games the kids like to play

Lately one of the kids' favorite games to play is Doctor. Kevin is usually Doctor Alice, and Heidi is usually Doctor Morgan. Ann Marie is the patient, of course. In a typical visit she generally receives multiple shots, has her blood pressure taken a few times, and gets several zaps from the defibrillators (i.e. the toy vacuum or the toy digger). This game requires close supervision, obviously.

Kevin likes bean bag fights. He's only allowed to have them with me or Dad, and only if we're not holding the baby, because he throws the bean bags really hard and it hurts.

Heidi loves to reenact scenes from Frozen. She has a lot of the songs and scenes memorized. She will knock on the door and say, "Elsa, I know you're in there. People are asking where you've been, etc." or she will lie on the floor and do the scene where Christoff is in the barn and Ana is trying to get him to take her to the north mountain. I'm getting a kick out of it because I was a huge fan of princesses when I was little and I'm enjoying seeing her playing Princess like I did.

Heidi burned her thumb (the one she prefers to suck) on the heating element of my food dehydrator about a week and a half ago. She's been going through bandaids like Halloween candy. By the end of the day she had gotten a blister over the burn, so I was trying to protect it with bandaids, but it popped anyway, which made it a little more painful if she bumped it. I tried to give it some air sometimes so her thumb didn't end up a gooey germ-infested mess, but whenever I did that there were a lot of tears. I'm so glad that it's mostly better now and I don't have to keep picking up used bandaids, which is just gross.

For Heidi, the highlight of the first week of school was getting a new package of underwear.

Ann Marie enjoys nose beeps and peekaboo.

I don't do it all.

I think sometimes people are impressed with my bread-baking, cloth diapering, piano-playing, sewing, reading, and whatever else and they get intimidated because they think I do it all. I just wanted to clarify that I don't do it all and that sometimes I feel the same way to other people who have talents that I don't. Nobody does it all. There isn't time.

I am not a good photographer, and while I'm not satisfied with my pictures, I don't care enough to learn how because I would rather do other things.

I don't crochet or knit.

I don't make fancy wall decorations and my picture frames don't match.

I don't decorate cakes. I don't care that our birthday cakes are cake mix with frosting slathered on top. I don't even like cake. I don't do themes or activities for our birthday parties and I rarely even invite friends over to celebrate with us.

I don't do crafty things with my kids very much.

We never go to story time at the library.

I didn't do anything creative or cute or clever on Kevin's first day of school. I packed his lunch and snack and made him get dressed and eat and then Ryan took his picture. And I'm perfectly fine with that.

The fabric from one of my "recent" sewing projects has been sitting in a wadded up ball under my sewing table for several months.

I like Ramen and Hamburger Helper Chicken Enchilada Rice occasionally.

I don't go out of my way to buy organic food. (We do eat a very healthy diet with a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains.) I also don't buy quinoa, kale, or seaweed, nor do I substitute flour with mashed cauliflower and claim that I love it. I also have to curb my tendency to be very judgmental of people who go to food extremes.

My kids eat cereal a lot. Sometimes for breakfast and lunch on the same day.

I have a temper. I also have to use a lot of willpower sometimes to let my kids give me hugs because sometimes I hate being touched.

I haven't worn makeup for a couple of months.

I don't have a single pair of high heels.

I don't wear trendy clothes.

I tend to change back into my pajamas in the middle of the afternoon (if not earlier) most days.

I would rather take a nap than take a shower (and yes, I do forego showers for the sake of napping, for everyone's sake).

Kevin watched a movie almost every day this past summer so I could take a nap, and sometimes I let him watch the movie twice. (Now that he's in school we are not keeping up this habit.)

I spend too much time on the internet.

I am terrible at sports and I've never cared enough to try to get better. I am also frequently guilty of foregoing exercise because I don't want to sweat.

Cleaning the bathrooms is pretty low on my priority list.

Whenever I plan activities they are extraordinarily poorly-attended.

I have other worse faults that I don't want to admit on my blog.

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.

Everybody deserves to have friends.

With Kevin starting school I've been processing a lot of memories from my school days. I've been thinking a lot about some of the kids who I remember struggled a lot in school. These were the kids who didn't have any immediately apparent disabilities and looked normal to me, but as an adult I can look back and see that many of them were dealing with ADHD, sensory processing disorders, mild autism, dyslexia, and others. It was easy to be nice to Sophia ("the wheel-chair girl") and Stevie (the deaf guy in our ward) because to me their disabilities were obvious and I knew from Primary that you should be nice to those people. But ADHD and SPD are much less obvious and I didn't understood at the time that the kids who were struggling with things like that were having behavior problems and struggling with their schoolwork for reasons that weren't completely in their control. Those kids were made fun of a lot and had a really hard time making friends, and I think a lot of the "normal" kids didn't realize it was just as wrong to make fun of these people as it is to make fun of someone who can't walk. I don't remember making fun of those kids who were struggling, but in retrospect I wish I could have understood how much they needed a friend and that I had taken some time to be a true friend to them. I hope I can help my kids recognize those kids and be willing to help them, because everybody deserves to have friends.

If you have any suggestions, please share.

men and women according to Mulan

We've been listening to the soundtrack from Mulan in the car lately, and I've been struck by the differences in the men and women's perspectives about relationships and the opposite gender in the movie as demonstrated in the songs Honor to Us All and A Girl Worth Fighting For. I thought I'd do a compare and contrast to show the differences. Keep in mind that I don't necessarily think these are a good representation of what men and women think (either in Western culture or Chinese culture), but there are some good/true points here.

What the women think the men want:

"Men want girls with good taste
Calm
Obedient
Who work fast-paced
With good breeding
And a tiny waist."

What the men really want:

"I want her paler than the
moon with eyes that
shine like stars."

"My girl will marvel at
my strength, adore my
battle scars."

"I couldn't care less what she'll
wear or what she looks like.
It all depends on what
she cooks like."

"My girl will think I have no faults,
That I'm a major find."

So the women think that the men want girls to be good housewives and have a nice figure. Some of the men do want nice-looking girls, but it seems like the main thing they want is someone who admires them and takes care of them and is willing to overlook their faults (which can be a good thing, depending on how the wife goes about it).

What the men think the women want:

"My girl will marvel at
my strength, adore my
battle scars."

"And I'll bet the ladies love
a man in armor."

"My manly ways and turn of
phrase are sure to thrill her."

"But when we come home
in victory they'll line up
at the door."

What the women actually want:

"Boys will gladly go to war for you."

"Please look kindly on
these cultured pearls,
Each a perfect porcelain doll."

"Ancestors,
Hear my plea:
Help me not to make a
fool of me
And to not uproot
my family tree.
Keep my father standing tall."

So the men think that women want them to be manly and that they admire soldiers. That is mentioned in Honor to Us All, but the women are by far more preoccupied with bringing honor to their families (based on what I read in the book Wild Swans this is fairly representative of Chinese culture before World War II and the rise of the Communist Party there) and being the model of a perfect woman, which isn't actually that related to what the men think of them. It's more about what their society, especially the other women, think of them. I think this is interesting because I've noticed that women are often a lot more preoccupied with how other women perceive them than they are about how men perceive them. We dress to impress other women to show that we are put together and look nice, and we try to give the impression that we are great at taking care of our homes and such. And we do it while partly thinking that we're doing it to impress our husbands when really what the men want more than a picture-perfect housewife is someone to support and love them despite their imperfections.

(I realize that this isn't necessarily true for all men and women, but it's pretty common, and besides, this is just a fun little exercise, so don't take me too seriously.)

Then You Look At Me

Lately I'm obsessed with this song from Bicentennial Man.

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.