still no dusting

I recently read something on someone’s blog, and I apologize if it was yours, about how the writer was afraid or hesitant or something about having babies, because having babies sucks the “youness” out of you. As if the moment that you give birth results in both being responsible for another human life, and you losing yourself.

It made me wonder how having the Loaf has changed me. And I find it interesting that I inadvertently used the words “losing yourself” in the paragraph above, because I meant it to come out in an ironic way. Like “losing yourself” is some painful, irreversible occurrence that happens just once and there is no cure. But as it turns out, I think that’s what it is.

So let me just say, after that incredibly long preface, that when I had a baby, I did lose myself. And I don’t see one thing wrong with that. I know what whoever it was that said it meant it to mean you care less about things that you once had a great passion for. I know they probably meant to say that the little quirks you had disintegrate under the new title of mom.

I would like to say, to whoever that was, or whoever might think that, that it was not the case for me. I still make time for myself. I still love going to movies, and I still love blogging and taking obnoxious pictures…

…and the only thing that having a baby has changed about all of that is that now while I’m at the movies, I have a little gal in the seat next to me, staring at the screen, shaking her head back and forth, trying to catch every detail. When I blog, it’s usually about her, and when I take obnoxious pictures, she’s never too far away. And someday she’ll have a greater appreciation for the Biebs because of it.

There is a fun little game that Steve and I like to play, except it’s not that fun and we’re trying to break ourselves of it. But it’s called the “Who’s Job is Harder?” game and the answer is, regardless of who says it first, is “Mine.” I usually win when it gets to lunch breaks. “I wish I had a lunch break,” I told Steve yesterday. Steve said, “You do when she naps!”

And that’s the thing. He thought he had me. But one way that having a baby, or losing myself, has changed me is that breaks are not really breaks. Naptime is a good time for me. I do get a break. But not from having a baby. Not from worrying about her. Not from wanting to make sure she’s okay, and she’s sleeping okay, and that she’s not too warm or too cold or has her head smashed up in the corner of the crib with no way to get out (this happens often).

So yeah, I lost myself when I had a baby. But it’s really not so bad. So person, whoever you are, that wanted to make sure you don’t lose track of yourself by having a baby, let me quell your concerns. You absolutely will. And some days–most days, very likely–it just might make you insane. It is very, very probable that you will not go one day without wanting to scream, or at the very least, lock yourself in a soundproof room, eating your weight in cheesecake, watching bad TV on Bravo.

Essentially, having a baby means that you are going to make up and sing the most ridiculous songs imaginable. The lyrics will contain reference to baby butts, poop, and snotty noses. You are going to come up with retarded nicknames for your baby’s butt, boogers, poop, and pee. You are going to figure out that sometimes the most excitement you will have in a day is bath time, and that the only time you have to yourself is going to include the ambient sounds of a baby screaming to be picked up. By noon, you will be able to identify at least three stains on your clothing that each came from different bodily functions (shoulder snot, lap puke, pee leg), and you will likely not get around to dusting your bookshelves. Ever.

And you know what? You’re probably gonna love it.

oh yeah.

Oh man, I loooooooove me some Thanksgiving. Last year I decided to start a new tradition of having a Thanksgiving with some of our friends. I call it (and this is super creative, so watch out)… Friendsgiving. I don’t know why I do it. It makes me crazy. I’m not the social butterfly I used to be. Last year we had 36 people come, this year we have 26 people coming. I think that means I’ve managed to offend at least 10 people this year. I should work harder. Next year I should be able to work the guest list to an even dozen.

I don’t know what it is about Thanksgiving, but it always makes me feel really happy. I mean, let’s not beat around the bush. Eating mass quantities of food generally makes me feel really happy, but beyond that, Thanksgiving just inspires the feel-goods in people.

Thanksgiving is the one day of the year that I can actually be expected to be in a good mood. I actually love having large groups of people in my house because it means I have a lot of people to be grateful for. There are at least 26 people in my life who know that for 364 days of the year, I’m likely to bite someone’s head off for no reason, and they still love me. At least enough to come eat a metric ton of turkey at my house.

Seriously though, Thanksgiving is great, and I truly am so thankful for everything that I have. I’ve been thinking extra about gratitude the last couple weeks. I’m so thankful for my house, for my husband and my baby. I’m so thankful that we’re in this together, and that I’m not going to roll over in bed one day and realize that when 5 pm rolls around, I’m on my own without someone to take over diaper duty for the rest of the night.

In addition, I’m thankful for my family, for good friends, and that of all the people that God has to look over every single day, I know that when I wake up tomorrow morning, He’s going to hear my prayer. And he knows that I am going to need help. Seriously, 26 people in my tiny house? Heaven help us.

It’s brown.

Twenty-eight years ago today, a fat little baby boy was born three weeks late, tipping the scales at 10 pounds and change. That little guy has grown up now (although for most of his life, it would appear he has looked exactly the same as he does now, just in a different-sized container) to become pretty much the coolest guy that I know.

I guess the deal is I’m supposed to give you all 28 reasons why I love this fella. Well, I’m not going to because that would be conformity, and that’s just not my style. But I will tell you a few really good reasons why I think my husband Stephen is the best.

Steve loves people. Steve sincerely loves people. I know it’s kind of the “cool” thing these days to be aloof and not let people know how you feel every second. Not so for Steve. I love listening to him and his friends talk because Steve is always full of all sorts of praise for people and he doesn’t really care if they know it. As a result, people find it a lot easier to be themselves around him.

Steve is loyal. This is on my list of Top 3 Favorite character traits. Loyalty is huge for me. Steve’s friends, you can all rest assured that Steve will never say a bad word about you behind your back. He is not buddy-buddy with you one day and then talking trash to everyone else when you’re not around the next. He is unflinchingly loyal to the people he cares about… and as mentioned before, that’s a lot of people!

Steve is selfless. The thing about Steve is that he always considers the needs of others before himself. Case in point: We went shopping for his birthday the other day and I saw a sweater that I really liked. I had to talk him out of using the birthday money he was given to buy me a sweater. If anybody needs help, and Steve is able, he will do it.

Steve is the genuine article. Yeah, this is kind of related to the above. Sincerity is probably one of my other Top 3 Favorite Character Traits, and Steve has got it. He is full of compliments for people and is just dying every day to hand them out. Luckily for me, he spends most of his spare time with me, and I know he’s sincere when he comes home from work and tells me how beautiful I am. I know that when he says he loves me, he means it. You never have to wonder if Steve is being ingenuine. He’s not.

Steve lets me be me. One of my favorite quotes is by President Gordon B. Hinckley’s wife, Marjorie. She says about her husband, “He always let me do my own thing. He never insisted that I do anything his way, or any way, for that matter. From the very beginning he gave me space and let me fly.” Steve might have been taking husband lessons from the prophet at one point, because this describes Steve. I’m spontaneous. I get crazy ideas that I can’t let go. And Steve is good to just roll with it. He’s never tried to make me do or be anything I didn’t want to do or be.

Steve is funny. His jokes are sometimes inappropriate, sometimes given at the wrong time, but usually funny. Even the ones that aren’t are just silly little Steve-isms. He can impersonate just about anybody’s voice, and he knows by heart every funny line he’s heard in movies and TV shows since he was born. There’s never really a dull moment with Steve. And he makes me feel like I’m pretty funny too, which I like.  :)

Happy birthday, man. You’re pretty cool and I love you!

Stop the Mean!

A couple days ago, I remembered a quote I remember seeing somewhere. “A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person.”

I seriously always hated the movie “Mean Girls.” I thought when I saw it how awful the girls are, and how the meanness was a little bit over the top. No one is really that cruel, right? Well, it happens, and not just in high school either. I know plenty of bullies and mean girls now. But when you’re in high school, and the opinions of your friends and peers means everything, it is a much more tragic thing to experience.

I have been working as an essay grader for an online high school. Every day I read stories from kids who were removed from the public school system to literally escape from the cruelty of their peers. It’s heartbreaking. The current assignment I’m working on involves students writing about a time they made an unexpected friend. Many of these kids write about their “best friends.” These are, in a lot of cases, not friends in the sense that we all think of them. In a lot of cases, a “best friend” might be the only one to talk to them. A “best friend” to some of these kids might be a faculty member at school who stood up for them. A “best friend” in some cases could be someone who lends a listening ear. Either way, these friends saved the life of someone just by being nice. 

Sure, at first read, it seems like it might be an exaggeration. Then again, maybe not. Think back to your high school days. You can probably think of at least one person who likely walked the hallways, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, trying to avoid people. We might peg them as weird, or loners, or apathetic. However, maybe it wouldn’t be much of a stretch if we were to peg them as victims.

I can’t help but look back now and wish that I had reached out to some of these people. I can see their faces, their expressions that I thought were blank stares of ambivalence now showing what they really probably were–wordless cries for help, for some basic human kindness.

I think I would like the opportunity to go back in time and ask them to sit with our group at lunch. They weren’t involved in groups at school. They didn’t go to dances. I didn’t have them sign my yearbook. Not the cruelest thing in the world, but not the nicest either. I didn’t give them a second thought in high school, and until now, I hadn’t given them a second thought in over ten years.

So I guess all I’m trying to say is high school may have been a pretty good time for a lot of us. Then again, for a lot of us, it might have been a living hell. I’m seeing that a lot more now through my work. And if all the meanness, all the gossip and backbiting and your basic run-of-the-mill cruelty, had ended back in high school, we might be okay. But unfortunately, we all know about meanness all too well, no matter how old we get, no matter how much we learn and how much we should know better.

I guess another thing that I’m trying to say is that I’m grateful. I haven’t always been the best person or nicest. I made a lot of mean prank calls when I was a teen. I gossip a lot more than I’m supposed to. But as I slowly dissociate myself from mean girls, I’m finding it’s a lot easier to stop feeding the fire. Stopping gossip, backbiting and meanness is a lot easier when you have the friends I do.

There is a quote that is generally attributed to Plato that I’ve always thought was worth remembering. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. I remember being in high school and looking enviously at the popular kids and pitying the out-crowd. As it turns out, both groups had their own sets of problems.

Nobody is exempt from problems. But nobody is exempt from being kind either. Everyone is going through something. Perhaps we would be less prone to jump all over someone’s case for saying something we don’t like, or for acting in a certain way, if we were to think, even for just ten seconds of our time, that they might be going through something too.

Be nice. Even to the waiter. If not just to be a good person, at least because he can easily pee in your soup.

The Great Slurpee Caper!

I walked to 7-Eleven today to get a Slurpee for my friend. While I was at it, you know I got one for me too. Anyway, I went in, got the Slurpees, dropped one off at my friend’s house, and made my way back home. I was just about home, and about halfway through my Slurpee goodness, lamenting in my mind the outrageous charge for what is nothing more than frozen syrup-flavored sugar, when I realized I had no idea how outrageous the charge is for a Slurpee, because I hadn’t paid for them!

I felt pretty awful for having shoplifted, so I went back to the 7-Eleven, which was swarming with cops. I live in Ogden, and for some reason, America’s Most Wanted all seem to hang out at the 7-Eleven on 24th and Madison, but I was still paranoid. I passed the drug deal going down on Pump #2, slipped past the guy taking a field sobriety test, past the lady being handcuffed against her car, reassuring her baby inside that “Mama’s okay, sugar,” and through the doors to my grossly public confessional.

I imagined the 7-Eleven checkers hearing my story and immediately calling a Code Orange, and all the police coming in and handcuffing me, hauling me off to prison for a crime that could have been avoided with under $4 dollars in pocket change. I stood in line behind a little girl who was begging her mom to cover the remaining 27 cents she owed for a Snickers bar and a chocolate milk. I made small talk with the guy in line behind me. He asked me where I got my stroller. I might have told him, but in my anxiety over my impending arrest, I don’t remember if I answered him or what I said.

It was my turn. The checker looked glaringly at my half empty Slurpee cup sitting in the cup holder of my stroller. She watched as I fumbled through the diaper bag for my wallet. As I discovered my wallet, wedged between a booger-sucker bulb and a baby bottle, I am trying to explain my plight: “Well, what happened is… I feel so stupid…” She cleared her throat. I grabbed the Slurpee cup. Three words leapt out of my throat before I had time to think of how stupid it sounded. “I stole this!”

The checker looked at me and laughed. She had seen me. She said she just thought the other checker had helped me. She called over the other checker, who said that she witnessed the crime too, but thought her co-worker had helped me. I apologized again, but both checkers were laughing.

I suppose they thought it was pretty funny that someone would come back to confess their crime here in Ogden, where at any given moment, at any given convenience store, there are crimes happening that are far more malicious than lifting Slurpees from the 7-Eleven. They thought it was so funny in fact, that rather than calling the authorities (it would have been pretty easy, as there were several within 10 feet), they paid me for the injustice with another Slurpee, on the house.

So I write to you from the comfort of my own home rather than a prison cell. I’m thinking about honesty, and how sometimes being honest doesn’t seem to pay off the way you think it would, and then sometimes it pays off in more Slurpees.

The goal I didn’t even know I had.

I once had a pair of jeans. (No, he’s not really going. Yes, we really are in the men’s room at the Sugarhouse movie theater.) Ahem, the jeans?

So I had this pair of jeans. They were my favorite jeans, purchased I believe just for the great day Stephen and I had our engagement pictures taken (shown above). I loved them, and they fit faithfully up until December 2010, when I started mysteriously getting fatter, despite how little I was eating, and how sick I felt.

Now, let’s step out of the jeans for a second. (Not literally. I’m still wearing pants. Are you wearing pants? Good.) There was another time I bought a dress:

Four months after I debuted in that dress, I started replacing all of my clothes, even my favorite pair of jeans, with maternity clothes, and ugly frumpy looking maternity jeans. I had a baby. I was still wearing maternity clothes. I couldn’t fit into anything.

Until today.

Let’s just say if I ever have the occasion to wear a wedding dress again (don’t worry, I’m sticking with Stephen), I’ll have a dress that fits. As for the jeans? They just got spit up on. But I’m wearing em. And I’m wearing em goooooood.

All thanks to no exercising and a baby who cluster feeds. It’s been a good day.

 

Day 1 – Almost Autumn

I can feel Fall coming up, except I’m going to call it Autumn because it’s prettier. So Autumn is almost here, although Logan Canyon hasn’t completely transformed, and that’s usually what does it for me. The air just feels a little bit crisper, and it seems almost like I would be able to replace my window A/C units with just open windows. I love sleeping in Autumn. It has to be just barely above freezing in my room for me to be able to sleep, and Autumn open window sleeping is perfect weather for that.

Perhaps the best thing I love about Autumn, however, is the food (surprised?). I love soup! This brings me to the picture of the day for today, this almost-Autumn day.

This is by far the best soup I have ever made. (Click on the picture for a link to the recipe.) Blonde chicken chili is good for you (unless you put sour cream and cheese on it, which I recommend doing) and tastes less like chili, which is #1 for me. I plan to make it every day until March 2012. It’s even better the next day after all the flavors meld together in harmonious soupy glory. So there you go.

I miss you!

I miss this version of me. Having red hair was the best and I am trying so hard to resist, knowing now what I do about the upkeep involved in having red hair, especially when your hair holds color as poorly as mine. But I see pictures of my ginger glory days, and I miss it.

Someone please grant me permission to do what I want with my hair regardless of the expensive and every three weeks-style consequences. Thank you!

reason for not posting

I have become one of “those” moms and pretty much only blog now at afamilyofbears.wordpress.com. See you there.

she is here!

Ophelia Kelly Stoker arrived on August 6, 2011 after 19 hours of labor and a vacuum sucker that I swear saved my life. Sometimes pushing is really the worst. And in case you wondered, we are pretty much smitten with this 7 lb. 15 oz., 20.5 inches little chub with hair.