in sickness and in health

(I'm publishing this on 3/2, but changing the date to last week since that's when I actually wrote it.)

A few evenings ago I was saying my prayers and it occurred to me that even though my kids have been sick a lot, I haven't really been sick this winter, so I said a prayer of gratitude for that. The next morning I was throwing up. I recovered pretty quickly from that stomach virus and promptly moved on to getting a cold which is only getting worse. Yay.

Ann Marie may have another ear infection, but I'm not sure. I might be in denial. Or she might just be bored and want more attention. She's been crying a lot more than usual lately, and she's had a chronic runny nose all winter. She's probably had a low-grade fever several times too, but I haven't been able to check because our kid-friendly thermometer died and we only have a mercury thermometer. Every time I show up at the walk-in clinic at the doctor's office I'm afraid they'll roll their eyes and say I'm starting to be a hypochondriac, except I know that's silly because every time we've gone it's been for a legitimate reason.

Kevin is having surgery to get tubes in his ears next week. As time goes on I'm becoming more convinced that he's been dealing with mild hearing loss for most of the school year. He's always asking me to turn up the volume in the car, but this morning I turned on the car before buckling him in, and when I got in the back I realized the fade on the speakers was set so that it's way, way too loud in the back. He also turns the volume up on the computer a lot when he's watching movies. His OT thinks this surgery will help him a lot with his auditory processing issues, which are the source of a lot of our behavior problems lately.

Heidi puts on a mournful look and tells me she's "just feeling a little sick" multiple times a day. It's tricky when they're three because it's hard to tell if they're actually sick or just in the habit of saying it.

I was trying to crunch some numbers today:

3 kids

1 school year

4 ear infections

5 rounds of antibiotics

~15 doctor visits with two more scheduled (if you count the ear tube surgery) and Ann Marie due for a well-child (for a total of ~18)

10 pharmacy trips

We are trying to enforce hand-washing more strictly, but I don't have much control over the germs Kevin gets at school.

general update

This week Ann Marie learned how to play peek-a-boo and clap her hands, which is absolutely adorable. It totally redeems her from all the times she bit me and scratched me while nursing last week. And I can't believe I just said that on my blog.

Heidi is enjoying preschool. This week she had a Valentine party and learned about the letter R. She likes and hates Primary. There hasn't been a single week when she hasn't cried in Primary. However, she is already singing the songs she is learning there. Heidi is our worst sleeper right now. She almost always comes out a couple of times after being put to bed, and she also almost always comes out and sleeps on the couch at some point during the night. For months we were getting up and putting her back in her bed, but now I've given up. I just turn the hall light back off and go back to bed. My sister slept outside my parents' bedroom door every night for months and she turned out just fine, so I've decided I don't care anymore. Heidi's a really sweet kid and she's having a hard time figuring out how to deal with all of her emotions. She's really interested in the concept of people getting older and the changes that happen with that (like being allowed to do more things).

Lately I've been really amazed at how much Kevin's behavior has improved. His arousal level is much more stable than it was when he started school, and I feel like I can trust him to do things independently a lot more, which is really convenient. Just as an example, last Wednesday at a doctor appointment (more on that in a second) we ended up waiting for a really long time, and Kevin was really, really good the entire time. He didn't run around or scream or bang things. He mainly sat still and observed things. Doctor visits used to be a nightmare with him because he had to touch everything, so this was amazing. We have our hard things too, but there have been huge improvements.

So, the doctor appointment was with an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist. Last fall Kevin had a pretty bad ear infection, the first he's ever had. The first round of antibiotics (amoxicillin) didn't completely get rid of it and the penicillin caused him to break out into hives. The ear infection didn't come back after the second round of antibiotics (Cefdinir), so that was good, but unfortunately from the hearing tests he had at school we learned that the ear infection had impacted his hearing, so the doctor recommended that we see a specialist. He was still recovering from the ear infection the first time we saw the specialist, so she asked us to come back in a couple of months when the ear infection should have completely healed. So on Wednesday he had a hearing test and then we saw the doctor. We learned that he still had fluid behind his ear drums and his hearing was not too bad, but it should be better. So the doctor recommended that Kevin get tubes put in his ears. Then on Thursday night Kevin started complaining that his ear hurt and we learned that he had another ear infection. So it looks like the ear tubes are a good idea. We haven't been able to schedule the surgery yet, but it will probably be at the beginning of March. From what I've read, it's a pretty simple procedure and recovery isn't too bad (most kids can go back to daycare/school the next day), but he will have to have general anesthesia during the surgery. So if you could keep him in your prayers that the surgery will go well and the tubes will help, we would appreciate it.

We also found out that we will be staying here an extra year. Ryan and his advisers feel that he needs more time to finish his dissertation and that he will have a better chance of getting a job if he waits a year. I feel good about this and I'm happy that we can stay another year because I love it here. We are probably going to stay in the same apartment because anyplace bigger would be out of our price range and we feel that Kevin would benefit from staying at the same school. I was sort of getting excited about the thought of finding a little house with a fenced backyard to rent, so that's a little disappointing, but we can handle it.

Lately my main focus has been to get as much sleep as I can. I am realizing that I've been operating on a sleep deficit for a long time and it's affecting everything else. It means that I'm not getting as much done as I want to, especially in the evenings when I normally try to get things done, but I'm hoping that will get better once I'm more rested and not feeling so lethargic and out of it all the time. I really wish Kevin's school started about an hour later. My body naturally wants to wake up around 7:30, so it's been really rough to get up at 6:15 to get Kevin ready for school.

I am on Week 6 of the Couch to 5K program. A little over a week ago I ran for 20 minutes straight, which was a huge accomplishment for me. I think I am running at a rate of one mile every fifteen minutes, so I'm guessing that once I'm running for 30 minutes I will still have a while before I can run a 5K (3.1 miles), but it's still exciting to see how much progress I've made. Before I started Couch to 5K last fall, the most I had ever run at once was half a mile, and that was really hard.

It's going to be really cold this week. I can't wait for the weather to get warmer.

stuff

I started Couch to 5K on August 19, so it's been about a month since I did it for the first time. The first week went pretty well. I could tell at the end of the week that I was getting better because the last couple of running intervals weren't as hard. For the second week, I decided to repeat the week one routine, but I skipped the third day of running because I was feeling sore. The third week, I ran on Monday (repeated week 1 for the third time) and it was really hard. My knees were really sore and I wasn't sure if it was a bad kind of sore or muscle soreness, but at any rate the pain was bad enough that I didn't do anything cardio that week except walk about half a mile one day. So I took a break for that week. I did some research and asked friends for advice, and I learned some things about proper form and decided to ditch my new shoes and go back to my old ones. I started up again for a fourth week, repeating the week 1 routine one more time, and that week went a lot better. This past week I finally moved up to the week 2 routine and it went pretty well. My calves are feeling sore, but I'm not worried about that because I can tell it's the good kind of pain like you get from working muscles that aren't used to exercising. I'm going to repeat the week 2 routine again this week. I can tell that my lungs and heart are in a lot better shape already. The main thing is that my leg muscles need to get stronger before I can run for longer intervals.

On Friday after we picked Kevin up from the bus, he dashed off and ran up the hill, wanting to check on our garden (the neglected one that only has dead plants in it). I didn't want to do that because it was hot and Heidi didn't have any shoes (and there wasn't anything to check because all of our plants have died), but he wouldn't listen to me when I told him to come back. The cool thing was that I was able to run after him. Before I started doing Couch to 5K I couldn't really have done that. I got tired too fast to be able to run after him for very long. This was one of the main reasons I started running. I don't know if I'll ever get fast enough to keep up with him, but I wanted to be able to "run and not be weary" so that I can keep up with my kids better (and play with them more!), so that has been a blessing. And even though sometimes I feel like Jello after doing a run, I also love that feeling of accomplishment and exhilaration afterwards. It really helps my self-esteem to know that I am doing something for my health and to feel the power that my body has. I've also been going to a Pilates class and lifting weights at the YMCA when I can. Heidi can do all of the puzzles at Child Watch in the time that I do a workout.

Kevin is enjoying school. In the evenings he will often get a piece of paper and sit and practice writing letters and numbers, which was something he would very rarely do before school started. He's improving a lot.

Some people in our ward have started a playgroup for kids that are Heidi's age. I've been asked by various people if I was putting Heidi in. I haven't really felt a strong need this year to do anything like that. Right now I feel like she needs to be home with me. She really is a sweetheart, and I enjoy having her around. She likes to help me fold washcloths and diapers, read books, and color.

You would think that now that I've graduated and Kevin is in school I would have a lot of extra time, but the reality is that I'm busier than ever, and I'm not sure why. Other than the meals, changing diapers, and feeding the baby, it seems like most days I can only manage to do one more thing. It's hard to keep up. I'm trying to become okay with that and realize that this is not a clean house season in my life.

I haven't been participating in social things as much lately. It's probably largely because Ryan's at work all day now that I'm not in school, so at the end of the day I usually would rather spend the evening with him than go to the girls night or whatever.

This week I got to go do an endowment session at the temple. On Wednesday I was feeling really overwhelmed by my responsibilities and some decisions I needed to make, and I had a very strong prompting that I needed to go to the temple the next day, so I made the call right away and scheduled an appointment for Thursday. It was a really special experience. As I approached the doors I was already in tears because it felt so, so good to be at the temple and I knew I would be in the presence of Heavenly Father there. I gained a lot of insights during the endowment session, and as I was praying in the Celestial room afterwards I got some answers to some questions I had. I also had a strong impression that God and His angels were there in the temple, including my ancestors, and that my family members who have died are helping me with my work as a mother because they want our righteous branch to continue. I probably have not felt the Spirit this strongly in the temple since I received my own endowment six years ago, so it was a really good day.

Kevin and Heidi started soccer yesterday, so hopefully they will enjoy that. Kevin is the tallest on his team, and Heidi is the shortest on her team by a head.

Yesterday was our annual Stake Women's Day. It's kind of like Super Saturday, except there is a much wider variety of classes (not just crafts). In the past I've attended classes about couponing, making ties for boys, managing finances, raising children, food storage, various spiritual topics, and more. This year the classes I chose were about building our children's strengths, making the most of attending the temple, and self defense. The self defense class was really interesting. The two main things I learned were that if you feel like you're in danger, you should head for lights and lots of people--not the bathroom or your car--and that the most important thing you can do to avoid being a victim of violence is to be aware and avoid getting into unsafe situations. We learned a few basic self-defense maneuvers, but I realized that for those to be useful you really would need to practice self-defense enough that those moves are instinctive.

Ann Marie rolled over from back to front on Tuesday. So now she sometimes has the problem where she gets on her tummy, plays for a while, then gets too tired to remember that she knows how to roll back over.

first week of school

Ann Marie is three months old now! She rolled over from tummy to back on Tuesday (Aug. 26). She has taken longer to roll over than the other two kids (Kevin did it at 2 months and Heidi did it at 3 weeks [!]), but it still seems early. I think she will probably figure out rolling from back to tummy soon too. She gets most of the way there, but then she finds her thumb and starts sucking on it instead of going the rest of the way. I have to hold her or put her in a baby seat with me in the kitchen a lot to protect her from the kids, so she doesn't get as much floor time as Kevin and Heidi did. She has started laughing. One of her favorite games is when I touch my nose to hers and say, "Beep." It makes her giggle hysterically. At her two-month appointment she weighed 12 lbs. 6 oz, so I'm guessing she's probably around 13 lbs. now.

I think Kevin had a good first week at Kindergarten. He was disappointed on Saturday morning that he didn't get to go to school. He also took a nap that afternoon of his own initiative, which was the first time in many months. He doesn't talk about Kindergarten much, but occasionally he mentions things. Here are a few of my favorite things he said this week:

"The cafeteria is this place at school, and it has a restaurant in it."

"My bus driver is a farmer. He was doing naughty things because he just drove past Baity Hill and didn't stop."

"At school there are rules, like no running, and respect others."

(Not school related)
Me: What are you eating? Spit that out right now!
Kevin: (spits out wrapper) I think it was some kind of wrapper at some point.
(Name that movie.)

Heidi was very upset that she didn't get to go to school with Kevin at first, but she is also enjoying that she gets to have the toys all to herself for a while every day. It's certainly quieter during the day without Kevin's noises, and the house stays cleaner too.

I am on week 3 of Couch to 5K, but I am repeating the first week for the third time. I am feeling some pain in my knees and I'm having a hard time deciding if it's the good kind of pain that means your muscles are growing or the bad kind of pain. I am thinking of going to Aqua Aerobics at the Y a couple of times to give my knees a break. Even though my knees are sore, I can tell that my heart and lungs are really improving, so that's encouraging. If my knees weren't hurting I would probably be moving on to the second week of Couch to 5K.

For those that are wondering (a lot of people have been asking), Ryan and his advisors have talked about him graduating next May. He is trying to get a couple of papers published before then and he is looking for a postdoc position at Who-Knows-Where University. He's working really hard and the kids and I are very proud of him.

on exercise and fitness

Since Ann Marie was born I've really wanted to put some emphasis on my health. I want to be strong again and have more energy. I also want to lose a lot of body fat, but I'm trying to focus on feeling better rather than how I look. It's taken me a while to figure out what I want to do to get more fit. I've been going for walks a few times a week, but I've been wanting to do more.

I decided to start with the Couch to 5K running program. I've been interested in it for a few years, but I never got motivated enough to try it before. Last Tuesday I found Robert Ullrey's podcasts and downloaded the one for the first week. I've finished the first week now and I thought it was great! He tells you when to run and when to walk and has a very friendly and motivating voice. It was a bit of a push on the first day, but I can tell that it's getting easier for me. I think I'm going to repeat week one this week before moving on because I'm still feeling pretty tired at the end. I think this will work for me. I feel like it's okay for me to start slow if it means that I can stay motivated. I was really turned off by running when I was on the track team in middle school because the coach expected too much of me (but didn't give me much advice or support), so I appreciate that with Couch to 5K I get some guidance but don't have anyone pushing me too hard and giving me disapproving glares. Even though I'm sweaty and tired when I get back from my runs, I also have a feeling of exhilaration and pride in what I've done.

I've also been wanting to strengthen my core, and a friend suggested that I could try Pilates. I tried it once in high school and I remember liking it, so I thought I'd give it another try. I went to a class at the YMCA yesterday and enjoyed it. It was really difficult for me, but the instructor was really understanding and didn't push me too hard. There was a really friendly and supportive atmosphere, with people of all different ages. I felt like this is a place where they're just happy that I'm trying to get more fit. I don't have to be as strong as everyone else. I'm planning to start going to this class twice a week.

Both the Couch to 5K program and the Pilates classes have a scheduled element to them, which I'm hoping will help me to stay consistent so that I can make progress.



I've been thinking about Victor Frankl's lecture (embedded above) and how it applies to me and exercise. I often give myself a hard time when I get out of the habit of exercise for a while. But it occurred to me this week that it's better for me to aim for consistency and keep making fitness goals, because even though sometimes I fall short, it's better than if I didn't even aim, because if I don't bother then I won't do anything and then my heart and muscles and emotional well-being will suffer the consequences. I want to be healthy so that I can play with my kids, have the energy to fulfill all of my responsibilities, be happier, and live a fuller and longer life.

What Do Your Cravings Mean?

Recently I came across some charts explaining some common cravings, what they mean, and what you should eat instead. Having read a few nutrition blogs myself, I consider my own opinions about nutrition to be superior to these charts, which are obviously flawed since they conflict with my opinions, so I decided to make a chart myself based on the thorough and accurate research I have done after reading so many nutrition blogs. Here is what I came up with. *

*Disclaimer: I am not officially an expert on nutrition and I cannot be held responsible for any decisions you make about your diet based on the suggestions I offer in this chart. In fact, I recommend that you do not take anything in this post seriously except the disclaimer because this post is intended to be silly and I wrote it while taking a break from studying for a midterm, so my sanity may currently be in question.

Here is a rant. It might offend somebody. Oh, well. It's my blog.

Recently I came across a tutorial for making homemade sunscreen with coconut oil. Here are the first couple of sentences: "Most commercial sunscreens contain toxic ingredients and endocrine disrupting chemicals. In fact, in the years since sunscreen use began skin cancer rates have actually risen. In many cases commercial sunscreen use may actually promote skin cancer growth and free radical production." (emphasis mine)

And that is when I had to resist the urge to bang my head against the table. This is why I am very hesitant to get more involved in healthy living stuff--because so often I come across claims like this. Hmmm, skin cancer rates have been going up ever since people started using sunscreen, so it looks like sunscreen causes skin cancer. By that logic, you could probably also say that sunscreen causes tanning beds. Correlation does not equal causation, people. You have to look at who got skin cancer. Is skin cancer more common among people who use sunscreen than among those who don't? My guess is that skin cancer is more common among people who frequently use tanning beds or lay out in the sun to get a tan than among those who use sunscreen. The more you expose your skin to ultraviolet light, the more likely your DNA is to be damaged or altered by it.

As for the effectiveness of the homemade sunscreen, I suppose it's possible that it would work because of the zinc oxide. I find it interesting that several people commented below saying that they use plain coconut oil as a sunscreen, claiming it has an SPF of 4 (which is not much at all). I think one person even said she tried it and got burned everywhere that isn't normally exposed to the sun, so her arms and face were okay, but everything else was sunburned. Instead of realizing the coconut oil isn't very effective, she decided to keep using it every day until her skin builds up a sun tolerance. That sounds to me like her arms and face were already fairly tolerant of the sun and the rest of her skin wasn't, and the coconut oil does nothing to prevent sunburn. In fact, other commenters said that they used to use plain coconut oil to get tan faster.

I realize that toxins and nasty chemicals (Oh, I am so tired of that phrase!) and carcinogens and all that stuff are a concern. But whenever I stray to a health blog I always seem to see things like this and I rarely see good quality research. I am happy to cook most of our food from scratch (it tastes better that way anyway) and to strive to eat plenty of fresh and healthy foods, but I'm not going to let wild and unsupported claims get me worried, and I'm not going to spend money we don't have on magic foods just because some blog says I will get cancer if I don't eat them. It's like Abe Lincoln said: Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

Oh, and while I'm at it, here's another claim that makes me go bug-eyed: You should eat organic potatoes, because most of the potatoes that are eaten in the United States are in the form of deep-fried french fries, which are obviously really bad for you and are also usually not made from organic potatoes. So since french fries are not organic, you should eat organic potatoes.Yes, I have really seen this on the internet.

pool water

It's that time of year again--the month when the county puts copious amounts of chlorine into the water to clean up the pipes, which means that our drinking water tastes and even sometimes smells like a swimming pool. Ugh. It's not so bad if you put a lot of ice into your water, though.

I have been struggling to get over being sick. Today was the first time in three weeks that I've been to church. Two weeks ago Heidi and I had colds. Heidi recovered pretty quickly. I had a very runny nose for a week and then a little over a week ago I started having a lot of pain throughout the right side of my head--it was a constant throbbing. I generally prefer to wait to see a doctor and let my immune system do its job, but I really should have gone to the doctor sooner this time. I tried Ibuprofin and Acetaminophen and neither stopped the pain. So last Monday I asked my friend Annie to babysit Kevin and went to an urgent care. It was about a two hour wait, and after sitting up for so long I was in a lot of pain. The only thing that got me through was knowing that I had to get some antibiotics. So between the antibiotics and a lot of prayer to be healed, I feel like I'm pretty much back to normal.

We bought a bunk bed and two mattresses and set them up in Kevin's room. He is very excited about his new bed and has been having a hard time settling down to take naps because of his fun new bed. He's been sleeping in his crib with the side taken off, and it was definitely time to get him a twin bed because he's too long to fit on a crib mattress. Plus, his crib mattress needs to be put in the trash because it is quite old. We figured that eventually we are going to need a bunk bed for the kids, so we might as well get it now. It's a very pretty pine wood bunk bed and can be taken apart to be two separate beds.

Heidi has her first tooth. It poked through on Valentine's Day. She is saying Mama and Dada and means them both. She can stand up by herself for a few seconds, but usually she doesn't even try. She is quite mobile now and has all sorts of bruises from falling as she looks for adventures. I don't remember Kevin falling so much. She can also put tiny things like crumbs and stickers and individual oats into her mouth--everything goes straight into her mouth.

Kevin is up to all sorts of tricks. He uses just about anything he can think of to pick locks. This week he picked a lock with the end of a shoelace. (The conversation went something like this: Ryan: Um, Kevin just picked the lock with a shoelace. Me: He picked a lock with a SHOELACE? Kevin [while repeating the feat]: Yeah! Uh-wock door! Hahahahahaha!)

Some phrases he has picked up lately: "What the?" "Oh, dear." He's taken to telling us, "Don't scream! Go to your room! Okay, time out (pie-owp is how he pronounces it)." (followed by trying to drag us to the time out chair) Hmmm, where did he hear that from?

I have been thinking about starting to potty train him tomorrow. I still haven't decided. I do feel like he is ready to be potty trained, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to deal with it. We keep the bathroom locked all the time because he likes to get up to mischief in there (understatement of the year), so if we start potty training I think we would have to take everything out of the bathroom so he would have access to it without us having to worry about him squeezing out all the toothpaste and burning himself on my straightener. Besides that, of course, there are all the accidents on the carpet and figuring out how to go in public and so on. So on the one hand, I don't know if I'm ready to handle the stress of it all, but on the other hand, I feel like we might as well get it over with. Maybe we'll try it out and see how it goes.

[I was looking through my drafts and found this one that I apparently didn't publish.]

Heidi will be eight months old next week. She has found some new vocalizations. She can do the Indian sound by bouncing her hand on her mouth, and she will say "Bababababa." She also will look at you and say, "Hah," then pause, then repeat, several times. I guess Ryan also won the race, because she's taken to saying Dadadadada. Her first tooth just barely started popping through on Tuesday. She waves her hands in excitement when she sees someone she loves.

She loves eating solid foods, although she still doesn't eat a lot quantity-wise, mainly because I'm so busy chasing Kevin that I don't think about giving her food. She figured out the whole chewing  food up thing pretty quickly, so we haven't done a lot of pureed food except for applesauce. At dinner time I just give her small pieces of things like cooked carrots, sweet potatoes, green beans, and bananas. She's even figuring out how to do pincer grabbing, which means no crumbs on the floor go unnoticed (or untasted!). One day I was mortified to find her happily chewing on one of my old laptop keys.

Heidi has also for the most part converted to a full-on crawl, and she's already pretty fast. I don't think she'll be walking within the next week, but I think it will likely happen within the next couple of months.  She can balance for a few seconds on her feet without help, but once she realizes what she's doing she sits down or leans forward so you'll catch her.

We used disposable diapers last weekend to try to get rid of some awful diaper rashes. We put all the prefolds through several rinse cycles without water. I don't know if it's soap build-up or if diaper rash germs get caught in the prefolds, but there have been a few times (in over two years of cloth diapering--so not too bad) where this has happened, and doing several rinses was what seemed to fix it. On the one hand, I quickly realized that's it's sort of nice to be able to just fold up the disposable diaper and stick it in the trash. Sometimes dunking soiled diapers is kind of a pain, even if our diaper sprayer makes it a little easier. But I think the convenience is outweighed by the fact that the trash can fills up really fast (dumpster trips with Kevin in tow generally take about an hour), and the packages of diapers also disappeared really quickly. I think we'd be spending about $15 a week just on diapers if we weren't doing cloth. I expect that our prefolds will last through several children and we'll only have to replace covers, so if we get twelve covers per child then that would be less than $200 for diapering one child until they're potty trained. So it was nice to get a reminder that the small amount of extra work actually is saving us some money. But then, I don't mind doing laundry too much. And I don't have to wash my diapers by hand.

This week I had two tests. Then Ryan got sick, then Heidi and I got sick. On Friday we decided to just order a pizza. It took me a while to get over the fact that I was giving up and ordering a pizza instead of making dinner, but then when it occurred to me that this was the first time I've done that since we got married, I decided we're not doing too bad. While Kevin and Ryan picked up the pizza, I made some pretty good headway in getting everything else cleaned up.

I am enjoying both of my classes. In my history class, we write two papers, take a midterm and an exam (which are also actually papers), and read seven books, which we discuss in recitation sections. It has actually been a blessing to have reading books incorporated into school, because normally I don't have much time to read books during the semester. So far I've enjoyed all the books, and I appreciate the new views they have given me about recent world history.

visit from Ryan's parents

(Read this one--the other one wasn't finished yet.)

Last Sunday Ryan's parents came to visit us. They stayed until Thursday morning.

On Monday I did homework in the morning, and then we went and looked at the Duke gardens and walked around Duke campus. Ryan's dad took a lot of pictures. Kevin liked seeing the fish, the geese, the turtle, and the blue Heron. We enjoyed looking around the Duke chapel. There was someone in there practicing The Messiah  on the organ, and I just loved it. The organ had a really beautiful sound. Kevin really enjoyed it too. When we went back outside he kept running back inside and saying, "Song? Song?" There were a couple of students nearby who tossed their football around with Kevin for a while. One of them even told Kevin he should go vegan. (We are politely disregarding that advice, as milk is currently one of Kevin's few sources of protein.)

On Tuesday I had class in the morning and Ryan had to help administer a final all afternoon. The rest of us spent the afternoon at Kidzu, a children's museum. The favorite activity was definitely the Gravitron. (You can see a picture of it halfway down this page.) It had a magnetic wall to which you could attach various pipes to make a winding tunnel for balls to roll down. Kevin couldn't get enough of it.

On Wednesday we went to Raleigh and saw the Capitol and the war monuments all around it. Then we went to the Natural History museum. We saw dinosaurs, turtles, snakes, spiders, beetles, fish, crabs, and butterflies. Kevin's favorite exhibit? The escalators, of course. He just wanted to ride them the whole time. After the museum we went to Chick-fil-A and then drove home in a lot of traffic and even more rain. Ryan's parents babysat Heidi and Kevin so Ryan and I could go out for ice cream alone. We had such a nice time just sitting and talking after we finished our ice cream, and I realized we really need to go on dates alone more often.

Ryan's parents left early Thursday morning. It was so nice to have family here to visit! Kevin loved his grandma and grandpa.

On Saturday evening Ryan and I got a babysitter and went to a party held by one of Ryan's advisers. That was the first time I've left Heidi with a babysitter that wasn't family, but she did great, even if I worried the whole time. We had a nice time and it was fun to get to know some of the other people Ryan works with.

Yesterday we had our ward Christmas program in Sacrament meeting. It went really well. We had some really beautiful pieces and the Spirit was very strong. Playing the piano and singing in the ward choir has really strengthened my testimony of Christ this Christmas. Kevin was coughing and had a runny nose, so I ended up bringing him and Heidi home after Sacrament meeting while Ryan stayed and taught in his Primary class.

We've had quite the series of illnesses this fall. I'm definitely getting tired of it. There was the cold I got at the beginning of the semester that spread to my eyes, then a few weeks later the kids had colds, then I got swollen lymph nodes, then Ryan and Kevin had sore throats and fevers, then Kevin had stomach cramps and threw up a couple of times (in the grocery store and the doctor's office--lovely!!), and now the kids have colds again. I am being very consistent about washing hands as soon as we get home, but somehow the germs are still sneaking in. Maybe we should just never leave the house until February? That being said, we have loved the extended fall weather this year! Up until this week it's been the perfect temperature. (Anybody want to move closer?)

Today I am staying home from church. I promise I'd rather be there! Yesterday I woke up coughing and literally didn't stop for at least a half hour. I got in the bathroom and turned on the hot water and sat there coughing on the floor by the tub. It was kind of scary for me, even though it seemed like it was a productive cough. I can't remember ever coughing like that. The rest of the morning was better as long as I concentrated very hard on my breathing. If I breathed too shallowly it would irritate my throat again and I would cough. By the end of the day I was breathing a lot better and not coughing as much. I turned on the humidifier before going to bed, scared I would wake up coughing uncontrollably again, but I felt better when I woke up. I'm not coughing as much and I've kind of lost my voice. But I knew I would not be coming to church because I definitely would not want to share whatever I've got, even if I did feel up to going. K has a runny nose and a little cough too, so one of us would have ended up staying home with him anyway.

I'm grateful to be feeling better. I said many prayers yesterday expressing my faith that God could heal me, and I feel that he did heal me.

It's kind of scary to get so sick when my body is also trying to nourish a growing baby. I think there are a lot of mechanisms in place to protect the baby, but I also know that sometimes things can get through to the baby. My thoughts were turned to Baby Girl, but she has been very active, as if to reassure me, "Don't worry about me! I'm doing great!" She seems like she has a very happy spirit. I think of her often and feel so eager to meet her (although I'm happy to wait until she's developed enough to breathe properly!).

So K and I will have to come up with some ways to honor the sabbath even if we can't go to church. We're lucky to have access to so many great resources about the church. I think we'll be looking up some Mormon Messages, listening to some talks and church music, and reading more from The Miracle of Forgiveness (if Kevin will let me). I'll have to let you know what we learned about the gospel today.

K, insurance, non-fiction, school, and missionaries

This is one of the toys I found for Kevin at the consignment sale (the link is to show you what it's like because I don't think most people know what they're called). He loved pushing the lids back down from the very beginning, and recently his dad has taught him how to open some of them by himself. It was interesting to see the process of him learning to do this.

We've started to notice that he says something resembling "amen" when we finish our prayers. It sounds a little more like "mom," but it seems like he's consistently saying it at the end of the prayer. I'm glad it's a word he recognizes and that we pray often enough that he notices somewhat.

I'm hunting around for insurance for myself. It turns out that part-time students don't qualify for the student insurance plan, and to be added to RT's plan is pretty expensive, so now I have to search for individual insurance plans for myself. I'm a little frustrated, because if I had realized this I might have just gone full-time. It's tempting to just go without insurance, especially considering that I only saw a doctor once in the past year and I'm healthy and young, but at the same time, it would just take one car accident or an unexpected illness to cost us a fortune in medical bills, so I feel like I need to at least have something. It's kind of overwhelming! Individual health plans seem to be much more expensive than the student plan I've had for the past two years, and they don't even cover as much and they have much higher deductibles. It seems like every once in a while major expenses come up that remind me how expensive it is to be a grown-up. It's a little depressing.

Lately I've had this urge to read some non-fiction. I haven't read a lot of non-fiction in my lifetime, but I'm feeling excited about learning about some subjects that have interested me lately. Right now I'm reading Guns, Germs, and Steel and Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World, and it's been fun. Joining Good Reads has helped me to find some non-fiction that seems worth reading. In the past couple of years I've had several people tell me I should join Good Reads, but I didn't think I would like it, so I didn't bother. But now that I've joined, I really like it. I've enjoyed seeing the books that my friends and family have read and what they thought of them, and also being able to keep track of books that I'd like to read. Unfortunately, I'm starting school in a couple of weeks, so I don't know if I'll have time to read all the new books on my to-read list!

I'm not feeling that eager-to-have-some-schoolwork feeling that I normally have after being out of school for a while. This summer has been really fun and I've learned a lot. I've read books, spent time with my family, tried some new things, and strengthened friendships. I don't want to let school prevent me from doing that, but I also know that if I want to keep up all those things and then throw calculus and geology into the pile, I'm going to be really busy. I'm going to have to learn to prioritize and manage, and to work at a little faster pace. I'm nervous about it, but I still feel strongly that my education is important and that this is the time to get my education. I feel grateful that Ryan is so supportive of my efforts to get an education.

Thursday we had the missionaries over for dinner. It's always nice to have the missionaries in our home, but the two missionaries that are serving in our area right now are particularly wonderful. I always feel the Holy Ghost strongly and learn more about the gospel when they share a thought before they leave. We have had some very special spiritual discussions with them when they have come to our home. I always get the sense that they love missionary work and God and that they really want to help people hear and accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm very grateful that we have had the opportunity to get to know them.

staying home sick

One positive thing I have noticed about the swine flu is that people are a little more aware of sickness and how to avoid it. Many different sources are encouraging people to wash their hands frequently, carry tissues to sneeze and cough into, sneeze or cough into their sleeves or a kleenex (not your hands or the air--makes perfect sense!), and avoid touching their noses or mouths. I see bottles of hand sanitizer in lots of places. That really should be basic information that we've known since we were two, but it's a good reminder and I suspect that in reality many people don't do that well enough.

The thing I appreciate the most is that at work and in schools they seem to be encouraging people to stay home if they're sick. Growing up I always felt like I couldn't miss school unless I was throwing up or dying. My parents would have supported me in staying home (my sisters were much better about asking to stay home sick than I was), but there were consequences for missing too many days of school, so I would go to school with colds and sore throats and nausea. My parents probably didn't realize I was that sick because I convinced even myself that I wasn't very sick and continued with my normal routine--and I would be sick forever. I feel like with the worry about swine flu a lot of places are being much more aware of the importance of staying at home when you are sick, saying you should stay home until 24 hours after you don't have a fever anymore. If you're sick, it's better to stay home and not contribute to the spread of the germs, plus you will probably recover much more quickly if you get some good rest and reserve your energy for your immune system to use. In my class this semester, our teacher encouraged us to stay home if we are sick and said he would be understanding if we miss class because of sickness. I hope this trend will continue and more people will realize that it's a good idea to stay home when we're sick. Whether or not that happens, though, I plan to at least make it a practice in my home.