Let There Be Heat

Yipee! Our furnace has been replaced! We've been without heat for the past month or so, ever since we found out that our furnace had a cracked heat exchange and was both a potential fire hazard and a potential carbon monoxide hazard in our basement. Lovely, huh? We found out because our home warranty company had given us a free maintenance visit for our heating system when we renewed our warranty for another year. Little did they know that this nice little thank you gift they gave us would cost them a pretty penny when they would end up replacing the very furnace they were paying to have serviced! Although it cost us a pretty penny, too--the warranty covered the furnace itself, but not the extra duct-work needed to adapt the furnace. All told, it was $850 to us. Still, better than footing the entire bill. To date, the home warranty company has now fixed our furnace twice (last year--probably should have just been replaced then, but oh well--we didn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning, so all's well that ends well), replaced our microwave, and now replaced our furnace. We're getting our money's worth, as well as our peace of mind's worth, out of this policy.

We're also having our two bay windows replaced, along with the front bedroom window. We had a couple of industrious salesmen point out to us that the seal had become cracked around our front bay window, and as a result, the bottom support was starting to rot and disintegrate outside, and the inside caulking was beginning to disintegrate. I had noticed that these particular windows collected a lot of condensation on them whenever it was particularly cold outside, and now I've learned (yet again) that the persistent presence of water on wood doesn't have good effects. These replacement windows are definitely higher-end products. We could have gotten less expensive products, and the Hansen in me feels that I should have fashioned a replacement window myself out of the old glass top table and left-over caulking we have down in the sunroom. But those salesmen demonstrated all of the features of these windows and guaranteed me that what we paid now would be the last money we ever spent on those windows. Even screens, they said, would be replaced for free if we had any problems with them. And, yes, I believed them. I like the idea of paying for something once, and never having to pay for it again. I guess we'll just have to see if we live in this house long enough to make good on that guarantee.

So money for the furnace, money for the windows--all of these big-ticket items have taught me something about myself. I can't bring myself to spend money on things like clothes, eating out, entertainment, even outings for the kids. Once in a blue moon it happens--around holidays or birthdays. But during the normal weeks and months of the year, I just can't bring myself to shell out cash for anything other than groceries, gas, and store-brand household items. But I have no problem writing out big checks for things like replacement windows and new furnaces. I was *this* close to agreeing to the $3000 gutter upgrade that the salesmen were pitching too, until Dave pointed out the not-insignificant percentage of our current bank account that $3,000 represents. So anyway, this all goes to show that I don't know how to have fun with my money. I'm only capable of spending money on extremely boring things. I'm guessing that as I get older and money becomes a little more available, I'll loosen up about that. But for now, my poor husband is stuck with a cheap wife and a new furnace.

A Story for Ferguson

A few weeks ago, a new kid started coming to my Sunday School class. I teach the 16-18 year olds, and even though he was 21 and supposed to be attending the adult class, he hadn't been to church since he was a teenager, and I guess he felt more comfortable with us. Plus, I have candy every week, and I think he has a little crush on one of the girls who sometimes comes.

I start each class by asking the kids about the best thing and the worst thing that happened the past week, and a couple of weeks ago he said that he'd started a new job. "That's great, what is it?" I'd asked. Turns out he was one of the young men running behind garbage trucks emptying trash cans into the compactor in the back. "We love those guys," I'd said enthusiastically. "Joshey always runs to the window when he hears the truck coming!" He smiled and nodded, and we moved on.

Four days later, on a rainy Thursday morning, I wasn't thinking about Sunday School. I was coming back from the gym, and I was in a bit of a hurry because Cici's bus was due to arrive soon. I was driving in my blue minivan with two good little boys in the back, and I was undoubtedly preoccupied with the thick of thin things in my good little stay-at-home-mom life. Needed to start the laundry, had to find a babysitter for my eye appointment tomorrow, was Polly doing any better with her have-to's this week? As I turned onto my street, the garbage truck was making its slow way up, a little later than usual. It was driving smack dab in the middle of the road, and the two guys running behind, hoodies up against the freezing rain, were jogging slow figure 8's up the road as they grabbed and dumped and returned. I was impatient. What if the bus was already there? I nosed my way in between one of the guys and the truck, and gave an apologetic little wave as I cut him off at the curb. I may have even said something like, "Sorry guy! I know, I know, I'm a jerk!" And truly, I was. I was sitting warm and dry in a heated car, yet I couldn't wait 45 seconds for the garbage truck to pass me so this poor guy wouldn't have to abruptly stop jogging in order to avoid getting run over. I felt a little guilty, but when I rounded the corner and saw that the bus wasn't there yet, I forgot about the feeling in the resumption of my internal narration of my to-do list. Get the boys down for naps, unload the dishwasher, decide what to make for dinner...

Fast forward to yesterday, Sunday School, all of us sitting around in Sunday clothes and smiles. Antoine starts the best and the worst of the week. "Well, the worst is that I missed work on Saturday. I was just so tired. And I didn't have my boss's phone number. But I was wondering-- did I see you on Thursday?" I looked at him again, and suddenly--yes. My Sunday School student was my trash guy. He was the one jogging behind the garbage truck, the one I'd cut off. And I hadn't even recognized him. When he was in my Sunday School class, he was Antoine, the kid who had started coming back to church because he'd felt like his life wasn't going the right way, the kid who felt like getting that job was an answer to prayer, evidence that God was looking out for him. When he was on the other side of my minivan windshield, he was just another young black man, slowing down traffic when I had laundry to get home to.

I have listened to the news coverage out of Ferguson, Missouri with deep feelings and deep interest. I have a sister who lives in St. Louis with her husband and four kids, and her oldest daughter is just about the age that I was during the LA Riots following the Rodney King case. When I was in junior high, and I came home to see my mom watching some breaking news coverage with images of a man and a truck and an intersection crowded with police cars, I had zero idea what was happening (except that my mom never watched TV, so something must have been going on). When I was looking out from my junior high balcony at the distant smoke and flames from South Central off on the horizon, I had zero idea what was going on. Afterward, when my parents drove us through the fire-charred neighborhoods and past the empty store fronts graffitied with protest slogans, I had zero idea what was going on. I was kind of a clueless child, and I didn't know how to start understanding complex things.

Now I am as old as my mom was during the LA Riots. I am no longer a child, and, to misquote the Apostle Paul, I no longer "see as a child." I am the one glued to the news, wondering what's happening, wishing I could do something. I am heartsick that social conditions, race relations, structural poverty--everything that's been part of this tinderbox--have been taking the St. Louis area down the road of dejavu all over again (to misquote someone else). But I have to say that I'm glad I have the opportunity to experience this national upheaval as an adult. I don't want to be clueless again. I don't know what I can do--I don't even know what I would do if I lived in that area instead of in Baltimore. Probably just pray and agonize internally and pray some more. But I'm glad I have a chance to give a damn about it.

Of the demonstrations I've heard about, the one that touched me the most occurred at the St. Louis Symphony, on the night that they were playing...oh, what was it... Brahms Requiem? I think that was it. Anyway, just after intermission, as the conductor stood ready to give the orchestra its downbeat, someone started singing from the balcony. Soon they were joined by other voices throughout the audience. What did they sing? I can't remember. Maybe "We Shall Overcome," but maybe something else. When they finished singing, they unfurled a large banner from the balcony, there was some applause from the other audience members and even some of the orchestra, and then the protestors filed out and the concert continued. The banner read "Black Lives Matter."

Black lives matter. All lives matter. But not just in the aggregate. All lives matter because all lives are individual souls, dealing with the set of cards they've been dealt starting with birth. Yesterday after church, Antoine asked if I could give him a ride to his foster mom's house. She lives off of Harford Road, and since I almost ran over Antoine close to that very street, he knew I must live relatively close. We had 20 minutes to talk as we drove, and I found out that he lived in foster care when he was 17, and then transitioned to a series of group homes. At one point, he even lived with his bishop for a number of months, and then he followed a job to Kentucky. Now he was living with his mom and sisters and a few nieces and nephews, and he was planning to use his next paycheck to buy Christmas presents for the nieces and nephews. I found out that on Sunday, he gets up around 8 am, puts on his suit and purple tie, and takes the bus to Church. That morning, the fare machine on the bus was broken, so he got to ride for free. I found out that when he was still a teenager, he went to stake youth conference, a retreat for the 14-18 year old teens in all the congregations in our area, and the theme was "Disconnect to Reconnect." Whenever I ask a question in Sunday School--"How has prayer made a difference in your life?" "How have you seen that gratitude makes you more spiritually and temporally self-reliant?"--that's always his answer. I found out that during the week, he gets up at 4 am in order to walk the half mile to where he starts work, and he only takes the bus when he has the fare handy. "What do you think about your work?" I asked him as we were driving down Harford Road. "It's not too bad," he said. "I ask my boss if I can do commercial, so I just have to do dumpsters all day. So I try to take it easy."

There's a lot I don't know about Antoine. I don't know why he was in foster care. I don't know the story behind all the tattoos on his arm. I don't know what job was in Kentucky, and how it ended. I don't know how he came to join the church. I don't know what Thanksgiving is going to be like for him. I don't know whether he's ever going to start attending the adult Sunday School class, like he's supposed to. I don't know whether the girl in my Sunday School class with her Coach bags and new clothes will ever find out that he has a crush on her. I don't know if he'll stick with his job through the long, cold, dark 4 am winter mornings when he doesn't have bus fare. But I have learned that the young man on the other side of my rainy windshield, running behind the trash truck, is the same young man praying with me and reading holy scripture with me on Sunday. And I hope I will always recognize him for who he is.

Detoxing Ungracefully

This weekend, for the first time in a long time, we didn't have any Saturday-gobbling plans. Ballet in the morning for Polly, church activity in the evening for which we would leave around 5:15 pm. Which meant a good long stretch of hours in the middle of the day for getting back on top of the flotsam and jetsam of Sloan Family life. This was good, because between parent-teacher conferences and American Education Week visits to the classroom and playing the harp in the evenings and having relatives and missionaries over, we'd been doing a lot of getting through things and not much getting on top of things for the past 2-3 weeks. So I was ambitious to do the following things:

• rake leaves
• pay bills
• finish/make progress on the crocheted rug for the girls' room
• scrub the bathtub
• do the Christmas letter
• file papers
• clean off my desk
• clean off the art desk
• move out the broken dryer and hook up the (hopefully) functional dryer
• go to the gym
• record and analyze our family expenditures
• finalize our December calendar
• catch up on my Book of Mormon reading
• make cookies for my neighbors
• do family history
• floss
• find a wheat grinder and grind the 50 tons of wheat we inherited from a sister in the ward.

(Okay, I may have employed some hyperbole in that list. Flossing, for example, might be expecting too much.)

Anyway, I actually got a reasonable amount done. After ballet, the kids and I made a Walmart run, and when we got home, I did a whirlwind cleaning of the house and then cranked out the bills. In the meantime, Dave went out to find some games from Goodwill for game night that night and do a couple of errands. The kids played played played (and by that I mean made a huge mess in the basement while intermittently gorging themselves on PBS Kids on the computer). After the bills, I tried to get up the energy to go rake leaves in the upper 30's gloom of a November afternoon, but I ended up curling up in bed to try to shake a headache and a bad mood. As I lay in bed drifting into a nap, I found myself wondering why I was so grumpy. Wasn't I glad that we weren't crazy busy? Wasn't I glad that we had a relaxing day with not much planned? Why couldn't I just be like Dave and take it easy in the morning and just enjoy a day off? As I pondered this, I found myself wondering if I was going through a detox process. It's not that I want to be busy all the time, or that I find myself depressed and without a purpose when I'm not busy and scheduled. I don't want my bow tightened all the time, and I look forward to the end of a busy season because I know that I need to regroup and get ready for the next round that will be coming soon enough. But I just don't really know how to detox gracefully. Detoxing for me means releasing all of the tensions and worries and nagging to do's that I've been thrusting aside while the Sloan Family Machine is functioning at full capacity. I've heard that when you start drinking a lot more water, it flushes toxins and impurities out of your system, and as they're flushed out, they make you break out and feel a little ill. But that's all just part of the process of getting them actually out. I don't know if the physiology of that is accurate, but it felt true to the emotional and spiritual process of coming off of a busy season. 

Anyway, this insight didn't necessarily change anything for me, but it gave me a framework for being patient with myself and for explaining to Dave why I'd been grouchy-ish all day. And it gave me the challenge of finding out how to detox more gracefully. Perhaps make sure that I'm listening to good music all day. Perhaps make sure that the gym happens before Walmart, since Walmart on a Saturday saps the life force out of anyone. Now the big question: will any of this help me to make the Christmas season more worshipful and meaningful?

Homework Time

I had parent-teacher conferences last week for the girls, and one of my take-aways was the need to give Polly more experience at home with focusing on tasks, practicing sight-words, basically becoming a more disciplined student. She's got a ways to go in developing those executive functioning skills, and evidently letting her draw elaborate storyboards for princess adventures and roller-skate around the house isn't facilitating them. I have to admit that I haven't taken her homework too seriously before now. SOmetimes Dave would do it with her, sometimes I would, sometimes we'd do it in the afternoon right after school, sometimes we'd do it in the morning before school. So Dave and I decided that it's time for some structure. The plan is that I will feed the kids dinner around 5 pm, when they're hungry and whiny and clingy anyway, and then when Dave gets home around 6, I'll sit down and do homework with her, and Dave will play with Joshey and Cici and get them ready for bed. We tried it out on Monday, and I learned a few things.

• Dinner isn't any easier when I'm the only one waiting tables. It's not tremendously easy anyway, with Cici and Joshey as the World's Messiest Eaters, not to mention the World's Pickiest Eaters (Cici, anyway). I feel the need to be training my kids in proper table manners (we have a little song for it: "Sit on bottom, use your forks! Chew your food and don't be rude!"), so by the end of dinner, I'm feeling grumpy and stressed. Then I need to clean up the table in order to do homework on it--reference the world's greatest mess above. Dave usually walks in around this time, and the only thing I have for him is stress and grumpiness. 
• Now that I'm thinking about Polly's homework in terms of a practicing ground for improving her performance at school, I'm more heavy-handed about how she does it. I want her to be sitting still, focusing, doing her best work, not being silly. Every lapse of attention, every resistance to my feedback or help translates in my mind to the reason she's not getting into a good groove at school. Which means that she's feeling a lot of emotional pressure from me, because I'm feeling a lot of emotional pressure about trying to help her succeed in the classroom. 
• Which all adds up to: argh. My instinct is that I'm not approaching this the right way. It's okay for family life to have intense times, times that kids need to learn to do things simply because they need to be done. But there also needs to be time to just enjoy each other's company, time to not have the emphasis be on constant training and correcting. At least, I think there should be. And I wonder if I'm crowding out the enjoyment by the stress I'm feeling and conveying to my children about their behavior. Shouldn't dinner be about reconnecting with everyone, processing our days together? Not about "Cici, sit down! Joshey, do NOT throw your water! Yes, Polly, you're the neatest one." 

Well, I have more thoughts, but it's now the end of the evening, and I'm tired. More on this later, I'm sure.

"Hey, I have an idea!"

It's 8:06 pm, and I'm here in the girls' dark bedroom, Old Testament stories on (we're in the middle of Elijah right now). But it's anything but quiet. Polly decided that she wanted to rearrange her bedroom so she could be closer to the portable DVD player, so for the past 10 minutes, she's been wrestling her mattress off the box springs and hauling it across the room. I'm actually very impressed with this feat. She asked me for help, and I said, entirely remorselessly, "Nope! I'm doing my computer work!" She didn't need my help after all, as it turned out. And as she tugged and pushed and shouldered it around, she'd punctuate her efforts with "Hey, I have an idea!" and then she'd run over and throw a blanket or a pillow on the mattress. Funny girl. I like that she's getting to know that wonderful feeling of having an idea and having the power to carry it out--and having that confidence boost of having done it.

This is apropos of very little, but I've been recently thinking about the fact that Polly's physical build is like mine--tall for her age, and strong and solid. Cici is built like Dave, tall and skinny, with a lot of natural grace. I've wondered if Polly will ever wish that her body were different--more like Cici's, perhaps, or more like one of her friends or cousins. I certainly went through that, wishing that I were shorter, more slender, had a different shaped face, had different colored hair. Polly has already wished that she had "golden hair" so that she could be in the "blond hair club" on the bus (that's a subject for another night). As Polly grows up, I want her to come to value her strong, capable body. I have been grateful for the ability to pitch right in and move pianos with the best of the men. Being strong and able to bear a lot of physical stress has become an important part of my identity, and I wish I'd arrived at that place much earlier, in my insecure teens. We'll have to see. In the meantime, I'm glad that Polly now knows she can move her mattress wherever she wants in her room. Now to convince her to move in back in the morning...

Today was a normal day. Rainy, which I always like. Although I've started using cloth diapers again, and yesterday I hung a load out on the clothesline, then neglected to bring them in before the rain started. Ah well. They'll just smell extra fresh, I suppose.

Our line-up today was doing morning work, going to the gym (yes, we've become a gym membership family. It feels like the height of luxury to drop Joshey off at the kids' club and then go use a bunch of expensive fitness equipment for as long as I want), playing with little Sebastian after his grandma dropped him off, lunch for two little boys, naps for two little boys, a very little bit of bill-paying and mail-opening for me, then getting Cici off the bus and, for once, giving myself over to playing with her. Cici is such good company, I love her dramatic intonations ("Do you want to be CROCODILES with me?" she'll sing, her voice going up and down the treble clef), and she is so very easily pleased. She also put herself down for a nap in the afternoon, which meant that she was good company all the way till bedtime :). Which was a good thing, because we spent most of the afternoon in the car, dropping off Sebastian and then taking dinner to a new mom in the ward. If I were my neighbor, I would take a seat by my front window and just laugh every afternoon around 4 pm, when I'm loading up the car to take Sebastian back. First, Joshey gets strapped in, a look of resignation on his face. He always is the first in and the last out. Then back in the house for Cici, inevitably followed by a sprint back to the house to bring out handfuls of apples for the kids. I badger Polly in, and finally, I bring out Sebastian and his bags. Efficient I am not.

Tomorrow...I'm going to New York City! Dave gave this trip to me for my birthday in July. I'll be visiting Benjamin and Shayla, arriving on Friday evening and leaving Sunday afternoon. I'll have over 6 hours on the Megabus to read any book of my choosing, and I can even sleep in! This is going to be wonderful. The country mouse going to the city, with the best of city mice to show her around.

Trying Something New

So here's the problem: around 10:30 am, when I'm feeling energetic and things are getting done around the house, I find myself thinking, "Today is definitely the day. I'm going to post an update on the blog. How could I not write about this wonderful, golden stage of life when Joshey runs around like a little Rumplestiltskin and Cici requests the same three books at bedtime every day and Polly documents her entire brain through stick-figure drawings?" But by the end of the day, I'm thoroughly sick of myself and my wonderful, golden stage of life, and all I want to do is scrunch myself up in bed and read the scriptures until I fall asleep. 

But here's the other problem: there are probably only two people who will read these updates with any regularity or interest, but I love them both very much. And I have the sense of depriving them of some happiness by not writing these updates. So I want to figure out how to make this happen.

Here's my current plan, which I'm debuting tonight. I do the bedtime routine with the girls, but instead of falling asleep in Polly's bed and then dragging myself downstairs at 10 pm, I bring my laptop upstairs, and while the girls are listening to the Old Testament Stories DVD, I'll check my e-mail (which also often doesn't happen) and post something. It might not happen every night, but it would be hard to do much worse than going silent for 9 months. 

So enough explanations. On to the updates. Yesterday, voting day, the kids had a school holiday. We bustled around in the morning, getting the dishwasher loaded, making beds, starting a load of laundry, doing our morning work. Then around 10 am on a gorgeous, sunny, mid-60's morning, we jumped in the car and headed to the zoo. We got a membership for Christmas, and I love the frequent trips we've taken. I warned the kids that today was not a carousel or train day--just a see the animals day. And they seemed okay with that. 

We have our zoo visits down to a science: set up the sit-and-stand stroller, tie the plastic bag full of food to one of the handles, hang my purse on the other handle, strap Joshey in the front, sit Cici in the middle, and have Polly stand in the back. Then mommy flexes her muscles and pushes everyone to the shuttle stop. We saw the new penguin exhibit, got great seats to a puppet show, and then did the rounds of rhinos, zebras, flamingoes, elephants, and chimps, ending with a visit to the goat petting farm, which is Cici's absolutely favorite spot ("I'm Mary, I'm Mary! These are my little lambs!"). As we walked between exhibits, I gave the kids slices of cheese, graham crackers, cucumber slices, muffins, and Halloween candy. 

"I'm pretty good at this," I thought, as I was passing another mom whose umbrella stroller had just fallen over from being loaded down with too many bags. "It really isn't fair that I'm the stay-at-home parent that gets to do these kinds of things in the middle of the day. How much would Dave love to see Joshey imitating that elephant? But he has to sit in front of a computer working on spreadsheets all day." 

This is an internal conversation that I often have. 

"Of course, Dave gets to go to the bathroom by himself whenever he wants, and he gets to sit down and have lunch without waiting tables for toddlers. And I had to work hard this morning to get the housework all done and ready for us to be gone. But still. It doesn't seem fair that I get to have all the fun." 

An hour later, after we'd washed hands from petting the goats and taken a few turns on the barn slide, I was turning the stroller toward the shuttle stop to start for home. As we passed a little gift kiosk, Polly asked if she could run in and look at things. "Sure," I said, not thinking things through very well. "But remember, today is not a buying things day. And make sure to catch up with us!"

I continued pushing the stroller up the ramp, and as I reached the top of it, Polly came sprinting after me, tears streaming down her face. 

"Mom! You have to come see this thing! I really really really really want it!"

Oh boy, I thought, Strategy 1: change the subject. 

"Wow, you're a super fast runner, Polly! Were you worried we were leaving you? We were just going up the ramp because the stroller can't go up the stairs. Why don't you point at the thing you wanted to show me from up here?"

Polly, still crying, pointed at a pink-and-black striped stuffed tiger attached to a stick that acted like a leash. For the record, Polly has about 100 stuffed animals at home, and she'd brought a giraffe to the zoo precisely to prevent this kind of situation. 

Strategy 2: say no in a non-inflammatory way. "That looks like a really cool stuffed animal. You love pretending to take your stuffed animals for walks! Today isn't a buying things day, but shall we add that to your Christmas list?"

But Polly wasn't having any of it, and as I inexorably took her away from the kiosk, Cici decided to join in the fun by wailing about not being able to see the penguins again. And then, as I wheeled up to the shuttle, the back wheel on the stroller fell off and the plastic lunch bag split down the middle and spilled its contents on the ground. Doing some deep breathing, I got the stroller, the food, two screaming girls, and one angelic little boy into the shuttle. 

Okay, I thought to myself, Polly needs time to get herself under control, but I can give Cici something to eat, and that'll distract her. I pulled out a cup of yogurt, took off the top, and stuck in a spoon. Again, I wasn't really thinking this through. 

"Your little girl is getting really messy," one of the other parents commented to me. Sure enough. Peach yogurt all the way down her dress. That's what happens when a 3 year old eats yogurt on a jolting shuttle bus. 

We made it to the entrance, and I got the stroller down, then wrestled the wheel back on the spoke while a zoo volunteer hovered close by, trying to figure out how to tell the lady with two screaming girls and a broken stroller to move along because she was holding up the shuttle schedule. 

On the way back out, there was another kiosk with another pink-and-black tiger, and Polly burst into tears anew, declaring that she was never going to school or ballet again, she was only going to the zoo. 

By this time, we were half way to the car, passing by a broad expanse of grass covered with fall foliage.

"Okay, let's just stop here, shall we? Let's just take a moment to calm down." I wheeled us onto the grass, and then I proceeded to completely ignore my tearful Cici and my worked-up Polly while I put the lunch things in my purse and gathered up the trash and the torn plastic bag. Then I took out my baby wipes and tried cleaning up Cici's dress, only to conclude that it couldn't be done. As it was a temperate day, I took her dress off and wrapped her up, Baby Tarzan style, in the pashmina I keep in my purse. By then, I noticed the poopy odor coming from Joshey's backside, so I changed his diaper as well. This whole time, Polly is sulking, and Cici is finding cause after cause for fresh tears (she couldn't climb the tree! She didn't WANT the giraffe! She was all done with yogurt!). Oh yes, and we were right next to the walkway where all of the other parents were walking by with their well-behaved children. I could almost hear them muttering to themselves, "What is that lady doing there, surrounded by trash and dirty diapers and crying children? And why is that poor little girl in nothing but her underwear and a scarf?!"

My strategy to calm the girls down by stopping on the grass clearly wasn't working, so we trucked on through the last quarter mile to the car. By the time I got the stroller collapsed and back in the car, Joshey was asleep in the car. By the time we'd gotten on the freeway, Cici was asleep. And by the time we'd made it back to Parkville and Polly had gone in with me to vote, she had forgotten that life without a pink-and-black tiger wasn't worth living. 

That night at dinner, I told Dave that I took back everything I'd been thinking about feeling guilty for getting to be the stay-at-home parent. By golly, I earn every good moment I get through all the impossible moments that surround them! I also told him that every public place needs someone, some parent, to be "that parent." That day, I was "that mom." The one with the naked child, the one with the bratty kindergartner, the one with everything that was falling apart. Maybe it's like jury duty, and I won't have to be that mom for another year. Wouldn't that be nice?

Let Sunday Go

Well, it's 11:19 on a Sunday night, and about 45 minutes ago, I sent an e-mail to Mama telling her that I was going to bed. Such is the self-deception of the night before Monday (though wouldn't it be wonderful if I could somehow hear her voice echoing down the basement stairs, saying, "Sweetie! Time to turn the light off!"). Sunday is almost always the night on which I stay up the latest. I'm waiting for the weekly harvest of family letters, which is a high point in my week and definitely worth waiting up for. So far, Mama, Benjamin, and Rachel have submitted their offerings, along with Dave's parents, as they so faithfully do every week. Daddy's will be coming along soon enough, I'm sure. Rosalynde wrote last week, and she's much more considerate than I am about the degree to which she'll make her siblings and parents read minute accounts of everything that happened in her kids' lives, so I don't expect to hear from her this week. If I'm lucky, Abraham will send a brief epistle which will capture the matter-of-factness, modesty, and goodness of this brother of mine (though he, too, sent a letter just three weeks ago, and he averages once a semester these days). Gabrielle updated her blog last week, and probably will this week, so she's not necessarily tied to the Sunday night filing deadline. I get my Christian-fix from Facebook and on the phone (time for another conversation, Christian!), though I'm not above placing a little guilt trip in his path to get an honest-to-goodness letter every now and then. Christine will often write for her and Brigham, so maybe something from her will appear in my inbox, and send me back to my perennial schemings about how to fit in a trip to Utah over the summer. And, of course, we'll hear from Eva tomorrow, on her P-day in Russia. So within 24 hours, I will again feel connected to this family of origin of mine, and I'll have some wind beneath my wings for the week to come. I'll resolve to work a little harder, like Mama and Daddy and Benjamin. I'll resolve to have more intelligent conversations, like Rachel. I'll resolve to take pictures and post them to my blog, so Gabrielle can see how desperately I need her to take pictures of my family again, since I'm bungling the job famously. (Boston! Less than a month! Pictures of me and Joshey!) And then I'll take a deep breath, and I'll plunge into the week. I think that I let Sundays go with the same reluctance that I leave my parents and my siblings at the end of every family reunion. I know I'll see you again. I know life wouldn't work if it were a non-stop family reunion (or a non-stop Sabbath). But still.

It's 11:41 now. Time to let Sunday go. It will come again next week.

My Book of Life

I've been turning over a pet project in my mind for the past year or so. I would love to chronicle some of the people who have entered into my book of life because of the way their lives have touched mine. My life is abundant with riches and treasures, both tangible and intangible, and all of these treasures, every single one, is a gift from someone. A project of this sort would require some diligence and staying power, and I'm still mastering that skill (though, for the record, I'd like it known that I am unfailingly diligent in the brushing of my teeth and the application of mascara every morning. If only I could be so diligent about saying my morning prayers and reading scriptures!). But Valentine's Week seems a good time to start, even if that start will prove to be inconsistent and fitful. And the first entry in my book of life, of course, belongs to my mother.

I've been telling the story of my mother for my whole life. How she was raised on an Indian reservation (she used to do presentations in my elementary school classrooms wearing her Navajo dress and bringing her papoose carrier and fry bread. No, she's not actually Native American, though you might think that, given her black hair and high cheekbones. My grandpa was a range conservationist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so they moved around from reservation to reservation). How she met my dad in the Honors Reading Room at BYU, and she was everything that he had hoped for in a wife--smart, pretty, musical, hard-working, and a committed disciple to Jesus Christ. How every employer or professor she ever had wanted her to stay on with them and take over their work when they were done. How she bore and raised eleven children instead of running large companies or teaching at universities (though she actually does teach at universities now, as a religious teacher). How she bore and raised these eleven children in expensive Southern California in a one-income family. My mother managed to pay for private piano lessons and instrument lessons for all of us--that's about 100 cumulative years of paying for music lessons, if I'm factoring in all of the variables correctly. We ate a lot of scrambled eggs and pasta and red sauce, and I am so grateful that I have a robust musical education instead of memories of steak and pork chops. There are so many other parts to the story of my mother. She cared for my little brother Jacob during the year and a half that he fought cancer, and when he died at age 5, she spent the next year writing a book about him to try to overcome her grief. Six years later, she lost her last baby, Isaac, when he was born too early. Loss, grief, faith, pressing on, compassion, consecration--in the emotional lexicon of my brain, these words belong to my mother. But then, there's the many memories of seeing her at the kitchen table with the road atlas and a sheet of paper in front of her, carefully plotting out our annual family camping trips--an exhaustive itinerary complete with mile counts and equipment lists. There's the old book of "Having Fun in Southern California for Kids" (I made that title up--can't remember the real one), from which she planned summer and spring break and weekend outings to the California missions, Solvang, Olivera Street, the Central Library, the beach. My mother would claim that she's not good at having fun--and I have to say, you would be hard pressed to find a woman less likely to enjoy a manicure and lunch at a nice restaurant with a group of friends. But she created the conditions for fun and discovery and imagination and wonderment for her kids, and also for herself, I'm sure. Despite the fact that she was always holding a baby and handling a toddler, I know that she loved absorbing the rich history of Southern California, a place that I don't know if she'd even been to before she and my dad moved there after law school.

I could tell stories about my mother forever, and I probably will be. Telling stories about her is my way of navigating myself through the waterways of motherhood, as I continue to enter into the phase of life that she was in when I first came to know the world. My little Cici comes and wants to bounce on my crossed ankle as I'm nursing Joshey on the couch, and I remember doing that same thing to my mom as she was nursing Brigham. I find myself irrationally aggravated at Polly when she smears her fingers all over our front plate glass window, and I remember my mother's own battle against smudged windows. I find myself putting on mascara in the morning and putting on jewelry on Sunday, and I wonder if my children will remember me as being as beautiful as I thought Mama was. She defined beauty to me--her dark hair, her slender frame, her collection of Sunday dresses and Sunday shoes in the closet. Snow White couldn't have been more beautiful than my mom, I knew.

I don't mean to idealize my mother (though there would certainly be plenty of grist for that mill). One of the things that I value the most about her is that I've seen her grow and change as she's moved through different periods of life. She wants to keep growing and changing and progressing--she doesn't think she's perfect, and she's not going to stop battling the weaknesses that she feels she has. That is comforting to me, as I am so acutely aware of my own imperfections, even those that I think I should have overcome by now. My mother's greatest gift to me, I think, aside from giving me life, is her ability to see simultaneously my weaknesses and my potential. I know that I can't hide anything from her, no matter how much I might wish that some part of me didn't exist. But I also know that she sees in me infinite potential, infinite capacities for goodness and growth. And because she sees this, I believe it, too. Isn't that an amazing gift for a mother to give her daughter? The sure knowledge that the person who brought you into this life thinks that you will make good of it.

Happy Valentine's Day to the person who taught me first and most about love.

Hibernation

I've been hibernating from the world for the past couple of weeks--hoping, I suppose, that when I poke my head out, both the world and I will be full of springtime warmth and goodness. Well, no luck on the first count, though the weak winter sun is enough to warm our kitchen a bit, even if it can't melt the snow outside. As for the second count, I have learned plenty of times before now that the advent of some anticipated date or event doesn't flip some internal switch that activates the good habits and noble character that are slow to accrue in me. I did not become perfect when I started college. I did not live the flawless life on my mission. I certainly didn't become the ideal student when I started graduate school. And somehow I don't even approximate the discipline and hard work of my mother, now that I am a mother myself. But, in the words of Theodore Roethke, "I learn by going where I need to go." So I can't hibernate forever and hope that I'll wake up as the exemplary person. I'll blunder into a serviceable life if I keep at it. It won't come any other way, at least. All of which reminds me of something that my sister Rachel told me. She learned it from her mission president. "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly." The inverse is also true, of course--if something is worth doing, it's certainly worth doing well. But if it's worth doing at all, it's also worth doing badly, partially, start-and-stoppedly until you can do it better. You can't simply not do it until you can do it well, otherwise we wouldn't be able to do anything that doesn't come to us naturally. So I'll do the things that are worth doing in any manner I can, and I'll try to do them frequently enough to get the practice that I need to do them better.

Well, I didn't intend for this to become a cliche-ridden pep talk. What I really wanted was to give some snippets of Sloan life from the past couple of weeks:

Polly has discovered our treasury of "Harold and the Purple Crayon," and she's enjoyed re-enacting some of the stories on our picture wall.

A trip to Olive Garden--it's always important to document the fun things we do, lest our children doubt that we actually did them, don't you agree?

We've had some little babies in our house recently, and Joshey has been very drawn to them. If I could handle it, would 12 months be the perfect sibling interval? (TOTALLY facetious question, since the first condition in that question would never be met)

A couple of weeks ago, we spent a VERY long afternoon traipsing from car dealership to car dealership trying to resolve some minor issues with our minivan. The kids were truly phenomenal over the course of the 6-hour adventure. As were the other customers who didn't mind the occasional preschooler sprawled out over the floor.

My Eva

Yesterday was my little sister Eva's 20th birthday. If she were within calling distance of me, I would tell her what my best friend told me when I turned 20:

When you're 20, you're perfect. You're not 19 anymore, so you're not a teenager, but you're not yet 21, so you're not an adult. You're nobody, and everybody knows that nobody is perfect.

A year of being perfect, that's what my Eva has. And since she's a missionary in Russia, it will be the best kind of perfect. Not necessarily straight-A's and dreamy boyfriends, but the year that will be perfect for her. My mission was perfect for me. What could be more perfect for an insecure girl who grew up in affluent Southern California, who didn't know how to talk to boys, and who thought that being smart(er than other people) was the most important thing than going to Romania where people earning $20 a week insisted on treating me to pastries and coca-cola and where I got to work with 19-year-old missionaries who taught me that there was DEFINITELY nothing to be scared of in talking to boys. Oh, and where I learned that loving people is more important that being smarter than them. I don't know how my Eva's year of being a missionary will change her, but I am excited to be a witness to it.

From the Kitchen

Peaceful naptime on a Thursday afternoon. Just a few days ago, Dave pulled out the electric drill and put up a kitchen shelf that is going to and already has changed my life. It's my media center--out of reach of the children, but big enough for a laptop, a small speaker, our phone and answering machine (yes, we actually have an old fashioned answering machine), and my cell phone. Above it, I've hung my faithful little whiteboard that Dave and I conscientiously populate each Sunday night with the schedule for the coming week. So now, when I think of the most brilliant Facebook status update while elbow-deep in dishwater--voila, I can turn around, dry my hands, and impress the world :).

The shelf itself gave Dave some trouble. He found it for $6 at Goodwill (which is the right price and the right retail outlet for us at this point :), but it needed a fresh coat of paint and a little bit of sanding. So Dave took it out to our screened-in porch underneath the deck and worked on it a few nights last week. Well, it was FREEZING (actually, below freezing), and it turns out that spray paint doesn't apply so well in sub-zero temperatures. So a once-over turned into a thrice-over or more before Dave finally brought it inside and just slapped on a coat of acrylic white. He wasn't satisfied with the somewhat blotchy result, but I'm too impatient to be a perfectionist. And the sentimental part of me looks at the somewhat uneven finish as evidence that my husband loves me enough to spend not one, not two, but three freezing nights outside with the sander and the paintbrush, just so my life in my warm kitchen can be a little bit better.

And now, for your reading pleasure, a transcription of the song Polly was making up while I was writing this! (she has My Little Ponies on the brain)  

Even though I love the pony,
Walked and walked and ate the marshmallows!
These are all the places that I love!
When my sister was a little girl,
Princess Luna wasn't my friend anymore.

Not sure how to interpret this, but it's sure fun to listen to!

Happy Birthday, Joshey-Mosh!!!

So Joshua is officially one year old. The calendar cooperated nicely with us this year, giving Dave the day off for Martin Luther King Day. We celebrated by going to Chick-fil-A for lunch (always a grand treat), where I was that pushy mother who told the circulating serving staff that it was my son't birthday, so they brought him some free ice cream and sang Happy Birthday to the packed lunchtime crowd. I love making an exhibition of myself and the people I love :). In the afternoon, Polly went with Dave to pick out a Dollar Store present (a little clapping toy--perfect for Joshey, who loves to shake things and make noise), and I made a cake. Nothing fancy, just an old Halloween confetti cake mix that I'd stocked up on when the price went down to 25 cents per box at the beginning of November. Hope my kids like it, because we have about 15 of those boxes down in our food storage! Polly helped me decorate it with vanilla pudding, two tiaras, a bracelet, and Twilight Sparkle. Oh, what a boyhood Joshey has in store, with these two older sisters. Then we tried to wrangle the kids for some birthday games (roll the ball, tag with party blowers), and when it became apparent that the balance was tipping toward chaos, we shipped everyone off to bed. And thus begins our birthday year! Polly and Cici will be turning 5 and 3 in just a month, and we'll be spending a couple of days in Morgantown to celebrate (and for Dave to give a talk at WVU). I'm excited for that. But mostly I'm excited to have my little grinning, shrieking, walking, wrestling, exploring, climbing, 5-toothed 1-year-old!

Polly loves having me snap pictures of her but apparently hates actually looking up for them. No mind, she has a lovely profile, doesn't she?

The exact time that Joshey was born! (more or less--might have been 6:18 pm)

Pancakes and fresh pineapple for dinner.

Polly, again, not wanting her face captured on camera.This picture is so typical of so many things about our family :).

And the handsome little birthday boy himself.

'Twas the Night Before Joshey

Tomorrow is Joshey's birthday, which means that precisely one year ago today, I was home on a Saturday evening, straightening up the house after the girls went to bed. Dave was at the lab, slaving over another do-or-die experiment, and Joshey's due date was a couple of days away. After I got the house in decent shape, I eased my pregnant body into bed, and then I felt the tell-tale rush of fluid signalling that my water had ruptured. I was scared. I had known, of course, that labor and delivery was imminent, within the next week, but it's one thing to feel like something hard is a day or two away, after another full night of sleep, after another normal day perhaps, and it's something very different to realize that the hard thing has just started at that very moment. You've made it to the top of the water slide, and there's no one left in front of you in line. You sit down, and the only way out is through that dark, fast, frightening tunnel. I'd like to think that I knelt down and said a prayer first, and I probably did. Those are generally my instincts. Then I called Dave, who was slipping into the "die" part of the do-or-die experiment and was very willing to manfully set aside the possibility of his boss's wrath and come home to his laboring wife. Then I called my midwife, and then I called my dear friend Candida, who was my babysitter-on-call. I didn't know how fast labor would progress, and Candida assured me that she was ready to come over and stay with the girls no matter what hour of day or night. So I found my guided imagery labor-and-delivery CD (yes, I placed FULL trust in this soothing voice to get me through this difficult, scary thing), and I listened to it over and over as I was packing my hospital bag and working through the irregular, minor contractions that were developing. Oh, and I ate a big bowl of oatmeal, because I knew that as soon as I went to the hospital, all eating would cease. Then--nothing happened. I went to bed, I counted contractions, I slept, and by morning, productive labor hadn't started. But since my water had ruptured, I needed to go in to the hospital, so we dropped off the girls at Candida's house, took a few pictures, and were off to Mon General with the giddy excitement of going on a very long date without the kids (that giddyness didn't last too long). I won't recount the full birth story, which probably isn't entirely suited for a public audience anyway, since it ends with my shrieking like a banshee as Joshey finally emerged at 6:20 pm that night. But I find myself dwelling on that night before Joshey's birth. It feels heavy, solemn, even dark in my memory. Dave was unhappy at work, and we had recently realized that this meant a major divergence in his career path, with all of the accompanying financial and family insecurity and uncertainty. I was quite concerned about my little Cici, whose speech was very noticeably delayed by that point. It was the middle of a long, cold winter, and I knew that I was embarking on the fatigue of mothering an infant. It just seemed like a stark realization of all of the heaviness and difficulty that was awaiting us without that emboldening joy that comes from holding a newborn and seeing how little everything else matters in comparison. Now we are here, a year later, with a chubby, dapper little toddler enthroned as the reigning baby in our house. He charms everyone he sees, and he beams light out at the world. He is as strong and as good as his name. The year of uncertainty and fear and darkness and heaviness, the year of long, tense conversations late into the night and grim calculations of our savings account, the year of unpaid internships and job applications, the year of packing up and saying goodbye and then unpacking and saying hello--that year has ended now. I was making the very unremarkable observation to Dave that the first year of Polly's life seemed like FOREVER, and the first year of Cici's life seemed quite long, but the first year of Joshey's life flashed by. I really do feel like our family was scooped up by a kind, protective, wise hand and placed down in a new and more sure place. Polly was my Tuesday child ("Tuesday's child is full of grace"), Cici was my Monday child ("Monday's child is fair in face"), and Joshey is my Sunday child ("But the one who is born on the Sabbath Day is bonny and blithe and good and gay").

Winter in Parkville

Friday is the most celebratory day of the week around here. The hour between when Dave gets home in the evening and when the kids go to bed somehow seem the most carefree and full of potential. The weekend seems endlessly accommodating to whatever chores or outings we want to do, and I still have the hope that the bathroom will be cleaned, the laundry will be done, and the house will be sparkling before Sunday (taking the sacrament with the assurance of having left a clean house is heaven to me :). By even mid-morning on Saturday, I come back to earth a little bit and realize that the limitations of time and space still apply, even on weekends. But here, for your viewing pleasure, is a snapshot of our Friday. We took a late afternoon walk to shake off some of the cabin-fever-crazies. Joshey wasn't so interested in being pushed in the stroller as in pushing the stroller himself :). In the meantime, Polly was being a very good little mommy to her Purple Baby (official name, of course). But the best time of all was when Daddy came home. Joshey lights up like a spotlight as soon as he sees Dave. Last night, I was getting some pizza in the oven (I have a great and easy recipe for thin-crust pizza, if you ever want it--ready in 20 minutes!) while the girls were downstairs and Joshey was eating canned peaches. Joshey had a clear view to the front door, so when Dave got home and tried to sneak up on me, Joshey ruined his surprise by bursting into a happy chatter and huge grin. 

Now it's Saturday, late-morning. Dave took the girls to their weekly library outing, and Joshey just woke up from his morning nap. We'll head off to the B&O Museum as soon as the girls come back, and then it'll be time for "Installation Afternoon"--installing our new diaper sprayer, our new flag/flagpole bracket on the front porch, a shelf in the kitchen. Like I said, endlessly accommodating to our wildest desires of productivity and fun, right? 

Singing in the Basement

I have a dear friend, Julie, who is trying to keep three little babies safely gestating in her belly for 11 or 12 more weeks. She's had quite a few scares with them over the past couple of weeks, and after driving across state lines in a tricked-out minivan to get life-saving surgery for two of them, she's now on complete bedrest until they come. Which means, of course, that she'll need good reading material between now and April. So, my beloved Julie, I'm going to try to provide you with frequent entertainment from the Sloan corner of the world. I wish I were close enough to rub your feet and clean your bathroom and play the piano for you, but since I'm not, I'll give you a peek into the craziness of three children that will soon be your life. Of course, I came by my three children over the course of 4 years, not all at one time. So this is like getting tutoring for the AP Calculus exam from a remedial math student (which, coincidentally, is also what I am these days).

So your story for today, my dearest Julie, is right up your alley because it's all about singing (Julie, for those who don't know her, has a divine voice). By the time Dave came home yesterday evening, I'd worked myself into being grumpy. The reason? Because I'm spoiled rotten. When we lived in Morgantown and Dave was a simple post-doc, he was usually home by about 5:25 pm, because he worked a mile away and could walk fast. (Dave would interject here and remind me that he was either home at 5:25 pm or at, like, 3 am if he were doing an experiment and had to stay late. Whatever, Dave. Just go along with the story). Well, now that we're in Baltimore and he's a big-time grunt in a consulting company, he's usually home around 5:45, and this week, it was after 6 every night. This is where the spoiled rotten part comes in--I have several sisters and a truckload of friends who would salivate at the prospect of having their husbands home that early. But not me. I have commute envy. I know that Dave leaves the office shortly after 5, so between 5 and whenever he comes home, while the kids are getting grumpier and clingier and hungrier and louder, I'm dwelling darkly on how Dave is just relaxing in the car. He's probably listening to an audio book or singing along with a CD. He has not a care in the world, now that he's clocked out of work. He's planning which old episode of Lost he'll watch tonight, or what project he'll work on after the kids go to bed, which will be about 20 minutes after he comes home. As for me, I lament to myself, my work day starts at 6 am when Joshey wakes up and doesn't end until the last girl stops coming down for one last drink of water. And then the swing shift starts for Joshey's midnight and 3 am snack. Dave doesn't even know how hard I work, I think while slamming dinner dishes on the table. He gets to go to the bathroom without a child climbing onto his lap. H eats lunch sitting down. He can check his e-mail without getting interrupted every three minutes. Anyway, you get the idea. These are the complaints of someone who is spoiled rotten. There's probably a single mom or two out there that would have something to say about my work load. Nevertheless, these were my thoughts as 6 pm came and went and Dave still wasn't home. He came home not long after that, and I managed to be civil during dinner. Except there wasn't really dinner for me, because Joshey started throwing food and throwing fits after I'd had about three bites. So I got up, put Joshey in the bathtub, and then, because martyrs don't sit back down to eat after they've been interrupted at dinner, I went downstairs to hang up a load of laundry. I actually highly recommend hanging laundry if you're in a bad mood. You can feel sorry for yourself because you're doing something that servants used to have to do three hundred years ago. But there's also some physical outlet in snapping the clothes sharply to get the wrinkles out before hanging them up and in all of the bending down and standing up. So for whatever reason, I started to feel better almost immediately. And once the first edge of self-pity wore off, I started to sing. "Goodnight, My Someone," from the Music Man, then "Lida Rose." By this time, Dave and the girls had finished dinner, and Dave was finishing bathing Joshey. The bathroom is right above the laundry room, and down through the heating ducts and water pipes, I heard Dave join in with me. He would take the harmony line; I would have to listen to keep the right timing with him. We finished our Music Man repertoire and moved on to "Oh, how lovely is the evening." Then, as I finished hanging the last shirt, Dave was there at the door with a clean-smelling, cheerful, freshly-diapered baby. And my bad mood was over.

Made it through Tuesday!

Have I ever mentioned that Tuesday is one of my hardest days? The weekend is already a thing of the past, the next weekend is still a thing of the distant future, and Polly doesn't have preschool, which means that it's just one long day stuck inside trying to stay warm and sane. But we made it through today. We had a couple of speech therapy-related visits for little Cici (which are always gratifying, because no matter how delayed Cici's speech may be, she just charms the pants off of anyone who spends any time with her). I hung a couple of loads of laundry (I'm perfecting my use of the straight pin, which means I can hang an entire load-and-a-half on a laundry line that crosses my laundry room ceiling and the basement hall just once. Ma Ingalls would be so proud!). Then around 3:30 pm, when Joshey was up from his nap, the house was in its usual state of afternoon shambles, and all of the kids were just beginning to get extremely whiny, I called my sister Rachel and had her talk me through the duldrums. "You can make it, Naomi," she said. "Just give yourself permission to do nothing else for the rest of the day except play with your kids. Don't worry about cleaning the bathroom [how well she knows me], don't worry about returning e-mails, just play with your kids and then put them to bed an hour early. And do some deep breathing." How wise my little sister is. I tucked the kids under my arm, took them downstairs where the pellet stove was keeping the basement nice and cozy, and I just started--well, I just started singing at the top of my lungs and picking up blocks. "Oh an Austrian went yodeling on a mountain so high, when along came a cookoo-bird interrupting his cry!" It's amazing how cathartic it is to belt. And the kids were thrilled. Polly joined in with the cleaning, Cici became interested in actually playing with the blocks (which is fine with me!), and Joshey toddled around from one end of the playroom to the other, delighted. Somehow Polly and I ended up in a game of chase around the basement, me still singing at the top of my lungs and still trying to clean up--and let me tell you, singing and running and stooping to pick up toys is great exercise! So we got through Tuesday afternoon, and the basement was even decently picked up by the end of it. Of course, 30 minutes later I was forcing Cici into the bathtub and she was wailing at the top of her lungs, but that happens. In the meantime, here's my wise sister and my charming daughter. On to Wednesday!