Well, improvement and maybe severe depression. Brad was the only man I dated that made me want to be me. With him I am comfortable in my own skin.

Happy Valentine's Day to the man who calls himself "the luckiest" after he's come home from a long day at work and the kids are running loops around the stairs, screaming, and dinner is not done, and I'm still wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt.

He obviously has it backwards.

Hide and Go Seek

If you follow me on Instagram, maybe you remember this year-old gem:

That is Rose. At my feet. She is either insisting to be held since the dinner-making which is requiring my attention is significantly less important than her, OR, she is objecting to the disgustingness which she will soon refuse to eat at dinner time.

Either way, it was not super fun. 

These days, Rose has a new tactic. The minute I approach the stove or the sink, or (heaven-forbid) the kitchen-aid, the child runs to my legs. She clings on for dear life. And with a sweet smile she pleads, "Mommy, ho' ju."  It's a pretty hard request to deny. But it's also really hard to ignore the cries of three other starving children waiting for you to cook them breakfast. It's even harder to flip a pancake while holding a two year-old on your hip.

So.

I invented a new game. It's called "Hide Spiderman."

Observe:

Spiderman hides, and Rose spends 3-5 minutes looking for him (during which I cook, and add ingredients, and stir a little), she finds him and rejoices and jumps up and down, and then I hide him again.

This trick works so well that I'm spending more time in the kitchen. I've baked 6 loaves of bread this week. (The drawback is that I have eaten an entire loaf every day this week. So... I'm also growing a muffin top. Bonus.)

Why I should probably post more.

Yesterday I was perusing all of my posts living in "draft" land. And I came across this number that I started last year, titled, "A Misunderstanding":

Last week I was standing at my kitchen island with a cup of applesauce in one hand, and a spoon in the other while I held Rose on my hip and tried to feed her. I do not recommend this feeding arrangement. Unless your end goal is to be covered in baby food, in which case, this is the method for you.

In addition to holding Rose while feeding her, I was also attempting to hold her hands to prevent her from glopping fruity handfuls of sauce into my shirt and eyebrows. This is impossible. But I am a mom and so I have to do it anyway.
All Moms should be octopuses.

Anyway, as I was wrestling Rose, I realized that Weston was trying to get my attention. It usually takes me a minute to realize that. I'm really only good at focusing on one thing at a time. Which is w

...and that is all she wrote, friends. And now, a year later, I have no inkling of how this story ends. Or even how that sentence was going to end.

Maybe: "Which is... why I never succeed at watching TV and folding laundry"? or "Which is... why my kids have to repeat themselves 2-3 times before I realize what they are saying"? or "Which is... why I am not the poster-child for awesome homeschooling mom"?

It's time to post more. Before my kids are all grown and my brain cells are gone and I turn around and wonder what the heck happened.

(And, let's be honest, I haven't set the bar too high... posting "more" means at LEAST three times a year.)

Just now, in my living room.

Brad has been throwing a ball at the kids. In my house. They are running away, loving to be terrorized.

Claire, watching the scene from our overstuffed chair, asked, "Dad, how do you throw so good?" (As you can see, my grammar lessons are really paying off.)

Brad replied, "I'm good at throwing. It's like my second best talent."

Claire quickly responded, "What's your first-best talent?"

"Loving mom," he said.

I die. I love that man.

Listening

Tonight was girls' night at our house. Dad and Weston are camping and I decided to take the girls on a rare trip to a fast food restaurant. Living on the wild side over here.

Somehow, with only those three kids, I was more present. More relaxed. And my kids started to talk. And they started to vent. And they started volunteering information that they'd been holding onto for months.

Grace in particular is a story-bottler. She'll tell the most bomb-shell stories during the most unexpected moments. Tonight she told me that while school was still in session (so who knows how many months ago this happened), her class was out at recess, and she and her friend were lifting their shirts up to show their bellies and sticking their stomachs out. (She didn't explain why they were doing this.) As they did this, a kid-who-I-will-begrudgingly-leave-unnamed-but-had-at-one-point-had-a-crush-on-Grace walked up to her and said, "You're already fat without doing that."

Flames. Flames... on the sides of my face...

On the inside, I want to murder that kid.

On the outside, I listened to Grace and then gave a mirthful laugh. And said, "I have never heard anything more ridiculous. Or stupid. Next time a kid says something like that to you, you have my permission to tell him he's stupid."

She was shocked.

I'm usually the parent who assumes that their own kid is to blame for everything. I'm not usually the type to tattle to parents about their children. When my children are mistreated or lightly bullied (don't stab me for taking bullying lightly), I generally tell them to suck it up and figure out a solution. I'm sort of heartless like that. I guess I figure that the world is a mean place and they have to learn to deal with stuff.

But I must be doing it wrong.

I want my kids to defend themselves against this crap.

And I want my kids to feel safe telling me. So I can wrap them up and love them and tell them that things are going to be okay. It's hard to do that when you find out months later.

Sometimes I really hate being an inadequate parent.

Guess who actually did send out Christmas cards this year?

Me. I did.

That may surprise you. Because it's highly likely you didn't get one. That doesn't mean that I didn't put your name on one. What it means is that I am lazy. What it means is that I left for our Christmas vacation, packed my Christmas cards with addresses and stamps.... and then I actually went on vacation. And who remembers to mail cards on vacation?

Well I don't.

So don't hate me for posting a digital version.

If you still want the stamped card I have addressed to you in my still-packed Christmas vacation bags, and you won't call me tacky for sending a Christmas card right before Valentine's Day, leave a comment and I'll pop it in the mail.

Oh. And since I know you're wondering (since how could you not): I did get the bathroom mirrors up, and Brad finished our fireplace. (well, the carpentry, anyway. Nobody has time for paint.)

A boring update. And a sad birthday.

I haven't blogged in a long time. I don't know why. I can't seem to make it to the computer. And then when I do, I can't think of anything interesting to say.

I might never have blogged again, except I spent Thanksgiving with my darling grandmother and she asked me why I haven't blogged in so long. She told me she checks regularly for a new blogpost. And then, in an effort to prove that to me, she recited from memory the post below. And, well, that is kind of sad. Especially considering the fact that it was no epic blogpost.

So now that it's two months after Thanksgiving, my guilty conscience has finally kicked in and I am writing.

Wow. This post is so boring so far that I am falling asleep writing it.

What to say.

I know. Rose. Rose turned a year old last Tuesday. Huge hallmark birthday. I have great pictures of all of my kids on their first birthdays. I am a good mom. Let me illustrate:


Grace with GG at her 1st birthday party


Claire eating her first traditional birthday mud pie at Grandma Betsy's


Weston eating a cake (courtesy of the talented Diane Ferguson [and Grandma Betsy who commissioned it]) at his joint birthday/BYU football birthday party (also at Grandma Betsy's)

And now here is our dear friend Rose on her first birthday:

Not even a cake for this one. Poor thing. 

Was I saying something about being a good mom earlier? 

With a plastic bat to boot.

Weston [approaches Brad, sleeping on the couch.]: I'm Batman. I have to FIGHT YOU!

Brad: No... You don't fight me. I'm a nice guy.

Weston [angrily incredulous]: Are you Kidding me?!

Things we did

We've been busy with house stuff and cleaning stuff (although never seeming to make any progress), but we do fun stuff too. And I think me and my kids should remember that stuff too. So here are some things we did last week:

The kids and I changed the rear blinker on the F150. Never done that before.

I made dinner with Rose on my hip. I do that a lot. Well, whenever I make dinner, which turns out to be not that often, actually.

We fed Rose her first lasagna (a dinner gifted me by a sweet friend who knows first-hand the dinnerlessness of house building).

We Wii bowled.

Brad's brother came to visit and we toured the caverns. I carried Rose in my trusty Moby, and for about 20 minutes or so, I held a very fussy Weston too. Sometimes I think I could have made it as a pioneer. And then Brad reminds me how whiney I've been during the housebuilding ordeal... And I change my mind.

We said goodbye to some of our dear Carlsbad friends who will be moving to Rexburg, ID. Can't blame them. Hard to pass up a professorship at BYU-I.

Dinner

I've been working a lot at the under-construction-house. Up until yesterday, my sister had been here for the last two weeks. With her at my house to watch the kids, I would leave every morning at about 7 or 8 and work until 5, 6, or 7 with twenty minute breaks here and there to go home and nurse Rose.

I'm still working at the house, but without Karlee here, I'm getting significantly less accomplished. Today I went to the house with all four children, their bikes, a pack of bubbles, some balloons, lots of food, cookies, and Capri Suns. I was hoping to get four cabinets done. Since I average 2 per hour, uninterrupted, I felt like this was a totally achievable goal. Two hours. Doable. And yet, not. It was a massive failure. (You could see that coming, right?)

Rose needed to be fed (twice). Claire stubbed her toe and bled all over the clean but as yet unsealed stone floors. Weston took off his shoes and got stickers (burrs?) in his feet and so had to be retrieved and carried back to the house and comforted. Rose was hot and bored and began screaming her lungs tired from her baby carrier. The neighbor kids wanted our kids to come play with them (which required me meeting their grandparents, of course). Grace fell off her bike and scraped her elbow and hip. And then my drill died. I got exactly one cabinet assembled. Count it--yes, ONE.

It's hard convincing the kids that I'm doing this for them--that this exhausting parental neglect will actually result in bedrooms and a yard to play in and a kitchen big enough for them to help me cook in.

Perspective. They don't have it. And so I feel guilty for being Worst Mother of Summer 2013. I haven't made dinner in two weeks. Haven't folded laundry. Haven't even gone grocery shopping in a month. A. Month. People.

So today, I'm scouring for something to make for dinner without having to drag four munchkins through Walmart. And all I can come up with is bread machine white bread with honey butter. And green beans. I am not kidding. This is what I feed my children.

Turns out that my kids have never eaten so much of one of my dinners as they did tonight. Can't really decide whether that's because I'm starving them or because they actually liked it. But they did fight over the last of the green beans. And so in my current life-season of haggardness and insanity, I am totally counting tonight's measly snack as a hands down motherhood success. Yay for me. Maybe tomorrow I'll defrost some chicken or something.

Craving Certainty

We spent Grace's birthday (this April) in Texas. At Grandma's house. I thought she would have more fun there than cramped in our itty bitty house in a city with almost nothing to do.

And it was quite the eventful trip. But in the wrong sort of way. The night we pulled in, I went to bed feeling ill. I woke up vomiting. And then Claire got sick. And then Weston. And during the entire trip, Rose screamed more than she slept.

So maybe I was on edge. Or maybe there is no excuse and I am always this way (more likely). But at some point, Grace (the only well child) became very slightly mischievous in an effort to find something to do, and I got impatient. Mad. I lectured her. (I don't think I yelled this time, which is lucky.)

When I finished, Grace looked down at the rubber ball she was holding and asked, "Mom, do you think I'm mostly good, or mostly bad?" My heart cracked open.

And just seeing it written here, reliving it, makes me ache all over again.

I can't remember exactly how I responded. Looking back now, I hope I ran to her and told her she was so good. Is so good. I know at some point I told her that just because you don't think clearly before you do something doesn't make you bad.

We talked about natural consequences. Like what would happen if she continued to the throw the rubber ball against the walls in the house. And then we looked for alternatives. Like: where could we throw the ball where it wouldn't damage anything? And what could we do with it to make it more fun?

We spent the next hour together, giddily playing outside with this ridiculous homemade ping-pong ball slingshot that was the result of our conversation.

It made me realize that the main reason Grace gets into trouble is because she's bored and she comes up with creative and sometimes somewhat destructive ways to cure her boredom. It made me remember what I tell people; why I keep coming back to homeschooling her eventually: the girl is bored. And I don't know why it's taken me eight years to really internalize this fact and actually try to help her out.

Motherhood is a challenge. It's hard. And it's lovely. And there's this lurking, hovering, paralyzing fear that I'm messing it all up, that I'm not connecting enough, that I don't know enough. that they'll grow up to be gun-toting drug dealers who hate me and everything I tried to teach them.

To raise these people who have bits of you and bits of someone else and somewhere up in their ancestry bits of people you never counted on... all that is like trying to put together a puzzle without a picture of what it looks like.

Sometimes I feel like I'm breaking their hearts. Or I'm not teaching them what I should. Or I'm lecturing them too much and not teaching them the right way. There's so much at stake; how can I be sure I'm doing what I should be?

Photo-face fail

One Sunday I got a little ambitious. Grace had been begging me to curl her hair for weeks. I'd never had time to do it, but this particular Sunday we had happened to wake up at 5:30 and had a little extra time. (Yay.)

I felt like her hair turned out well. So I decided to take a picture.

I love my kids. They are gorgeous. So there must be something wrong with my camera.

Missed him.

Weston is home. My mom brought him back last week.

So the other night, when he asked me to lay down with him at bedtime, after having lived without him for two weeks, how could I refuse?

I slid off my shoes and lay on the edge of the bed. He stuck his wiggling toes into my legs. He wrapped his arms around my neck and with his hands held strands of my hair. He kissed my cheek and said, "I need you, Mom."

Roses

At the end of last month, our families gathered in puny little Carlsbad to help us celebrate and participate in Grace's baptism and Rose's blessing. I love momentous family events. I love spending time together. 

And now, my children are gone. Three of them, anyway. Grace and Claire left with Grandma and Grandpa for a fun-filled month of farm work and bike riding and creek wading. Weston went with my mom so that Brad and I could work on the house that we're building. But because subcontractors routinely break their commitments and because I tend to be way too optimistic about the amount of work that can be accomplished in a day, Brad and I haven't done much that qualifies as work.

So while Brad is at his job, I am home with one little nursing baby, encompassed either by silence or colicky screams. The time with Brad and Rose has been mostly quiet. Still. Nice.

But I ache for my children. 

Years ago, my dad was showing me how to prune a rose bush. He told me that cutting the roses was like separating a mamma from her babies--the rose bush works hard to bring them back. At the time, of course, I did not at all understand his metaphor. I hadn't been a mother. But, man, I feel like that. I miss my babies. 

Lopsided

I was making dinner amidst our nightly family madness when I heard Claire say,
"Mom. I am sorry for saying your leg is fat."

Um... I was confused. I am semi-deaf when I'm trying to accomplish a task (I get that from my dad). So I responded, "What? Did you just say that I'm fat?" (Wouldn't blame her honestly. Baby weight is sure stubborn.)

"Noooo! Loook!" she yelled. And she pointed at her drawing on the fridge, "I didn't mean to be MEAN--I'm sorry, Mom."

She seemed pretty concerned, so I laughed and said, "Oh, Claire, it's no big deal! I make mistakes drawing all the time. I mean, you didn't draw it that way on purpose." I pointed to my left leg and said, "I know this leg isn't bigger than the other one."

She cocked her head, smirked, pointed to my other leg and said, "No, that one is."

Huh.

Maybe next she'll apologize for decapitating her dad.

Wooden boxes

We're building a house. I told you that a while ago. It's been kind of slow because we're trying to do a lot ourselves. And because the person in charge of getting bids is kind of lazy (me).

But today my cabinets arrived. I am excited. What do you think?

Help me out.

Perhaps you will remember that with my third child, I tried to have a natural delivery. You can read a little about that here.

Turns out, with Rose, I had no choice. I made it to the hospital less than an hour before delivery. (Story later for you strong-stomached peeps.) Good news is, this time I actually prepared. I read a book. And practiced natural birthing techniques.

I wanted three things from a natural childbirth.

1. Pain-free recovery
2. "Runner's high"
3. Bragging rights

And here's the thing, friends. Didn't happen. Here's what happened instead:

I had just birthed beautiful Rose, and I held her on my tummy while adrenaline gifted me with the shakes (which had lasted all through labor and for about an hour after), and all I could think was: "I'm gonna drop her" (I didn't), and "Why the devil do women choose to do this without drugs?"

So, dear readers, what's the secret? What did I miss?

Perfectly Presumptuous

My parents have spent the last few months cleaning out their storage locker.

In this process, I found all of my old high school yearbooks.

One of them includes this:

We barely knew each other. And at the time, he claimed it was a joke.

I would argue that time and circumstances have definitively. proven. otherwise.

I love this guy. I'm so glad he was gutsy.