"sublime"d Cool Whip and stale(r) croutons

We had Thanksgiving with a huge group of friends this year. One of the things we signed up for was the salad (because even though nobody really eats salad for Thanksgiving, you still to have one or it would feel kind of weird). Salads for holiday dinners need to be nice, so of course we bought some croutons to put on the salad. Croutons from Costco. So we now have a huge bag of croutons.

When I was growing up, croutons were for very special occasions. I always wanted to just get a handful of croutons and just eat them plain, but my mom generally said I couldn't. Croutons are for salad. Not just any salad--special salad.

So now I have a huge bag of croutons, but I feel like I can't just eat them plain even though I'd like to. Croutons are for salad. Special salad. So I feel like I need to save them for special salads.

I explained this to Ryan, and he said, "I know. That's why I'm eating them. Because if we don't eat them, then they'll just sit in the pantry and go staler than they already are."

This led to a comparison to what happens to Cool Whip in families that don't use it very often and save it for special occasions. The special occasion just never comes up because they don't use Cool Whip, and then several months later there is freezer burned Cool Whip in the freezer and it gets thrown away. Or there's a mysteriously empty container of Cool Whip that still has the plastic seal around the lid. (This is a process called sublimation, where solids go directly to the gaseous phase. It really happens--watch the snow disappear even when it's never gotten warm enough for it to melt.)

So we made an executive decision, and the executive decision was that we are going to eat our croutons--plain, on our salads at dinner every night, whatever. It will be hard. We may feel guilty at first for being too casual with our croutons. But that seems better than letting perfectly good croutons go stale(r).

True story: My mineralogy professor accidentally dropped a white board marker on his white sweater and then in his frustration he rubbed the eraser all over it (for dramatic effect, I think). Next time we were in class, he informed us that the sweater had been ruined. So then it occurred to me to send an email to him with the subject line "saving your sweater" and suggest that he try rubbing alcohol, hairspray, or oxyclean. He thought it was so hilarious that he was receiving laundry advice from a student (and said he would try it). What can I say--I'm not just a student, I'm also a mother.

I think I'm finally starting to get a better perspective about why I'm really supposed to be in school. I've been a straight A student since 9th grade, and I largely attribute this to all the effort that I put into studying and doing my schoolwork. But this semester I am starting to find that straight A's may not be a possibility for me anymore. It's been really tough this semester to not have a lot of time to study. It's really hard to get much done when Kevin is awake, and by the time he's in bed I don't have a lot of mind power left to study. I'm also taking some really hard classes, and a good portion of the rest of the classes I will have to take are also very difficult classes. It's also been very frustrating to walk out of tests feeling very confident that I got a good grade, only to get the test back and find that I didn't get a very good grade, and all the points I lost were due to dumb mistakes, not because I don't understand the material.

But one thing I'm finally starting to realize is that it doesn't really matter if I get perfect grades in my classes. Even if I don't get A's this semester, that doesn't mean I didn't learn anything. Honestly, I think this semester has been the most uplifting one of my college career, and I have never learned as much in any semester as I have learned this semester. And because of that, breaking my 4.0 isn't as devastating as I thought it would be. I'm still an intelligent person, I still understand the material, I still did my best, and I'm still getting a lot out of my education.

The other reason it doesn't bother me is that I have a better understanding of what this life is about, and even though it's important to learn as much as I can while I am here, my grades are not going to be a factor in whether I receive exaltation. Maybe the world cares about that kind of thing, but God doesn't because he knows what the desires and intentions of my heart are. He knows how to judge me fairly and impartially and he sees me as a person of worth.

Something I hear all the time is, "You're so lucky to get to go to school right now. I miss being in school so much. If I could go back to school, I would really treasure the opportunity. I would work really hard to get good grades and get as much out of my classes as I could."

It's a very good point. It really is a blessing to be able to go to school, to have an opportunity to keep my mind bright and to prepare to get a good job if I were to ever need to work and to learn more about the way this earth works.

I have a hard time keeping that in mind. Honestly, I'm really tired of being in school. This is my fifth year of being in college, and by the time I'm done I will have been working on a bachelor's degree for at least seven years. I'm tired of deadlines and going to lectures and having tons of homework and readings to do all the time. I'm tired of having to put studying before having a clean house and clean laundry. I would really prefer to be simply a stay at home mom, not a mom who's trying really hard to live like a stay at home mom even though I'm actually a mom going back to school. And then I would have time to pursue other interests I have, like music and sewing and cooking and reading.

But despite my frustrations, I do still feel I need to keep going. I have some really great opportunities right now. I get to do things I never would have expected, like look at very thin slices of rocks through a microscope and learn how to identify the minerals that way. Those are things I probably couldn't learn on my own--I just don't have access to that kind of equipment. And as stressful as all the homework deadlines and tests are, I know that if I were to try to learn these things on my own time I would not move through them nearly so fast. I'm learning a lot more in a smaller amount of time than I would if I were just doing it independently. And even though I complain, I do like it. It is making me a better person, and I have felt the Spirit as I study. I will sure treasure my degree when I have finally graduated.

It's been a while since I blogged, but now that I've got a couple of tests out of the way I'm going to make an attempt to catch up--I have five recent blog posts that I started but never finished.

Here's a really long post about what Kevin's been doing lately. I wonder if our future children's lives will get even a fraction of the documentation that Kevin's life has had.

Kevin learned that trick where you use your fingers to pluck your lips and make that Bbbbb, Bbbbb, Bbbbb sound. I am doing a horrible job of describing it, but I have no idea what it's called.

He will also sometimes "tell" us that his diaper needs changed. Or, if he has access to his diaper, he will even try to do it himself. Which is why I love jeans on toddlers.

His favorite book is Moo, Baa, La La La by Sandra Boynton. He loves the animal sounds and asks us to read the book again and again. It didn't take too long for us to memorize it. Any book with animal sounds is interesting to him. He doesn't repeat the sounds, but he does like to hear them. He also asks for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and Big Red Barn multiple times a day.

Kevin likes to pick up books and "read" them aloud, which is very cute. Once I let him go to bed with a book, and when he woke up I heard him reading to himself in bed. And, knowing that most people do not get the privilege of enjoying Kevin's cuteness as I do, I was even thoughtful enough to do a video of it. (You do not need to watch the whole thing. A couple of minutes will be enough to see him read and jump on the bed a couple of times.)

He is becoming more interested in the process of getting dressed. He will try to put on shirts or shoes and socks.

He knows where his nose, ears, mouth, and head are. I didn't even know he could understand that, but Ryan taught him how and he learned quickly.

Here is a long video. Do not watch it all the way through. It is seven minutes long and mostly consists of boring stuff. But here are some cute parts to skip to:

• The beginning where he is bouncing the ball is cute. Running towards the door and then bouncing the ball off of it is one of his favorite games.
• At about 1:43 he suddenly figures out how to spin in circles.
• At about 4:25 he asks to go to bed.
• At about 5:10 you can hear one of his latest and favoritest vocalizations: "Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh!"
• And the rest of the time he plays with the broom, which might be interesting for a little while, but not for nearly two minutes. (He had been doing so many cute things, I was waiting to see if there was anything else!)

And some cute photos:

(He climbed in himself.)

This was Kevin's Halloween costume. He was very cute. We had very grand plans to make a ragged lab coat from an old button up shirt and spike his hair, and he would be a mad scientist or something and we would be his minions. But I got tired and didn't feel up to driving to the PTA thrift shop to try to find a button up shirt, so this was our backup, and we got lots of comments about the cute Krispy Kreme boy. Kevin did a little trick or treating at the ward trunk or treat party, but he got tired early, so we didn't do any actual trick or treating on the day before Halloween, when several friends in our apartment complex had arranged to have trick-or-treating since Halloween was on Sunday this year. (Besides, I was alone with Kevin because RT had gone to be with his family.) I wasn't really planning on taking him trick or treating anyway. I mean, when you have someone knock on your door holding up a 16-month-old, you know perfectly well that the candy is for the parent, not the child. If I want a bucket of candy, I'm going to buy a bag of candy bars, not go around getting a huge collection of hard candy, which I hate.

You know, I could keep our house a lot cleaner if it weren't for Kevin. Back in my premotherhood days, it was so much easier to clean up after a meal. It consisted of maybe wiping some crumbs or a little bit of sauce off the table, and then dishes and such. But now, after every meal, there's so much cleaning to do! There's the high chair tray, there's his seat where a lot of his food fell, there's the chair that the booster seat rests on, there's the plastic mat under his chair, there's the area that the mat doesn't cover, there's the dishes Kevin got dirty, and then of course there's Kevin's entire body and his clothes. By the time I've cooked dinner, I do not have the energy to clean all of that up as well. And then there's the rest of the living room, where Kevin is not content to play unless he's sitting in a pile of books, paper, cords, and toys. And the amount of time spent on any cleaning endeavor is at least tripled if he is around. I've been giving myself a lot of grief over the last few months over having a hard time keeping up with it all, but thinking a little harder about it, maybe I need to give myself a little slack considering how much my housework load has increased (and that I'm also taking two difficult classes). I still need to keep trying, but I guess all that cleaning, after every. single. meal. would be a little intimidating to most people.

Another thing that has been on my mind is all the food that is wasted by children. At any given meal, a good portion of Kevin's food ends up on his clothes or thrown on the floor and can't be rescued. And then there's also the food that I cooked but then couldn't eat because of food aversions when I was pregnant with Kevin. Then again, Kevin also does a very good job of disposing of leftovers.

Kevin's vocabulary has really grown lately. He knows several signs now: eat, drink, more, nurse/milk, all done, and hot. When he signs hot he also blows on his food, which is very cute. It's very convenient that he understands the concept of hot now, because he realizes you have to wait for the food to cool down or it will hurt to eat it.  He has also started saying a couple of new words (which are not terribly recognizable if you don't hear him saying them all the time). He will say thank you when we give him something or put him to bed, and also sometimes if he gives something to us. He will also point up at the shelf where we keep our Scripture Stories books and say "scriptures" (we read to him from those every night--I guess he is getting something from it after all!). He also says Mama and more, and has started saying uh-oh. You probably wouldn't recognize it as uh-oh because he is actually saying mmm-mmm, but he copies the pitches of the sounds and regularly says it when he drops something or he falls. Saying words has been a very recent development and kind of caught me off guard because I didn't think he was interested in that yet. It has been very helpful for him to be able to communicate most of his basic needs to us.

Kevin has been very interested in fine motor activities lately. For example, the other day he was trying to put a lid on a bottle of baby lotion that he had found (it was still sealed, so spilling it wasn't a concern). It was very frustrating for him if he couldn't hold the bottle still and get the lid on just right, but when he got it on he was very pleased with himself and would clap and grin. He also tries to put together the edging tools on the vacuum. It's fun to see the things that he is learning to do, but it's also hard sometimes because when he can't do the things that he wants to do, he gets really mad and yells and screams. But he's also perseverant, and he will generally calm down and try again and again.

Fairness

State Fairness, to be precise.

Fairs are near and dear to my heart. Starting at age 7, and up till I finished high school, I entered 4-H projects into the Twin Falls County Fair every year. I always entered a sewing project and a cooking project, and I also dabbled in some other projects, like ceramics, babysitting, quilting, and consumer skills (which, at the time, I thought was about how to be trendy, or at least how to be humble about not being very trendy--hence, not my favorite project). My 4-H projects took a lot of effort and preparation, and it was fun to have something to exhibit at the fair (I also got some pretty cool awards over the years). There was an entire 4-H building.

The Twin Falls County Fair was largely about animals. There was a building for cows, a building or two or three for horses, a building or two for sheep and goats and pigs, a building for poultry, and then there were other miscellaneous animals.

We had things we always did at the fair. We always rode rides. We always looked at the animals and our 4-H projects, and the other buildings if my parents could convince us to be interested. We always ate dinner at Papa Kelsey's--individual pizzas or pizza subs and a drink. This was one of the one times we went out to dinner each year, so it was big. And the pizza was really good. The missionaries were generally there helping to serve the pizza, which we thought was pretty cool. We always got balloons. And we always went to see the trains (a pretty neat model train setup which we loved). When I was older we also helped at the 4-H food booth on a different day of the fair.

Our state fair is a great state fair. It's not the Twin Falls County Fair. But we had a good time. We saw a lot of interesting things.

Most people say you go to the fair for the food. They basically sell deep-fried anything you can imagine. I think that's what most people go for--that and the rides. We didn't feel especially interested in eating deep-fried stuff or riding rides, so we mainly went to look around at the exhibits. (This is when I realized that the fair exists so people can advertise their stuff--the steer they raised to be slaughtered, their landscaping business, the handwoven basket business that they run in the middle of nowhere, and so on.)

Near the gate, Ocean Spray was handing out free samples of their new line of juice which has a blueberry base instead of a cranberry base. They were begging people to try all four samples. They were all good.

The first place we went to see was the Village of Yesteryear. It was probably my favorite exhibit at the fair. Basically the building was full of booths where people were selling their crafts, and generally also making the crafts in traditional old-fashioned costumes. Some of the things we saw were people making soap, weaving baskets, polishing rocks, tatting, making chairs, carving wood, and making beautiful things with glass. They were very eager to show people how they did their work. One woman even gave a lady her phone number so that the lady could try a new technique with the craft and call if she had any questions. When I paused to watch a woman doing some tatting, she showed me the basic knot and how to leave loops so that you can make a little flower. She made a flower using larger thread than she normally uses, and once she had finished the flower, she snipped the threads and said, "Here, have a flower." It was very nice. I had to wonder if a lot of these people are the ones that live out in the middle of nowhere and have a shop on the side of their house where they sell all this stuff the rest of the year. Driving in the country, we often see signs advertising different crafts for sale.

We looked around at the landscaping setups that various businsesses had arranged. There were a lot of interesting things to see.

There was a bluegrass group playing on the back porch of an old building. We stopped and listened and enjoyed for a while. I think there are a lot more good bluegrass groups out here in the East. It's a music style that has grown a lot on me since we moved here. One thing that Ryan and I have talked about a few times lately is the way people sometimes say that America has no culture. We do. We have blugrass and country music. We have rodeos and square dances. We have our heritage of pioneers and exploring new territory. We have our deep belief in liberty.

Here's a video of the group:

We looked at the animals. I was underwhelmed. There were tons more animals at the Twin Falls County Fair. Kevin wasn't really interested in the animals.

We looked at a lot of produce. There was more produce than animals. I think this is more of a grow things type state than a raise livestock type state. But I come from more of a grow things type farming family than a raise livestock type farming family, so I can appreciate produce.

To give you an idea of scale, the cucumbers are normal sized. The watermelon is enormous.

An 800 pound pumpkin. I thought it look like a very old, very obese old man. It was so big that it wasn't even nice to look at anymore. But I was still impressed.

Lots of apples.

There was a very interesting exhibit about bees to the side of all the produce. They had a hive and there was a man in a cage surrounded by bees who was talking about beekeeping. They were also selling their honey.

They had some 4-H projects. It was mostly clover buds (the little pre-4-H kids). Like I said at the beginning, the Twin Falls County Fair had an entire 4-H building, so I'm probably hard to impress. But there were also several sewing projects submitted by non-4-H-ers, and those were fun to see. The dresses below were all made by adults, but still, they are very impressive and well-done. I thought my grandma would enjoy seeing them.

The pattern for this red dress was designed by the same person who sewed it. Very neat dress.

Some cakes:

I'm afraid we didn't eat anything deep-fried. Everyone seems to think it's a necessary experience, but it didn't interest us much. There was a lot more food at the state fair than there was at the Twin Falls county fair, and it was spread throughout the entire fair.

A bunch of people were eating these turkey drumsticks. When I was pregnant with Kevin, I tried making a turkey in the crockpot, seasoned with onion soup mix. I had to cut it up and cook it in stages, and it took a couple of days to get it all cooked. By the time the turkey was cooked, I loathed the smell of it, and I couldn't stand turkey until after Kevin was born. The smell of these turkey drumsticks brought it all back, and I did not enjoy it.

Just to give you an idea of the massive amount of people there and all the food they had, here's a couple of photos:

The entire time we were at the fair, Kevin was sitting quietly in his stroller sucking his thumb. Maybe there was so much to see that he didn't have much to say. But once we were in the car, away from the lights and the people, he couldn't stop laughing. It was so hilarious!

I rather enjoyed it when he ripped the window shade. It was a very cheap Babies R Us advertising thing that came with a bunch of samples and a diaper bag a few weeks before Kevin was born, and it ripped before I had even successfully put it on the window for the first time (only about a week before the state fair). The frustration of mounting it on the window was all compensated by being able to see its demise.

So we had a really good time at the state fair. There were new and different things to enjoy that weren't at the Twin Falls County Fair, but it was similar enough to bring back good memories. Next time I think we'll try harder to arrive in the morning, though. The crowds were crazy.

notes from parenting class

On Thursday we had a Relief Society "Parenting Class." The teacher had some really interesting ideas that I thought I would share (and record for future reference).

The first thing she talked about was increasing your ratio of positive things said to negative things said. She said a good goal is 4 positive: 1 negative. The main thing is to try to pay a little more attention to the things you say to your children (and this also works for husbands). You also get positive points for things like making eye contact, spending quality time with the child, and sincerely listening. (And things like continuing to check your email and occasionally grunting to show the child you are "listening" count as negative points.) She said that once they start paying more attention to it, many people start to realize what a big difference negative words and actions can have on a child's behavior and on the parent's relationship with the child.

Another thing she discussed is preventive parenting. This means discussing with the family beforehand what the rules are and how certain behaviors will be handled, and often the children can do a roleplay. One example she gave was for a child who hits his sister and refuses to apologize after doing so. If this is a situation that happens more than once, you talk to the child about it at a time when he is not angry at his sister. You explain to him that it's not nice to hit, and tell him that if he hits again, then he needs to apologize to his sister and tell her he loves her. And then he can practice. "Pretend you just got mad at your sister and hit her, and now she's sad. What do you need to do?" And then he practices apologizing and telling her he loves her. This is helpful because he can practice apologizing when he's not actually angry, so he can think more clearly about it and understand better why it's important to apologize. If there has been some kind of ongoing problem, it's okay to sit down with the family or with the child who needs corrected, and explain that the family is going to change the rules and do things a little differently from now on when that situation comes up. And the roleplaying can also be used for situations that aren't necessarily bad behaviors. An example might be discussing with a child what he would do if he was at a friend's house and they started watching a bad movie, or if there was a new kid in his class who seems very shy.

She also talked about time out. She said that it's important to not make it something shameful by, for example, facing the child towards the wall and scolding in a negative way. You want to choose a place in the house that's very boring and not social. When the child has to be put in time out, you take the child there and nobody talks to the child for however long the time out lasts. If the child runs away, you pick him up and put him back, but don't say a word or even make eye contact. This way, time out doesn't become another way to get attention, because nobody pays any attention to the child and it's very boring. Many children would rather get negative attention than no attention. She said that time out works for children ages 2-12, and after age 12 privileges are a more effective motivation for good behavior. Also, one way to determine how long time out will be is to make it as many minutes as the child's age. When time out seems appropriate, one thing that is helpful is to present a choice. "Remember how we talked about apologizing? Well, you just hit your sister again, so you can either choose to tell her you're sorry, or you can go in time out." Sometimes it's disappointing if they choose time out rather than doing the right thing, but it's also important to let children use their agency to choose. It's important to be consistent with time out, so that they will know to expect it if they do something wrong.

I realize that not all children are the same, and maybe these things won't work for everyone, but I thought she made some really good points. I especially liked the idea of the children practicing what to do before they are tempted, so that when the situation actually comes up, they have made a decision about what they will do, and they are a little more comfortable with doing what's right. It's very good for their brains for them to think about what choice they will make in a certain situation, and it's also a good way for them to develop a clear idea of what the family rules are. I'm also trying to notice whether I am being positive or negative.