An ode to motherhood

12 years of education Will end in graduation All the parents and the teachers think you're swell If you're feeling like you're still a fool Off to college, then to graduate school. In 6 years you'll be free of those as well. But if you choose to be a mother A profession like no other You're stuck forever, as far as I can tell. You thought it'd be a pleasant life. That of mother and of wife But now your life is crazy, all pell-mell. The laundry's oveflowing Your grocery list keeps growing Your toddler's crying, pointing where he fell. DH is always working His duty he's not shirking But you wonder if you've maybe gone to hell. Dinner's burning in the oven Would it hurt to join a coven? How nice to clean the kitchen with a spell! The child's nose is snotty, Your leftovers are rotty, Well, just tell DH to swing by Taco Bell. Rewind the movie yet again Teach your kid to count to ten And sing, 12 times, "The Farmer in the Dell". "I love you child, dearly," You need to say, sincerely. Otherwise, you'll need a padded cell.
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A Day of Rest?

Do any of you find Sundays restful? Ive decided they're my most exhausting days. I need the other six days to recuperate from Sunday.

By the time Ive had meetings, figured out and found what everyone's wearing, fixed hair, fed everyone, prepared and timed dinner so it can be ready when we get home at 5:15, wrestled three kids during Sacrament meeting, contained 130 kids in primary, throw dinner on the table and eat -- I am beyond tired. My kids are ready for some action at that point and I am counting the minutes to bedtime.

I often go to bed and realize that other than attending Church (and lets face it, how much can you get out of it when youre glaring at, shushing* and removing kids), I havent done one thing that resembles personal or family worship or study.

*(My 2 yr. old has picked up on the game my girls play in the car that whenever they see a VW bug, they yell "Slugbug!" Well, he has no idea there is any sort of context or reason for yelling so at random moments hell just start yelling "Fwug-bug!!!!!" and one lucky week that moment happened to be in the middle of Sacrament meeting.)

My husband is very helpful, but I know I don't utilize him like I should because I care what my kids' hair looks and like their clothes to match. :)

Bottom line -- I'm desperate for any suggestions on how you've made Sundays meaningful restful days in your home.

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Bishops and life decisions

(Warning: This is a long, venting post. You'll need a minute to get through it. Sorry.) So, I got a job yesterday. Yes, a job outside the home that will actually reward me with monetary benefits. It's a job working as a per diem Speech Pathologist when Jacob is in preschool. With him in school 2 days a week, I have a little more time and a little less money, so I thought I'd give working a shot. And, it was easy to get this job. Really easy. I got on the internet, googled job openings for speech language pathologist in Virginia, and bam, up came a long list of opportunities. I applied online, sent my resume in, and a week later, I'm employed. Wa-hoo! The other thing is, I know I'm qualified for this job. Not only does my resume make me look qualified, I actually can do this job. I've done it before, and know I can do it again. In a word, I am marketable. Good thing I didn't listen to Bishop Bubblehead. Names have been changed, for obvious reasons. Bishop Bubblehead was my bishop when DH and I got engaged. At that time, DH and I were both far from being done with our education. I was just starting graduate school, and DH had about 2 more semesters in his undergraduate at BYU. We decided to wait until he had graduated to get married. We looked at our future goals, worked out the details, and felt we had a good plan. We booked the Salt Lake Temple for a date 7 and a half months into the future, and settled into the craziness of trying to go to school and plan a wedding at the same time. Bishop Bubblehead told us we were making a mistake. He called me into his office, and told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to quit graduate school and follow DH back to BYU, to be with him while he finished. I could always continue my education later. "But my graduate program doesn't allow you to just stop and then start up again. It's a pretty regimented program, with clinical hours and things that need to be completed by a certain date," I explained. "You haven't even looked into it,though, have you," he said, accusingly. "You haven't explored any alternative educational options at all." I admitted, guiltily, that I hadn't. I didn't want to. I wanted to finish as soon as I possibly could. He then said, "And I'll bet you are planning to put off having children until after he finishes law school, too. I'm telling you right now, putting off marriage and family for education is a mistake. You need to really pray about this, and see if you can't get married in December. Otherwise, really, you might not make it to the temple." (DH and I had gotten engaged at the end of October.) I called DH in tears after this, and told him about the conversation. Luckily, DH said he would have told the bishop to stick it, and that we were honestly doing the best thing for both of us, and for our future family. The bishop continued to bug us, (well, me, mainly. DH was in Utah most of the time) but we held firm and got married in May, 7 months after our engagement. DH had graduated and deferred law school for a year so I could finish at GW, and I was in the home stretch of my program. Things looked good. I did what I needed to do to get licensed, and Jacob was born 2 months before our 3rd wedding anniversary. So now, 6 years later, I can get a job almost at the drop of a hat that is flexible and fits into my schedule as a Mommy. That would have never happened if I hadn't finished my degree and gotten my license. And it makes me a little bit mad that Bishop Bubblehead was not concerned with this particular aspect of my life, that he was not considering the long term consequences of me giving up a graduate program, just because it separated me and my intended for a few months. I understand that his main concern was getting us to the temple, and that 7 months is a long time for unmarried people to stay chaste, but I wish that he would have had enough faith in us to realize that getting to the temple was just as important, if not more so, to us (which it was), and therefore, we would somehow manage it (which we did). I wish his counsel could have included ideas about DH juggling HIS education, (which actually ended up being the case), instead of accusingly putting the burden of giving things up squarely on my shoulders. And what is even more disturbing to me is that I was ready to listen to his counsel. I was, really. It was DH who scoffed at it, who didn't give it a second thought because he knew that we had prayfully and faithfully set up a plan that was best for us, and that this bishop had no business telling us what to do. I'm glad that I have a husband who knows who is responsible for receiving the revelations for his life, and when counsel from a bishop is counsel from God, and when it is counsel from a guy who has had to deal with too many hormonal driven singles. I'll keep you posted on the job. Who knows? Maybe I'll hate it, and want to quit. But at least I have that option.
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Taking risks

We had a little swap table at Enrichment the other day, you know, the kind of thing where you clean out your house and get rid of the crap that has been cluttering your own life, just so you can pick up somebody else's crap and bring it home and fill the space you just cleaned out. (Sadly, this time I didn't even clean out my own crap, I just gleefully brought home somebody else's crap without pausing long enough to consider that if somebody else is throwing it away, I probably don't need it either. Oh well.) Anyway.... One woman brought mounds and mounds of baby clothes of every size you can imagine. She's just had her 6th child, and she is done, so out with the baby crap for good! Another woman remarked, as this liberated mother deposited literally 5 loads from her car of undifferentiated baby paraphanalia onto the tables, "My, it must feel good to know you are done." The mother looked at her and said, "Oh yeah. I'm done." The first woman (who is 40 and has 4 kids, by the way), said, wistfully, "Oh, it's just still such a debate between me and my husband about whether or not we'll have another one, and I feel like the Lord is just saying, 'Hey, make up your mind!' You know what I mean, Heather?" Well, actually, no, I don't, but this is Relief Society, after all, charity never faileth and all that, and since she was clearly in a mood to wax lyrical about motherhood rather than actually seeking my opinion about such things, which she certainly really, REALLY would not appreciate anyway, I just smiled and shrugged. She continued, "Oh, and you know, I'm almost 41, and my doctor tells me there are such risks involved with having a baby over the age of 40. But, you and I both know that when we know the Plan of Salvation, it makes it so there are no risks, not really." I stared at her. What? "What will come, will come, whatever is meant to be. And actually, statistically, it's the women who are having babies at 23 that are having the problems." I actually have little idea what statistics are involved with problematic pregnancies at age 41, or how in any way they relate to women at age 23, but it was really the previous statement that blew my mind. Knowing the Plan of Salvation eliminates risk? Is that true? Or did she mean that being able to put figures on a flannel board about where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going makes it so we don't have to be scared of what might be coming? Don't get me wrong. I love knowing the Plan of Salvation, and I'll admit that it probably adds a persective to a difficult life that others may not have, and having the gift of the Comforter certainly is a part of that, too. But deliberately taking a risk, just because you know about the plan seems foolish to me, if not in direct contradiction of God's commandments about being good stewards to our bodies and our families. If this woman had said, "I feel like there is another spirit that belongs in our family, even though I'm forty", or even, "I know I'm getting older, but I still really want another child," I would be fine with it. But ignoring risks just because, "what will come will come", well, I'm not so okay with that. We didn't continue our conversation, because the Relief Society president announced that it was time for refreshments, so we broke off rifling through the stuff and headed for the kitchen. If there's anything we Mormons like better than other people's crap, it's fattening food somebody else has had to prepare. (Enter Homer Simpsonesque voice here:)Mmmmm...doouuughnuts....arrrgglrrg...{tongue lolling out, drool, drool, drool...}
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Big ears

(Warning: This post is a shameless self-congratulatory one about how cute and smart my kid is. Just so you know.) I was talking to my sister the other day, complaining about what an early bird my small child is. (Have you picked up on the fact that I'm not exactly a morning person?) I told my sister (who also likes to sleep-- the excessive need for sleep is rampant among my side of the family), "Jacob got the Oman genes when it comes to sleep, that's for sure. He doesn't sleep late, he doesn't sleep long, and he's is always cheerful in the mornings." I said this while Jacob played at my feet. Two hours later, Jacob walked into my room, holding a pair of jeans. "Mom," he said, "Are these my Oman jeans?" I was folding laundry, and didn't answer him immediately, so he started waving them around and shouting, "Hey, MOMM! Are THESE my OMAN JEEAANS?" I stopped what I was doing, and looked at him, trying to figure out what on earth he was saying. Then I remembered the conversation with my sister. So I smiled and said, "Yes, Jacob, those are your Oman jeans." He looked at them for a minute and said, "Do I have to put them on?" He was already dressed, so I told him he didn't have to put them on right now. "Good," he said, "because I don't like my Oman jeans." Little children have big ears.
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Talent, or lack thereof

I don't know why we Mormons do it. Why are we so compelled to embarrass ourselves in front of other people in the name of "talent"? Yes, it was our ward talent night tonight. And it was a hoot. You had the usual suspects: little kids telling not-so funny jokes ("what kind of key never opens any locks? A Donkey! WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!),the little kids playing instruments badly, like the two brothers who played a duet with one brother a measure behind the entire song (Yes, the whole song. They didn't even end together), and the primary girls singing off key, blushing and giggling when they forgot the words, and saying stuff like "Um, hi (giggle), hi, we're up here, hi", until some merciful parent gave them the words to the primary song they are singing. But I feel like our ward went above and beyond the usual spectrum of bad tonight. First, there was our MC. He was dressed (I'm not making this up) in camoflauge fatigue pants and a pink and blue tie-dyed shirt. It hurt to look at him. And then two adults, yes TWO adults read their original poetry. People, if you are over the age of 10, nobody wants to hear an original poem recited at a talent night. And we sure as hell don't want to hear 4 of them. And I don't care how lovely you sing, if you didn't practice with your duet partner, you will invariably mess up and look silly. There were some highlights, of course. The missionaries would periodically run across the stage, interupting the psychedelic MC with their juggling antics, which sometimes invovled their own shoes. Some 12 year olds sang "Book of Mormon stories" ala early 90's grunge band, complete with drums and keyboards. And one kid who looked to be about 8 told us everything he knew about spiders. Did you know that black widows only attack you if you pull on their webs and act like you are going to squish them? Because if you don't do that, they don't bite you. But tarantulas can bite, and even though they're not poisonous to people, a bite on the leg can still cause you a lot of pain. Tarantulas are strong. Jacob slept through most of this, leaving me with a huge drool mark across my breast on my white shirt, which looked lovely from the stage, I'm sure. Yes, I participated in this talent debacle tonight, although I'd like to think our number (I shoowapped with some other ladies) was the hit of the night. If nothing else, we knocked 'em dead with our encore, which was our 30 second tribute to RiverDance. Yes, we had a young mother flying through the stage like a gazelle, doing her best imitation of Lord of the Dance. I'm telling you, it doesn't get any better than that.
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Freakonomics and the uselessness of parenting

I just finished the book "Freakonomics", and it's a good book. It's very interesting, and says some really fascinating things. Among the more controversial stands in the book are the ideas that abortion has caused the crime rate to drop, and that what parents actually DO matters less than who they ARE when the baby is born. If you want to know more about the abortion thing, read the book. I'm not going to get into it here (yeah, like I really want a flame war on a Mommy blog about abortion. That's T&S's department!). But I would like to discuss this idea that what you do as a parent matters less than who you are before your baby was born. Now, this assumptions are all based on test scores, of course, which we all know don't amount to everything George Bush had hoped they would. But still, standardized tests do give us some irrefutable numbers and patterns which then can be matched to coorelating factors. And they have found that kids who perform well have some unifying aspects of their background, which include race, socioeconomic status, family background (2 parent family vs. single parent), etc. That's not all that surprising, right--rich kids tend to succeed in school more often than poor ones. But the numbers do say that there is no correlation between success and having a stay at home mom until the child went to kindergarten. What IS shown is that kids with mothers who had them at age 30 or older, who have mothers with a known high IQ, or who have a mother with an education, are the ones who are succeeding, at least at the standardized tests. Frankly, reading that DID surprise me, and I'm wondering what to do with this information. Take it for what it's worth, get a full time job and pack my kid up to day care because what I'm doing all day doesn't really matter? I'm highly educated, I have a fairly high IQ, I'm 30, and I'm white, so apparantly, my kid has it made. He has all the tools since birth to succeed, and I don't need to give him any more. Somehow I can't really believe this. I've read too many other things that say the exact opposite, that a mother has the most profound impact on her offspring, and staying at home is the best thing a mother can do. But I guess we've all known some SAHM whose children probably would be better off in day care. Anyhow, I am a little bit disturbed about the findings of these guys, and I don't think they are doing it to be politically correct. I mean, c'mon, saying that the kind of people who are having abortions are the kind of people who would raise criminals is seriously politically INcorrect, so I'm not sure what kind of political agenda this book has. But since this is already the longest post ever, I'm going to end it soon and throw out my confusion and dismay to the bloggernacle at large to find out what everybdoy else thinks. How important is a mother, I mean besides providing good genetic make-up? Am I overestimating my effect on my son? Would he succeed or fail, regardless of what I do, just because of who I am and what kind of genes I passed on to him? To be honest, sometimes it might be nice to think nothing that I do matters--it would erase a whole multitude of Mommy sins I commit every day!
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Raising puppies

We are thinking about getting a puppy. I know, there's not enough chaos or poop in our house, so we're looking for some more. We went to a puppy training class the other day, to pick up some tips from the pros. We chatted with one woman for quite a while who gave us the following basic facts about training a puppy. While you read this, substitute the word "child" for "dog" in your mind, and see if this doesn't sound more like something you would find in a parenting book: 1) Always give the dog clear expectations, and never deviate from those expectations. Your response about those expectations needs to be consistent. 2) Never repeat a command to a dog. You need to expect that they carry out your command immediately. 3)Using treats to bribe your dog to do what you want is ok in the beginning, but the dog needs to learn to obey you out of respect and love, not because they expect a reward for doing so every time. 4)Talk to your dog while you are training him. The dog will begin to understand that not everything that comes out of your mouth involves discipline or commands, and that will build a better relationship with your dog. The dogs also love approval and praise. 5)The dog needs to understand that there is somebody in charge. If there is no apparant authority figure, the dog will become agitated, and he will try to assume that role, the role of Alpha Male. It will be very difficult once the dog assumes that role to convince him otherwise that you are charge. You have a short window to establish the chain of authority, and you have to constantly reinforce it. During this whole spiel, Jacob was happily playing with this woman's puppy, who nestled comfortably in my son's lap and exuberantly licked his face. The woman smiled and said, "It's not that different from raising kids, really." Yeah, DH and I had definitely picked up on that already. I started thinking, "Oh, great. My puppy handling skills are going to be judged according to the behavior of my 3 year old!" Dh pointed out a woman who was particularly vocal about technique to the other puppy handlers. "Oh," our new friend said. "That's Roberta." DH kind of snorted and said, "It looks like she thinks she's the Alpha Male!" The woman looked at us and said, "She doesn't think she is. She KNOWS she is. All the dogs know it, too. She can get any dog to behave." She paused for a minute, and then said, "Come to think of it, her children are remarkably well behaved, too." So there you have it, folks. If you want to judge a person's mothering skills, don't judge her by the behavior of her children. Judge her by the behavior of her dog. And if you feel your mothering skills are lacking, you don't need a family counselor, or a self-help book. Just show up to your neighborhood puppy training class, seek out the Alpha Male, and ask her to teach you everything she knows.
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Hurricanes and mothers

Let me just start by saying that I am overwhelmed with what has happened down in New Orleans. I have spent the last week or so very distraught, trying to figure out what to do, how to help. Come to find out that two men in the ward took off for Housten and the Astrodome. They just, took off. I said to one man's wife, "Hey, I want to do that! How did they find out about doing that?" She told me how they had managed that, and then she looked at me and said, "You can't do that, Heather. You have a kid. What are you going to do, take him with you? Or leave him for 2 weeks with somebody else? Just stay where you are, you're fine. Donate some money." We have donated some money, of course, but her words struck me. You can't do that. You have a kid. In so many ways, she's right. Am I supposed to take my child into a potential dangerous situation, and deliberately put him at risk while helping others? Should I burden somebody else with his care while I act the hero to assuage my conscience about not doing more? And the people who went were men, one who has no children, and one who is a student and could leave his children with his stay at home wife. "You can't do that. You have a kid." In Martha Beck's book "Expecting Adam" (and please, let's not open up this thread to comments about Martha Beck. I just want to say what part I liked in her book and move on), she talks about one experience she had when there was a fire in her apartment building. She was pregnant and had a toddler at the time, and she said she finally understood why there were so many references to the woes of women and children during war in the scriptures. A single woman can run, hid, fight. A pregnant woman, or a woman with a toddler in dire circumstances is, quite frankly, screwed. I'm trying to find circumstances in which the answer is "Sure you can do that, even if you have a kid." In a situation like this, though, those are harder to come by. I just hope that I can find something, and I say godspeed to those who are able to leave their children, (i.e, the MEN) to help those people who need it so desperately, because I know there are women down there who are also saying "I can't do it. I have a kid."
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The Beautiful People

I haven't sat down at my computer for a week. I've missed this blog sisterhood. Chaos is always nipping at my heels. I'm not a skilled organizer, but I am good at functioning within my disorderly world I'm so accustomed to and am not a flake. I somehow almost always manage to pull it together just in time to satisfy (at least on a very minimal level) any requirements and responsibilities expected of me. However, there are times like the last two weeks, that events conspire and ambush and coincide in a manner that render me completely useless which allows the chaos to finally get a good firm hold of my ankle and bring me down. (I promise nothing bad or drastic has happened, all I was trying to say was that I just got swamped and very behind on everything.) Having read the above paragraph, you will not be surprised to hear that at 9:45 am Thursday morning I realized to my horror that I had a meeting for my child's pre-school in fifteen minutes and I wasn't supposed to bring any children with me. There I stood in my exercise clothes (not the stylish sporty kind, the scroungey sloppy kind) without a stitch of makeup and two kids in the next room.

For a split second, my pride and my practicality debated. Pride: "You can't go to a meeting for your child's pre-school looking like this. What will the teacher think of you? What will the other mothers think of you?" Practicality: "This isn't about you, this is about your child. Go to your meeting and quit being so vain. Besides, it's 10am, I'm sure none of the other mom's are all dolled up either."

A desperate phone call, a child hand-off, and a mad dash later I arrived at the school at 10:02. I rushed to the room and entered a nightmare. It could have been a photo shoot for a magazine called, "Moms-a-licious". There they all sat in those tiny chairs (fitting nicely) in their Gap capris, or old Navy skirts with a perfectly coordinated cute little t-shirt or tunic. Their hair was perfectly stylish and modernly carefree, and they all had just a hint of freshly applied make-up.

I promise I don't usually care a whole lot about how I or others look, but the contrast was humiliatingly inescapable. I silently sailed across the room and and sat down on my awkwardly tiny chair as invisibly as I could, but I was as conspicuous as I would have been had I just done a tap dance number on the middle table. I mustered all the dignity I could and held my head up, listened attentively, filled out all the forms, signed the volunteer list and waved to a few familiar faces. That's what mattered, right?

I am the first to admit that I could stand to take better care of myself. I confess I have never been a trend-setter or even a timely trend follower. I'm happy with my own little sense of style, but it probably wouldn't kill me to expand my shopping stops to include more than Target and Wal-Mart. That said, I understand and share the desire to look cute. I have often, in my enthusiasm at the chance to leave my house without children, shown up at Book club or Enrichment kind of over dressed and just generally over-done. But, come on people, how did those moms ALL have time to be that cute and that pulled-together at 10:00 in the morning? These are the same Moms who are sometimes seen at the park in July with jeans and high heels (I'm not lying, my SIL knows a lot of them and had a play date at the park and witnessed it first hand). Ugh. Call me sour grapes, but isn't there a middle ground here?

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Anybody out there feeling creative?

J. Stapley, of Splendid Sun fame, has graciously offered his services to take this blog out of the Blogger galazy and into the greater universe beyond. He designed FMH's website, and IMO, FMH looks absolutely fabulous. So he and I sat down (or maybe we were standing--it's hard to remember) and talked about what I wanted this blog to look like, and, really, I was at a loss. I talked the The Wiz about it, and she, too, had few definite ideas about what we want a real website to look like. We don't have the pink that FMH does--I picked a boring template because asthetically, well, I'm more of a boring kinda gal (although I did just make a daring home decor purchase in the form of BLACK dining room chairs! They look fabulous, but it's totally out of my decorating comfort zone to do this, so I'm excited that a bold decorative leap actually turned out well! Oh, wait, but I digress...). Anyway, creative modeling is just not where my talents lie, so I thought I would appeal to you, our readers, as to what you think this blog should look like when we abandon the Blogger template and become an actual grown-up website. Is there some image (other than a potty, of course) that cries out "Mormon Mommy Wars!" to you when you read this blog? A color you would prefer to look at when you are straining your motherly eyes, blogging in the wee hours of the morning? A loving, maternal sculpture we could put at the top of our page? Let us know. because I think we are on the brink of something exciting--our very own, blogger free URL! The font possibilities are just endless.
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