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Cracking Joshey's Nap Code

I did it! I cracked Joshey's nap code! I heard a humorous story on NPR earlier this morning about how we're in for a deluge of advertising from health insurance companies once the individual mandate comes into effect, and how those companies will all be trying to crack the marketing code for the healthy 18-35 year-olds. Well, I don't know how the insurance companies are going to do it, but I liked the idea of "cracking codes" for various things. Like I'm still trying to crack the code for how to wash Cici's hair without screams of agony and how to get Polly interested in tracing letters and numbers (she REALLY likes making x's, she's REALLY not interested in any other letters). Anyway, I'm pleased to announce that I have figured out how to get Joshey down for a nap that lasts longer than about 30 minutes. I had been nursing him to sleep, but the multiple occasions for waking and crying between the rocking chair and the pack-and-play were driving me crazy. I'm not quite ready to lay him down awake and get him used to soothing himself to sleep. So I adopted the Dave-Sloan-patented method of nappening babies--bounce them to sleep in your arms, ease them onto a pillow, and then ease the pillow and baby down into the pack-and-play. And I've been able to skip a step and just bounce him on the pillow from the beginning. Yesterday morning it took 10 minutes of his crying in my arms and a few more of his crying on the pillow before he succumbed to sleep, but by this afternoon, he was asleep on the pillow in about 2 minutes and didn't stir a bit when I lowered him into the pack-and-play. And he's been napping for over an hour for all of these naps. Yipee! Except that now I have no excuses for not cleaning my fridge or mopping the floor... Having a baby asleep in the sling made it very easy to convince myself that really the only thing I could do was stand around eating chocolate chips and listening to the radio :).

Something for Wednesday

My kids take turns crying throughout the day. This morning, Cici woke up early-ish, so I tossed her in the jogging stroller and set off for jog (the Sloan siblings and parents are having a family competition involving exercising and eating healthily, and although there's almost zero chance that I'll win this competition, I still feel obliged to do something that can be entered into the master spreadsheet every week :). Unbeknownst to me, Polly was right behind Cici--she even saw us jogging down the street--and she proceeded to camp out on the front lawn and wait the entire 45 minutes until I came home. By the time I got home, she was crying because she missed me, she didn't get to go, I was taking too long, etc., etc. (and probably also because she was damp and hungry from waiting on the grass for 45 minutes!).  Hugs, kisses, snuggles, promises that she can go another time--and we were off to showers and breakfast and dishes and beds and the whole morning routine. A few hours later, we had gone to Suncrest Primary School to play on the playground, and I was taking advantage of my kids being occupied to call Rachel and catch up. Except that my kids have the uncanny ability to sense when I'm on the phone with someone I actually want to talk to, and they'll choose that moment to stop playing, run over to me, climb on me, demand my attention, and so on (come on, kids, you have a whole playground at your disposal, you don't have to hang out by the benches with me!). Anyway, I was determined to have the conversation, but finally Cici's forlorn wails and multiple attempts to run out of the gate onto the street convinced me that she was ready to go home. So pile the kids in the stroller, push the unwieldy thing down and up and around, ply my kids with grapes, switch the laundry, feed Joshey--the whole pre-lunch routine. Fast forward an hour, and Cici is down, Polly has been instructed to look at books until I finish getting Joshey down for a nap, and I'm in my bedroom, the door locked against Polly's intrusions, nursing little Joshey. Getting my babies down for naps once they're out of the sling is one of the stress points of my day. Gently unlatching him once he's asleep, ever so gently getting out of the rocking chair, ever ever so gently lowering him into the pack and play--there are so many fraught junctures. This time we didn't even get past breaking the latch. Maybe it was because Polly decided that she wanted to be a baby too and curled up right outside my door, alternately howling through the crack and knocking loudly. Maybe Joshey can just sense when I'm not channeling my inner zen. Whatever it was, I tried four times, and on the fifth unsuccessful attempt as his eyes popped open, I told him that I'd be right back, then I went out to vent my frustration on Polly. But when I saw her lying on the floor, having wrapped herself in a baby blanket, I didn't have the heart to scold. So I stomped around the family room, picking up cushions (grumpy cleaning is my preferred way of expressing my displeasure at something), and finally sat on the couch and waited for Polly to crawl over. "Mommy, that took a long time," she said in her baby voice (which drives me crazy). "When are you going to read me my book?" "Right now," I told her. We read the book, I pretended to put her down for a nap on the couch, we had a quick talk about what she needs to do while I'm putting Joshey down for a nap, and then I went back to retrieve Joshey from the pack and play, where he had finally discovered that he'd been ditched. So anyway, everyone has had their turn crying for today. Even me, if you count this blog post :). If it's a really good day, this will be it for crying. If it's a normal day, we'll have another round before dinner...

Notes on Tuesday

It's 2:32 pm on Tuesday afternoon. Cici is still napping, Joshey's going to give me about 4 minutes (I hope) before he needs a nap, and Polly is engaged in some elaborate imaginative world which includes river dolphins in the bathroom sink and a flying cat in the kitchen. It's been a good day so far, mostly. Not that I really deserve a good day after behaving badly this morning. Dave got up early with the girls, which means that I didn't get up early enough to go running, and then to reward Dave for letting me sleep in, the first thing I did was point out to him a glaring error in a cover letter he sent off for a job application a couple of months ago. Come on, Naomi, did you really need to do that? I told myself that he needed to see it so he wouldn't make the same mistake again, and perhaps that's true, but I probably could have been a little less eager to point it out. Anyway, I fussed at myself for 15 minutes, then went contritely to Dave to tell him what jerk I was, only to have him be completely surprised that I thought his feelings had been hurt--he had taken the correction and moved on without a second thought. Which is why Dave has been, and always will be, a better person than me.

Anyway, it was grocery shopping day for us, and thanks to some amazing prices at Aldi, I spent our $70 of grocery money on two containers of blueberries, two containers of strawberries, 6 bunches of bananas, a watermelon, and 6 loaves of whole wheat bread, in addition to our usual line-up of cans and boxes. I love summer! And I sure hope my family loves french toast and smoothies, because I anticipate a few such meals in the coming weeks as we unload our now-full freezer.

Well, Joshey has given me more than 4 minutes, so this daily exercise in recording the mundane will end. Hope your Tuesdays are going well!

Windows of Heaven

I was talking to a friend the other day about being poor. Neither of our families are really poor, of course. On our missions, both of us saw what real poverty looks like, and it's not a 2-bedroom single-family home with air conditioning, a yard, and a full fridge. But nevertheless, we were talking about how our peers--those in their mid-30's with youngish families, a few years out of graduate school--seem to be moving into a place in their lives where they can buy homes, buy larger cars, go on vacations, buy consumer electronics, go out to eat, sign their kids up for dance classes and karate classes. All of those things that we don't feel like we can do because we still feel like we're on the edge of financial instability. This friend was saying that sometimes at church, people will say, "Well, if you just pay your tithing, the windows of heaven will be opened up," implying somehow that their family must not be paying tithing because otherwise BMWs and gym memberships would be raining down on their apartment complex. I haven't gotten that sense from church friends in the Morgantown area, but it made me think about what really happens when those windows of heaven open up. And it made me see that even now, during this time when Dave is job-hunting and the future is very uncertain for us, some of the clouds that are hanging low over our path are there because of the constant drizzle of generosity from so many people around us. Just last week, a friend who was moving into a new house with a new washer/dryer that couldn't take powder detergent asked if I wanted her two boxes of newly-purchased laundry soap. Yes! Later that week when our dryer broke, this same friend saw my facebook post about it and called me excitedly to tell me that they had an extra (functioning) dryer from their old place, and did we want it? That very same week, my next door neighbor came over somewhat hesitantly and told me that she had a bunch of skirts that didn't fit her anymore (she lost a lot of weight a year ago), and would I be interested in looking through them? She didn't want to offend me in any way, and I was happy to assure her, after looking through her clothes, that $200 worth of cute weekday and Sunday skirts given to me for free wasn't at all offensive. Finally, on Saturday morning I got a facebook message from a sister in the ward who is battling cancer. In the midst of her treatments, she noticed that her apple tree was bearing fruit early, and realizing that she wouldn't be able to pick them or eat them all, she thought about our family and asked me if we might want them. Dave was quickly dispatched and came back with a couple of bushels of apples that Polly has been happily munching on ever since. Now none of these people know our financial situation. They may know vaguely that Dave is job-hunting, but that's it. Yet somehow, over the course of just one week, these neighbors and friends and church members just happened to think of us and have the heart to give of their excess to our family. So has Dave been offered a six-figure book-and-movie deal to launch his dream career? No. Have we won the lottery? No. But we have the assurance of knowing that, meager though our tithing may be these days, the Lord doesn't open the windows of heaven in proportion to the size of our check. They've been open all along, and that gives me the faith during the moments when I need it to know that He will always keep them open.

Scout Camp!

In honor of Dave spending the night at Scout Camp this week, I thought I'd include this picture of some classic scouting activities. This was up at the Church-owned camp up Angeles Crest, right? Or Church-formerly-owned?

Let's go for a hike.

I sure with I could! I bet that Mama could still beat me up the mountain, just as she could back then, too.

Name that baby.

He's a cute one! And also, how old do you think he is? My little Joshey is starting to squirm-crawl like this, and I'm wondering if this mystery baby is about 5 months old here.

I love this picture of Mama and--who is it? Rosalynde? I think so... A wonderful mother-daughter moment.

Happy July!

How many of my siblings recognize the dishes on that table?