interesting thought

I have been reading a very interesting book called Half the Sky. It is about bringing women out of oppression and helping them have opportunities to succeed. Hopefully later I will have a chance to share my thoughts from the book because the ideas in there have truly changed my life. But I wanted to share one thought that I had today.

If you look at countries that are managing to dig themselves out of poverty and become flourishing economies, they are the ones where women have become involved in the economy. They are the ones where cultural views about women are changing so that women can have freedom, education, and respect, rather than being supressed and expected to stay home and be submissive to their husbands. They are the countries where women's views are being heard and women are starting businesses and going to school.

Interestingly, one of the things that is improving the quality of life for women, and really for everyone, in developing countries, is the growth of the factory industry. Before, women had no choice but to stay home at the family's poor farm, without being able to get much education and without any hope of improving their family's financial situation. The women from the book who are in the most poverty are the ones that live in rural areas on small family farms. But now, as factories are being increasingly built in some developing countries, those women have the opportunity to go work there, where they get better wages and eat better food. Since they have more money, they can save it or use it to get their own education or to fund younger siblings' educations, which means that their entire family is more capable of improving their standard of living. They also are able to break out of the cultural view that they are not worth much because they are only women, which is also a very positive thing because the entire society begins to realize that women have a lot of worth and deserve respect.

The interesting thing is that in Western societies there is a growing trend of thinking that factories are evil and that we would all be better off on our own family farms, and the environment would be better too. But in many societies, including the United States about a hundred years ago, factories have enabled many people to improve their standard of living and get out of poverty. In addition, if everybody lived on their family farm and was mostly self-sufficient, women would continue to be oppressed and disrespected. It is getting into the factories or starting businesses or going to school that enables so many women to become empowered, respected, and free. And doing things more efficiently with factories or machinery or technology frees up resources so that these women can do that.

So maybe we should think about that when we get critical of the factories in China making all of our junk and polluting the air. I'm not saying there aren't problems with all of this, but I think it's important to realize that industrial revolutions in developing countries are likely to significantly increase the quality of life of their people, especially the women--and this because they got off the family farm. I'm just trying to say that it's certainly not ideal to go backwards like that. Division of labor is a good thing and we need to appreciate it.

Hope this makes sense . . .

things that have happened

Favorite quotes:

My friend Emily Coyne: "Canned peas are an abomination."

Kevin (while I was putting a little ponytail in Heidi's hair): "I want a funny tail."

Things Kevin is doing:

• Constantly asking me what his friends are doing (What's Charlie doing? What's Guy doing? What's Joseph doing? Where's Dad? Where's Lexi?). I have to make up answers fast or he will take my face in his hands and ask it faster and faster. And "I don't know" is not a satisfactory response.
• Learning to cut with scissors.
• Enjoying going to the library and reading library books.
• Saying, "Wanna get outside . . . wanna get outside . . ."

Things Heidi is doing:

• Sleeping in Kevin's room some nights. If she goes to bed earlier than Kevin, then we can sneak Kevin in after she's asleep. Yippee!
• Climbing on chairs.
• Playing peek-a-boo.

Story:

Kevin was in time out in his room. I was going about getting things ready to go outside for a minute. There was . . . ahem . . . a smell . . . which I thought was Heidi's diaper. It was not. I looked around to figure out what in the world it could be, but the hall was clean for once and there was nothing in there that would be making that smell. I shrugged and went to get Kevin out of his room and put his shoes on.

And then I figured out what the smell was. Let's just say Kevin was bored to tears in there and decided to take his diaper off. No, it was not just a wet one. And I have no idea how it was spread so far.

I cannot believe I am writing about number two on my blog.


Kevin went in the shower. Heidi got strapped into her booster seat at the table because I was not letting her run free while I cleaned up Kevin's blanket, Kevin's cloth diaper, basically all of the carpet in his room, the door, and the wall. Fortunately, somebody left a steam cleaner in the mail room of our building a couple of months ago and I snagged it, so that did the carpet cleaning for me. By the way, Kevin knows how to operate that thing, from filling the tank with water to emptying everything out.

Well, Kevin finished his shower and came out with Ryan's towel wrapped around his waist. I was still cleaning. He watched me for a while and then ran off somewhere.

Several minutes passed and I finally felt like things were clean. Then I came out to free Heidi.

And that was when I realized that my son was standing on the windowsill, banging on the window and watching for trucks. And he was stark naked. I'm certain someone must have seen.

[Shrug.] Oh, well,

looking like a good mother vs. being a good mother

Lately Pinterest has been a really useful tool for keeping track of things to do with my kids. I'm finding all sorts of ideas on there.

But it has led me to ponder about what kinds of activities I should be doing with my kids.

There are a lot of ideas out there for activities to do with your kids. And some of them are actually beneficial for the kids--fun, interesting, thought-provoking, etc. But some of them just make you look like you're an awesome and creative parent. Texture seems to be the buzz word right now, by the way. As mothers we need to step back and look at the intent behind what we do with our kids and try to make sure that we are doing it to help them learn and grow, not just so that we can post about it on our blog so everyone will think we're a creative parent.

Okay, so that was me getting on a soapbox. I'm done now.

Beyond that, I've been thinking more about how much I need to be coming up with things for my kids to do. Some people feel like they need to get out and do something every day of the week. And that's fine. But sometimes I look ahead at the week and feel a little guilty because I haven't already planned out a creative outing for every single morning like all those amazing-moms-who-always-have-such-good-ideas.

Today as I was thinking about this, I realized it's not a problem. It's a matter of what our family likes or needs. We do try to get out of the house most days. If we don't, Kevin goes nuts. But most of the time we just go on a walk or play at the playground. We get to park days with friends from church about once a week, sometimes we go to the library, and we go grocery shopping on Tuesdays, and other than that we don't really go anywhere. And that's okay--probably even desirable. I don't need to entertain my kids all the time. They need to learn to keep themselves occupied and come up with ideas themselves. And there's nothing wrong with doing simple things like going on a walk. In addition, doing new things every day can get expensive. There's the price of gas for driving everywhere, and then for a lot of things there's admission or purchase price. Another important factor is that I need to spend time at home because being home gives me mental and emotional energy. I enjoy going out, but I need to be home to recharge (which, by the way, is one of the reasons why I'm so grateful to be done with high school--after I started attending college I realized it had been really draining on me to spend 7 hours at school plus at least an hour and a half on the bus every day).

And that is why we don't get out much. I'm okay with that!

This morning I decided to just write down four goals to accomplish during the day. They were: 1) Wash the wall behind Heidi's chair, 2) Vacuum, 3) Read 20 pages of a book, 4) Fold the clothes. At the end of the day, I have accomplished 2, 3, and most of 4. But in my defense, I had to do an emergency carpet shampooing in Kevin's room (more on that later). We also took out the garbage and cleaned the vacuum filters. It was a pretty productive day, and I think I might utilize this method every morning.

But I noticed something interesting about myself as I was making dinner. I realized that despite that fact that I  had accomplished so many things today, I still felt somewhat dissatisfied with myself. I was still finding ways to fault myself for not doing better about keeping the house clean, which was absurd because I did a lot today. That's a personality trait that I need to work on overcoming. I need to learn to be satisfied with doing my best.

I also thought it was sort of sad that I had to make it a goal to read 20 pages. What a contrast with how much I used to read when I was growing up!

Although, now that I think about it, I did read to Kevin for about an hour altogether today.

first time swimming

I finally got around to taking my kids swimming for the first time. It took me a long time to get around to it because I didn't have a swimsuit and I wanted to get some cloth swim diapers, and I sort of kept procrastinating going and getting them. Plus I was nervous about the frenzy of getting everyone changed, keeping the kids from drowning or splashing more sensitive kids, and then getting everyone changed again. I'm not a huge fan of going swimming, but I knew Kevin would love it and it would be a nice thing to do when it's hot outside. This afternoon both of the kids woke up early from their naps, and I was faced with the prospect of having to keep them entertained for five hours before bedtime. I didn't know what to do, but I knew we would never survive if we just stayed home and played. So we went to the free community pool.

They have a little wading pool that is fenced off from the big pool, which was perfect. I didn't know it was fenced off, or I wouldn't have been so nervous. Kevin had a fun time jumping into the water and crawling in it. Heidi was very apprehensive and would whimper if I even put her toes in. By the end she had warmed up enough to the idea that she would sit between my legs on the side and kick her feet in the water. We had a really nice time.

When we had to go, I figured I would just change Kevin there by the side of the pool so that we could go straight out to the car, since I hadn't really gotten wet and didn't need to change. I didn't really want to mess with the dressing room again. Well, he had his shirt and underwear on, and then I had to go chase Heidi. I turned around and saw the look on Kevin's face, and I knew he was going to run and jump in the water, and there was nothing I could do about it. So Kevin had to go home in just his pants. Next time maybe we'll change in the car, or not bother with changing. I needn't have bothered worrying about his car seat getting wet, because he dumped half of a water bottle into his lap on purpose while I was getting Heidi out of her car seat. I rarely give my kids food in the car, but henceforth Kevin is banned from having even a drink of water until we get home.

Still, things went pretty well, and I'm sure we'll be going again.

Independence Days past

When I was growing up we tried a few different things for Independence Day. We would have picnics in our backyard or visit my grandparents or my Aunt Janeil's family. A couple of years we got serious and lit some sparklers. One year my mom made homemade ice cream. It was really good, but for some reason even after over a day in the freezer the mint ice cream never managed to get out of the liquid phase.

But the one tradition we always had was to watch the fireworks display at CSI (College of Southern Idaho--the community college in Twin Falls). A few times I got to go with friends or family and see it on campus, but usually we watched them at home. My dad was a farmer and we lived in the middle of a lot of fields, so we could see for quite a ways and we had a pretty good view of the show from our house.

Our house was at the end of a quarter of a mile of dirt road, and some of our yard was on the other side of the dirt road. There was a nice patch of grass across the road where we were able to get the good view. We would spread out a blanket and lie down on it and sit and wait for the fireworks.I don't think it got very hot in Idaho because a lot of the time we wanted another blanket to wrap up in. I'm sure the fireworks started late at night because it had to get dark first, and I remember the wait always seemed to be long. We would see people's little fireworks shows at their houses and say, "Well, that was lame. No, that can't be it. Let's wait some more." It was always so fun to be sitting there in the dark with my family on the blanket, hearing crickets chirp and staring at the stars. And then the fireworks would start and we would all comment on which kinds were our favorites.

And then subdivisions started going up, and one year we went out to watch the fireworks and realized that some houses were cutting off the bottom part of our show. But the view was still pretty good.
One summer when I was in high school, I went to see the fireworks on CSI's campus with a group of friends. One of them was Austin Hartgrave. We knew each other growing up and had been close friends for a long time. I talked to him most of the night and he was cracking jokes the whole time. At one point he remarked, "You know, I wonder what the Good Lord thinks of all this [i.e. the fireworks show] . . . He's probably thinking, 'I hope they'll be done soon so I can go to bed.' "

The summer after my freshman year at BYU, I had moved into Campus Plaza, and my roommate Hillary wanted to go watch the Stadium of Fire from the mountains. So we got our blankets and walked there. We didn't really want to go all the way to the Y because that's where everyone goes and Hillary wanted to be more alone, so once we'd gotten up the mountain a ways, we just went off the road, tumbled across a ditch, and found some rocks to sit on. I think it was still light when we found our spots. The fireworks were much more impressive than I had ever seen before and the show went for quite a while. From the very beginning it was about as good as the finale was at CSI, so I was interested to see what the finale would be like--and I was not disappointed. About the time the finale started, though, I started to wonder how in the world we were going to get back home because now it was dark and we still had to get across that ditch in the dark and find our way down the road. I think I had a little LED light on my key chain that we used, but I can't really remember.

The next summer, Ryan and I had just gotten married and we were living in his sister Eliza's basement apartment for the summer. We spent the fourth of July with them. In the evening before the fireworks started we watched a BBC Life video. Then we had to walk along the street to see if we could find a spot that had a good view of the stadium. A neighbor saw us and said they had a pretty good view from their house, so we went up there. It seems like I saw some people sitting up on their roof.

The next summer, I was expecting to have a baby four days later. We went to the annual ward pancake breakfast and several people expressed their surprise when I said I was due so soon. But as it turns out, he didn't come for almost another two weeks. It was a hot summer, and that was augmented by having a built-in space heater inside of me, so I was not interested in going outside to see the fireworks. I probably made some wimpy hamburgers on the stove (my hamburgers always shrink to pathetic-looking little UFOs) and then we probably watched a movie or something. And I probably fell asleep on the floor for a while, because we didn't have a couch at that point and I tended to do that.

Last summer, Heidi was a new baby and we still went to the pancake breakfast again. I felt fine and I wanted to see people and get a good breakfast without much effort. Kevin played with flags and rode in a little red wagon with a little girl. He brought the flags home and they have been the bane of my existence ever since . . . actually, I think they're both finally broken, so now we're okay.

Ryan and I exist too.

Here is what tends to happen if I try to play the piano:

Video



(Kind of pathetic, huh?)

And here is Ryan on Father's Day:

Heidi's first ponytail

Yes, the hair is sticking straight out at a right angle to her head, but still, I thought it was cute. Heidi lost all the hair in front a couple of months after she was born, so she has long hair in back but not in front. It makes it kind of hard to do anything fun with her hair these days because clips don't really stay in, but if she wears headbands she gets funny little hair loops behind the headband. All this is assuming that she doesn't take the clip or headband out, of course. So it was exciting to get to fix her hair. It stayed put even through a grocery store trip.

puffy soap

I am determined to actually do the things that I pin on Pinterest. One of the things that I pinned a while ago (after finding it on one of Kristi's boards) was instructions for puffy soap clouds. On Saturday Kevin was bored, and we have been experiencing record temperatures, so we decided to try it out. Kevin thought it was fairly interesting.

Basically, you put a bar of Ivory soap on wax paper in the microwave and then watch it cook. The result is pretty cool. Be sure to watch it because that's the best part.

I would not recommend using an entire bar of Ivory soap. A quarter of a bar would be plenty. After we had left the bar in for about a minute, it had filled up the microwave and we pulled it out, and after stirring it around for a while we realized we still had half a bar left and cooked that too. And after stirring that around I still found another small piece that didn't puff.

Cost: free. In my couponing days I tended to be able to get Ivory soap for free with coupons, so we have quite a supply built up. You can still kind of use the soap afterwards.

Check out those brown, brown eyes.

a little birthday party

We are so thrilled to have Jared and Kristi living close to us now. The day after Heidi's birthday we had them over for brownies and ice cream to celebrate.

Here is a video of Heidi getting the Happy Birthday song and tasting her brownie. She thought it was nice.



But the ice cream is what really made her excited.

one year old

Heidi's favorite games are: climbing onto things and then screeching at people to help her get down, getting her fingers caught in things on purpose and then screeching at people to get her fingers out, spitting food out, the dropping game, standing beside the bed or couch and screeching because she can't manage to climb onto them, pulling flinging things out of drawers, pulling and eating things out of the fridge, making funny vocalizations, clapping and rubbing her hands, splashing in the toilet water (and, of course, getting her fingers caught under the seat and then screeching), and banging on Kevin's door during his nap so that he will wake up early and come play with her.

She's in a really fun stage, but lets just say that I had forgotten how wearying it is to be rescuing a little toddler baby all the time. I don't think she can reach the door knobs yet, but that will be another lovely adventure.

That screech. It's excruciating. It's not really loud, but it's incredibly unpleasant to hear, which is what makes it such a useful tool.

Kevin and Heidi are gradually learning to have fun playing together. Now that Heidi is walking confidently it is fun to see Kevin come hold her hand and say, "Come on, Heidi," and then lead her to go play somewhere.

Heidi usually sleeps through the night again now (but it took much crying it out), and if she does wake up I wait a while and she usually goes back to sleep on her own pretty quickly. If she wakes up before 6:00 I don't get up to get her. I am closer to feeling like we can move her to Kevin's room without fearing for her life, but now I'm reluctant to deal with them waking each other up. Kevin has been getting up at 6:00 lately, and that's bad enough. We made a feeble attempt at putting them together one night. It involved Heidi getting up and running around in the crib, giggling delightedly, while Kevin kept running over to the crib and alternated between laughing with her and telling her she was being naughty and needed to go to bed. Maybe Heidi's just going to stay in our closet for a long time. I want another bedroom.

Heidi isn't really a picky eater, but she likes to have a little bit of several different things for her meals, which makes a lot of work for me. She's picked up on Kevin's cinnamon toast thing. I'm also pretty sure she eats more than Kevin, and yet she's still small. (She's about 17 pounds, which is 10th percentile for weight, and she's 25th percentile for height.) A couple of weeks ago I decided it was time to drop nursing in the middle of the day, so now she only nurses in the morning and before going to bed. It was just starting to feel a little burdensome to me and I felt like it was time for her to be mainly dependent on table food, especially since her weight curve is dropping. It's been a good change. I'm not planning to stop breastfeeding her right away because we both like it, but it's been nice to pare it down a little. Nursing has been a lot less of a burden with Heidi because I was more comfortable with using a cover or a blanket so I could feed her in public, so I haven't had to miss a lot of church meetings or cut playground hangouts short. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to meet other moms in the mother's room, and I have missed the mother's room chats, but that's not why I go to church. I'm guessing it won't be too long before I'm the mom walking the halls with the active toddler and gazing longingly at the doors to the nursery.

Here are some pictures of Heidi on her birthday. By the way, I'm trying to be resigned to the fact that I'm just going to have a lot of pictures of my kids with clutter and piles of laundry in the background. The fact of the matter is, they always do the cutest things when the house is a mess, and while I love good quality pictures, photography is not as high on my list of priorities of skills I want to develop.

Heidi loves sucking on wet washcloths.

What is this?

We are getting into a question phase with Kevin. He will point at everything and say, "What is this?" (emphasized like that) And the thing is he knows perfectly well what they are. It kind of threw me off at first. Sometimes I have to think about my answer for a second because some of the things he asks about don't really even have names. He is also always asking, "Where's Dad? Where's Heidi?" even if they're right there beside him. I've taken to giving silly answers just to add some variety to the monotony of saying over and over again that Dad is still at work. And if I don't answer right away Kevin gently takes my face in his hands and asks again until I finally answer.

In the morning he gets up and flings the door open and then says in a bright voice, "Heh-lo!" (Trying to transcribe the way he says things is hard sometimes!) It's nice if that happens at 7:00, but lately he's been waking us up at 6:00, which is barely even morning in my estimation. I'm tired!

Ryan says "Epa" a lot. It's a phrase he picked up on his mission in Argentina. So now Kevin has taken to saying "Huppa."

A few days ago Kevin had closed himself in his room. I went to check on him and he slammed the door in my face and told me to go away. I was quite busy with dinner and figured he can't do much harm in there, so I left him alone. A few minutes later Ryan got home and went into Kevin's room, and then he came out and told me that Kevin had moved the crib beside his bed so he could climb onto the top bunk and then lower himself into the crib.

Since Heidi's birthday he's been going around singing, "Happy da birthday to you, happy da birthday to you . . . " I continue to be amazed when out of the blue he starts singing a song or quoting a book.

Neal A. Maxwell quote

"Many individuals preoccupied by the cares of the world are not necessarily in transgression. But they certainly are in diversion and thus waste “the days of [their] probation” (2 Ne. 9:27). Yet some proudly live “without God in the world” (Alma 41:11), with gates and doors locked from the inside!

"Mark it down, brothers and sisters, people too caught up in themselves will inevitably let other people down!"

--Neal A. Maxwell, The Tugs and Pulls of the World

This quote was shared in Sunday School yesterday and it really stuck out to me. I think sometimes I tend to get into this situation, where I'm not really committing sins, but I've allowed myself to get busy and preoccupied with other things and I don't put a lot of thought into my relationship with God or my testimony. It might not be a transgression to be in that state, but what a pity it is to waste away time that way when we have so much potential that could be achieved if we use our time wisely to strengthen our relationship with God and to do His work. How sad it would be to look back on one's life and to say, "Well, I didn't really do anything bad . . . but then again, I didn't really do anything. I was too busy. I wasn't thinking about it. What a waste."