Baby Girl

Ummm, did I mention that we're having a baby girl come about September 20? Sorry, news reporting sometimes gets behind around here!

sorry the pics are upside down - technical trouble that I don't want to spend any more time on :)

James is thrilled he's getting a "baby sisser" - he's already allocated one of his blankets for her, and he tells me regularly that's why mommy's "tummy getting bigger" (I'm glad he doesn't say I'm just getting fat :)

Freckles

Around our house, we're pretty in love with a certain little boy's freckles. They sure are cute ... and the rest of him is quite a bit of fun also!

Here's a snapshot into a bit of what those freckles have been up to lately:

Popcorn and face-painting at the neighborhood carnival

Exploring spring - caterpillars, cocoons, and moths

His first overnight camping trip with Daddy!

Getting there

I'm nearing the end of that marathon again - the one that comes at the end of every school year. This one has been a doozy, I tell you, with all sorts of uphill climbs that I wasn't planning on (those elementary school kids sure do keep you on your toes). But, two weeks left, and summer can't come soon enough.

I've put up a new quote on my chalkboard wall that's helping me get through. It's one I came across from Pres. Uchtdorf recently, and even though it's simple, every day it's helping me keep things in perspective, remember what really matters, and feel reassured that it's all going to work out.

"What mattered to Heavenly Father was that I was doing the best I could, 

that my heart was inclined toward him, 

and that I was willing to help those around me. 

I knew if I did the best I could all would be well. 

And all was well."

(for the full talk, "You Matter to Him," link here)

Some Thoughts on Mothers' Day

Growing up, one of my biggest memories of Mothers’ Day was the fact that my mom actually hated the holiday. She really, really did not like Mothers’ Day, and I remember very often being so confused as a child how she could possibly dislike a day that was meant to celebrate her – I mean, the one special day I had was my birthday, and that was great! How could she dislike having a whole extra day to enjoy everyone’s attention, praise, and even gifts?

As I got older and heard her talk more about her feelings, I started to understand a bit better. She would comment that Mothers’ Day often left her feeling so inadequate – that it was a day that she was confronted head-on with all the things she thought, or heard others talk about, how a mother should be, and that she felt she wasn’t meeting up to. Even though hearing that I kind of understood, I still did not really get it. To me, she was an amazing mother, and I thought that she did meet up to all the expectations of what a mother should be. However, as I’ve gotten older, and have come to realize that as women we seem to have an instinct for inadequacy - as if we are innately programmed to believe that we are never doing enough, that we are never meeting the standard, or that we are never as good as the “woman next door, ” the Relief Society president, or the mom in the pew in front of us - I’ve really started to understand my mom’s feelings about Mothers’ Day.

It is a day of mixed feelings. Mixed with the intended joy and gratitude, there may also be feelings of inadequacy because of losing patience with active toddlers, or a working mom’s feelings of guilt because she isn’t home with her kids. Sometimes, it’s painful feelings stemming from lost opportunities – whether through tragedy or simply the passage of time – to be a mom, or because of never having had the opportunity to be a mom in the first place. But, over the years, as I’ve reflected on my own mother’s experience with Mothers’ Day, and in my hope to avoid feeling a similar level of mixed emotions on this annual day of celebration, I’ve decided there may be a better way to define “Mothers’ Day.”

I began to reflect, recently, on how different the connotations of the verb forms of “mother” and “father” are. It struck me that “to father” connotes something very short-term and somewhat impersonal – as in “to father a child.”  Whereas, “to mother” – with a few exceptions, such as when my husband pleads with me not to “mother” him – has such a deeper meaning of compassion, nurturing, and long-term love. Now I’m not saying that I agree with this cultural distinction of the apparent roles of mothers and fathers, but the difference is striking to me nonetheless, and I think that it can positively affect the way we think about and celebrate Mothers’ Day.

For most, saying “Happy Mothers’ Day!” probably typically means something along the lines of – “We’re happy you’re a Mom day!” In that meaning, we’re focusing on the noun form of “mother.” But if we were to think of “Happy Mothers’ Day,” instead focusing on the verb form of “mother,” it seems that we would be saying something more like, “Let’s take a moment to celebrate all the caring, compassionate, nurturing things that you, or I, or anyone has done for God’s children recently.” Taken this way, we are not only celebrating so many acts that mothers do, in fact, perform on a daily basis, but we are also celebrating the many ways in which so many around us bless our lives in similar ways. We’re celebrating the care and concern of a compassionate visiting teacher for the sisters she visits, we’re celebrating the teacher who nurtures a child’s hurt feelings, and we’re celebrating the deep love and support that friends share through good times and bad times.  When we celebrate Mothers’ Day in this way we are celebrating women – or even men – everywhere, who take time out of their lives, their schedules, and their priority list to put another’s needs first and try to make someone feel a little better about the figurative “skinned knee” that they might have gotten that day.

I definitely plan on calling my mom today and telling her how much I continue to appreciate all that she has done for me in the past, present, and future. But I also hope to take some time to appreciate the many people in my life who “mother” me, as well as to recommit myself to “mothering” – not only my own children, but anyone else who crosses my path who could use a kind word, a smile, or a tender hand to let them know that they are loved and cared for.

I believe that we are given mothers, and the opportunity “to mother,” in order that we can learn more about how to become perfect. Being a mother does not make me perfect, but as I learn “to mother” – giving up selfishness, letting go of pride, and consistently putting the needs of others before my own – I will become perfect. I believe that Jesus Christ is, in many ways, our perfect example of mothering. “As a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings,” He waits with open arms to “mother” us in our times of need, as well as to teach us how “to mother” in such a way that we can achieve the perfection, exaltation, and eternal joy that our Heavenly Father desires for us. My prayer on this Mothers' Day is that we may, as daughters of God, both receive and offer that perfect, perfecting mothers’ love.

Calm Breath

A happy boy with a full Easter basket!

One thing that I'm very aware of now as a mom are the ways the my professional life intersects with my parenting life. Working in schools as a psychologist definitely causes me to approach working with my own kids in a certain way - for good ... and for bad at times. I (very) frequently have to tell myself to stop over-analyzing each and every interaction I have as a mother, and just go with my gut. I have to reset my overly high expectations on occasion (i.e. all the time) - mostly my expectations of myself - and just allow myself to enjoy the ups and downs of the journey. On the good side, though, I think having the background I do does help me to approach parenting in a proactive, rather than entirely reactive, way, and I often appreciate  having access to a toolkit of ideas when I'm trying to figure out how to deal with a situation.

Recently, my "psychologist" side has come out as we've been trying to deal with James' increasing tendency to whine and get upset when he's not getting what he wants or when he's frustrated by something. It gets pretty annoying, pretty quickly, and my annoyance has led me to a number of not-so-effective interactions that usually only lead him to more and louder whining and crying in an effort to get my attention or give in. We've tried to consistently encourage him to "use your words" and to use "nice words" to some effect, but we've also recently hit on a new strategy that makes the psychologist in me burst with pride. :)

For a while, I've modeled using deep breaths to help calm down at the end of the day as we're getting ready for bed. He has sometimes joined in, but mostly I've figured that I'm just giving myself a moment to calm down and relax during that moment, rather than really teaching something that is useful to him at only two years old. But, I recently realized that he has been paying attention (a lesson I think I'll continue to learn!) when, in the midst of one whining cycle, I told James to tell me using "calm words" what he needed. Using the word "calm" seemed to hit a reminder in him, and I heard him stop and take a long, deep breath, then tell me a bit more effectively what he wanted. I was impressed with the effect his calm breath seemed to have, and so when the next whining moment came up, I prompted more explicitly this time to take a "calm breath" and then tell me what was wrong. Again, he stopped, took a slow breath, and then was able to tell me in a much more pleasant voice what the problem was. As we've continued to prompt (and praise) his calm breaths, we've noticed that he is able to consistently follow the prompt, that he's actually begun doing them on his own at times, and that sometimes when he takes the calm breath the problem either resolves itself or he's able to find his own solution without us actually intervening.

Although I'm sure this isn't something that will work for every two-year-old upset, I've been pleasantly surprised by how well James has taken to his "calm breaths" - and, I have to admit, just a little bit proud of how cute he is when he does them! :)

(I also can't help but laugh at myself a little each time I see it, because I can feel the stereotypes beginning to play out of my poor son with the psychologist as a mother!)

"Is this thing on?" (...or my failed announcement on facebook)

Facebook and I have had a recent run-in, and I'm nearly convinced that it was really a plot to subvert my social confidence and make me way more analytical than I already am. (Warning: this is a long, fairly boring post, but if you really like me I promise to make it worth it in the end!)

So, have you ever posted something on Facebook and then gotten zero response? You know, you put your interesting picture, cute video, or witty status update out there on the wall - for everyone to see - and then you wait...

... You are, of course, waiting for that acknowledgement from the world that whatever it is you posted has meaning. Or maybe it's that somebody cares what you have to say. Or maybe it's just that instinctual need for validation (it started in middle school, but it never really went away) that you actually are cool.

You tell yourself otherwise - that you don't really care what people think - but you know that's not really true. You wait, watching for the "like" or comment to appear below, hoping that you don't go unnoticed.

I know I'm not the only one here, but I'm okay if you're not ready to fess up to it. I'm not afraid to confess that I've been there, and that recently I had to own up to my true facebook insecurities. I'm not a big "facebooker" - I check it regularly to see what people are up to, but I don't regularly post anything. But, over the past several weeks I've put a few things up - a witty status update here, a funny video of my child there, a major life announcement - you know, the usual fare. When nobody said anything about my witty status update I didn't think much of it. Okay, not true, I did wonder a little bit if what I said wasn't as interesting as I thought ... but other than that I didn't think much of it. When nobody said anything about my child's cute video, I wondered (I mean, I think he's awfully cute, but maybe I'm fooling myself). But when I finally decide to make my big announcement to the "world" and nobody says anything, I have to admit I started to take it personally! That was the point that I started to wonder about whether my "facebook friends" were my "real friends," or if I'd been hoodwinked into becoming just another tally in someone's friend count.

So, I decided to test it out - my "tap tap, is this thing on?" into the microphone, if you will. It felt a little pathetic, putting a request out there for people to please respond to one of my posts - kind of like I was begging for the world to pay attention to me. But, it worked, and people took the bait. Now, I was left in a whole new dilemma: If they could see this and comment when I begged them to ... did that mean my more subtle pleadings for social validation really had gone ignored, and that people really didn't care that much about my real life? Or, had they just gotten lost in the abyss of some corporate server, and no one could actually see them? If I reposted my cute video and big announcement, would I look like a loser begging for even more attention, or would people be happy to now have the chance to appreciate what I had thought they would all along?

Ah, the dilemmas... this is what you have led me to, facebook. I thought I was done with high school, but apparently it only continues in a new venue. I'm sure I'll get over it, but for a while I'm going to have to approach my facebook podium a little more cautiously - still overcoming the trauma and social angst I have felt.

Maybe I need therapy... In the meantime, I'll save my announcements for the not-all-that-different venue of blogging. But, I guess if you've survived my strange rantings so far, I can be assured that you are my "real friend," and that you really do care to know that we're excited to be looking forward to baby #2 in 6 short months! :)

More Crafties (...or... discovering the joys of chalkboard paint)

In an effort to liven up our dining room wall, I came up with this project that consists of four 14-in square canvases and some chalkboard paint. All in all the project totaled about $45, and we now have endless possibilities for dining room art (and interesting conversation starters for dinner time).

(One note: I'd recommend the canned chalkboard paint - I found it at the hardware store, rather than the craft store - you get a LOT more bang for your buck, and I felt a lot more comfortable using it over spray paint.)