Odds and Ends

I admit that my attitude this year has left something to be desired. At times, this school year has felt like a series of unfortunate events. Between hurricane power outages, computer failure, job rejections, sicknesses, limited car access, and the more frequent immediate demands of business school, I have felt a little worn out and irritable, and the semester has just begun.

However, when I step back and get things in perspective, I can see all the good that has come of these little irritations. The hurricane gave us more time together as a family and with some of our favorite people, the Wilkersons; not having the Internet or my computer gave me more time with my kids; not having the car and being sick has made me more creative about family activities; and Patrick being busy has given me time to write more and it's also made me enjoy the good time we do have together. And beyond these little challenges, our lives are very blessed.

Most Especially, I Have Very Funny Kids

Eli is incredibly verbal for an eleven-month-old. His words include "wa-wa" (water), "kaka" (cracker or anything edible), "da-da" (Daddy, said with so much excited delighted; also means people he likes in general, I think), and "ahhh-da" (all done). This last is the funniest. I've tried to use it consistently to mean the end of a certain activity-- high chair time, playing with a certain toy, being held when he's wriggling away to play. And he, brilliant little munchkin, has applied it to nap time. After I put him down in his crib, he'll call out, "Ahhhh-da! Ahhhh-da!" I don't think so, little boy!

Caleb's vocabulary is increasing faster than his pronunciation, which I didn't realize until I noticed friends of mine couldn't understand him when I've always thought he was so good at expressing himself. Ah well. Mothers are blind to these things. I'm not that bothered by it. Someday his pronunciation will catch up. As it is, I love his language skills. Two recent additions are the word "sure" (which he says properly, and uses it to mean yes, and says it either with enormous excitement or a calm shrug of assent, but it's very grown-up yet cute sounding), and the phrase "just a second" is also new, but it's pronounced "just a sen-ic." Patrick corrected him the other day, and I told him not to. It's too dang cute.

Caleb is also hilarious, though not always intentionally. As part of our bedtime routine, we do a scripture story before reading out of the actual scriptures. For scripture story one night, I was telling him The Good Samaritan (a favorite).

I'd just begun: "Jesus told a story of a man who was traveling to the city of Jericho when some robbers attacked him. They beat him up and hurt him . . . "

"And they took his money," Caleb added.

"Yeah, and they took his money," I agreed.

"I would do that," Caleb said thoughtfully.

"Do what?" I asked, taken aback. "You mean, you would beat somebody up and take their money?"

"Yeah," Caleb agreed.

Holy Cow! Well, a mother's dream come true: my son aspires to be a thief. Great!

(As a disclaimer: 1. This is only funny because Caleb is not an excessively violent child. He's very mild and calm, so that's why it took me by surprise. 2. I did have a discussion with him about what this actually meant and hopefully I destroyed all of these violent aspirations permanently.)

Relief Sa-What?

It's "Relief Society." Come on, now. Haven't heard of it? How can that be? It has over 6 million members in over 170 countries and territories. (Thank you, Wikipedia, for those statistics.) It is the largest and oldest organization for women in the world. It includes all women of the church eighteen-years-old and older. It's motto is "Charity never faileth."

Now the fact of the matter is, I wasn't all that impressed with Relief Society when I was younger. I mean, Primary (for the children) is full of fun music and active lessons, and Young Women's (for teenage girls) was full of awesome activities and girl bonding. Relief Society was old woman stuff. I've had my moments when I've stood up in defense of Relief Society, as when a boy I had a crush on stated (jokingly), "Well, it keeps the women busy." The condescension and disrespect just about ended all pining from then on . . . but in the end teenage infatuation prevailed over gender pride for a few more years. And perhaps the reason it didn't bother me more was that, secretly, in my heart I thought perhaps he was right. Keeping the women busy while the men did the important stuff.

I am pleased to say that over the years, I have gotten a greater vision of Relief Society, and last night completely shattered any lasting illusions about the inconsequential nature of Relief Society. Relief Society is a worldwide organization with the purpose of strengthening and uplifting individuals in all areas of their lives, strengthening families, and helping those in need. And Relief Society ain't for sissies (well, actually, it's for everyone, so if you're a sissy, you're not excluded, but you don't have to be a sissy to participate). When I reflect on the women I know who have been Relief Society incarnate to me, they are powerful women: Sister Baird (my friend's mom), Sister Allred (even though she serves in Primary), Sister Harmon (gentle, but inwardly powerful). There are many more, of course, but these are examples. And I have friends who are active members of Relief Society who are in many different places in their lives, some single, some married but childless, some in school, some working, some parenting full-time.

And the society itself? What do we do exactly? Well, Relief Society sisters organize things like book clubs or mothers' groups. But they are also there when babies are born. They are there for moves. They are there for operations and even death. They are there for hurricanes and tornadoes. They are there to educate and teach both secular and spiritual concepts. And I'll be blunt enough and "religious" enough to say, a Sunday with Relief Society women is an immersion into the Holy Ghost even with a room full of imperfect, very different women.

In short, this is actually, despite all my quiet childhood disdain, one of the coolest organizations in the world.

Get Your Creative On

This morning I was feeling sorry for myself. After two weeks without a car, almost one week of somebody being sick, (which led to) one week of nose wiping two little boys and myself constantly, two weeks of being almost anti-social (except for my visiting teacher who stopped by last night and Stacy who has popped in occasionally during our two weeks of confinement and a number of friends who have contacted me to chat or by text), I felt entitled to . . . something. And I felt sorry for myself, especially when it started raining. I felt claustrophobic and cooped up, and I felt like whining to somebody and I wanted somebody to do something about it.

And then I had an inspiration, which went something like this, "Girl, get your creative on." Now that might sound a little ridiculous, and it may seem a little outrageous to believe God would speak to me that way, but it had the very useful effect of shaking me out of myself. And when me and myself were separated, I grabbed myself by my shirt front and shook myself a little and said, "Hey, you! You lucky woman! You get to stay home and get to know your two incredibly cute and wonderful little boys. You are blessed because you generally have excellent health and so does everybody else in your family. You are blessed that you ever have a car to use. You are blessed because you had an awesome date weekend with your husband [tennis on Friday night while some friends babysat and a movie at home on Saturday night]. You are blessed because you have friends to miss. You are blessed to live in such a beautiful place and because fall peeked out at you last week and made you happy. So, woman, get off your duff and decide to be happy."

So I turned to Caleb and said, "This is lame, huh? We are sick, so we can't go out. We don't have a car, so we can't go out. And it's raining so we can't go out. What should we do? I think we should use our imaginations."

And bless that little boy's heart. With glee and excitement equivalent to any person who ever won the lottery, he said, "Our i-mag-in-ations! Yay!"

So after this inner battle, I popped open our pop-up tent and made a "table fort" (where we cover the table with a blanket and throw pillows on the ground). Then we called these our houses and we loaded them up with toy phones and stuffed animals and other toy paraphernalia. Then we used our toy phones to "call" each other and meet up at the "library" (Caleb's bedroom bookshelf) and the "movies" (the couch with popcorn to watch songs from The King and I). And then Caleb called me and asked if he could come over, and we read together awhile. After this, we had lunch at a "restaurant" (a small black table with benches as the chairs, set up in the boys' bedroom). And this was followed by a "pretend adventure" (inspired by my dad) to "hike the Grand Canyon."

And the morning went beautifully with two mostly very happy boys enjoying the originality of chaos in our living room and cushions and books spread everywhere and Mom paying attention to them while promoting creative play, and I felt better about myself as a human being and as a mom. So, we will call Operation: Look on the Bright Side a complete success.

Back in Action (Temporarily)

I have a moment, this Sunday afternoon, after stake conference to come back to the wonderful world of blogging. It's been almost impossible to maintain without Internet in our home. Unfortunately, while so many things looked possible when we linked ourselves up with Cox, the Internet still feels just out of reach most of the time. No, no, it's not actually Cox. (Unlike Verizon, who could neither give us service when we signed up with them and would also not end our contract or discuss our contract or take any responsibility for the fact that a strike is actually their problem and not their customers' problem.)

Instead, it's Dell. (Poor companies getting bashed today.) Patrick's computer has been on the fritz for months and suddenly spiraled into eternal computer insanity right as business school started. You can imagine the bliss that this has brought to our MBA experience so far. Don't worry, though. He has a warranty until 2013. Phew. ... Except he called them the week before Labor Day, worked things out with them for an hour or more and then was told a tech guy would come the next week. The next week, finally, the guy came and installed a new hard drive. Meanwhile, I will remind you that William & Mary does not so much as slow down during Labor Day-- so he is continuing with his studies full speed ahead and all that jazz limping along to keep up, using my cute little Notebook computer while I'm wishing fie upon Dell because he's stressed and I'm computer-less and essentially Internet-less, even though we finally gave in and paid for it. Well, you would think all our problems would be solved. But they're not. The computer continues to suffer from some sort of unknown disease in which it starts to turn on when you push the power button and then half-way through, it shuts down. So, in fact, it can take multiple tries to get it to turn on, and there's no guaranty it will stay on. Therefore, another conversation with a friendly and defensive (in a very subservient way) and concerned customer support worker is in the making for me or Patrick in order to get him a high-speed, high-memory working computer and me a ... well, my computer.

All in all, I hate to begin up again with such a negative post. Because, really, besides these computer complications, life is quite good. But I did think I would explain since somebody, no names here, accused me of being lazy and told me on Facebook to post on my own blog instead of riding piggyback off of a friend's blog. So, now, if you continue not to hear from me, you will know that my computer has been taken possession of by a poor, needy, handsome graduate student who can't give it up. But someday (no promises when) I may try to be more devoted to publicizing all the grand and glorious events of our adorable little household.

And now follows the obligatory pictures that make up for any boredom I may have caused while you forced your way through my rant. And, yes, these are the two most adorable little boys in the world.