Behind it all

I was talking with a beloved friend yesterday who's going through some pretty difficult struggles in her life. When the subject turned to blogging she said: "I would blog, but they're always happy, and I don't have anything happy to say right now." That comment floated into my mind when I sat down tonight to write yet another "I'm so happy" post. I hate the idea of facades, and yet I, like most people I know, don't feel completely comfortable living without them. I clean up my house before a friend, even a really good friend, drops by. I attempt to look somewhat put together when I go out (though it probably doesn't look that way to most people!). When asked how I'm doing, I generally I say I'm fine even when I'm not- something that Eric has tried to beat out of me this week as I've dealt with insurance agents calling about our car accident. So I spent some time really thinking today: is my life truly as happy as it looks on my blog? Or is it just another facade?

I rarely blog about how disgusting my kitchen is at the moment, or the unkind thing I said to Eric, or how I smacked the dog on the nose for eating my flip-flop. But those things are not what make up me. The moments when I am my best self, when I take a moment to look at the lego ship Brigham has built, or help little Eric write a secret note, when I apologize to my husband without expecting anything in return, when I look at my thighs in the mirror and smile- that's me. Or the me I want to be all (or at least most) of the time. The me I am working toward. I just think it makes more sense to memorialize and share those good moments, because then maybe I'll have more of them. I'm pretty sure it works.

The boys and I opted to stay home from church today due to a VERY nasty strain of stomach flu circulating our ward. I forbade Eric from touching children and hard surfaces, and made him wash his hands twice when he got home. We have invested WAY to much time, energy and money into a positive birthing experience for either of us to be puking in the delivery room. Can you imagine? Anyway, when he got home and we had a quiet moment together, I said, thinking of the hours that the boys had spent drawing, playing in a puddle, building forts and being read to, "our kids have a good life". He answered, "WE have a good life". And we do. And what I want my friend, and all my friends and especially my family to know, is where that good life comes from:

It comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe that God knows each of us and cares about us and what we do in this life. We believe that we're here to give and learn and grow and become, to the best of our ability, like our Savior, and that after all that we can do, he will make up the difference. We believe that after we leave this life, we'll be together as a family in heaven- that our family will go on into eternity, and that the smiles and hugs and laughter we've shared on this earth are only a shadow of the happiness and closeness we'll feel together in the life to come.

The night after our car accident the boys fell asleep in our bed. I looked at them and saw, for the millionth time, how heartbreakingly fragile they are- from their little noses and eyelashes, to their sensitive spirits. I thought about how I would ever make it through life with such fragile little beings carrying my heart around inside their bodies, how I would ever find the strength to let them make the mistakes they will surely make, and feel the heartache they'll surely feel. But then I remembered that although our lives here on earth are fragile, the sealing ties that bind us together as family are not. And I have the power to make them stronger by striving every day to be as much like my Savior as I possibly can. I can't think of any greater motivation to keep trying, no matter how terrible I feel, or how many mistakes I make. That's what I hope comes across in my blog- that we're nowhere near a perfect family with perfect lives, but that we try very, very hard. And in that trying there is growth and in that growth there is joy.

If you would like to know more about our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, you can follow the link on the right. We're excited to hear our prophet speak to us this weekend. It will be broadcast over the church website, and my prayer for my dear friend is that she'll be watching, and that she'll open her heart and hear something that will help her start to heal.

Alrighty....anytime....seriously, go right ahead....anytime at all....

...or not. Nature is playing a cruel trick on me. I had Eric at 38 weeks. Brigham at 36. I had braced myself for bed rest and all manner of measures to keep this baby in past 34 weeks. And here I am, at almost 39 weeks, no sign of labor. Perhaps I should have listened to Eric, who warned me: "Katie, two data points do not constitute a trend." I swing wildly from gratitude for these extra weeks with the boys, which have truly been special, to eyeing the castor oil at the supermarket. I'm not quite that far gone yet.

Two days ago the boys and I were on our way home from my prenatal appointment and we were rear-ended by a very nice man in a giant pickup truck. I thought he was going to have a heart attack when he saw me get out of the car, pregnant as can be. Our car is a goner, which is kind of a bummer. Nothing like car-shopping with a newborn.

In the meantime, Eric is spoiling us all with his latest hobby: making chocolate from scratch. I've noticed something about him...he absolutely LOVES to breaks things down to their pure, essential form. Running barefoot, swimming without goggles, commuting to school on a fixed gear bike, grinding wheat, making chocolate. His hot chocolate, which is made of milk, honey and ground cacao nibs (or cow nibs, as Brigham calls them), is amazing. Maybe if I drink enough of it I'll go into labor?

Why am I so happy today?

It's raining, and that reminds me of Seattle (plus Eric fertilized the lawn on Saturday and he says the rain will help it grow). Then he told me that he "can't" mow it for three weeks, and we both laughed because that's about how often he mows it anyway. Good thing we're such nice people or the neighbors would be getting sick of us.

My boys are on the second day of a three week vacation from school. I am so much happier with them home. I need someone to periodically come up to me and burp, or show me how he can jump off the kitchen counter, or bring me a feather. Right now they're playing in the driveway in their winter coats in 70 degree weather because I have yet to buy them new raincoats.

My baby is healthy and happy inside me. I'm trying SO hard to be patient while I wait for her to be born! Yesterday Eric walked into the bedroom and woke me up with nice loud burp aimed at my belly. She gave me a whopper of a kick in the ribs. That was kind of a nice start to my day:).

On my schedule today: 1. Clean bathrooms while blasting Micheal Jackson songs. 2. Go to Whole Foods to buy snacks for during/after the birth. 3. Pack my bag for the birth center.

My toenails are painted. I asked Eric to do it- it was so cute to see how hard he was concentrating on not getting nail polish all over my toes. He did a better job than I would have- he's got good fine motor skills. Girls like guys with good fine motor skills:).

My second best birthday ever

Friday was my 28th birthday, and, I have to say, next to my 19th, which I doubt anything could ever top, it was the best ever. It started out kind of lonely with the kids and Eric at school all day, but in the evening we went out to dinner at the Cheesecake factory, ate ourselves sick, got free t-shirts from our brand new triathlon store, stopped by my old friend Liz's and talked on the front porch while the boys slept in the car, and then came home to the second best chocolate cake I've ever tasted made by my wonderful visiting teacher, Nancy, and left on our front porch. The best one, if you're wondering, was the one that my friend Tamra brought me while I was in the hospital after I had Brigham. It may have been the drugs, but there was voodoo magic in that cake. Anyway, here's the photographic record:

Waiting in the car for the sudden downpour to cease so that we can go inside the restaraunt...



Trying on Halloween costumes at the store next door while waiting for a table...

Well behaved children...seriously, they were pretty great...

Birthday kiss...

Happy family of four....but not for long.....

Installment 4: You are getting Sleeeeeeeepy.....

As of three weeks ago, Eric and I are official graduates of the Hypnobabies childbirth course. The idea is that I will give birth to our baby in complete comfort (or close to it) with no drugs or interventions of any kind. My friend Kate had her two kids using Hypnobirthing, a similar method, and she swears by it. The basic idea is that fear and tension cause pain during childbirth. And when you think about it, there is a HUGE culture of fear surrounding birthing- how many horror stories have you heard/told about birth in every setting from dinner parties to book club meetings? So Hypnobabies teaches you how to get into a state of very deep relaxation, and then, while you're in that state, gives messages to your subconscious that replace the notion of inevitable pain during birthing with feelings of confidence, peace and excitement. And you know what? I AM excited! To find out more, check out www.hypnobabies.com. And for local readers: www.tranquilbirthing.com, which is the website for our amazing instructor, Susan, who came to our house each week for six weeks to teach us the method. There are also a lot of clips on youtube showing women using hypnobabies while in labor- it's pretty amazing.

Susan and me after our last class...

Installment 3: You should know this about me...

You know how there are things about you that you want people to know, but you don't want to sound show-off-ish, so you have to wait for them to find out randomly? Like that your second cousin won a bronze medal in fencing in the 1988 Olympics- something like that. That's how it is with my Grandmother. She never won any medals (that I know of), but she's just that cool. When I introduce her to someone I just sit back with a self-satisfied smile and think, "Isn't she the most quirky, fun, awesome grandmother you've ever met? And she's mine!" I love these pictures from when she came to visit last month because they capture in visual form one of the things I love most about her- her reading voice. I can't describe it, other than to say that listening to her read Winnie the Pooh (as she's doing here) is pure heaven. I laid awake that night wondering whether I would be able to remember the sound of it twenty years from now. And whether the boys would. Good thing I caught it on video. Anyway, I wish you could all meet my Grandmom- she's the best.

Why I love Katie

I wish I could write something that would equal the post that Katie wrote for my birthday - unfortunately, it was so kind and thoughtful (it brought tears to my eyes to see that she remembers more about my life than I do!) that what I write below won't even compare.

Several years ago, while flying on a plane, I saw the movie "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton", and, as silly as it may seem, you would be surprised to discover that it made me think seriously about love. What is love? How do you know that you love someone? I remember thinking about those questions very seriously and feeling dissatisfied with my own thoughts on why I love my wife. They seemed to center more on things that she does than characteristics of who she is. Do I merely love what my wife does for me, or do I love my wife?

Yesterday, I put my finger on it better than ever before: I love Katie because she wants to live in a small home. Katie sends interesting news articles to me from time to time (one of the things that she does that I love), and yesterday she sent this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/garden/11tiny.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=small%20homes&st=cse&oref=slogin

While reading, fascinated as I considered the many benefits that would follow from reducing the size of one's home, I was shocked that Katie had sent the article to me and that she was (seemingly) a proponent. It occurred to me that she is frequently the wife of the guy in that article - her husband is always coming up with nutty ideas that he must see to completion. And she does it with such grace.

So why does desiring to live in a small home make me love Katie? It symbolizes several very important things about her:

1. She's a progressive thinker. She doesn't shy away from new ideas that break convention, especially if they seem to have merit.

2. She would rather focus her energy on more important elements of life. One of the arguments in favor of living in a small home is that it requires far less energy to maintain (measured in a variety of ways: time, cost, environmental resources, worry, etc.) - energy that would be better spent on other things. Katie has a knack and a vision for prioritizing those 'other things' and cutting out the fluff.

3. If I told her that I wanted to build a small home with my own hands, she would be supportive. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be difficult times along the way, but what kind of wife would let her husband run off and do that when his portfolio of home building experience consists of nothing more than working as a grunt on a home construction site for a month one summer? Sometimes, she's probably not dissimilar to Noah's wife.

Katie will testify that she and I are very different people. Yet, more and more I realize that we are actually quite alike - we share a similar vision of life and family. And by 'share a similar vision', I don't mean that we have a common notion of how we're going to live out the rest of our days...I mean we have a common underlying philosophy of how to approach life naturally, cutting away the excess and living in a way that brings us deep satisfaction and excitement. Our differences are really caught up in the fluff.

What I most love about Katie is how she validates my life and who I am. Somehow, she has wrapped herself into the webbing of my character and has figured me out on a fundamental level. Just read her blog post on April 8, 2008. Most importantly, understanding who I am, she promotes my strengths, rejoices in my good news, comforts me in hard times and encourages me to fulfill my dreams. But just to be clear: I don't love her BECAUSE she does those things...I love her because she IS the person who does those things. That is a defining characteristic of who she is and it's attribute to which I aspire.

So, happy birthday, Katie! Thank you for sharing life with me, growing up with me and bringing great happiness to our family.

Installment 2: Our trip to Boston

In August, Eric took the boys up to Boston for a week to visit his family. I joined them for three of the days they were there. What can I say about the trip? It was amazing, I'm so glad I went, I hope it's the beginning of new things for our family. How strange and wonderful to see all the ways in which we are who we are, independent of our environment or how we were raised. It makes me excited beyond words to meet the little person hanging out inside me right now. The pictures tell the story better than words....

Little E playing croquet....


Brigham with cousin Ambria....


Amazing vegetarian dinner with the whole family (those are root/ginger beers!)...


Eric and Rick...


Eric looking heartbreakingly handsome....


Me talking to Eric's Uncle Sandy...


Sleepy heads...


Eric and the boys on the steps of the barn behind the house in which his Mom grew up....


Newly minted Red Sox fans in front of the Mayflower...


Eric has a slideshow on his website with more pics (follow the link on the right). A trip to remember.

And before I sign off, I have to brag about how much my husband loves me. Usually I'm the one complaining that the house is too cold and arguing for open windows instead of A/C in the summer. When I'm pregnant, however, I morph into a polar bear. Truly. My very heat-tolerant grandmother came to visit last month and she sat on the front porch almost the entire time she was here because she said the house was too cold. And this:



is how I found Eric dressed for bed one night recently. Not staged, I promise! Anyway, I suspect that if the situation were reversed I would have complained my head off until he turned the A/C down simply to shut me up. Good thing I'm not married to me:).

Catching up...Installment 1: Katie's Kakes

You know how, when you stop doing something you know you should be doing, first you feel kind of bad, then you feel really bad, and then you just get defiant? That's how I've been with regard to so many things this past month- one of which is blogging. The problem is that I've got a huge backlog now of things I've been meaning to write about so I feel like I have to write a HUGE post, which, of course, only makes me procrastinate even more. So I've decided to catch up in installments (and they're in no particular order). Here's #1...

I am now officially a Kitchenaid devotee. My stand mixer ran for two days straight last week while make a wedding cake for my friend Cindy Lynn's reception. If you've ever made 6 batches of Italian meringue buttercream frosting in one day, you know what I mean. I was holding my own until it came to the assembling and decorating part- that's where things took a decidedly Dr. Suess-ish turn (picture a lopsided, asymmetrical, Cat-in-the-hat-style job). Luckily my friend Lindsay, who is much more aesthetically attuned than I am worked some magic with a bunch of fresh flowers and saved the day, as you can see, below.

Linds and me with the finished product...



As soon as I get them, I'll post the pictures of Cindy Lynn looking STUNNING in my wedding dress, which, I must say, is one of the few very, very, very nice things I own, right up there with my engagement ring and my drop-dead gorgeous dog. More on that in a minute...

An hour before the reception started, the clubhouse was filled with bustling, capable women on a mission: to make it a night that Cindy Lynn and Mahon would always remember as the perfect start to their lives together. For me, it was the partial fulfillment of a promise I made to myself a little over eight years ago. I can picture a similar scene in the hours leading up to my own wedding reception, the wonderful sisters in our ward working their fingers to the bone so that I could feel some of the happiness and significance of that day, even as my mortified family and friends looked on, baffled as to how exactly it had come to pass that the feminist/ROTC cadet/sorority girl they knew and loved was getting married at the tender age of nineteen. And I do admit, after all this time, that at nineteen, I was a little on the young side to be getting married. But I also still believe with all my heart what I did on that day: I had found the person I wanted to spend the rest of eternity with- there was no doubt in my mind, and there still isn't. What would have been the point of dragging our courtship on? We'd found each other and there was nothing left to do but get married and grow up together. Anyway, I promised myself that someday I'd pay forward at least a small part of the kindness that was shown to me. There aren't too many things I can do that would be useful in that sense, but I can bake a cake and I can certainly lend out my wedding dress and it felt so, so good to do both of those things for Cindy Lynn, who is truly one of the most amazing people I know. Check out her blog (follow the link to the right) and you'll see what I mean.

At the end of the night I gave the boys a five-minute warning and collapsed into a chair in front of the continuously playing slideshow of pictures of the bride and groom. The emotion of the night hit me all at once and I started crying at the picture of Mahon (a boy I had know all of two hours!) and his brothers digging up potatoes. Apparently they actually do that in Idaho- kind of cool. Anyway, at that point, I knew it was time to go home and go to bed. But the hope and happiness of the evening has stuck with me, and I can't stop thinking of how almost everything that's precious to me began on my wedding day, and how I never could have imagined back then the incredible, loving, weird, hilarious, imperfectly perfect family that is my life today.