Photos

I have been trying to get caught up on organizing the photos from the last few years. I finally completed Ravenna's baby book in November and wanted to tackle the photos from 2008-present as my next project. I got 2009 completed and got a great deal on a photo book from Shutterfly. I have to say that going digital saved me a great deal of time. With 2010, though, I am stuck. I cannot fathom why looking at the pictures from the summer of 2010, the summer I was last pregnant, leaves me with so much pain. I find myself looking at myself in those pictures and wondering "Do I look pregnant? What about me was different?" Then I see how much my daughter has grown since that time and I think "I am wasting her childhood...what am I doing?"

With our foster baby leaving in a few weeks I find myself feeling quite hopeless. We had hoped to adopt him; we hoped that he was the answer. My daughter is going through a developmental rough patch and I am plagued by thoughts of "What if...?" It is hard not to blame myself for our misfortunes regarding our family size. I often think that it is my fault my daughter is having such a rough time. If only I had been able to give her a sibling sooner, or if we hadn't chosen this very stressful route of foster care in order to grow our family. "What if I had just kept trying to get/stay pregnant?"

I am in desperate need of some peace; the questions are driving me insane.

Knitting A Sock

Making the Heel Flap While Knitting in the Sunlight

Three weeks before Christmas the conversation went something like this:

Me: I am going to knit [unspecified person] socks for their birthday.

Father-in-law: Great. Sounds like a great gift.

Me: Would you be interested in some knitted socks, too?

FIL: I don't know. I have never had knitted socks before.

One Week Later:

Me: I finally got my sock yarn and needles in the mail so I am going to start on making the socks for [unspecified person] right away.

FIL: Am I getting socks for Christmas?

Me: Ummmm...I wasn't planning on it.

FIL: But you said you were making me socks for Christmas.

Me: Wait! What?! I was planning on making you socks for your birthday!

FIL: Why would I want wool socks in June? 

The second conversation occurred five days ago and until yesterday I had been feverishly knitting a men's size large sock in the hopes of completing them in time. I love my father-in-law and he is notoriously hard to gift to so for once he wants something that I can make and I was determined to do it. Now, you must understand that this was my first sock knitting experience with tiny gauge yarn and needles (it is like knitting with toothpicks) and my father-in-law has big feet. I was making great progress until I dropped a stitch right after turning the heel. I tried to correct it but to no avail. The project began to unravel, very literally, right before my eyes and I had to "frog" it i.e. pull out all the knitting that I had spend 10 tedious hours on.

At that moment I had an epiphany: I was close to tears of frustration for all the time I had already spent only having to start all over despite it all. Four days of a semi-neglected home and family all in the name of a knitted sock. Had I not made the mistake I would have been able to complete the pair before Christmas and been able to happily gift them, but it was seriously stressing me out and taking the joy out of the knitting. I love to knit and I love the challenge of a new project but it was like the "sock that stole Christmas" since my presence was missing from my family.

This year I have had such a strong desire to simplify. Perhaps it is having a foster child and the busyness that brings, or maybe it is a consequence of reading Simplicity Parenting, but I did nearly all my Christmas shopping in November, said "No" to party invitations, and did the very minimum of holiday decorating choosing instead to try to concentrate on spending time with my family. The sock project kind of killed the simplicity bubble.

Right now Ravenna is singing a song that she created whose lyrics primarily consist of "Can I watch the little Merlaid?" She certainly is creative in her requests but I am going to have to say "no", not just because she has watched "The Little Mermaid" a least a dozen times since she got it but because it is time that I got off the computer and spent some time with her. That is what family is all about, right?

Things To Do Before I am 30

This is how I look to a 3-year old.

My senior year of high school I took a class entitled "Agriculture Business." At the time I wanted to go to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and get a Agribusiness Degree and go work for some big time monster Ag corporation like Monsanto, gags. In any case the class covered my Economics graduation requirement. I can't remember most of my assignments there except for a competition I went to (and WON!) about agricultural cooperatives but one silly assignment stuck in my brain: we were required to make a poster illustrating what we wanted to accomplish by the time we were 30. I wish I had kept that but alas, I am not a pack-rat. I can remember most of what was on it, though, and with the big 3-0 only year-and-a-half away lets review:

• Graduate High School, check
• Graduate College with a Bachelors Degree, check
• Get a high paying power job
• Find a Hottie and get him to marry me, double check!
• Own my own home, yup
• Travel to Foreign lands
• Speak a Foreign language

I can't remember having anything on there about having kids but I was pretty sure that I never wanted to have them when I was 17 and the second eldest of 5 children. So looking at that list one might say that it is pretty shallow. Yup. Many of the things also didn't hold up to reality: I only held one job out of college and it was neither high paying or powerful (I will forever call it my "soul sucking" job), I haven't traveled and I stopped learning French after 4 years because I married a German speaker. But hey, I still have a year and a half so let's see what I can accomplish!

In June Andrew and I will be chaperoning a bunch of teenage German language students to, you guessed it, Germany. Aha! Travel!!! Ding ding ding! But I also need to speak German in order to go on the trip. I have around 7 months to get to about a German 3 level. I started learning at the end of October and finished German 1 with a 94% on my final the third week of November. I sped through that puppy but it was exhausting and now I am struggling with serious Deutsch burnout. I am allowing myself two months, until the end of January, to do German 2 and the deadline for German 3 is June 1. If I can get that all done I will have completed nearly all of my shallow high school goals! Woot!

It got me wondering though, how many of us remember what our dreams were when we were 17? I find mine pretty practical considering my age but also most definitely influenced by the TV shows and movies of my teen years. The things that I listed showed what my 17-year old self  believed the pathway to success to be: Education-->Awesome Job --> Money --> Travel, House, and a man to love me. While education is still important to me, having a high paying power job certainly is not. With time and experience I certainly still value certain things on that list but for different reasons. Like traveling for its own sake, rather than to say that I had traveled; Speaking a foreign language to broaden my horizons and work my brain rather than just to put it on a resume. And how about having kids? Being a good wife and mother have taken top priority on my life's list of "To Do's." I think my 17 year-old self would have scoffed at the notion of domestic happiness being my chief desire, and yet, ten years later, it is.

Life is wonderful. Life is harder than I ever thought it would be. Life is better than I ever imagined.

Post Title

When I started this blog I certainly had high expectations. I really wanted to be able to share who I was and all my thoughts and the crazy/fun stuff that I do but then I go to write it down and it just seems silly. Nearly every week I sit down to write a post, get a paragraph or two down, read it over and then delete it. So I think I might end up deleting this blog. This seems to be the way of my life right now starting with getting rid of Netflix, then Facebook and now blogging. I think I might just be casually climbing my way out of the interwebs.

Pain and the Atonement

"It will comfort us when we must wait in distress for the Savior's promised relief that He knows, from experience, how to heal and help us...And faith in that power will give us the patience as we pray and work and wait for help. He could have known how to succor us simply by revelation, but He chose to learn by His own personal experience."

-Henry B. Eyring, quoted by Kent F. Richards, Ensign, May 2011, 16

I did find this thought comforting today as I pondered upon the pain of waiting and not knowing. I do feel better that Christ understands the conflicting emotions I feel as I struggle with waiting for more children while my foster daughter joyfully becomes a mother. With my limited perspective, I feel that the lessons I learn as a foster parent will help me when and if Andrew and I are able to have more biological children. When people ask us why we made this choice, to parent other people's children, most of the time I want to say "I have no idea" because I truly do not, but the rightness of this choice is daily confirmed by the whisperings of the Spirit. I am so grateful for that and for the sweetness of new life.

Mother's Day

Mother's Day and I don't have a good track record. It all began with the years of infertility. In those days it just felt like good sense to stay at home and not go to church. Then POOF! I had a baby and all should have been fixed, but strangely there still lingered a sense of weirdness about the day. This year royally sucked. I basically wept the entire day. To put it simply, I thought I was pregnant; I am not. I found out on Mother's Day. Real fun. Add in a HUGE dose of hormones. Then, of course, my daughter treated me like a pariah and would have nothing to do with me; did I mention I was hormonal? Then speakers and teachers all around decided to focus on those of us who due to circumstances outside of our control, don't really relish the day. Yup...

Thankfully, Heavenly Father sent me a comforting angel in the guise of a woman I hardly knew. She hugged me, told me she loved me and that she would pray for me and best of all, that she would do it without needing to know what was wrong. I cannot describe the relief I felt. So many people asked me what was wrong (I have one of those awful "cry faces" that cannot be hidden) but nobody did was this woman did. I am so grateful.

What Poverty Does

Today Ravenna and I went to Roots Market with the BFF and after buying produce and checking out the critters we wandered over to the flea market in search of treasures. Christie was in search of a candy dish (which she found for $1!) and I was just keeping my eye out for Depression glass, Delft and useful junk. Just as we were about to leave I spotted some cool stuff at a table I had passed by earlier. The man sitting at the table was quite eccentric, had incredibly LONG nose hair and a generally disheveled appearance. No matter, it wasn't unusual.

I spotted a blue and white serving platter and while I debated over buying it (the price wasn't bad I just didn't need it) I had one ear open to the conversations this man was having with other customers. I became startled to observe that this man was actually begging people to buy his wares. Then I started to look around. It didn't take a rocket scientist to notice that something was up. The seller appeared to be living out of his van. He said that he used to be a Social Studies teacher and was down on his luck. He needed some sales. Some people might call me a sucker but I don't believe that there was any dishonesty going on.

My heart broke to see this lonely, eccentric human being begging for me to buy a $10 platter that was certainly worth much more. I bought it even though I didn't need it. After leaving I felt so grateful for my comfortable life and the blessings of being surrounded by wonderful friends and family. What did he have? I really don't know but in my experience with flea market sellers they might bring down the price of an item but they never beg.

What could I do for this man? Could I have done more than just bought the platter? All these thoughts fill my mind now. What more could I have done?

Don't Talk To Me...

To Parents of Children in Public Schools:

Don't talk to me about how bad your school district is because of the low test scores and tightly stretched budgets. Don't tell me that teachers are overpaid for the poor work that they do. Don't complain to me that your kid's teachers aren't actually "teaching" them because they have to do so much paperwork. If you try to get me to commiserate with you about the poor quality of public education in the United States, TOUGH. I will not join you in your ignorant rantings and instead I might just tell you off. 

A few weeks ago my chiropractor admonished me that since I was in a certain school district I should either home school or private school my daughter. News flash: MY HUSBAND TEACHES IN THAT DISTRICT. By telling me that the school district where my husband teaches is "horrible" and will result in the "poor education" of my daughter you are directly insulting me and the hard work my husband does and you are showing your utter stupidity.Yes, I said stupidity and here is why:

It bugs me to no end when people complain about all the time teachers waste documenting rather than teaching, as if teachers have a choice. Parents are the ones primarily responsible for educating their children and it is because they have abdicated this responsibility that teachers have to document "results." If parents were involved as they should be, there would be no need to know how their kids are stacking up to others because the parents would know intuitively. Too much blame is placed on teachers by parents who willingly give away the right to educate their children to bureaucrats who care of little but test scores and bottom lines.

I wrote that in response to an article posted on facebook that asserted that the reason that teachers don't teach exciting lessons is because they are too busy recording results. Guess why they have to do that? Because parents WANT to see results. Tax payers want results. They want to know that their dollars are making a difference. Test scores show only a small portion of what others find meaningful and in my opinion they mean jack squat. I was an honors students and I still randomly filled in bubbles on the standardized tests we were forced to take every year for days, and days and days. I did it because I was bored and I know I was not alone. What makes you think that children today are any different?

 

The real teacher of any child is the parent. Plain and simple. If you do not like how your child is being educated, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I have observed that while people enjoy complaining about teachers and school districts on blogs, facebook, grocery stores, in mommy groups and even in chiropractic offices, none of them seems willing to step up and take their child's education fully in their own hands. I knew before I had a child that I was willing to be my daughters teacher if that was what she needed and I stand by that.

I also reject the notion that going to a "bad" school will destroy your child's chance at getting into a good college. I went to a bad school with low test scores in a bad area and had a few stinky teachers, but guess what? I also had great ones, the vast majority actually. When I struggled in math class my mom stepped up and helped me herself. I graduated at the top of my class from high school and college and continue to have a love of learning. I consider my education a success, however I know that the foundation of my education did not occur in a classroom.  My education was fostered at home from a young age and those principles I learned as a child helped me through the under qualified teachers, drugs and violence, and ridiculous time wasting standardized tests of that "bad" school. The key is being fully involved, knowing your child's educational needs and a willingness to do whatever it takes to meet those needs even if it means teaching them primarily on your own.

 

As the daughter and wife of educators I have seen how hard my mother, husband (and yes, even his coworkers) work. They are passionate about what they teach. They are just as frustrated as you are about not being able to spend time preparing and teaching great lessons because they have to spend such a huge chunk of their time with paperwork, documenting student's "progress" and being trained on how to write lesson plans using complicated charts and buzz words to satisfy the bureaucracy. But parents are what it comes down to. You are your child's first teacher and it should always be that you are their PRIMARY educator. No matter how great the teacher, they will never make up for you, the parent.

D-Day

Today is my D-Day. Today, had my pregnancy gone as hoped I would have been 40 weeks. Maybe I would have already had a baby right now? Maybe I would be huge and uncomfortable wishing desperately that labor would begin and doing everything that I could possibly imagine to get it to start? Today there are lots of "maybe's" and "what-if's" and still the old "why me, why anyone?" I think it was appropriate that I announced our foster parenting plans on our family blog today and it also helps that today is sunny and warm in the middle of February; a day that makes me think of the coming Spring and life and renewal.

I think today might be a good day to get out and spend a lot of time enjoying the beautiful moments and then tomorrow life will continue as usual, the cold winter weather will resume, and I will look forward to a future which is not what it could have been.

How Do You View Yourself?

I have been really quiet lately in the blog world. The slow pace of my life in winter has that effect but the lull also seems to be extending into the realm of the internet usage. For example, I quit a web forum that I had been actively participating in for a few years now, stopped reading so many blogs and making comments and haven't been as active on Facebook. For whatever reason I feel the need to make my interactions count and I have been feeling that my interactions on the internet are mostly shallow. On the flip side I have been writing more thank you notes and trying to encourage others.  I have spent a lot of time knitting and consequently pondering on my life, blessings and struggles.

One of the things I have been learning on this journey of introspection is to stop viewing myself in relation to others. It is a constant struggle for me. Probably the most difficult thing is seeing the families of my friends grow while ours stubbornly remains the same size. The other day my friend asked me if I would be fulfilled with having just Ravenna. At the time I said "yes" but added that of course I would still like to have more children. Later a familiar nagging thought crept into my brain: "But if I don't have any more children I will never be a real mother." This doesn't come from nowhere, people. I have often been told in conversation with mothers of many children (Have you ever said this?): "Oh, you will understand when you have x many kids" which I took as meaning that I could never understand because I don't have as many children. What a way to feel shafted in the kid department! While my days are full and steady with my one darling child, often I feel guilty because I have so much more time than these women with more children but also guilty because my child is missing out and that is my fault.

Here again we come back to me learning not to view myself in relation to others. I will never understand how those women with such and such number of kids feels because I am not them and they are not me.  If I had five children I might be able to have empathy for the shared struggles of another mother who has the same number but I will never understand how her life is. My life is my own and learning that requires constant reminders to myself that what I accomplish and what I do not has nothing to do with anyone else. I am a real mother if I choose to see myself as one, period.

Motherhood is just one aspect of my comparative inadequacy that I have been dwelling on lately but really this applies to anything in my life: Am I a good enough cook? Does my house look tacky? Is my conversation boring to people? Do I not read enough books? Is there enough romance in my relationship? Do I have a strong enough testimony? All of these questions are about some idea of perfection that does not exist. They have to do with how I perceive other people and their talents and abilities. It isn't bad to want to emulate someone and to be better, but what I need is to be comfortable with myself as I am now and build my questions/goals around that: Do I enjoy the food I cook and does it nourish and sustain my family? Does my home fulfill its purpose? Do I do my best to uplift and connect with people in conversation? Am I getting enjoyment and education out of the books I read? Am I doing my best to be a supportive and loving wife? Am I making an effort to build my relationship with God every day?

The internet is a fabulous tool for self-depreciation. One only has to spend some time blog hopping to see where we just aren't "enough" compared to others. Getting an inferiority complex from viewing Mormon Mommy Blogs may just be my problem so take this for what you will; I have found that taking a step away from the internet to gain perspective on how what I was viewing was affecting my perception of myself and others was a great eye opener and well worth the missed status updates. I want my life to bring me, my family and others joy, so that is what I will focus on from now on. I can promise inferior quality photos, general corniness and probably a lot of stuff that will make you roll your eyes. Enjoy!

The Empty Womb

"Empty But for Love"

When I miscarried last August I wasn't ready to get pregnant right away. A nagging feeling kept telling me that it was a bad idea. Right after the loss I set a tentative date of January 2011 as the time when we would probably be ready to try to conceive again. And yet, here we are in January and there is no baby making going on, nor any in the foreseeable future.

At the moment not being pregnant just sucks. It seems like everyone that I know and love is pregnant (even my favorite blogger recently announced a pregnancy) and it hurts. I doesn't hurt in a jealousy kind of way; more in the way that I felt when I was infertile. It is lonely. That is why I titled this post "The Empty Womb" because that is really the only way to describe the feeling. Having experienced a pregnancy before I sometimes feel "ghost kicks" or muscle twitches/gas bubbles/whatever you want to call them that remind me that at this moment I would be less than a month away from my estimated due date and instantly I am overcome by sadness at my lost experience.

I just found out that one of my best friends is expecting a girl later this year. On Facebook. This is the same woman who told me she was pregnant the first time before she even tested! While I am not sure this is the case, I wonder if she would have told me earlier if I had not miscarried. I hated learning through a website. If I wasn't on Facebook would I have heard about it ever? Maybe next year we would get a Christmas card from them and there would be a baby! Surprise!

While I am still occasionally bitter and sad, I am growing to appreciate my currently empty womb. It has given me an opportunity to work on healing myself that I wouldn't have had if I had been pregnant/nursing. The empty womb has opened doors for us and the journey that Andrew and I have been on in the last few months has been amazing in so many ways. It has been so difficult and yet we know we are now on a path that we would not have otherwise gone to if we had not lost the pregnancy. I might even dare to say that this is a better path...but more on that later.

Controversial Monday: Nutritional Dogma

Dear Readers,

Today I felt affronted. Today I felt attacked. It was all because of Facebook. I feel that people should be respectful of every one's beliefs despite how damaging (or what I perceive as damaging) they might be. That doesn't mean that I don't feel like I can't throw information out there when I feel like it so long as I am respectful. Unfortunately not everyone feels that way. It makes me not want to be an active part of the Internet because at this moment while I write this post that maybe two people will read, I could be reading a book instead, or knitting or forcing my husband to listen to my nutritional dogma of the importance of fat and cooking ones vegetables! But noooooo, I am too keyed up.

Here is another beef: Moderation. I am so SICK of that word. What is moderation? Is it what a government body decides is moderate? How about a scientist? Blogger? Television show? I guess it all depends on whose definition you trust. Moderation in my estimation as pertains to nutrition has to do with NOT eating things we know to be bad for us except in VERY rare circumstances. By rare I mean a few times a year, not every day or even once a month. But then again, what foods are really bad for us?

So, I am irritated. I am annoyed not because people disagree with me but because they chose to do so by putting me into a box of tyranny that makes any statement that comes out of my mouth tantamount to the dithering of an idiot with a large stick. All I want is to enjoy REAL food and for others to do the same. A propos: I have decided that I will no longer comment on anyone's facebook posting if it has anything to do with food because I am a Real Food Tyrant who believes everyone should be forced to eat saturated fat (gasp!), properly prepared grains (the horror!), and pasture raised meats (No!). Yes, you can just call me by my acronym RFT (pronounced Rufft) and if you eat sugar or uncooked cruciferous vegetables this dithering idiot will beat you with the aforementioned stick on thine head.

Thoughts on Conversion

This afternoon as I was ripping staples out of some chairs I am trying to reupholster, for some reason the idea of a cheeseburger from Burger King popped into my mind. It could be that my Candida control diet makes me think of forbidden foods when I am bored but I don't want to ponder on that too much because it will only give me processed food cravings. Alas...

Any who, after the cheeseburger at Burger King thought, a memory emerged from the brain fog of my best friend in 5th and 6th grade. Shira was Jewish and an only child which made her exotic in my eyes. Plus, since her mom was single, she was also alone a lot which meant free wandering all over our neighborhood and lots of 7/11 Slurpees paid for with change absconded from our parent's dressers. Occasionally I got to go to synagogue with Shira and her mom on Friday nights which was THE COOLEST THING EVER! I enjoyed the ritual and the songs and "reading" a book backwards, the numerous celebrations, but best of all...they had food! After the service was over there was a social hour where they served a potluck feast, which in my opinion, was vastly superior to the LDS services I attended each week.

Here began my religious crisis. In my 10 year-old estimation, Judaism was way cooler than Mormonism and I determined that as soon as I was able to, I would convert. Shira certainly doubted my sincerity and explained to me exactly how difficult it was to become a Jew. I am not sure she was correct in all her statements but it sounded pretty painful. Either way, I was still somewhat determined to follow that path until the Burger King incident.

Often my family would take Shira with us when we went out to eat and treated her to dinner, and the same was true for Shira's mom. Up until that point while I recognized and respected my friends religious traditions, I certainly wasn't expecting them to be applied to me. Back at Burger King I hungrily ordered my cheeseburger only to have, indignity of indignities, my order stricken from the receipt because, I was informed later, Shira's mom didn't feel comfortable paying for a meal that was not Kosher. I was shaken to my core and as I sullenly ate my tasteless, plain hamburger that seemed ever so dry that day, I decided that I was happy being LDS; at least I could eat cheeseburgers.