rebound

I'm on the surviving end of having been pummelled by a stomach flu.  I seriously spent an entire day in bed, and I never spend entire days in bed.  This misery was aggravated by our gentleman being equally puke-faced, and we made a sad little pair.  There may have been self-pity involved.



Thankfully I can now smell a calorie without dry-heaving, so we seem to be on the mend.
All of these unpleasantries have served to remind me how much I dislike being pregnant.  Mucho mucho.  I always forget how utterly debilitating my pregnancy nausea and malaise truly are.  But after yesterday I distinctly remember, spending all of one's energy trying to hold very still and not vomit for months on end....  so very ugh.  It almost gives me a panic attack to ponder it too much, because I know it is most likely in the cards for me again someday sooner than later.  Sometime, but not now.  For now I'm going to be doubly grateful for any level of functionality I am blessed with that allows me to get out of bed and actually do something, or think about something besides my GI system.  Blessings abound when you are given an opportunity to remember them.  So is that what this puke-fest was?  An opportunity?  Sheesh.

cum laude

Thursday Sir O had his preschool graduation.  Only he calls it "gradulations"  and if you call him a graduate he corrects you, "I'm a gradulations, I gradulated."  The whole thing kind of sneaked up on me.  Having Sir O gone to school Tuesday and Thursday mornings has been an easy thing to get used to.  And now I have him to myself all summer.   Hmmm......



Sir O has fortunately had the best preschool teacher on the face of the earth.  She is like Mary Poppins, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and Nanny Mcphee all rolled into one.  He has shed tears and had panic attacks at the thought of not seeing her regularly anymore.



For the graduation ceremony, each child had a short 4-line poem about a letter of the alphabet to memorize and recite.  Sir O had no problem memorizing his, but I was not optimistic about the performance element.  My child reverts about 3 years when placed in front of an audience.  So far 2 talks in primary have both been reduced to Sir O giggling in embarrassment at the microphone while I tried 5 or 6 times to get him to say the first line.  And if he does eek a word out, it's made unintelligible by the spin of "baby talk" he puts into it.    So, baby-talking aside, I was pleased when he managed to complete his part.  He is certainly not one of the more mature or tall kids in his graduating class, and it makes me a bit more comfortable with my choice to hold him back from kindergarten for another year.



When we were in Springville a few weeks ago and had a chance to introduce him to his new preschool teacher, I was happy to find how much she reminded me of his current teacher.  And here's hoping that when graduation comes around next year our child is on the more participatory end of the spectrum.  Just a hope, not a demand.  It's hard not to have those as a parent.

in the midst

I seem to be having one of those months where life flies by in double-time. I am perpetually strapped for time and my children never seem to get the memo that they need to be cooperative and in good health in order for me to pull everything off. Things that seem like they should take 30 minutes take 3 hours. I am constantly bombarded with messes and potty breaks. My "packing timeline" keeps getting put off until I hyperventilate at the crunch it's creating for me. And I'm having to face the reality that I may not know where I'm going to be setting up a home until a week or two ahead of the move.
All of this craziness lends itself to lowering the bar. To shameful levels sometimes.

But to prove that God is aware of me, I still get ample tender mercies. This morning with 2 of my 3 children sick in bed, I was eating breakfast with the Captain and began the meal a somber distracted lady. Then the Captain decided that forking pieces of banana into his mouth (an otherwise common occurrence) was hilarious. He would take bites with great flourish and then laugh his head off after each one. Utterly irresistible, contagious laughter - it's a gift of his. And pretty soon I was in a remarkably improved mood, even if I do still have two miserable littles this morning, and places I need to be by this afternoon.



And... while I typed that our gentleman just pummeled me with copious baby vomit. Serious, power-vomiting.  I expect I'm going to use up every iota of positive energy I can scrape up today.

Prospects

Our Dear Mr Renn is in for some big changes.



Chief among them being the transition from a 50+ hour workweek to a 30-35 hour workweek. We're mostly excited about that, but there is some trepidation as he is easily prone to stir-craziness.   If we can manage to cut his hour-long commute down to a 10 minute one, we are going to find ourselves with a barrel full of time.

My hope is that while most of that time is bound to get eaten up by long to-do lists and projects, that Mr Renn finally gets a chance to pursue some of his non-dentist aspirations that have been shelved for pretty much our whole married lives.  The man wants to learn to play the bagpipes, certify as a master gardener, earn scads of indexing points, perfect recipes, and teach his kids lots of cool stuff.  It's easy to remember how I fell in love with him.



We're just so out of practice in the realm of "pursuing interests" and "having a life outside of school/work" that we may have to get our sea legs as a family as we adjust to it all.  It will be the first time since I've even known Mr Renn that he won't consider himself a student.  And redefining your identity is always tricky.

And a little bit exciting.

How to have a long day

Our dear Mr Renn had another morning of testing the waters at his *new* job yesterday.  We elected to have me bring the boys down for a late lunch and then make an afternoon of exploring our new town.  Sir O got to meet his new preschool teacher (who reminds us a lot of his current preschool teacher, whom we all adore), the boys got to play in the "kids room" in the waiting area of the clinic (it has a treehouse, a tv, and at least one monster truck), and we checked out in person a few of the rental houses we'd been considering online.  Most of them were in neighborhoods that we were only "alright" with.  There were only 3 that I felt any real energy about.   And one of them, of course, I fell head-over-heels in love with.





It has the most perfect back yard known to man.  It also has only 1000 square feet and 0 closets in the entire house.  It would be tiny and tight living there, but a part of me can't fathom living anywhere else just now.  It is right across the street from the Art Museum, and the kids played in the backyard for over an hour and we had to peel them away with great alligator tears.   All of us want to live there, we just think the lack of space inside might just kill us.  We'd definitely have to have a storage unit again.  We'll see.



We stopped by Sammy's in Provo for dinner on the way home. (A friend from my freshman ward is married to "Sammy")



 It was as cool as I'd hoped, and the food was a good as I'd hoped.  But it wasn't as kid-friendly as I'd hoped.



 I also had a "welcome to Utah county" moment when I was surrounded by 3 moms trying to force their kids to be cute so they could mamarazzi them with their dSLRs.  I was happy that at that moment my camera was out of sight.  That part of life "down south" will be an adjustment for me.



Do people really sign a lease for a house and move in a week later?  Everybody wants their rentals filled by June 1st and we are not moving until July.  I can't quite wrap my brain around not planning ahead more than that.  Perhaps it's because I'm moving from far enough away that I can't buzz over to look at a new listing.  A rather large part of me is anxious to nail down our new temporary home and move on to the next stressor.  How have you handled temporary housing?

Letters: my firstborn

Dear Sir O,

I do not doubt that God is good at His job. And in His infinite wisdom, He sent you to me.  Clearly I have not got infinite wisdom just yet, because there are still days that I wonder how in the world we are a good match.



I often hear parents comment about the children that "do them in" with their oversized personalities.  This is often part of an explanation of why that child was their final familial addition.  But you are my firstborn.  I knew you would not be my last attempt at parenting, no matter how much trouble you gave me.  And truthfully, I have yet to meet your equal in stature of personality.  Yours is huge, but also deep and broad.  The sheer scope of your personality astounds your mother.  And your personality's capacity for breadth of dynamics just wows me.  You can go from so brazen, stubborn, and impenetrable to remarkably sensitive and receptive in a startling short period of time.



You are capable and versed at insolence, defiance, selective listening, and blatant disobedience.  I cannot trust you to yourself if there is an ounce of sugar within a hundred yards of your being.  You persist in learning certain things the hard way and you still cannot eat without wearing your food by the time you are done.  You do not ever hold still, not even in your sleep.  Your mind can dart from one idea to another like a hummingbird  on 12 cups of coffee.  You make me tired.



But you are also evolving into a remarkable sibling.  You do things without provocation that make my heart sing.  4 times out of 5 you share with your brother as though not-sharing were not an option.  Your memory of all the rules becomes crystal clear when it comes to recognizing when he's breaking one that endangers him.  You give cuddles and kisses, and to our baby gentleman you give them in abundance.  My favorite thing in the world right now is your unprovoked "thank you" during the course of a meal.  You must be our child after all if good food brings out the best in you.  This is no fluke either, for the last month at least 3 times a week we get your compliments to the chef.  I adore it.



You're starting to ask real questions and want real answers.  Having curiosity as a major character trait myself, I find I have a remarkable reserve of patience for this.  I so badly want you to feel safe asking us whatever your mind yearns to understand. I hope you don't mind that sometimes we just don't know and we tell you so.  (Usually with a promise to find out more together).

You stretch me in a myriad of hard and uncomfortable ways, and force me to see truth in the cliche that you are teaching me far more than I can possibly teach you.  We need each other that way.  So I suppose it's not so very hard to see just enough wisdom in the stewardship God gave me to decide to trust Him the rest of the way through it.

Captain Enfermo

One by one my kids are getting picked off by a virus I'm tempted to nickname "fast and furious".  They are slammed by a malaise and fever, lasting about 8 hours, and then irritable for another 12 hours or so.  Just in case you are wondering, there is nothing in the whole world so cuddly as our feverish captain.  Wreaks utter havoc on my productivity.  One cannot truly cuddle and multitask, you know.

Banana Bread - improv

We have a running problem around these parts with over-ripe bananas.  When we buy a bunch, there's always one or two that get soft before we get around to eating them.  Yesterday I wanted to make banana bread with 4 browning bananas, and then turn around and make french toast out of the quickbread.  I turned to my trusty Cook's Illustrated recipe bank, and found that their recipe calls for 6 overripe bananas, so improvisation was in order.  (Who lets that many bananas go brown?  4 is about our max.)  I dug out some banana extract and went to work.  Everyone is glad I did because it was the BEST FRENCH TOAST EVER.



Banana Bread

1&3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 peeled bananas
2 teaspoons banana extract
8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter, melted and allowed to cool a bit
2 large eggs, room temperature (or place eggs in a container of warm water for a few minutes)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons granulated sugar

*Prep - preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Spray a loaf pan with nonstick spray.  whisk flour, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl.

1. Place bananas in a microwave safe bowl, cover with plastic wrap and cut vents.  Microwave on high 5 minutes.  Move bananas to a mesh strainer over a bowl.  allow bananas to drain 10+ minutes.  Hopefully you will get 1/3 to 1/2 cup of fluid.

2. Transfer fluid to a small saucepan and cook over medium high heat until reduced. (5min) Add banana extract, then stir liquid into bananas and mash until smooth.  Whisk butter, eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla into banana mixture.

3. Pour banana mixture into flour mixture and mix until just combined.  Scrape batter into prepared loaf pan.  Sprinkle granulated sugar evenly over top of batter.

4. Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 50 to 75 minutes, depending on size and type of loaf pan.  Allow bread to cool in pan 15 minutes, then run a knife or spatula around the edges and remove from pan to finish cooling on a cooling rack.

5. If using for french toast, slice into 3/4 inch slices and allow extra time for bread to marinate in your egg mixture of choice before moving to griddle.

*(if desired, 1/2 cup nuts can be added when wet and dry ingredients are mixed together)

lift off

A certain gentleman around these parts insists on racing through his babyhood.  Suddenly all he can think about is going places.  He has the audacity to pull himself up on all fours and scoot.



I cannot keep up at this pace.  How about if we switch places?   It can be my job to lay around all day, and you can do all the hustling?  Something tells me that wouldn't quite work out.  So, my baby, do your job and SLOW DOWN.  We are not in a position to fill your position (baby) as quickly as you're bent on vacating it.



And trust me, someday having nothing to do but lay around, smile, and look cute will sound like a pretty good gig.

bloggers anonymous

You may begin wondering whether you have a blogging "problem" when every time your camera is whipped out you get an "is this going on the blog?" comment.
How often does this happen to me?  Pretty much every time there's another adult in my picture.
But it's always nice to find out people actually read what I write.  More than occasionally I feel like I'm talking to myself here in bloggerspace.
I slipped out last night to visit some out-of-town friends from college, most of whom I haven't seen in years.  My, how we've all grown up.  I was the only one with kids who managed to make it to this shin-dig (thanks to my lovely husband) and I got to contemplate lots of deep and happy things.  God's good to me in the "landing lovely people in her lap" department.

up and out

While I'm preoccupied with the near-future, my kids determinedly grow up in the here and now.





In the "just a year" that we've been staying here, Sir O has completely blossomed with his ability to communicate complex thoughts and ask meaningful questions.  Our Captain has transformed from a babyman to an autonomous toddler.  (And he's picked up great momentum with his speech, just in the last two weeks).  Oh, and the gentleman has exploded into a ginormous tubby chunk of sunshine.



So why don't I feel like I've changed much at all?  I expect I just can't see it because I've been experiencing every minute glacial iota of it.  I know it's impossible to keep from changing, and I hope hope hope I'm changing more for the better than not.

homework

This month I'm enrolled in Nicole's Photo 101 course in an attempt to polish my photography skills. It's so weird to have homework again! (Almost as weird as cramming for my floral design exam this same time last year). Here's a peek at some shots I've taken for my homework assignment this week. I find it hilarious that I appear to like my photographs tight and close (with shallow depth of field), just like my floral designs.....

That's what I said, a rally

Monday finds me scrambling to pick myself up and face a new week (yet again).  But with a few concrete goals that yield wholesome versions of instant gratification (bake bread, check), I am aiming to get back on my feet.



The fact of the matter is that we have packing to do.  We may not have found a house to live in yet, but we know where we're going come July.  I am, of course, rooting for this to be a long-term endeavor.  But having grown up in a situation where job opportunities that should have been permanent had a way of spontaneously combusting, I know better than to go out and buy a house before Mr Renn has worked there long enough to commit and marry the place.  So behind the scenes we are rental-house-shopping and trying to will our belongings to pack themselves.



Sensing my absent mind and stress, my children feel it is their duty to put me through the rigors of Parenting 505.  Every rule and decision is tested and tested and tested.  It is so {freaking} exhausting to be consistent and stand my ground. Worth it, yes I know it is.  But there are lots of moments lately where I start to wonder where I'm supposed to pull from to gather the wherewithal to pull myself up by the bootstraps and commandeer the entropic troop into responsible adulthood.  Imagine feeling like 2 tsp of butter spread over 60 loaves of bread.  Well, that probably only requires imagination if you've never been the mother of 3 kids under 5.  And many of you have.

Luckily our prospects for the future, while full of initial stresses (finding a home, settling health insurance, utilities, change of address, blah blah blah), also holds the promise of some renewed energy.



Because it's true what they say.  Sometimes a change is as good as a rest.

And when you are praying because you're near the end of your rope, you're almost always given more rope rather than less need for rope.

So we'll keep on keeping on.

Happy Mother's Day!

saw sharpening

Do you ever reach that point of overwhelmedness where apathy starts to take over?



I couldn't pinpoint which of my numerous stressors is the primary culprit, although I'm willing to bet that sleep-deprivation tops the list.  I am just treading water lately, occasionally going under, and never quite getting high enough to actually figure out what direction I'm headed.  It's all survival mode, all the time.

Motivation and goals become fuzzy images through all that water.  I'm just bobbing between good shining moments with my individual kids and in between I sink into the frey.  Weeks slip through my fingers and I have precious little to show for them.

Somebody always, always needs me.  There is an intense sweetness to that on principle, but truthfully, it can be overdone.  I could use 5 minutes here or there without so much helplessness breathing down my neck.

I need some time to sharpen the saw.  My well is running dry.  I haven't been taking care of myself much.  (Although getting my haircut was a lovely step in the right direction).  All the things I should and need to be doing to keep myself centered and motivated keep getting shoved to existential back-burners.   Exercise? Schmeh.  Meal Planning?  Renn will do it.  We'll eat more cheese and potato chips, but we won't starve.  Prayer?  Oh, lots of little 1-sentence ones, but the focused soul searching kind are awfully scarce.  And the pondering and listening that should follow prayer?  Suspiciously absent.

My biggest failure is (yet again) scripture study.  I believe very much that this would make the largest difference of all.  And I get so jealous when people describe righteous women who are always curling up with their scriptures because they love them so much.  I've had moments like that, but by and large my scripture study lacks the confidence to think that my observations and suppositions amount to anything.  Plus, when do I ever do anything without interruption?

I think, for mother's day, I should like a very large nap.  And an hour to curl up with the good book.  Anyone care to communicate that request to the three little men who won't let it happen?

olé

Feliz Cinco de Mayo de nuestros seῆores pequeῆos.  

cutting block

Between the receding hairline, the post-postpartum fuzz, and severe time restrictions for my morning routine, my hair needed a big change, and I finally bit the bullet and got it over with.



You like?

chunky gentleman

Speaking of our Gentleman, isn't he growing up fast?



Most of the time when I go to pick him up after a nap I'm convinced he's doubled in size since I laid him down to sleep. He is a solid, wiggly, delightful little man. I'm certain you never saw such a smiley baby. And, like all my children, he's ticklish out his ears. (The poor boys are related to me.)



You cannot hear his soulful laugh without smiling inside.  Is it any wonder he's so popular around here?

a hopeful heirloom

I never did get to show you the blessing outfit we made for our Gentleman back in January.
It was a crazy labor of love.
I bought vintage italian linen and velvet ribbon and an out-of-print pattern for it.  (On an ambitious day) but then decided it needed to be lined (which, not being included in the pattern, is still beyond my comfort zone) so I had to call in reinforcements (in the form of my mother taking a day off of work to help me.)

I am beyond pleased with how it turned out.  I hope someday I get to see a grandbaby in it.

tulipa

My grandpa has a garden-full of tulips. Years ago he planted the bulbs extra deep so that he can just till and plant his kitchen garden on top of them once they're done for the year. I'm told that people stop to look all the time, it's certainly an unexpected and cheerful wash of color when one is cruising down Main Street in Farmington. My mother told us that we needed to find time to visit it last weekend while it's still in it's prime.  We made the briefest of drive-by visits, but still; lovely lovely. As close to the Keukenhof as we're likely to get this year.