Processing Some Grief

Yesterday morning, I had two living grandparents. This evening, I have no living grandparents.

Apologies if that is a bit of downer way to forge back into this blog space that I've been absent from for almost half a year now, but of all the things I have to say, that is the one I need to say the loudest right now.

It was such an unintentional blogging break. At first I stayed away because things were busy, and I had other writing projects that needed my full attention. Then I stayed away because I got pregnant, and as has been the pattern, proceeded to get even sicker than any pregnancy before. I've been in survival mode for the past two months, honestly just trying to stay alive. So that explains some of the more immediate reasons for my absence.

But then there's the bigger picture. The weight of what we've all been experiencing these past months, these past weeks, and for me, these past two days. There's the protests and heated discussions around racial prejudice and police brutality (I did write a bit about that here). There's the election, the politics, the vitriol and hate being spread everywhere. There was that horrifying day on January sixth, when a sitting president goaded extremists to attack democracy. There's so much in all of this, so much that needs to be said, so much I want to add my voice to... but I'm just tired. And sick. Not an excuse, I just have to pick my battles, and right now, the battle is keeping food down in my stomach and not wretched up in the toilet (a battle I'm still losing all too frequently, despite being fifteen weeks along).

And then there's the pandemic. Remember this post, when I wrote about thriving under quarantine conditions? I've not minded this year the way many have. I'm an introvert at heart, and having the excuse to stay home, to not have people over, to not have to go to that social engagement... it's been a reprieve. Also, I must say being first-trimester pregnant in a pandemic has been nothing short of a blessing, with no expectations to be anywhere or show up or look good.

But last week my grandparents contracted Covid-19. My grandmother had already been ill for a while. She's been on hospice since last June, and when we went to Utah in July, we visited them knowing it was probably the last time we'd see her alive (honestly, we've all been a little surprised she was hanging on this long). But my grandfather, at 93, was healthy and spry, still able to fully care for my grandmother and himself. Longevity runs in his family (his older brother is still kicking at 96), and I anticipated many more years of his presence. I anticipated him meeting this last child of mine, somewhere in a Covid-free future.

But then he got the virus, and they admitted him to the hospital. Eventually, his lungs and heart began failing, and they sent him home Saturday. He passed away Sunday around noon. Amazingly, my grandmother survived him, but only by 23 hours. She passed away earlier today.

And this is how I will remember the pandemic now. Not as a theoretical disease that everyone is overreacting about, not as a problem that "other people" are dealing with, not even as that funny little disease my brother got one time that made him lose his taste for a few weeks.

Now it's the disease that took my grandparents.

Yes, they were old. Yes, my grandmother was going to die anyway. But I'm still so terribly sad about it.

And happy. They wanted to go. They were ready. My grandpa didn't want to watch another wife die (he lost his first wife to complications of MS when she was 29), he didn't want to live alone. And my grandma clung to life because, I'm sure, she didn't want to leave him. In a way, it's beautiful they got to go together. Devastating, but beautiful.

I didn't intend for this post to be a tribute to my grandparents. I intended to pop on here and say, Hi! I've missed this space! I have so many books to talk about!

But I'm in the middle of my grief, and these are the words that are coming right now. Perhaps I'm back here because I need to write, not about books (not yet, I'll get around to that), but about my grandpa.

My grandpa was named Milton E. Smith. He was the youngest son of Joseph Fielding Smith, the grandson of Joseph F. Smith, the great-grandson of Hyrum Smith. When we visited with him in July, he looked at my son Josh and said, "Your relationship with me is the same as my relationship with Hyrum Smith." And that's what my grandpa is, a link to this incredible heritage, this incredible family history we share.

I love the stories my Dad tells about having a prophet for a grandfather. He once dropped by his grandpa's home with a friend while in Salt Lake City, and they were warmly greeted by Aunt Jesse and invited to sit at the kitchen table and chat for a minute. After leaving, my Dad's friend exclaimed, "I can't believe it! There he was, the prophet of the church, just sitting at the table cracking peanuts! Like a normal person!" And my Dad was like, "Well, of course he's a normal person. He's just Grandpa."

But I love the stories my grandpa used to tell, of Joseph Fielding sneaking out of meetings to go to his son's football games (my grandpa was quarterback for the University of Utah, back in the day), or the letters they used to get while in the military or on missions that were like sermons, full of scripture and counsel. My grandpa loved to share how when he was in the Navy, stationed in Chicago, he wrote home to tell the family about going to see a Chicago Bears game. Joseph Fielding, knowing the games were played on Sundays, wrote back to my grandpa a two page letter outlining the ten commandments and stressing the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy. That letter lives in family lore.

But my grandpa himself was a great man. He loved his family fiercely. He kept detailed records of all his children, grandchildren, and great-children, and especially our addresses so he could send, without fail every year, a birthday card with a crisp $10 bill tucked inside. Every year. For every grand-child and great-grandchild. He never missed, not even this last year as he took care of my failing grandmother (he enlisted some help at the end). My last communication with my grandpa was an email a few weeks ago that he sent explaining that the card for my oldest son's birthday would be late, as it had been accidentally sent to the wrong address at first. I guess he did miss, because he never sent a card for my daughter's birthday that happened just five days later, but I can hardly fault him.

 I will miss those cards from him every year.

When I turned eight, he traveled down to St. George for my baptism. I remember, after I was confirmed a member of the church, standing and shaking the hands of all the men in my circle. When I got to my grandfather, he refused to shake my hand and instead declared, "This deserves a hug!" before sweeping me up into a big bear hug. He was a man generous with his hugs.

My grandpa was a temple sealer, and I was privileged to have him officiate my own wedding at the Mount Timpanogos Temple. The chandeliers in the sealing rooms have a very distinctive pattern, a cross with four crystals on the bottom, and branching crosses of eight, sixteen, and so on crystals as it moved up each level. As I held hands with my soon-to-be husband across the altar, my grandpa gave a speech that I'm sure he delivered to most the couples he sealed in that room, about how we were two hands being linked that day, but above us in that chandelier symbolized all the generations before us who were also linked by the sealing power, four parents, eight grandparents, sixteen great-grandparents, and so on. Only this time, for my wedding, he could name many of the links for my side. He was one of them.

How grateful I am to be eternally sealed to my grandparents! To be eternally sealed to the incredible legacy of family before him. I cherish my heritage so much. And so, while I will miss my grandparents terribly, I know I will see them again.

And if none of you read through all of that tribute, those precious memories of mine, that's fine. This post is for me anyway. But I've got so many more things I want to write about, so many good books to talk about, so much to catch up on. I have no guarantees or promises that there will be time (I'm still pretty sick, still busy with this little thing called writing a dissertation, still teaching, still raising three kids and trying to keep a marriage alive), but I will always come back here. I've missed you. I'll be back.

Summer Recap

I always have such high hopes for summer. For a few months, I get to be a real stay-at-home mom. I get to focus on my projects, my pleasure reading, my agenda. There's time to get the house back in order after a school year of neglect. And there's time for fun. Road trips! Reunions! Swimming and park playing and staying up late to watch movies!

And then, of course, you get a few weeks in and despite having finally scrubbed all the bathrooms for the first time in months every surface is dirtier than ever because we are all home all day long making messes, and those trips to the park actually turn out to be kind of miserable because it is so dang sweaty hot, and staying up late for fun activities does not translate to my kids sleeping in later the next morning (why can everyone else's kids sleep in?!?!?) so they are all super grumpy, and there are several attempts at potty training that make me want to lose my mind, and I realize all over again that being a stay-at-home mom is actually just as difficult as being a working mom because of that incredibly draining part where your children never seem to let you even go to the bathroom alone, or so much as finish a thought. Living in a state of constant distraction is exhausting.

So here we are, dragging ourselves to the finish line of summer. My oldest has been in school for a week-and-half now, but the Littles and I start on Monday. I'm both salivating over that quiet little dungeon office where I'll get to spend up to six uninterrupted hours a day not wiping poop off of anyone's bum, and feeling incredibly apprehensive and sad that our beautiful season of freedom and fun is over. In an effort to help remind myself that this summer actually was fun (and not just an unending series of tantrums and bug bites), I'm journaling some of our highlights here. It's all about perspective, so let's focus on the positive!

Smith Family Reunion

My family is pretty spread apart, and we hadn't all been together since my brother's wedding in 2016. Two babies joined the family in the meantime, and it was well past time for us to get together again, so we finally made an official reunion happen this past June in Island Park, Idaho (my aunt and uncle own a cabin there which was able to house the whole crew, and it was just perfect!).

We had the longest trek to make to get there, and we broke it up into a two-day road trip which was actually fairly pleasant.

My favorite part of the road trip was pulling over to a rest stop in the mountains above Jackson Hole to build a snowman! In June! It was a little piece of whimsy that the kids talked about for days, and was so worth the fifteen minute delay and muddy shoes.

We rafted down streams, spent a day hiking in Yellowstone, saw waterfalls, ate a ton of really good food, played games, sang songs and roasted marshmallows by the campfire, and generally had an amazing time just hanging out together.

We hired a photographer to get some real family pictures together, and while it was a bit of a miserable experience (the sun sets so late we couldn't start till 8 PM, and with the time zone change my kids were exhausted and going crazy and had to be bribed with a constant stream of jelly beans, also it was really cold, because, Idaho), but it was worth every penny. Beautiful family, beautiful location, beautiful memories. I love these people so much, and I'm so happy we got to spend time with them all again, even if it was just a few days.

4th of July

You guys, I didn't take a single picture worth mentioning over the 4th of July. I blame this on the fact that my husband was out of town for five days over that holiday. He went to a board game convention in Florida and spent his Independence Day playing game after game after game in a hotel ballroom with a bunch of other sweaty guys (actually there were some women too, and even children!) (and, also, it wasn't all that sweaty, because my husband complained about how fierce the AC was the whole time). I, on the other hand, corralled the three kids over to my in-laws for a weekend of barbecues and paddleboarding on the lake (although we got rained out on that adventure), and staying up late to watch fireworks (and then being very grumpy the next day, because like I said, my kids are physically incapable of sleeping in). It was all much fun, but solo parenting (even with in-laws involved) over a holiday weekend with sugared up kids is anything but relaxing. Also, we got some of the worst chigger bites of the season this weekend. Summer highs and lows right there.

San Francisco Trip

My sister has been living in the Bay Area for the past three years, and I always figured we'd get out there to visit her and get a good tour of her stomping grounds at some point. But then this spring she up and applied to MBA school and got accepted and suddenly we had a deadline to get out there this summer before she moved back to Utah. So we squeezed a weekend trip in between conventions and reunions. We bought our plane tickets back in May when this seemed like the best weekend available, but then her really good friend went and got engaged and scheduled her wedding for this very same weekend. So it ended up being a bit of a crazy schedule, with her trying to balance being tour guide and maid of honor, and we ended up crashing the wedding reception (which I didn't mind one bit, considering the bride's family owns a chocolate company and that dessert table was one of the most exquisite things I've ever seen, and you better believe I left that party stuffing handfuls of decadent chocolates in my pockets and purse).

We actually ended up missing our flight out of Kansas City (it was a super early morning flight, and we naturally got out the door a little later than planned (guys, 3:45 AM is hard on a body), and din't take into account the fact that security would be bonkers that time of day, but surprisingly United was amazing and rebooked us on a new flight out just forty minutes later (and even refunded us $10 per flight? Because it was cheaper?), but because of the stress of it all by the time we landed I had a major headache and was super nauseous. It took me half a sandwich, a couple of ibuprofen, and nearly throwing up on the side of the road before I picked up enough energy to dive into our touristing schedule. Our first stop was the Golden Gate Bridge (naturally), and I feel like I still look a bit peaky in this photo, but all that brisk Bay breeze up on the bridge really helped pick me back up. I'll spare you the onslaught of photos, but we spent the rest of this day roaming around San Fran, and what a charming little city that is! Never want to live there, but it was so fun to visit!

Day 2 included some hiking in the redwoods, hitting up the beach at Half Moon Bay, and then an evening strolling about Stanford campus and the Palo Alto area (not pictured, but really beautiful campus).

Saturday was wedding day. We did a session in the newly renovated Oakland temple during the ceremony, and made it out in time to catch some photos of the wedding party. You can see my sister there in her maid-of-honor glory (she's not really that much taller than me, she just had on some fancy high heels and I was in flats). The reception was down in Carmel, which was about 2.5 hours south of Oakland, so we headed down there. Nathan and I wandered about that cute little touristy town and had a little picnic dinner on the beach before crashing the latter end of the reception. We flew out super early Sunday morning, so it was a quick trip, but I'm so glad we made it! It was a ton of fun and I would not mind a more extensive trip back to the Bay Area again some day (and next time, I'll be prepared with warmer jackets, those are chilly beaches!).

Tanner Family Reunion

Toward the end of July, we had a small Tanner family reunion on my husband's side. This one was close to home for us, because it revolved around his little sister's mission farewell, so it all happened at my in-law's home and we just had to travel across the border to Missouri. Festivities were dampened quite a bit, however, when my father-in-law suffered a minor stroke the week before the reunion, and then in the hospital they discovered even more serious and concerning issues with his heart that required quite a few procedures. So he was in the hospital for the whole weekend, and several of the planned activities were canceled and he missed the farewell talk.

We had quite a time cramming this crew into his hospital room for visits a couple times.

But we did manage to make it out to the lake for a fun swim day with the cousins! So it was still a great time.

The week after that was rather stressful for my in-laws, as Evy continued to prepare for her mission while my father-in-law prepared for what we thought at the time was going to be open-heart triple-bypass surgery. We went out to dinner with the family the night before Evy left, and then we headed over to the hospital where she was set apart. She flew to Utah the next day while my father-in-law went in for surgery. They ended up not doing the bypass surgery, opting instead for stents (which, while being a less invasive surgery, was actually a choice they made to keep him viable for a heart transplant at some point in the future). Anyway, while everything is fine and he's home from the hospital now and recovering well, we were all a little tense and stressed for a while there. Like I said, this summer has been all about highs and lows.

Little Things

We had a lot of other smaller activities, of course. I tried to plan some fun outings on a weekly basis. We usually made it to the library once a week, and had the occasional swimming or splash pad outing, or trip to the local nature preserve. Some of these little outings were fun, most were a struggle. If it wasn't the two-year-old throwing one of her epic tantrums, it was the four-year-old having an anxiety melt-down, or the seven-year-old exhibiting some early signs of attitude (everything was dumb and boring, which made me want to scream at him so much). Kids are so unappreciative of how awesome their lives are.

Surprisingly, while taking my kids on outings was usually a flop, staying home and in our usual routine was shockingly successful this summer. All three of my kids play really well together, and they had a great summer making circuses in the backyard, and building block cities around the basement, and all around just keeping each other entertained together. I mean, we had occasional spats (usually between the younger two), but I've got to say, this is the cutest group of little sibling friends, and it melts my heart every day to see how much they enjoy each other. I hope this dynamic lasts forever (fingers crossed!).

And speaking of staying home and sticking to routine, we actually had a surprising amount of success with chore charts this summer too, which I might write about at some point. And also, it meant I got a ton of reading in. So maybe that sounds super boring, but hey, I'm calling it a win!

But, it's over now, and we all head back to school/preschool/daycare on Monday. This semester will be very different for me, as I no longer have any coursework of my own. I will still be teaching and holding office hours, but I will be spending the rest of my time reading like mad to prepare for my exams (orals, comps, whatever they are called) which I'm tentatively scheduled to take around the end of November. I have so much work to do (I am feeling so much overwhelm and anxiety about preparing for these exams), but the scary thing is, this starts the part of my PhD journey that is all self-directed. I'm in charge of my schedule, and while there is a ton of work to do, I'm the one who has to set the pacing. So, if you notice me posting here or on Instagram a little too frequently, feel free to remind me to stop procrastinating (writing here will definitely be one of my pleasant procrastination tactics!) and get back to reading all the early modern drama! I really need to be disciplined, which means I probably need to be a little MIA around here.

So farewell sweet summer! Good-bye dear readers! I'll drop by occasionally (got to keep up with my monthly round-up posts at least), but you really shouldn't hear much from me until exams are over. Wish me luck!

Resolved: To Get Back on the Wagon

I crave routine.

I crave habits. They are the glue that holds my days together. They help me accomplish all the things I need and want to do every day without the exhaustion of making a million small decisions. They automate my life, so I can focus my mental energy on higher order things.

But the conundrum I've been dealing with forever is that so many of my routines get disrupted frequently, regularly, annoyingly. I implement practices with the best intentions, trying to squeeze the most value out of my time and life, when something comes along and throws a wrench in all the delicate cogwork of these routines and I get all out of sorts. Everything falls apart.

Here are my disrupters:

-New babies (massive disrupters, and super tricky because they disrupt things for months, then years).
-Illness (my own, or anyone in my family)
-Lack of sleep (usually due to babies, but also due to deadlines, illness, peer pressure)
-Vacations/holidays
-Children (like babies, very needy, just older and able to express those needs)
-Husbands (particularly ones who have habits that conflict with my own, like staying up late when I'd like to get to bed early)

At one point in 2018, I was doing really pretty good with my routines. My morning routine is the most important, as it sets the tone for my entire day. Over the summer and through the first part of fall semester, I was doing great at getting to bed early, and then waking up at 5:30 every morning to get all of my personal care in (exercise, scripture/mediation, shower/dressed, etc.) long before the kids were awake. The routine felt solid, and life felt good.

But then things got tougher. Everyone kept getting sick. My youngest rotated through periods of teething (2 year molars are beastly) and minor colds that kept her nose so clogged she couldn't sleep. So instead of the routine of solid sleep we developed the routine of waking up crying several times a night, leaving me exhausted and ragged in the mornings. Poof, there goes the morning routine of virtue!

Then things got busier at school. Papers and projects started piling up, and other things started slipping, like the laundry and any semblance of cleanliness. Our already chaotic mornings were now in even worse shape due to the prolonged searches for wearable clothes through the piles of mostly clean, sometimes dirty laundry strung around my bedroom. I shamefully ushered guests out of the boys bathroom on the second floor, redirecting them to the (marginally) cleaner guest bathroom in the basement, because at least that toilet wasn't encrusted in layers of urine from two young boys with terrible aim. Every floor of every room was barely visible under the layers of clothes, books, legos, and general grime.

Then the holidays happened, with all the chaos and disruption those bring. My schedule relaxed once the semester ended, but life was still full with to-dos and activities and birthdays and family parties and more illness and less sleep and still no routines.

I suppose I could pat myself on the back for the routines that did manage to survive the chaos. I seem incapable of losing my death grip on our meal planning/dinner making routine (I just don't have a drive-through/take-out easy button in my personality, and the only time I've ever served cold cereal is in the depths of first-trimester pregnancy). I managed to keep up my routine of a hot vegetable breakfast almost every morning (more on this later). I showered mostly every day. So you know, we're not talking newborn-stage chaos here.

Just life.

Just a busy, full, wonderful life, and life is full of disruptions. I'm am (slowly, oh so slowly) coming to terms with the fact that I must make peace with disruption. I must figure out, mentally and emotionally, how to roll with the punches, pick myself back up, and, metaphorically speaking, get back on the wagon.

My habits are only habits if they resurface after the disruptions are past. It takes months and months of effort sometimes to establish healthy routines, but it only takes a day to derail everything. And once a routine or a habit is derailed, it can take just as much effort to get it back on track as it took to start it initially.

Which is why my New Year's resolution, or intention for the year, or whatever we want to call it, is to simply get back on the wagon.

When everyone gets sick, take care of the bodies and when things feel healthy enough, get back on the wagon.

When life gets busy at school, pare life down to the minimum to get through and when the deadline is past, get back on the wagon.

When it's been a while since I've done something I want to be a habit, stop berating myself for the failure and just get back on the wagon.

Disruptions will come. Life will change. People will need things. So I must change and adjust and be flexible too, and as soon as life lets me, I must get back on the wagon.

Here are some habits and routines where I particularly want to cultivate this mindset in this year:

The Morning Routine
I've talked about this one enough that I'm sure you all get it. This is foundational to my day, my self-care, my everything. When I get up early and get things done, I feel awesome about life.

My biggest disrupter here is lack of sleep. Sometimes I'm in control of this (see later on, about getting to bed earlier), but recently I've not had much control over this. As any new mom will tell you, when you wake up multiple times a night, you're just dead the next morning, and my two-year-old has been as bad as a newborn recently (and when it's not her, it'll be my middle child getting disoriented after a middle-of-the-night bathroom trip, or something else, it's inevitable). But that just means I need to work extra hard to make up the lost sleep elsewhere so that I can get back to waking up early without feeling like death.

Also this next semester, I'm going to have my earliest leave-the-house time on Monday/Wednesday/Fridays (I have to get myself and the two littles out the door by 7:45 AM AT THE LATEST), and I'm anxious about how this will affect my morning routine. On the pro side, it will force me to wake up early because I actually have to get out the door. On the con side, I'll probably be tempted to cut corners and drop my ideal morning routine to make it out the door on time. My goal is to make my mornings feel as satisfying as possible, so we'll see how this goes.

Exercise
Usually this one is part of my morning routine, so when the morning routine dies, I don't get any exercise. But I'd like to work on the mindset that if it doesn't happen in the morning, it can happen at some other point.

Like I mentioned earlier, I had a rough semester at the end this past year, and I was feeling the tension of it. So for Christmas, I asked for a massage. After getting all situated on the table, my masseuse came in, and barely graced my neck with her fingers before she exclaimed, "Oh my goodness, are you in pain?!?!" Apparently I was hard as a rock, and she just couldn't believe that I was functioning. Throughout the entire massage, she kept dropping comments like, "Wow, are you sure this isn't hurting you? I mean, you've got a lot of issues here, and that's kind of an understatement. Are you sure you're not in pain?" While I'm not in pain most of the time, yes, I can feel the tension in my shoulders and neck, and I have a history of debilitating neck problems caused by stress (one happened right before my wedding, another after the birth of my third child and before our cross-country move). The long story short is that, if I don't want to end up a dysfunctional stress basket, I NEED to stretch more. I need to keep up with my yoga. I need to take care of my body.

I need exercise to be more of a priority, and I need this habit to stick in my life even when the routine it's tied to gets disrupted. The mindset is not if I'm going to exercise today, but when am I going to fit it in.

Spiritual Care
This one on a daily level, like exercise, is usually tied to my morning routine, which means if my morning routine falls apart, this one can be neglected. However, I've been much better with this one about moving it around to other times of the day when it doesn't happen in the morning.

I still need a better routine for getting to the temple. This past year I finally reconciled myself to the fact that at this stage in our lives, going alone is easier than finding childcare to go as a couple, and that drastically improved my attendance. But the second mental hurdle I'm still grappling with is the fact that the most convenient session to get to is the 8 PM one on Friday evenings. We have the long standing tradition of Friday night movie night followed by an in-home date night, and it does feel like a sacrifice to miss out on that family/couple time, but I just need to tell myself that missing once a month is not the end of the world.

Cleaning
Laura Vanderkam, an author I follow who writes a lot about time management, suggests that home cleaning is one area where maybe we could all afford to lower our standards. This isn't the 1950s anymore, she counsels, and we can let standards go to free up time for other more important things. She suggests that women should step back from house-cleaning chores and just see what happens... eventually, if things get bad enough, someone else (a husband, maybe even an older child) is bound to step in and pick up the slack.

Hahahahahahahahaha!

No.

From my experience at the end of last semester, what happens when I stop cleaning is that things degrade to bachelor pad levels. Okay, that's not entirely fair. The one cleaning routine we did manage to hold on to was the daily dishes routine. So at some point every day, at least the dishes would get done, either by me or my husband. And often, that means counters would get wiped and occasionally even the kitchen floor would get swept. But honestly, that was it. Every other room in our house was pretty much a cesspit. I've already mentioned the state of our bathrooms. There is a point where it just becomes unlivable. In this new year, something's got to change. This has got to be a higher priority, or the quality of my daily happiness and life will seriously deteriorate.

I would love, of course, to be able to hire a regular cleaning service, but frankly, we have too many other financial goals that are a higher priority. And while a cleaning service would definitely fix the problem of pee-crusted toilets, they wouldn't do much in the way of solving my daily laundry problems, or the endless piles of paper clutter that seem to build up everywhere, nor will they do the dishes for me everyday. So I've just got to figure out some new routines, or at least some new mindsets, to help me tackle this area of my life.

One of my big problems is that I always feel like I need a good chunk of time, two or three hours, to really tackle an area or a room and get it back up to snuff. I don't have that kind of time. But (as I learned here) I do occasionally find fifteen minute chunks of time. Doing something small may feel like not nearly enough, but it's got to be loads better than doing nothing at all. Right? (Well, not according to Laura). That's the mindset I want to cultivate. Do as much as you can, when you can. A little bit is better than nothing. Small habits build up. Cleanliness does a lot to improve my mood and sense of control, so it's okay for it to be a priority.

Nighttime Routine

My ideal here is to start the nighttime routine by 9 PM and be in bed/asleep by 9:30 PM (9:30 to 5:30 = 8 hours of sleep = my happy place). But I've got several major disrupters here. There's the pull of all the things I could do once the kids are asleep (and during the busiest parts of the semester, evenings are my work time). There's also the peer pressure from my husband, who is a natural night owl and likes to hang out in the evenings. This is my biggest problem because, you know, I like the guy, and I only get so much time with him (and kid-free time is at even more of a premium).

But (as my husband is well aware of) I am just not a happy person when I don't get enough sleep. So this is definitely one of those areas that I just want to keep pushing at, keep reaching for, keep getting back on the wagon with. Maybe I'll have a late night of work stuff, but that doesn't have to be every night. I just need to keep working at getting enough sleep, because everything else is better when I do.

Play

What do I mean by this? How do you have routines of play? I don't know, but this is definitely something I need more of in my life, and when I need more of something, I try to figure out how to make it a routine. This one is actually almost a contradiction to everything I'm trying to establish in all my other routines, because what I want here is more time with my people, more time relaxing, more time just being chill. But usually to get there, I have to sacrifice sleep, or time spent on personal care, or work, or cleaning or whatever. There are just never enough hours in the day, ever. But play is important too. Giving my kids and spouse quality time with me is important too. So what does this mean? I don't know yet. Only that I don't get enough of it and I need more. So I'll spend this year thinking about it and see if I can't figure out what it means to have a routine for play.

So I'm not mentioning here the routines that already seem to be pretty well in place, the ones that don't seem to be getting disrupted as much (like how I manage to make dinner every day, or read to my children every day). Nor does this include other areas of my life that I'd love to implement routines for but that just aren't reaching the right priority level for me right now. But they all play into the idea of how I want my life to run: automatically, in grooves that are familiar and help me find time for all the best things in life. These may not be SMART goals here, but this is what I want to spend this year focusing on. The mindset. The priorities. Find a way to make these things a regular part of daily, weekly, monthly life.

And when life gets in the way, when the disruptions come and everything falls apart?

Get back on the wagon.

The Perfect Summer

Recently (for pretty much my entire marriage), I've dreaded summer.

I know this is completely opposite of everyone on the planet (it feels like), but let me explain:

-We always move in the summer. Sure, we don't move as much as some people (only three really big moves in the past 10 years), but nothing is worse than moving, and it completely ruins my summers.

-I've been pregnant three times in the summer. Twice, it was through the whole awful just-kill-me-now-because-I've-lost-the-will-to-live first trimester, and with the middle one, it was through the huge-as-a-beached-whale final trimester. Something about being pregnant in the summer, when you're supposed to travel and be out and about doing fun things and your kids stay up late and wake up early because of all the extra light... doing summer while pregnant just depresses me.

-I'm a creature of habit and routine. And summer throws it all off. Sometimes in a nice way, but mostly in a disruptive way that leaves me feeling slightly off-kilter.

-I HATE being sweaty. I also hate the artificial feeling of air conditioning (especially when it feels cold enough that you actually need a sweater in doors to be comfortable!). Do you see the conundrum here?

-I do not know how to wear summer clothes. Layers are kind of my thing for putting outfits together, but that doesn't work in the summer. And I feel like shorts are so awkward, but skirts are too dressy, and pants will just kill you. Why are summer clothes so hard?

-I love soup. And hot chocolate. And roasting vegetables in the oven without my kitchen feeling like the surface of the sun. I do also love salads and fresh summer produce, but my husband is so sick of salads right now that I'm looking longingly at my soup recipes and wishing for colder weather.

So yeah, summer has, at least for most of my marriage, produced in me a feeling of low-level anxiety and annoyance that means I usually don't look forward to the season.

But all that complaining is to preface that this year! This summer! This summer has felt like the start of something new and wonderful and beautiful. This is the first summer in a long, long time that I've felt sorry that it's ending. And so I just want to take a moment to stop and reflect about what was so good about this summer.

-We didn't move! And it's likely we won't be moving for a long, long time. Which means I finally feel settled. Like we've arrived. I think that feeling of being "home" has really helped me feel more content with summer. I know we lived in our place in Houston for almost four years, which is pretty settled, but it was an apartment in not perfect school boundaries, and we always knew we would have to move someday, so I thought of it as temporary. And even though we will very likely move again at some point in our future, we are pretty sure we're here for at least another five years, and there is the possibility we'll stay here forever. We talk about things like "If this is our forever house, then someday let's (insert whatever house project dream here)." Apparently, I need roots. I need to be "home". And while I need this all the time, I especially need it during summers of travel and relaxed routines.

-My kids are at great ages. Seriously, it has been so fun to be home with them this summer. The baby is just big enough for adventures, but everyone's still young enough for nap-time/quiet-time (yay!). Everyone's sleeping tolerably well, no one got sick, they've played well together for the most part, no one was potty training or going through some otherwise horrible phase, and it was just fun to be with them! They are all at a really cute age for their personality. The baby's vocabulary has just been exploding this summer and she's becoming so much more reasonable and pleasant to be around now that she can communicate a little better (also, she's just so stinking cute!). My three year old is absolutely the most adorable child on the planet (I never thought I would say that about a three-year-old, I hated this age with my oldest son and predict I will hate it again with my strong-willed youngest). And my six-year-old is just the coolest kid ever, so helpful and responsible and full of enthusiasm for life. We spent lots of time going on walks or playing at the park or hanging out at the library or reading together, and it was just sort of the summer of my motherhood dreams. I'm really, really sad we won't be getting to hang out in this chill, relaxed, always reading kind of way anymore.

-We went on a fabulous trip! And my kids got to have a fabulous Grandma Boot Camp with their cousins! But then (this is the key), we all came home and just had a quiet rest of the summer, only a few weekend trips. I need balance in my life. I need big exciting vacations, but then I need lots of chill downtime to recover, and this summer was perfect for me.

-I know summer will end! Honestly, I think this was one of my biggest problems with summer in Houston, the fact that it never ended! Hot and sweaty temperatures just kept going and going and going, and it depressed me to no end. What I've decided about myself is that it's not so much that I love winter and hate summer, it's that I need my seasons to change! This sounds really funny, coming from someone who just spent paragraphs complaining about how I need roots and hate moving and need reliable routing. But for whatever reason, I crave changing seasons. I know by the end of last winter I was thoroughly annoyed with cold weather and just ready to see the sun again. That's what I need from my summer weather too. I need it to end. I can't love it unless it's temporary.

So yes, despite the fact that I need the season to end in order to fully enjoy it, this summer I do feel like it's ending too early. I'm already mourning the end of this perfect, golden summer. I don't want my children to grow up, I don't want to go back to school and spend so many hours away from them, I don't want this happy moment to vanish. I recognize that this is it. This is the moment, the season I will look back on and long for in years ahead. Yes, we'll have plenty of good times and good summers ahead of us, and there are many wonderful things to look forward to, but also there will be hard times too. There will be less than happy seasons ahead of us too, so I want to stop right now and recognize that this is it! This is happiness! This is beautiful! This moment, this season, was a pure gift of joy.

I'm sad it's ending, but I'm also grateful. I'm so grateful we got this summer, this summer together of all sorts of small golden moments. And I'm hoping that writing about it here will help me always remember. No matter how life changes, no matter how great or how horrible future seasons of my life are, I want to look back on this summer and remember what a gift it was.

We have a moment of happiness and sunshine, and life is good. Life is so, so good.

Notes on a Crazy Month

You guys, this month! This month has been intense. These past two weeks have been insane. So much has happened in these past two weeks that I kind of feel like it's been a lifetime. Basically, my brain is so full it's going to explode. I've had to compartmentalize all the different parts of my life and assign times to think about these different parts, because when I try to think about all the different parts together, it's just too much for my brain to hold at once and I just feel the thoughts overflow and slip away. It has been a busy, busy few weeks.

So, I don't really have anything coherent to say here, but I thought it might be nice or cathartic or something to journal a bit, share some snapshots of all the busy parts that have been going on, and just let you know what's been on my mind. This might be a bit random, but oh well.

1. The Solar Eclipse We happen to live just a few minutes south of the zone of totality, but as luck would have it, I was assigned to teach my very first college class at exactly 1:00 PM on that very Monday. And while it might be excusable for a student to miss the first day of class, under no circumstances can an instructor (especially a bottom-of-the-totem-pole first year GTA instructor) miss the first day of class. So I was super disappointed to find myself on campus in Lawrence that day, with the possibility of only seeing 99.3% totality (so close! yet so far away!). Then, in an even more disappointing turn of events, it was so overcast I didn't even get to see any part of the eclipse! I quickly took roll as soon as class started, then ushered my students outside for the apex (which was supposed to happen around 1:07 PM for us), and we all stood around with our glasses in our hands wondering where the sun was even supposed to be behind the clouds. It did get dark, but with all the clouds it kind of just felt like the darkness of a summer thunderstorm. Super disappointing.

My husband, on the other hand, had a much more exciting experience. He checked our oldest son out of school and headed north with his family. Their first location got totally rained out, so they found themselves wandering some country back roads chasing the sun. They managed to find a hilltop right on the mid-line and jump out of the car just seconds before totality, and despite some light clouds they saw the whole thing, and had a very exciting story to tell. I'm so jealous I couldn't be with them. I told my husband that I don't care where we are in seven years, I am going to see the next eclipse!

2. I Started School! My PhD program started with a week-long orientation, eight hours every day. While this was an incredibly useful crash course in how to teach the classes I'm teaching this semester, it was GREULING. I came home exhausted every day with nothing but hours of homework ahead of me. But the biggest headache of that week was figuring out childcare. Being away from a baby you are nursing for eight hours a day is logistically (not to mention emotionally) taxing. I had to pull out the old breast pump (detestable thing) and find private corners to pump during our lunch break, and even still I noticed a decline in my milk production over the course of the week (perhaps it was the stress?). On top of that, my baby developed a serious addiction to formula and bottle feeding, and is now showing some cheeky attitude when I try to breastfeed. As much as I dislike breastfeeding, I hate paying for formula even more, so I'm fighting her on this, but it feels like a losing battle. I might be weaning earlier than anticipated, which I'm both happy and depressed about. But baby girl's newfound love of formula has in no way dampened her enthusiasm for that 4 AM feeding she still won't drop (at least not permanently, she occasionally sleeps through it, raising feelings of false hope in me that come crashing down a few days later when she decides nope! Party at 4 AM is just too much fun). And no, I do NOT offer her a bottle at that feeding. Baby girls who insist on waking their mothers up at that time of day do not get rewarded with sugary fake beverages in synthetic plastic bottles. If I dry up, well then, she'll just have to deal with it.

3. My Baby Started Kindergarten! My oldest baby started kindergarten that same week as orientation (another logistical headache), but thankfully his transition was just about as smooth as can be. I was not one of those weepy mothers (except for the part about how I MISSED BEING THERE), because I'm actually kind of excited to have kids old enough for school. And he's loved it so far, even though I don't think it's quite living up to his expectations about what school was going to be like. We've probably been watching a little too much Magic School Bus recently, because he asked me last week when his class was going to go on a field trip, and why weren't they learning about all the animals in the ocean, because that's what he thought he was going to learn about at school. Hmmmm. It really is unfair to expect a public ed teacher to live up to Ms. Frizzle.

4. I Saw Hamilton! In Chicago! So, months and months and months ago, my husband and I decided that we needed to see Hamilton, and we were just going to make it happen no matter what. So we hopped online and bought the cheapest tickets we could find at the earliest possible date, which happened to be... last weekend. Then everything else in our life happened (getting into grad school, moving, etc.), and when I realized our weekend trip to Chicago was going to be right after the first full week of school, I just about cancelled (because, can you say most exhausting week of the year?). But I'm so glad we didn't cancel, because despite being exhausted and stressed, that trip was AMAZING and totally, completely worth it. It was so fun to be back in our old stomping grounds (and kind of sad we haven't been back more often in the four years since we left), seeing what's changed about the city (taxes on shopping bags!) and what's stayed the same. The weather was gorgeous, the company fabulous, and we had the best time. It's been a while since we've had a trip without kids, and I'm already itching for another one (preferably after the baby is actually weaned, so the hated old breast pump doesn't have to come along). Also, seeing Hamilton live was really, really super fabulous. I have lots of thoughts about the whole thing, but I'll spare you that since I'm already rambling on here longer than anyone really cares about.

5. Hurricane Harvey As much fun as we had in Chicago, guys, my heart is breaking for Houston right now. My Instagram and Facebook feeds have just been a mess with all the devastating images my friends are posting. Thankfully most of our friends have stayed dry and been okay, but a few of our friends did get flooded, and some more evacuated or were out of town and don't know when/how to get back. There's a part of me that is grateful we weren't there through it, but another part of me wishes we still lived there so we could help and serve. It's hard to watch something like this happen to people and places we know and love, and feel so helpless. We're certainly praying and donating and doing what we can from afar, but my goodness, what a week!

Okay, I've got to get back to doing some real work now. Life is just very, very full right now, and while I'm trying to get a good routine going so I can figure out some more regular time to fit in blogging, the truth is that I can't even figure out how to fit grocery shopping into our new weekly routine (I tried running to Aldi the other night only to find they close at 8 PM, not helpful!). So posts might be few and far between, but I'm not giving up yet! If I've learned anything, it's that this space provides me with a little bit of sanity and writing here makes me feel like I still have some "me" time, so I'll fight for it.

How's your back-to-school transition going so far?

Thoughts on Food Addictions and a Sugar Detox

I feel like I've generally got a pretty good relationship with food going on in my life (except for the times when I'm pregnant, because when I'm pregnant, everything about my relationship with food is horrible and nasty and emotional and complicated). Generally, I love food. I mostly eat healthy (because it feels good), but also never pass up a dessert when it's offered, and never beat myself up about it.

But apparently, things can change. Apparently, when things get stressful enough, I can eat my emotions.

Most of 2017 has been rather stressful for me. It seems that accepting a spot in a PhD program, going through a job hunt, buying a house, and moving states (with a baby who hasn't let me get eight straight hours of sleep one single night this whole year), is a bit stressful. Actually, incredibly stressful.

May especially (the month we bought the house, packed up, and moved) was super stressful. My first clue that the stress was getting to me was when I tweaked my neck during my routine yoga practice, and was unable to move it/sleep on it/function the whole week we were packing. The last time I tweaked my neck like that was the month before my wedding, and it took four visits to a chiropractor to get me back to mobility. Apparently, this whole move has been as stressful for me as getting married.

My second clue that the stress was getting to me was the alarming number of bags of chocolate chips I was eating my way through. I don't know exactly how many bags it was, but it was a lot. In fact, I found myself planning off-schedule grocery shopping trips because I needed more chocolate, and if you know me at all, you know that means things were desperate. I HATE going to the grocery store, and NEVER go more than once a week with my strict meal plan in place. So the fact that I was heading to the grocery store mid-week to get more chocolate was kind of a huge red flag.

Then I heard a friend mention a program she was trying called Bright Line Eating to help her manage her food addictions and lose weight. I was intrigued, not because I needed to lose weight, but because as soon as she said "food addiction" little bells went off in my head. So I came home and took the food addiction quiz, and came back with a score of 5 out of 10. While this wasn't necessarily a terrible score, it was higher than I thought I should be, so I started doing some thinking about how to fix this.

Basically, I decided to do a revised version of the Bright Line Eating program, my own little sugar detox. To sum up this program, there are four rules that adherents are supposed to follow for the rest of their lives (four bright lines): 1.) No sugar 2.) No flour 3.) Measure/weigh food (crap load of vegetables) and 4.) Eat only at meal times (no snacking). Since I'm nursing, and also not interested in losing weight (actually the opposite), I decided to ignore that last rule, and snacked as much as I wanted to. I also didn't worry about weighing my food (once again, not trying to lose weight), but simply tried to eat as much as I possibly could (especially veggies). But I did decide to cut sugar and flour as much as possible. I didn't go gluten free or hardcore (like, I didn't worry about sugar in salad dressings and stuff), but I cut as much sugar and flour from my diet as I conveniently could.

I waited until we actually moved into our house in June (and thus had full control over grocery shopping/meal planning), and then plunged into the detox for two weeks. The first few days were hard. Like, way harder than I expected. I was SO HUNGRY, despite the fact that I was still eating as much as I possibly could. This made me super nervous, because I'm always terrified about my milk supply dropping (it's been a problem before) and hunger is the enemy. But I decided to stick it out, and magically, after a few days, the hunger went away and I was able to stick it out without any problems with my milk supply.

While I only did two weeks of dedicated no sugar/no flour, I learned a lot of things and did some deep reflecting. These may or may not be of interest to anyone else out there, but in no particular order, here are my random thoughts about a sugar detox in case you are considering one.

-If you want to lose weight, this is absolutely the way to go. I lost weight (and I was trying desperately NOT to lose weight). One of the reasons I didn't go longer than two weeks was so that I wouldn't lose any more weight.

-Once I got past those first few days of hunger, I was actually surprised at how much energy I had, how full I felt after meals, and how good my body felt. Apparently, sugar and refined flour are actually huge energy drains on your system. And there's all this science about how sugar tricks your body into not being able to feel satiated. By the end, I felt really, really good. I mean, I felt like my old self, the self I haven't felt like since before I got pregnant last year. It was a super rough pregnancy, and my recovery was much slower than with my first two pregnancies. After this sugar detox, I felt like me again. It's like everything just snapped back into place (except for those stomach muscles, those still need some work...). This was awesome.

-It is possible, even for me, to get very, very tired of salads. Luckily I only need a couple of days, and then I'm back to my salad-loving self.

- It is HARD to cut sugar and flour and participate socially in food. I think this would be the hardest part about doing this program long term. Everything, and I mean practically everything, has sugar and/or flour in it. Also didn't help that my husband and I binge watched some Great British Baking Show while building Ikea furniture during this period, and it made me feel so, so sad that all that food was off-limits to me (even though I wouldn't have been baking/eating stuff like that anyway).

-When it comes to food addiction, I don't think I have a particular problem with flour, or even a lot of sugar. My real addiction is chocolate. I found that I wasn't sad at all to skip out on bread or other desserts, but oh! How I missed my chocolate! The only thing that kept me going was knowing that I was not going to be doing this detox forever, and eventually I would let myself eat chocolate again. It would be sad to go the rest of my life without ever eating bread, but I simply CANNOT live in a world without chocolate.

-It takes a lot of will power to eat this way. Two weeks was not long enough for it to become an automatic habit, and so I found myself exercising a concerted amount of will power every day to keep this up... and it was not healthy for my relationship with my kids. Especially those first few days when I was super hungry, I found myself snapping at my kids over very little things that I usually have the self-control to let slide. Science tells us that when we are exerting a concerted amount of will power in one area, we don't have any left over for other areas, and this was super true for me. I am a MUCH nicer mom when I can self medicate with chocolate.

-On that note, I realized that I use chocolate as a reward, a small treat, for getting through the hard parts of every day. I would tell myself things like "Once you get the dishes done, you can have some chocolate" and so I'd get the dishes done. Or "Once you get through bedtime, you can have some chocolate" so it was my little reward for surviving the bedtime routine. When that reward was taken away, life got just a little bit more depressing. I tried to come up with other little treats for myself, but most of them weren't practically possible or took more time than I had (like taking a nap, or reading a book, or taking a bath, etc.). It's so much quicker to just scarf a handful of chocolate chips.

-If you are an abstainer and/or have serious issues with food addiction, I highly recommend the Bright Line Eating program. I, however, am completely a moderator. I really enjoy life so much more when I can have my treats in moderation. I do feel like things got out of control in May when my stress and anxiety levels peaked, but all I needed was the two week detox to get back on a moderate track. Things may get out of hand again (I am, after all, starting a PhD program in a couple of weeks, and that baby is still not letting me sleep through the night), but I feel like I've gained some awareness and can monitor myself, and if need be, do another detox any time I need to.

Anyway, that was a lot of thoughts. To sum up, my sugar/flour detox was overall a really positive experience for me (except for the negative influence on my parenting), and I learned a lot about myself. While I've gone back to allowing myself a few chocolate treats, I've found myself with a hyper awareness of all the refined flour and sugar in food, and I'm still trying to avoid as much of it as I conveniently can. My body just feels so much better this way. I'm not a doctor or a nutrition person or anything, but I can pretty confidently say that everyone ought to try a sugar detox. I highly recommend the experience.

(P.S. If you have any questions about specifics of my sugar detox, feel free to ask!)

(P.P.S. I wrote more about body/food stuff last year in posts here, here, and here.)

Facing Big Changes, One Step at a Time

I've been a bit tight-lipped here on the blog about some big changes happening in my real life, mostly because while we knew they were coming, we didn't know how or when or where. For basically this whole year, we've been living in a state of anxious anticipation about our foggy future and trying to figure out our next steps. But things are finally starting to come into sharper focus, and so I feel okay now with sharing some of these bigger bits of news here on the blog.

As my faithful readers know, last fall I began applying to PhD programs. In mid-February, I learned I was accepted, with good funding, to two of these programs, and in March I accepted a place at the University of Kansas. My husband immediately began a job search that went through several rounds of ups and downs, but yesterday he accepted a very good offer with a law firm in Kansas City, and today he gave notice to his firm here in Houston. And so next month we will be moving.

To Kansas.

Looks like we're going to need to resurrect this family Halloween costume from 2012. And I've always loved ruby red shoes, so I should fit right in. There's no place like home, right? (If I'm going to live in Kansas, I might as well own it.)

Baby #3 Birth Story

Okay folks, here it is. Birth story #3. It's a novel, but believe it or not this is the edited version. I hope it makes sense (I'm pretty sleep deprived these days, so no guarantees). Also, just a note for any readers who happen to not be fellow mothers, I use a ton of pregnancy-related lingo (pitocin, VBAC, dilated, etc.). If you don't know what I'm talking about, just Google it. And finally, for any new readers around here, if you want some more context, here's Baby #2's Birth Story, and some more background on Baby #1's traumatic C-section.

Jan. 10, her due date, and one day shy of two weeks old.

I don’t remember when I read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth—it was at some point in one of my earlier pregnancies—but there is a sentiment expressed in that book that haunts me. Ina May describes a woman attending her childbirth courses who was surrounded by relatives, mothers and sisters and aunts, with highly dramatic birth stories. While this particular woman expressed the wish to experience a calmer and more natural birth experience, Ina May noted that she was too caught up in the competition factor of her family’s birth stories, and indeed ended up having a highly dramatic birth story of her own. Ina May’s point was that, even if it is unconsciously done, we write our own birth stories before they happen.

This sentiment haunts me because, if it is true, what does that mean for my birth stories? Particularly this one? Did I write this one before it happened? Because I don’t even know how I could’ve predicted this story, even unconsciously.

Introducing...

She's here! And a week old at that (if you follow me on Instagram, you probably already know this). Introducing Lily Grace, our sweet little baby girl. We are so thrilled she's here and so perfectly sweet and squishy and delicious. This whole newborn thing is so much easier to enjoy the third time around.

I'm currently working on the full birth story, but guys, it's a bit of a doozy. I'm on page 7 and not done yet (I will try to trim it down before foisting it on you here). Apparently I'm using this birth story as a sort of cathartic writing process to sort through all of my thoughts and feelings about how intense the end of this pregnancy was for me. But once I get it in a presentable form, I'll get it up.

For now, here are just a few more pictures for you to enjoy. Newborns are the dreamiest.

I still consider myself on maternity leave, so I can't promise how regular posting will be around here for the next little while, but as we get more into a new routine hopefully I'll find some more time to pick back up here. I've got so many bookish things to talk about!

Maternity Leave

You guys, I had lots of plans for all the posts I wanted to get up this month. We were going to talk Christmas decorations, Christmas books, end-of-year reviews and best-ofs. I may still get around to some of these posts at some point, but it became apparent this week that my lovely little baby is likely going to come earlier than later.

I'll try to spare you the intimate details (although a full birth story will be coming once she's here, worry you not!), but basically I've been in labor since Saturday. I'm dilating at a slow and incremental pace, living in a state of constant low-level contractions. Based on my last pregnancy, I expect this to drag on for a few weeks yet, but I'm definitely miserable. And trying desperately to keep some semblance of normalcy afloat with my other children as we still attempt to participate in holiday activities and celebrate the season.

But something's got to give, and for the forseeable future, it will have to be blogging. Hopefully next time I write, it will be with pictures of my precious, squishy baby girl. And I won't be pregnant anymore!

Until then, may you all have a very Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc. etc.!

Small Joys

I feel like my first trimester nastiness pushed right up to the half-way point of this pregnancy, and then I had a bout of second trimester relief, when things felt like they were getting better, and I might not actually hate being pregnant so much, and we could get out of the house, and I had energy and could do things and there was hope. That lasted all of two weeks, and then third trimester miserableness hit and hit hard this month (never mind I won't officially be in the third trimester for three more weeks, these pregnancy hormones don't care for rules like that). Exhaustion, back pain, swelling, leg cramps, heartburn, exhaustion, and more back pain. I just... do I really have three and a half more months of this? Really?

So before I spiral back down into my well of self-pity, let me count my blessings again and remind myself that life is actually very good. Very, very good. Here are my small joys for September.

How To Throw A Literary Themed 30th Birthday Party

Step 1: Make it a mid-year resolution, commit the goal to paper, or it will never be anything more than a pipe dream.

Step 2: Enlist the help of a friend with a vision. Steal her vision, because yours is hazy and probably unrealistic. Besides, hers involves a literary theme that's awesome for a party and perfect for your bookish tastes. It doesn't matter if you don't actually like the book in question, there is nothing better than a Great Gatsby party. Also, party planning is way more fun with a friend you can spend hours drooling over Pinterest with, instead of making all these decisions by yourself.

Small Joys

This summer has been the worst.

I mean, summer generally isn't my favorite season, especially not here in Houston. My friend Sarah jokes that she gets reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder, and gets depressed in the summers here because you just can't go outside for months on end, and it's miserable and terrible and no good. Air conditioning depresses me (even if it is also absolutely necessary for survival).

But beyond that, this summer has been particularly terrible, with this interminable case of morning sickness (this has been my sickest pregnancy yet) and the utter and complete lack of structure we've had since school ended. There have been entire weeks on end that we haven't left the house once, not even to get the mail. I may be the introvert mother of two home-body boys, but everyone has their limits. I may be too sick to leave the couch, but we can all still go crazy.

Anyway, in an effort to focus less on the doom and gloom (things really are getting better, if we could just all get over this latest bout of cold-turned-croup viral infection that has hit me and the boys, and honestly, why? Isn't morning sickness enough? Do I really need to experience the hacking cough before dry-heaving over the toilet?), I've decided to post on the few small things that have brought me joy this summer. Think of this as a "Things I've Been Into Lately," or "Things that Have Been Saving My Life" kind of post, summer pregnancy edition.

Me and My Body (Part 2 - Body Love)

Let's start with a story.

This is a few years ago. I'm at my doctor's office and, as per routine, the nurse asks me to step up on the scale to get my weight before proceeding to check my blood pressure . The nurse looks at the number on the scale, looks down at my charts, and exclaims:

"You've gained 10 pounds in one month! I would kill myself if I ever gained that much weight in a month!"

Now, setting aside just how inappropriate it is for any nurse to comment at all on any patient's weight (let alone such a shaming and negative comment), let me give this story some context. I happened to be 18 weeks pregnant at the time of this (routine pre-natal) doctor's visit. I'm also 5'4" tall (pertinent, just to let you know I'm a decently average height). And do you want to know the number on the scale?