Like Shoveling Falling Snow

My mom used to call me a pack-rat. This is an unpleasant term for someone who saves garbage. Apparently at four years old even a twisted paperclip can be treasure. I guess.

I don't save things anymore. I have had to move seventeen times and at some point I decided to make friends with the dumpster.

But now Grace is the pack-rat. A scavenging pack-rat. She does not favor only the trash bound items. She hunts for misplaced any things. And then she carts them around with her: in her hands, in the trunk of her tricycle, in her purse. It makes tidying our house close to impossible since there are piles of these things everywhere. And after I clean up, there are new ones.

Therefore, our house is never clean.

Today I took an inventory of her collection as it sat in her bike trunk:

1. 1 cracked, plastic thermometer case
2. A set of old Honda keys
3. 1 small bottle of Mommy's favorite lotion
4. 3 tubes of Mommy's favorite lipgloss, goobered on
5. Mommy's missing crochet hook
6. 2 rocks
7. 4 broken crayons
8. 1 of Daddy's business cards
9. 1 slice of pumpkin bread, crumbled and stale
10. 1 twisted electric wire
11. Grace's missing toothbrush, full of pumpkin crumbs

Perspective

I have spent the last week in a gloomy funk, helplessly anticipating my imminent failure at motherhood. As if motherhood were chess and I could see that I was losing. Just waiting for checkmate. Don't ask me what brought this on. I suppose it could be PMS. Blame the hormones; that's always a winner.

Anyway, whatever caused my dolor, Cheerfulness arrived last night in the mailbox from Netflix. It was disguised as The Nanny Diaries. Sweet relief. I at least want my children. And maybe that single virtue can outweigh thousands of well-meaning mistakes. I am hopeful.

Desperate Measures

Last night at a baby shower one of my new Carlsbad friends referred to me as "Supermom."

Excuse me? Were you referring to me? The frazzled, unshowered woman sitting across from you?

I might have been flattered if the term had actually been grounded in reality.

It happened when my gift was opened: a pair of white crocheted baby booties. Everyone oohed and aahed and passed the shoes around, which I was against. Because there were actually authentic crafters in the room who could rat me out as an imposter. And then my good friend Tanya was kind enough to mention that I'd started making them that very day. Traitor. [Yeah, well, do you know what else I did that day? Nothing. I slumped in the same spot on the couch amid piles of mail, toys, and smashed up popcorn while Grace climbed on my head and I held Claire in nursing position with my knee.] That's when I got accused.

"You Supermom... Is there anything you can't do?" MiYung asked with a degree of admiration and maybe annoyance.

This is coming from a woman I compare myself to a lot. I do this for mainly three reasons: 1) She keeps the books for her husband's pediatry clinic, 2) She keeps her home immaculate and beautifully decorated, and 3) She has been doing her dishes in the bathtub for the last two weeks, for lack of a kitchen sink. And she never whines. Okay, four reasons.

On the other hand, the only things MiYung knows about me is that I make booties, I bake bread, and I keep my monthly grocery budget to $100 (don't ask me how she knows that). She thinks those things are amazing. What she doesn't get is those things are necessities. Besides, the hundred dollar grocery budget means less produce and dairy. Which means fewer vitamins and nutrition. Which I'm pretty sure is the definition of not supermom.

But I do what I have to do. No more than that. Someday soon I will buy baby gifts made by someone else, and I will spend $400 a month on groceries without having a stroke. And then I will keep the house clean and decorated like MiYung.

Being My Best

Sister Ellen Thompson came over today. She is my Visiting Teacher. She quoted the "Proclamation on the Family" to me while Grace hopped on our couches, rode her tricycle up and down the hall, repeatedly yanked me toward her makeshift-refrigerator-box-playhouse, and pulled my hair. ("Does dis hurt, mom?" "Yes it does, honey." Sit. Down. And. LISTEN!)

Ellen wrapped up her lesson and the chit-chat, looked around and announced, "Next month I am coming to baby-sit so you can have a break."

Evidently I am not pulling off the "I have everything under control here" look. I was disappointed and a little annoyed at being discovered. Which is ridiculous. I should have been surprised and grateful she didn't laugh when I opened the door. She was sitting in a room that had exploded with laundry, visiting a woman with dark circles under her eyes and a lumpy ponytail.

After she left, Grace and I made bread. No. I made bread. Grace found a spoon and ate flour while my back was turned.

Sometimes I look at my little girls and the mistakes I am making and think to myself: "I'm not so sure how well this plan was thought through." (We watch Meet the Robinsons so much it is sinking into my brain.) I really don't know what I'm doing. I question myself all the time. What's the magic key to parenting? Will my kids suffer because of my dumb mistakes (even if I love them to pieces)? Does Grace know I love her even when I can only play tea party for one hour (instead of three)? How about when I stubbornly correct her learned lithp? Does she feel loved? AAAHHH.

This is harder than I thought it would be.

How Did Pioneer Women Do It?

Grace has an obsession with lip gloss.

She eats it.

I imagine sparkly-brown cappaccino flavored goo oozing down her throat. Yuck. Whatever terrible consequences await Grace's digestive system, the worst part of her fixation goes to the owner of the lip gloss. Thank you, Grace goober. I have pasted slobber all over my lips more than once.

Today I had planned to get a lot of office work done for Brad. I didn't. This is mostly because Grace is not a self-entertainer. One planned hour of computer work usually turns into an entirely unproductive full day. I sit down and Claire cries to be fed (or changed, or held, or burped) and angry Grace pulls on my arm pleading, "Come here, please, come here, mom, watch me throw pecans at the wall!" (or "watch me climb my closet shelves," or "watch me sit on Claire's head!"). Imagine two hours of that. It resulted in three barely-begun business documents.

Eventually I initiated a game that gave me thirty minutes of the children entertaining each other:

Just enough time to get one of those office things checked off my list. Then I joined in.

And to think that I had "bake bread" and "make granola" on my to-do list too.

Well, I can't ignore it. I love President Hinckley. And his funeral was the best thing that could have happened to me last week. It was a rough week. So to see President Hinckley's funeral and to be reminded of his ever-enduring optimism and hope was... a relief. I feel recommitted to adopting his mantras. Particularly: 1)Be the best you can be, 2)Forget yourself and go to work, and 3)It will all work out.

I keep saying that last one to myself: "It will all work out, it will all work out, things have a way of working themselves out." Prevents ulcers.

[artwork courtesy of McKay Livingston whose mother is my friend and gave me a copy! I am so lucky. The kid will be famous someday.]

Trustworthy, Brave, and All of That

Yesterday, while Grace and Brad play-doughed:


(making creepy bodyless heads):
I cut tomatoes; chopped cheese; tore, washed, and rinsed lettuce (my fingernails are still green) for 200 people. I am very proud of this salad. It took longer than it should, but it wore out my salad spinner (which we got as a wedding gift and was unwrapped for the first time for this project). The salad (which also eventually included pepperoni, croutons, and spinach) was sent with Brad to the Scout's Court of Honor/Fundraiser. I would have gone too, but Grace fell asleep in her car seat on the way (and even slept through the night, as a matter of fact).

Brad is our ward's Assistant Scoutmaster. Practically speaking, this means that he goes on lots of camping trips. I won't be too specific because this blog is public, you know. I'm scared enough home alone as it is. But I feel safe in saying that the trips are... frequent.

This is not his official calling. It's more of a business partnership/ward conspiracy to increase the intensity of the scouting program here in Carlsbad. The Head Scoutmaster wasn't getting the support he wanted to do more high adventure activities. So when Brad entered the ward (he who hiked and pick-axed his way up Mount Baker at ten years old), he found his right hand man. Brad really loves the adventure part of Scouting. He's amazing at it. I hope someday we have a boy so he can benefit from Brad's involvement in Scouts. As for our girls, I fully intend for us to camp and hike so we can all enjoy Brad's talents. Anyway...

On his last Scout outing, Brad was camping in the snow. It was not an easy trip. Apparently some of the boys thought it would be fun to roll around in a creek before going to bed that night--when the temperature dropped to zero. The boys couldn't sleep, and the next morning they must have been in frozen, hypothermic shock because Brad said he had to order them to pull their bare feet out of the fire.