Neither Here Nor There

January in Review

2012-02-01T19:52:00.003-05:00

Since it's February 1, it's time for my monthly check-in on my goals for 2012. You can find my original list of goals here. Here's the assessment:

1. Read the equivalent of a book a week.
I've read four books this month: Delirium by Lauren Oliver, Pregnant Pause by Han Nolan, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty (post on that one coming soon). Next up: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness.

2. Blog regularly.
One month, 10 posts. Not great, but far better than I did for the majority of last year!

3. Monitor my own health; stay healthy; keep this baby healthy.
For starters, I've realized an error in my original goal: I really should have said "GET healthy" rather than "stay healthy," since I'm definitely not healthy right now. But as you can tell by my last post, I made the very good decision to drive down to Indy and see my neurologist, and I have high hopes that the results of that appointment will improve my health over the next month. I've also got my 20-week ultrasound tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to learning more about the about the baby and his health.

4. Organize photos and memorabilia.
After a month of valiantly sorting through photos, labeling them, and uploading them to Flickr for storage, I am pleased to report that all our 2011 photos have been organized. Woo-hoo! Now on to older ones...

5. Get our house into "finished" condition.
I haven't made it very far on this goal so far, as my daily migraines have prevented me from doing much more than basic daily maintainance and then falling into bed. I did do a very tiny bit of painting in Liam's room (soon to be "the boys' room"), and finishing that is my top priority for coming months.

6. Love, value, and respect my family.
Obviously not a "measurable" goal, but I hope I'm doing okay on this. My constant migraines and exhaustion have led me to fall into bed early a lot of nights and crash on the couch many others. So Ben, if you're reading this, and in case I haven't told you often enough--I hugely appreciate all of your help this past month and love you very much!!

7. Read the whole Bible and spend more time in prayer.
I'm doing a chronological reading plan of the Bible this year. While I admit that I had to do some catch-up reading, I'm now on target. We're hoping to check out a new church this coming weekend, so I'm hoping that will lead to good things.

8. Be positive.
Again, not measurable. But I don't feel like I'm doing as well on this one as I would like. I've been so frustrated by health problems and the struggles of daily life. Hold me accountable on this one, friends.

And now, on to February!

Grateful for a Good Doctor

2012-01-30T19:48:00.000-05:00

Today I drove down to Indianapolis to see my old neurologist. I actually saw a new neurologist one time since moving to Lafayette, but suffice it to say that I didn't really "click" with him. My migraines have escalated intensely during this pregnancy. In fact, I have had a migraine every single day for the past 19 week. I think this is what we call "a problem."

It's not really entirely shocking that I've been struggling with migraines during this pregnancy. I very first started getting migraines when I was pregnant with Bryn, and they've pretty much plagued me ever since, although they do tend to be worst during pregnancy. During normal life, I have to take Topomax as a migraine preventative, and even then, I still tend to get at least one bad headache a week. So it's perhaps not surprising that with no preventative and my hormones raging out of control during pregnancy, I'm likely to get them really bad.

I know a lot of people that get migraines and have no idea why. I, on the other hand, know exactly why I get them:
1. They are genetic. My sister, several of my uncles, and my grandmother all had/have them.
2. They are caused by changes in hormone levels. Thanks to the past nearly 7 years that I have spent either pregnant, breastfeeding, or miscarrying, I've had wayyyy more hormonal shifts than most.
3. They are related to my thyroid. Of course, taking care of my thyroid is an epic in and of itself, which involves blood tests every four weeks and shifts in my medication nearly that often.
4. They can be triggered by changes in the weather. Winter tends to be an especially rough time for this for me.

I have a lot of friends whose migraines have been greatly helped by seeing a chiropractor or making dietary changes. There also some fascinating books on this subject. However, since genetics, pregnancy, thyroids, and weather are not affected by chiropractors or diets, those things do not tend to help me. I did see a chiropractor back in Indy for about two years, and while I enjoyed the back adjustments, it didn't do a thing for my headaches. While I admit that I haven't explored every dietary option out there, I've tried a few, and none have helped. (Plus I have so many food aversions during pregnancy anyway that eliminating even more stuff might leave me on a water-only diet!) I talked to my neurologist about these options today, and he, too, pointed out since my migraines have traceable causes that aren't in any way related to those more organic cures, they're not likely to help me. Darn!!

At any rate, the neurologist that I saw here in Lafayette didn't do a darn thing for me. Since then, I've been relying on my OBs to control my migraines.... which, it seems, was a very bad strategy. Several months ago, they put me on Fiorecet for my migraines. While this medication usually does eventually knock the headache out, it usually takes 2 or 3 doses. So I'm thinking.... hmm.... I'm taking 2 or 3 doses of migraine medicine every single day, and this has been going on for several weeks. Surely this isn't good for me or the baby.

I raised this concern with my OB at my 12-week appointment. He reassured me that never fear, my migraines would go away in the second trimester, so I wouldn't have to keep taking multiple doses of migraine medication on a daily basis for much longer. I pointed out to him that while I am aware that migraines do, in fact, go away for many women in their second trimesters, I kind of doubted that they would for me, since 1) I suffer from chronic migraines even when I'm not pregnant and 2) the migraines had not gone away in the later trimesters of any of my other pregnancies. He pretty much blew off my concerns and told me I'd be fine. (Yet another reason that this OB sucks and I will be starting to see a new one next week. Another post on that at a later time.)

Four more weeks passed, during which I continued to have to take multiple doses of Fiorecet every single freaking day. At my 16-week appointment (which was with a different doctor in the same practice), I again expressed concern about what taking so much medication would do to both me and the baby. The doctor (the same one that freaked out when she couldn't find the heartbeat) assured me that Fiorecet is perfectly safe for pregnancy. Yes, I asked, but even in these quantities? She again said it was not a problem and that this was all we could do. When I again explained the whole chronic migraine / usually take Topomax thing, she finally conceded to put me on Procardia as a preventative. This drug is usually used to stop pre-term labor (in much larger quantities than what I'm taking), but she said that it could be a headache preventative as well because it opens up the blood flow. Okay, I figured, I'll give it a try.

Three more weeks passed, with absolutely no lessening of the headaches. So I'm thinking: okay, now I'm taking both a preventative that doesn't work AND two to three migraine pills a day. This can't be good for anyone (except possibly the pharmaceutical companies). Since it had become glaringly obvious that my OBs weren't concerned and weren't going to do anything to help, I made an appointment with my old neurologist in Indy.... which brings me back to today.

I just need to say that today was the absolute best medical care that I have received in the past 10 months. My neurologist actually KNEW MY MEDICAL HISTORY BEFORE COMING INTO THE EXAM ROOM. (Unlike my ridiculous OBs, who I'm relatively certain have never so much as once peeked at my charts.) And once he came in, he actually LISTENED TO WHAT I HAD TO SAY. Personally, I think that these should be basic prerequisites for all doctors, but sadly, in my experience, that is not the case.

Anyway, after hearing about everything I've been through in the past few months, my neurologist was appalled and basically said that my OBs have no clue what they are doing (at least as far as headaches are concerned). For one, he said, while Fiorecet can be effective in women that get migraines infrequently, or even just during pregnancy, it's pretty much an epic fail when it comes to chronic migraine sufferers... which I am, and my doctors should have known from both my charts and what I was telling them.

Secondly, a bit of background. When I first when to see this neurologist, nearly two years ago, it was because I was suffering from massive rebound headahces (which I explain more here). Well, lately I've been thinking--hmm, if I'm taking 2-3 migraine pills every single day, isn't that going to lead to massive rebounding when these migraines eventually stop? Yes, says my neurologist. Particularly because, he says, Fiorecet is pretty much the #1 drug to cause rebound headaches. In fact, he said, it's likely that while it feels like it, I'm probably not actually having a migraine every single day right now. Probably some days it's a migraine, and other days it's a rebound headache, because with that much Fiorecet, the rebounds have probably kicked in already. He says that the OBs should have known from my medical record that I have suffered rebound headaches before and therefore should never, ever have prescribed me a drug that is likely to cause them. Awesome. Great. Thanks, sucky OBs.

The solution: stop taking Fiorecet immediately. Then he prescribed me with an actual migraine preventative that is safe during pregnancy. He said that it might take a week or two to take total effect, so in the meantime, if I suffer any migraines (or rebound headaches), there are other things I can take. He wrote me another prescription for a medication that he says is very effective but is likely to make me sleepy (so only to take it at night), and other one that is slightly less effective than that one (but wayyyy better than Fiorecet) which I can take during the day. (Unfortunately, I don't remember the names of any of these medications right now, as the scips are at the pharmacy getting filled.)

He then reassured me that I am NOT a freak and that my condition is totally normal, although definitely heightened from what other people usually experience thanks to the mis-medication of my OBs. He said that plenty of migraine sufferers go through things like this during pregnancy (although again, usually with better doctors) and that it is totally handle-able.

Hallelujah. I love this doctor. Fingers crossed for feeling better in the next few weeks and actually being able to enjoy the second half of this pregnancy!!

What Happens at 18 Weeks

2012-01-27T09:35:00.002-05:00

Last Wednesday (when I was 17 weeks and 6 days pregnant), my Bible study group met for the first time this semester. We had some new members, so we all went around and introduced ourselves. One of the questions we were supposed to answer was regarding our current "pet peeve." In response to this, I said that while I was nearly 18 weeks pregnant and none of my clothes fit anymore, I still didn't "look pregnant." Sure, it's obvious that I've been putting on weight, but it kind of just looked like I was getting chunky, with no clear evidence of a baby under there. (To soothe my own feelings, I should point out that I've actually only gained 2-3 pounds, but everything has redistributed.)

So that was last Wednesday. On last Friday (18 weeks and 1 days pregnant), I was packing up for our family to go to Indianapolis for the weekend. (The girls and I had tickets to Disney on Ice, and in deference to my varicose veins, we had decided to spend the entire weekend with our friends Rob and Andrea, in order to give me as much time to recover from the journey before driving back.) I've been in mostly maternity clothes and the roomier side of my regular wardrobe for a while, but on that particular Friday, nothing that I tried on seemed to fit. My belly just seemed to be in the way of everything.

Hmm, I mused--18 weeks must be when this baby decided to "pop." Hello, baby bump.

Sure enough, when we got to Indy, Andrea looked at me and said, "Oh, now I can see the baby! Hello, little guy!"

By Sunday (18 weeks and 3 days pregnant), Andrea said, "I'm not sure how this is possible, but you looked signifiantly more pregnant on Saturday than on Friday, and even more so today." Pop pop pop.

I realize that claims like this need a picture as proof. I actually don't think that it's quite as pronounced this week as last week.... since after returning from Indy, I came down with a yucky flu and lost 3 pounds (all that I had gained) in less than 24 hours. Ewww. At any rate, here's the current state of the belly:

(This was taken today--19 weeks and 1 day.)

In addition to belly growth, our little guy has also been making himself known in another way this week. When I was at my 16 week check-up, the doctor asked if I had felt the baby moving at all. At that time, the answer was no. Ever since then, "can you feel him moving?" seems to be the question everyone asks. And sure enough, this week, he has simply erupted. It's like as soon as we hit 18 weeks, I can feel him every time I lie down or sit still. He's an active little guy. I had Ben try to feel it one night, and I was actually really surprised that he couldn't feel anything from the outside yet, since the kicks are so strong and constant on the inside!

So there you go.... apparently 18 weeks is the magic week for this baby!

Book #3 of 2012: The Fault in Our Stars

2012-01-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

My friends, you have heard me raphsodize before about the wonders of John Green. And it's true, every single one of his books is downright freaking amazing. His newest, The Fault in Our Stars, just came out this month, and it both lived up to and surpassed my expectations. In fact, if you're looking for a good book, stop reading my blog right now and run directly out to your nearest library or bookstore and get a copy.

If you're looking for a little more information first, here you go:

Hazel Grace Lancaster, age 16, was diagnosed with cancer three years ago. She has never been anything but terminal, but thanks to a wonder drug, she is currently stable. In an effort to cure her "depression," her well-meaning parents force her to go to a Support Group, which is pretty awful, aside from the fact that she eventually meets 17-year-old Augustus Waters there. Augustus had a bout with cancer himself a few years back and lost one of his legs, but he's in remission and only attends the Support Group as a favor to he and Hazel's mutual friend Isaac, who is about to have his cancerous eyes removed, resulting in blindness.

Let me pause right there. Yes, this is a book about kids with cancer. But it is not a "cancer book." It's an amazing story about contemplating what really matters in this life. Yes, it is sad. I will admit that every time I read more than a single paragraph, I bawled like a baby (particularly in the second half of the book--but I blame that largely on the pregnancy hormones...). But there were also plenty of passages that made me literally laugh out loud with their hilarity. This is one of the many things I love about John Green: he can both reduce me to tears and make me snort with laughter, all inside 10 pages.

Hazel shares her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, with Augustus, and the two of them embark on a mission to contact its reclusive author in an effort to find out what happens to the characters after the story's abrupt end. And I really can't say more than that without ruining this fantastic story.

A note on the origin of the title: at one point, Augustus writes to that reclusive author about his relationship with Hazel, and this is part of the response that he receives:

"Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.' Easy enough to say when you're a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!), but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars."

For all my Indy friends, you might also appreciate that this book is set in Indianapolis, and basically every landmark is totally distinguishable, right on down to a gas station at 86th and Ditch.

In short, go. Go get this book now and read it immediately. And if you like this one (or if all the copies are checked out at your local library), pick up one of John Green's other books as well (Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, or Paper Towns, or Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which he co-wrote with David Levithan). I love, love, love them all. Not to be impatient or anything, but when is his next one coming out??

Evening the Odds

2012-01-15T18:06:00.002-05:00

Every time I have gotten to about this stage of pregnancy, people have started asking: "So are you going to find out?" Meaning the sex of the baby, of course. I have many friends who have elected to wait and be surprised on delivery day, but in the MeyPfan family, the answer is unequivically YES, we want to know. In fact, when Ben and I went in for my 20-week ultrasound with Bryn and the ultrasound tech asked me if we wanted to check for the gender, I answered, "Let's put it this way: we are not leaving this office until we know!" Perhaps not my least-cranky pregnant-lady moment. But you get the idea.

So of course, we have been anxious to know the sex of this baby. As I mentioned before, Ben has been absolutely convinced (or perhaps just really, really hoping) that this baby is a boy--so much that he has refused to even discuss girl names. My gut instinct (which was correct with Liam and Shay, but wrong with Bryn) has also been telling me "boy." But of course, the suspense remains.

My OB's office does The Big Ultrasound no earlier than 20 weeks. So even though I have done it at 18 or 19 weeks before, and I have friends that have done it far sooner, I have been resolved to wait patiently until 20 weeks. I'm 17 1/2 weeks right now, as a reference point.

So when I went in for my 16 week appointment, I knew that there wouldn't be anything too exciting happening. I figured just a basic check, a discussion of my daily migraines (that won't go away no matter what--arghh!), and I'd be out of there.

But then the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat.

This panicked my doctor WAY more than it panicked me. (Note to elaborate upon in another post: it is never a good thing when your doctor panics.) During my previous pregnancies, my doctors also had a hard time finding heartbeats for Bryn, Shay, and Liam... pretty much every time I visited. This used to worry me, but eventually I got used to it. Then an excellent ultrasound tech told me once that I have a retroverted uterus, which basically means that it's tipped slightly backwards instead of forwards, so my babies don't sit in quite the same position as other people's--thus why it's hard to find their heartbeats. So I explained all of this to my doctor, and she seemed somewhat reassured (again, it's never good when the patient has to reassure the doctor--one of a myriad of reasons that I am currently investigating other OBs).

Then she asked me if I had felt the baby moving yet. I had not. She got all panicky again, and was like, "Welllll, 16 weeks IS the very earliest that you would feel it, but if you haven't felt it move yet, AND we can't find a heartbeat, we'd better do an ultrasound to make sure everything is okay." Not the picture of the calm doctor I was hoping for.

So I headed into the ultrasound room, where the tech found the heartbeat in less than 30 seconds. As I had tried to explain to the doctor, my uterus just sits in a little bit of a weird position, and of course when the tech can see that on the ultrasound, finding the heartbeat is no problem at all. (I kind of felt like issuing a big "I told you so" to the doctor at this point, but I refrained.)

I really like the ultrasound tech at this office, so I said to her, "Look, I know 16 weeks is kind of early to be able to tell the sex of the baby, but I'd be kicking myself for the next 4 weeks if I didn't at least ask you if you could see anything."

She was totally agreeable and said, "Sure, I can look. Of course, you do know that 16 weeks is sometimes a little early to be able to tell anything conclusive.... Oh wait.... Yeah, that's conclusive!"

Yeah, that's right, we're having a boy!

Ben was SO excited when I came home and told him. (He was also very excited about the Chipotle burrito that I brought him to celebrate.) The girls had mixed reactions. Bryn, who had been rooting for a boy on the rationale that "I want three boys and three girls in our family" (that's including parents), was thrilled. Shay, who was desperate for a baby sister, was less excited. After thinking it over, she asked, "Well, can our next baby be a girl then?"

Oh, mercy. I think 4 kids aged 6 and under is plenty, thanks.

Anyway, we are very excited about our new little addition. This will work out perfectly, since Liam will be sharing a room with the baby. Now I get to spend the next few months boy-ifying it! (which I started yesterday with some blue paint) Plus we are very excited to have our 2 little matched sets, 2 girls and then 2 boys, all 2 years apart.

So it looks like Ben was right; we did not need to discuss girl names after all. :)

Book #2 of 2012: Pregnant Pause

2012-01-11T19:37:00.003-05:00

My official second book of the year is Pregnant Pause by Han Nolan (who is a woman, although her name doesn't quite sound like it). First off, disclaimer: this is not a book about being pregnant. I did not read it because I am pregnant. I read it because it was on the "new arrivals" shelf in the teen room at my local library a couple of months ago and it caught my eye. Secondly, I LOVED this book.

Okay, so 16-year-old Eleanor Crowe is kind of a mess. She's pregnant. She got pregnant the very first time she ever had sex--but don't let that fool you; she's no saint otherwise. In the almost three years she has been with her boyfriend Lam, he has convinced her to do all kinds of other not-so-great things, like drinking and using drugs and stealing her parents' car. Elly's been in juvie twice. So when she finally confesses to her parents that she's pregnant, they view it as just the latest in a long line of screw-ups.

To complicate matters, Eleanor's parents are missionaries, and when Elly reveals the news of her pregnancy (when she's 5+ months along), they're preparing to move from the States back to Kenya to work with AIDS orphans. Once they're done yelling at her, they seize upon what they view as the logical solution: to give Elly's baby to her sister Sarah, who is 10 years older, married, and has been trying unsuccessfully for several years to have a baby of her own. Of course, Elly has never done things the easy way.

Just to make her parents mad, Elly says that she's going to marry Lam. To her surprise, her parents call her bluff. They get together with his parents and agree that marriage would be a good thing (later, Elly realizes this is likely because they all knew that it was destined to fail, while hopefully straightening she and Lam out in the process). Furthermore, since her parents are moving to Kenya and she and Lam have no money, no jobs, and no plans in life, his parents "generously" give them a cabin at the camp they own and operate. Oh, except it's only one room (with no kitchen or bathroom or heating of any kind), and it's actually a fat camp (where kids are sent to lose weight), and Elly is not going to be paid at all for her summer of work with the campers. So at age 16, Eleanor finds herself pregnant, married, living in a cabin in the middle of the woods, working with troubled kids (for which she receives no training whatsoever), and financially dependent on her in-laws, who make no secret of their hatred for her. On the first day of their marriage, Lam leaves her home alone while he goes out to party with his friends... not to mention the fact that he also blows his entire savings account. Both Elly's sister and Lam's parents are like these vultures that are circling around her, just waiting for her baby to come so they can adopt it (Lam's parents had a baby die in infancy and have been dreaming of another one since then). No one, and I mean no one, is rooting for this girl, believing in her in any way, or even being nice to her.

Through her work with the kids at the camp and the relationships that she forms with some of the other counselors, Elly slowly comes to understand herself in a whole new way. She questions her love for Lam and eventually comes to understand his destructive role in her life. She is forced to deal with the tough issue of what to do with her baby, especially when the birth (which happens on the same day as a camp tragedy) brings some unwelcome surprises.

From the very first chapter of this book, I just wanted to jump into the pages and tell Eleanor, "I'm on your team! I'm rooting for you! I would help you if I could!" She is an awesome character, so much more multi-dimensional and REAL than any I have read in a long time. I was constantly frustrated on her behalf about how much everyone around her just SUCKED and constantly belittled her, telling her that because of her past mistakes, she was worth nothing in the present (and likely future). She was incredibly strong and brave, as well as incredibly sarcastic (which I happen to love).

In short, READ THIS BOOK. If you are a fan of Sarah Dessen (or if you only read adult books, Emily Giffin), I think you will love Han Nolan even more. I definitely plan on reading the rest of her books as soon as I can!

The Joy of Books

2012-01-11T08:38:00.000-05:00

Stole this from Katie over at Book Love. It is AWESOME. Like Toy Story, but with books. What's not to love?!

Book #1 of 2012: Delirium

2012-01-08T16:19:00.003-05:00

In 2011, I was foolish enough to try to review all 54 books that I read during the year in a single post. The post itself took ages to write, and I found that I couldn't provide nearly as many details as I wanted when it was all bundled like that. So it seems far more reasonable to post individually about each book that I read in 2012.

The first book I read this year (and just finished today) was Delirium by Lauren Oliver. It was recommended to me by my fellow camp girl, English teacher, and book lover, Sarah.
The book is set sometime in the unspecified future and is my (current) favorite genre, young adult dystopian fiction. The basic premise is that the feeling of "love" has been idenified as a dangerous disease, called amor deliria nervosa. A passage that basically explains that idea:

"Things weren't always as good as they are now. In school we learned that in the old days, the dark days, people didn't realize how deadly a disease love was. For a long time they even viewed it as a good thing, something to be celebrated and pursued. Of course that's one of the reasons it's so dangerous: It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being. (That's sympton number twelve, listed in the am deliria nervosa section of the twelfth edition of The Safety, Health, and Happiness Handbook, or The Book of Shhh, as we call it.) Instead people back then named other diseases--stress, heart disease, anxiety, depression, hypertension, insomnia, bipolar disorder--never realizing that these were, in fact, only symptoms that in the majority of cases could be traced back to the effects of amor deliria nervosa." (pages 2-3)

When people in this society turn 18, they have a "procedure" (brain surgery) which removes their desire and ability to love. Around this same time, people also undergo "evaluations," in which they are interviewed by a panel of scientists to "learn about their personalities," although people have found that the more generalized their answers are, the better they score. Based on the results of these examinations, people are paired with someone of the opposite sex who is roughly their own age. Without ever meeting (because boys and girls are strictly segregated), these two are promised to each other in marriage. Their careers, future income levels, and future number of children are also determined for them.

The main character, Lena, begins the story mere months from her 18th birthday, anxiously awaiting her own procedure. She wants nothing more than to be cured of emotion and live out the rest of her days in a bland, calm sameness. Of course, she has her reasons--primarily, her mother's suicide when Lena was six, a result of a failed third attempt at the procedure--as well as other skeletons in her family's closet. But as you might guess, things get complicated.

When I started reading this book, I got kind of stuck in comparing it to other books that I have read. The premise of a society without love (as well as various other aspects of the world in which Lena lived) made me think of 1984 by George Orwell, and the idea of a mind-altering operation for teenagers in order to create a calm society made me think of Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. Lena's eagerness to go along with the operation until her best friend Hana opened her eyes to other possibilities, and Lena's subsequent relationship with Alex (because of course there has to be a boy!) also strongly reminded me of the Tally/Shay/David relationships in Uglies. But once I got past those similarities, I loved, loved, LOVED this book and sobbed through probably the last 100 pages (of 441).

For starters, I thought it was beautifully written. I also loved the introductory quotes at the beginning of each chapter, supposedly taken from books in Lena's society, which provided a great window into the peoples' mindsets. And I especially loved that it focused not just on romantic love, but on all types of love: families, friendships, and everyday beauty and joy. The procedure took all of that away. Parents knew that they had responsibility to raise their children properly, but they didn't feel any sort of attachment to them. Children formed friendships, but after they had the procedure, those friendships became nothing more than dim memories. The friendship between Lena and Hana was one of my favorite parts of the book; I thought it was both realistically and beautifully portrayed.

Two thumbs up on this book. Run out to your local library and check out a copy!!

The Trouble with Naming

2012-01-03T21:30:00.000-05:00

As we start to think about potential names for this baby, we run into lots of naming difficulties. In theory, naming a boy should be easy. Ben and I had two boy names picked out before we even got married.... which is, of course, why we ended up having two girls first.

The two boy names that we loved right from the start were Liam and Aiden. When we picked them out eight years ago, they were both unique. Since then, both have become hugely popular. I just got an email from BabyCenter identifying the top 100 names of 2011. According to them, "Aiden" has just topped the boys' list for the seventh year in a row. Similarly, "Liam" has raised in popularity from a mere #10 to #4.

This is sad for me, because we were hoping to have somewhat unique names for our kids. Not anything super-crazy, but at least names that not everyone else in their generation has. I say this because I have one of the most popular names of my generation, and I ran into lots of confusion while growing up because I had so many other friends (including my next-door-neighbor and college roommate) with the same name as me. So I don't want to saddle my kids with some kind of crazy, made-up, unpronouncable names, but I also don't want them to have to constantly go by a first name and last initial (I was AmyP all growing up).

That all being said, I think we're still sticking with "Aiden" as our boy's name. Ben tells me that we need to come up with some crazy way to spell it (Aden?) so that it will only have four letters, as "Bryn," "Shay," and "Liam" each have four letters. I am against that for two reasons: 1) "Pfanschmidt" and "Meyaard" are both hard enough to spell, without doing anything crazy to the first name and 2) "Shay" is short for "Shaylee" and "Liam" is short for "William," both of which are more than seven letters, which, in my opinion, invalidates his argument. :)

"Liam" is actually "William David." We loved the name "Liam" right from the start, but we gave him the official name of "William" in honor of Ben's grandfather, uncle, and cousin, who are all also named William. The "David" is for my dad. If this baby is a boy, it will be "Aiden Thomas," with the "Thomas" being for Ben's dad.

But we are struggling to come up with a girl name. Of course, this is partially because Ben refuses to seriously discuss the topic, since he is 100% sure that this baby is a boy and discussing girl names would be a waste of time. :)

I had liked the name "Bryn" ever since my own growing-up years, so once Ben decided that he liked it too, the first one wasn't so hard. But we really, really struggled to come up with "Shay" (or, more formally, "Shaylee"). In fact, this blog was instrumental in naming our Shaylee Grace. (See the discussion here.) If this should end up being a girl, we will probably need to ask for help from all of you again!

As a side note, I was amused to see that on the same BabyCenter post, it listed the most "up-and-coming" popular girls' names for 2012. One of the names on the list was "Brynlee"--as in, half of our first daughter's name and half of our second daughter's name. Yeah, we're such trendsetters!! ;)

Goals for 2012

2012-01-02T10:52:00.001-05:00

Much like everyone else, I'm thinking about "resolutions" or goals at this time of year. A couple of years back, I posted my resolutions on this blog and then did a monthly evalution of how I was doing. That really helped me to stay on track, so I'm going to try it again this year. I may add to or edit these as the year progresses, but here's what I'm thinking right now (listed in no particular order):

1. Read the equivalent of a book a week.
As previously mentioned, I really enjoyed doing that this year. I haven't read that much in years, but it brought me a lot of joy. May be a little harder this year, as my classes are probably going to hinder rather than help, but I'm still going to give it a shot.

2. Blog regularly.
As I mentioned in my last post, I really enjoyed spending more time writing this past year. Since I don't have a defined writing project for this year, I'm going to try to keep up my writing by posting on this blog. Note: my loophole here is that I'm not currently defining what "regularly" means. ;)

3. Monitor my own health; stay healthy; keep this baby healthy.
As I explained in my post about Number Four, I've had a lot of health problems related to babies, but also a lot of problems non-related (thyroid, migraines, etc.). I really want to be more proactive about monitoring my health this year. Hey, maybe I'll even get myself to a point where I'm not exhausted all the time! And obviously, having a healthy pregnancy, delivery, and infant is a top priority.

4. Organize photos and memorabilia.
This is an ongoing struggle for me. I love to take pictures and save memorabilia for scrapbooks, but I have not actually put together a scrapbook since my junior year of college. Thus I have boxes in the garage labeled with every year since then. Right now, I'm thinking that a gigantic scanning project is in order. I'm not delusional enough to think that I'm going to manage to put together 11 years worth of scrapbooks this year, but seriously, it's time to go through the boxes and determine what needs to be saved and what doesn't.

5. Get our house into "finished" condition.
As much as any living space can actually ever be "finished," that is. This entails actually painting the walls (which I meant to do before we moved in, almost 9 months ago), hanging picture frames, organizing our garage, and emptying some of those millions of totes and boxes. I think there's a good chance that I'm a hoarder at heart, albeit a very organized one.

6. Love, value, and respect my family.
I don't know if there's any tangible way to measure this, but my family means the world to me and I want to truly appreciate my time with them.

7. Read the whole Bible and spend more time in prayer.
Pretty self-explanatory.

8. Be positive.
Again, I don't know if there's a tangible way to measure this, but I do know that as my aches and pains of pregnancy increase, I get more and more frustrated and negative (and this is with 25 weeks still to go!). So I really want to be deliberate about changing my heart and my attitude.

So there you have it. Hold me accountable, please. :)

The 52+ Books of 2011

2012-01-01T09:58:00.001-05:00

Back in 2010, one of my goals for the year was to read (at least) a book a month. Since I succeeded in that goal, I decided to drastically up my ambitions for 2011. My goal for this year was to read (the equivalent of) a book a week, and I'm proud to say that I did it!

I was greatly helped in this goal in a few ways. In the spring semester, I was taking a grad class for librarians called Materials For Youth. The class was designed specifically for grad students who want to become children's or youth librarians, so it was perfect for me. In that class, I had to read at least one (if not more) novels a week, plus our textbook and various articles. So while it was a ton of reading, I loved it, and it definitely got me off to a strong start for my goal. For the first five months of this year, I also enjoyed the great company of my MOPS book club in Indianapolis. Those wonderful ladies have given me some great titles to try. Lastly, I should mention that the vast majority (although not all) of the books that I have read have been young adult novels, as that's the kind of librarian that I want to be.

So, without further ado, a brief overview of my 52+ books of 2011:

1. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
I would never, ever have picked this up on my own. It looked creepy, but it was also my first assignment for my Materials for Youth class. It was my first Gaiman book. Most people either love him or hate him, but I find myself to be pretty indifferent. The premise of this book is that a baby's parents are killed and he somehow manages to then crawl into a graveyard while eluding the killer himself. He is then raised by the ghosts and other mystical creatures that inhabit the graveyard. I liked the book, but it felt somewhat disconnected to me, more like a book of short stories (all about the same character) than a novel.

2. The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
A young girl named Lucky is raised in a teensy tiny town (think like 10 people) and needs to come to terms with her mother's death. I liked it for what it was, but the sequels aren't on my short list of "to reads."

3. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schiltz
This book, which is a series of poems, was actually written by a teacher in order to get her students interested in medieval life. I loved how each character had their own distinctive voice and thought that it captured the time period beautifully. The illustrations were gorgeous too. I can't imagine most people picking it up for a "pleasure" read, but it would be hugely useful in a late elementary/early middle classroom.

4. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
My class was pretty polarized on this one, but I loved it. It's a very realistic story, aside from the bizarre element of time travel. It tells the story of a city "latchkey" kid growing up in about the same era as me and hte friendships she develops.

5. Uncensored Grace by Jud Wilhite
This is the first non-YA book on my list, and also the first I did not read for my class. It has also been published under the title of Stripped. It tells the story of Central Church in Las Vegas and people whose lives have been radically changed by God. It served as the basic model for the book God Can!, which I wrote with my dad and his pastor, Cal Rychener.

6. Looking for Alaska by John Green
This was my first book by John Green, and I must warn you now that I gobbled up every book he wrote in the coming months (and am SO excited about his new book, which is coming out soon). Alaska was definitely somewhat of a dark story, as the entire second half focused on boarding school students contemplating whether or not their vivacious (and depressed) friend Alaska had or had not committed suicide. Great, great book; I highly recommend it (and anything else by John Green).

7. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
I have to say that I loved this book. I couldn't get it out of my head for a long, long time after I had finished. But I also have to say that I think there were a lot of details included that didn't need to be, and I was left wondering about a lot of other details that I think would have really added to the story. It's set in the Australian outback and is the story of an orphan being raised at a boarding school. Throughout the book, she pieces together her past and reveals the story of her own parents growing up at the same boarding school years before.

8. Baby Proof by Emily Giffin
I read this one for book club. I have also now read all of Emily Giffin's books, but I have kind of a love/hate relationship with her. I like her writing and her books (although chick lit) always make me think, but I kind of hate all of her main characters and think they make terrible choices. This book contemplates one woman's desire to remain childless and its effects on her marriage, as well as the effects of children on her friends' lives and relationships. Clearly an interesting topic for a group of moms to discuss!

9. No Choir Boy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row by Susan Kuklin
A totally different read than anything else on this list. It's the nonfiction accounts of several teenagers who were convicted of murder and sent to death row (many are still waiting there) for their crimes. Reading their stories, and their accounts of life in prison, is definitely sobering.

10. Smile by Raina Telegmeier
This was my first graphic novel, and I kind of loved it. It's the simple story of a girl who has braces (and other pretty severe orthodontic problems), as well as the story of her growing up. Cute, light, well-drawn and written, a great introduction to graphic novels.

11. Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 by David Peterson
Also a graphic novel. I would NOT recommend this one, nor will I be reading its sequel. The illustrations were great, but I thought the plot was seriously lacking, or at least had major holes in the storyline. It's about mouse soldiers defending their hidden kingdom, and I got the distinct feeling that the author had this whole world and epic novel in his head and just couldn't get it out on paper.

12. Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
This novel dove into Norse mythology to tell the story of a crippled Viking boy and how he assisted the gods, in spite of a terrible family situation. I didn't like it as much as The Graveyard Book, but it was a pretty quick read. I did find that it was a little difficult to understand everything without knowing about Norse mythology--which provided me with a great excuse to learn. :)

13. Wait Til Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn
I think I first read this book in fifth grade. Back then, I thought it was the creepiest, best book ever. As an adult, I still liked it, but many of my classmates did not. It tells the story of a lonely little girl and how she becomes a little too friendly with a vengeful ghost.

14. White Cat by Holly Black
While this is the first book in a series, I spent most of the book feeling like I had jumped in in the middle of a story, trying to figure out what in the heck was going on. It's about magicians, who can control thoughts, dreams, and actions by just touching your skin. Lots going on, and I felt like I didn't really get with the program until the very end. That being said, its sequel (Red Glove) is on my "to read" list.

15. The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Loved this book! I read it with my book club, and it led to some really interesting discussion of how Chinese, Japanese, and American parenting are different. It it set during World War II and tells the story of a young Chinese boy and his friendship with a Japanese girl, who is eventually "relocated." You won't find this one in the YA section, but I definitely recommend it.

16. You Don't Even Know Me: Stories and Poems about Boys by Sharon Flake
This is a book of short stories and poems about young, urban black boys. While it did inspire Ben and I to walk around the house randomly retorting, "You don't even know me!" for several weeks, I really did like it. Definitely very different than my life as a suburban (now rural) white 30-something stay-at-home mom, but well-written and thought-provoking.

17. Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin
This book tells the story of a teenager autistic boy who loves to write and struggles to fit in. I was fascinated to read a story from his point of view, and his own creative stories provided a nice offset to the narrative of his experiences.

18. Frindle by Andrew Clements
This one is a classic of late elementary/early middle literature, but I had never read it. It's about a boy (who is not usually a troublemaker, or so he claims) who convinces his entire class to call "pens" "frindles" instead, which incenses his extremely strict English teacher, who happens to deeply love the dictionary. Dunlap people, the teacher totally reminded me of Mrs. Applen.

19. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
The two authors alternate chapters to tell the stories of two teenagers named Will Grayson, who both happen to live in the Chicago suburbs and end up meeting in a most unconventional way. Loved it! Both storylines were great, and it only made me love John Green more.

20. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon
I also read this one for book club. I can't really say that I liked it; it skipped all over the place way too much for a logical, organized person like me. :) The narrator was a teenage autistic British boy, and it chronicles his quest to find out who killed his neighbor's dog (and incidentally uncover the truth about his mother's disappearance).

21. Prairie Songs by Pam Conrad
A hardy pioneer girl tells the story of the lovely schoolteacher from the East who comes to live in a dugout near them, and how she cannot endure the loneliness of the prairie. Pretty depressing with the woman, but the girl loves the prairie's open freedom and paints some beautiful pictures of it. It's an older book and written for a younger audience, so probably not one that you need to run out and get (unless you, like me, have a history as a huge fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder).

22. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
As is the case with every book that has ever been made into a movie.... this book is better. At its core, the book is about a mouse who befriends a princess, and how they together manage to save the kingdom from despair. The book has way more storylines though, also telling the story of a (questionably) evil rat and a lonely servant girl. (This was also the last book I read for Materials for Youth, so the rest of them from here on out are free choice.)

23. Crank by Ellen Hopkins
It sounds like a weird book: it is written entirely in poetry (mostly free verse) and tells the story of a teenage girl's addiction to and struggle with meth. Not to pun on the theme, but I found it totally addictive. I rushed out and read both of the sequels (even begging my local library to order the second one for me), and I plan to do more Ellen Hopkins in the coming year. It's a thick book, but it goes quickly because of the form.

24. Glass by Ellen Hopkins
See, I told you I ran right out to get the sequel to Crank. In this book, Kristina's addiction worsens and we see more of the consequences for her family and loved ones.

25. Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
I'd heard really good things about this one, and I really liked the basic premise, which is that a boy finds a red moleskin book tucked away in a bookstore, filled with clues that will lead him to a girl. Cohn and Levithan alternate the chapters, and both Dash and Lily are nicely developed. All in all, I should have loved it, but I thought it was just all right.

26. Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin
Here, a woman runs into the former love of her life on the street, and he wants to reconnect. Problem: she's happily (at least until then) married to a man who is much better for her. This book explores the "what ifs" of marriage and the lives we could have had. My favorite of Emily Giffin's to date.

27. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Another win for John Green! The narrator, a prodigy of a teenage boy, has been dumped by 19 successive Katherines. During a road trip to "find himself," he also tries to develp a mathematical formula for deterining dumpage. Great book. It was probably my least favorite of John Green's books, but that's only because I loved them all, and I would still rank it higher than a lot of other books on this list.

28. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
This one has gotten a good bit of buzz in YA circles this year, and I picked it up because the Young Adult book group from IUPUI (which I have never actually attended, but often read along with) was reading it. I was disappointed. I thought the whole thing (poor boy saves rich girl, overcomes his personal demons, and is rewarded) was pretty predictable and dull.

29. This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen
This was my first book by Sarah Dessen, and it started my obsession with her. I've only read two of her books to date, but I plan on burning through all the rest of them in 2012. In the summer before she goes to college, Remy finally faces her abandonment/love issues, and discovers that falling in love isn't always a choice. If you like both YA lit and chick lit (which I didn't know that I did until Sarah Dessen and Emily Giffin), you need to read Sarah Dessen.

30. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
This one took me a long time to read, largely because I had to return it in the middle of my reading in order for us to move, and I didn't pick up another copy for a good long while. I read it with my book club (though I finished way after them). It's the true story of a poor black woman named Henrietta who died of cancer. Her cells were taken without her permission or knowledge, and they went on to form the well-known culture of HeLa, which has been used in an incredible amount of important experiments over the years. It's filled with science, history, and family. It found it to be both shocking and depressing, but I'd still recommend it.

31. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Thomas wakes up in a box (actually a sort of elevator), knowing nothing but his name. From there, he is deposited in a colony of all boys, who seem to be held prisoner by forces unknown, with the only imaginable way out to be a maze (whose walls rearrange every night) filled with nightmarish creatures. Loved the story, but I thought the writing left a lot to be desired. If you're into dystopian literature, though, (which I am) I'd recommended it as a good, quick read.

32. Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin
This is her newest book (and as I said, I've read all of them). I thought it was her best by far. It alternates narrators, from the wife to the potential mistress. It contemplates what makes a marriage, what makes a family, and what those things are worth. Read it (you'll find it in the adult fiction section).

33. Blink and Caution by Tim Wynne-Jones
I also picked this one up for the YA book group through IUPUI. It's about two homeless teenagers, both on the run from their past and getting into plenty of trouble in the present. There were some parts that I wanted to be better-developed, but overall, thumbs up.

34. Waiting for Orpheus by Melissa Raguet-Schofield
Sorry, folks, you can't check this one out at your local library. I got to read a draft copy of my BFF's first novel. Loved it! Anybody know a good publisher?

35. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
I decided to give the Cohn/Levithan combo another try, particularly since I'd heard so many good things about this movie (I know, I know, the book and the movie are never the same....). I really didn't like this one and had a hard time finishing it. Doesn't make my list of recs.

36. Turnabout by Margaret Peterson Haddix
I read this one in conjunction with my old book club and then drove down to Indy to make a guest appearance and discuss. It was a fascinating concept--reversing the concept of aging, until these women who were 160+ years old were teenagers again and facing the reality that in a few years, they'd be babies again, unable to care for themselves.

37. That Summer by Sarah Dessen
I didn't like this one as much as This Lullaby, but since this was the first book that Sarah Dessen published, it stands to reason that she's gotten better over the years. A teenage girl faces a summer in which both her father and her sister are getting married, and she longs for the simplicity of an earlier summer.

38. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner
This is the second book in the Maze Runner trilogy. I didn't like it as much as the first one, but I still devoured it. I still think that James Dashner's writing leaves a lot to be desired, but dang, he comes up with some good plots.

39. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
This was probably one of my favorite books of the year. Tally lives in a society where everyone has surgery to make them beautiful on their 16th birthday.... but at what cost? I devoured this entire series and plan to do more Westerfeld in 2012. A must-read for anyone who likes dystopian literature.

40. Pretties by Scott Westerfeld
This is the second book in the Uglies series, and as I mentioned, I devoured it. It's really a toss-up whether I liked the first or second one better.

41. Parfumerie by E.P. Dowall
This is the play that I helped to direct at Delphi High School. It's the basis for the plot of "You've Got Mail," as well as several other famous movies/shows.

42. Specials by Scott Westerfeld
Once again, did I mention that I devoured the Uglies books? This is the third in the trilogy.

43. Paper Towns by John Green
This is a really tough call, since I have loved all of John Green's books, but I think this one might have been my favorite. A teenage boy's next-door neighbor (and long-time crush) disappears, but she has left behind clues that only he can follow. It's both philosophical and hilarious. Run to your library and get it.

44. The Death Cure by James Dashner
This is the final book in the Maze Runner trilogy. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it when it came out this fall. An interesting end to the series, though I was still left with a lot of questions.

45. Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Even better than her Turnabout. It's the story of a girl who thinks she lives in the 1800s, but then learns that she and her family are actually part of a "historic colony" that is observed almost constantly by tourists. Crazy stuff; good book.

46. Mercy by Jodi Picoult
Before this year, I would have said that Jodi Picoult was one of my very favorite authors. I have loved everything that I have read by her previously. But since I discovered so many great new authors this year, I only read one of her books. Mercy (focusing on the concept of mercy killing) was definitely my least favorite of Jodi Picoult's books; I actually struggled to finish it. The topic was fascinating, but I really didn't like the characters at all and felt like too much attention was given to a sub-plot. I wouldn't recommend this one, but I'm still planning on reading more Jodi Picoult in 2012.

47. Extras by Scott Westerfeld
This one isn't exactly part of the Uglies trilogy, but rather a follow-up to it, set in the same society but with different characters. It was okay. (Not exactly a glowing endorsement, I know.) I'm still a big Westerfeld fan, but this one kind of left me cold. I think the trilogy stands better without it.

48. I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore (James Frey and Jobie Hughes)
After all the hype about the movie (which I didn't see until after I read the book, and didn't like), I figured that the Lorien Legacies series was the next big thing in YA dystopian fiction. I felt a lot about this book like I felt about the Maze Runner trilogy: great plot, but not so great writing (although I would say that this is better written than the Maze Runner). Still probably worth checking out, but only if you're okay with starting a series and then not finishing it, as only the first two books have been published so far (grr).

49. The Spy Lady and the Muffin Man by Sesyle Joslin
I ran across this one while trolling around on Amazon for gifts and had to buy it. In fifth grade, my best friends and I all passed around this book and desperately wanted to live it. I am sad to report that it did not stand up to a rereading as an adult. I struggled to finish it, in spite of my memories of it being so great. I guess there's a reason why Amazon was full of library discard copies of this book. :(

50. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
I had actually already read the first four books in this series (and loved them, because I'm a sucker for teenagers and lifelong friendship) and was really excited to see a few months ago that Ann Brashares had published a follow-up book, telling what happened to the girls 10 years after the last book (it's called Sisterhood Everlasting). I'm very excited to read that book, but thought that I should reread the others first in order to fully appreciate it.

51. The Second Summer of Sisterhood by Ann Brashares
Obviously, the second book in the Traveling Pants series. In spite of the fact that these were rereads, I have to admit to shedding a few tears during each book. Blame it on my out-of-control pregnancy emotions. ;)

52. The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore (James Frey and Jobie Hughes)
The second book in the Lorien Legacies series (and I've read that the series will eventually have either 3 or 6 books). Ben read these too and couldn't put them down.

53. Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of Sisterhood by Ann Brashares
Clearly, the third book in the Traveling Pants series. This leaves me with only one more reread to go before I can enjoy Sisterhood Everlasting. I hope it lives up to my expectations!

So there you have it. In 2011, I read 53 books (not including textbooks) and published one. Not too shabby!

So what's next? What will I read in 2012? I'm again aiming for a book a week (or the equivalent thereof), which I fear may be harder this year with taking classes that don't require fiction reading and, oh yeah, a new baby on the way. But I'm determined! Now that I've succombed to the reading fever, I don't think I can go back.

To finish up my aforementioned series, there will be a couple of Ann Brashares books. I've already started Delirium by Lauren Oliver, so it will probably be my first book of the year. I'm also planning on doing the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy by Stieg Larson (my dad and stepmom got me the first one for Christmas). Sitting on my bookshelf right now are library copies of Pregnant Pause by Han Nolan, The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty, and The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness... and I have a real policy against returning library books without reading them. I've also felt some old favorites calling to me over the past few months, so I may revist the fantasy worlds of Terry Brooks and Raymond Feist. While I love YA fiction (and definitely do need to be familiar with it if I want to get a job in that field), I'm also hoping to read a few more "grown-up" books this year, as well as delving back into some of my favorite Christian authors. So I've definitely got a full plate (or bookshelf, as the case may be).

I have no current plans of writing another book this year (unless my dad and Cal come up with another project for me!), although I would like to do that eventually. Working on the book really reminded me of how much I love writing, and how little opportunity I've had to do it for pleasure in my adult life. So now that the God Can! project is done, and we have semi-reliable internet here at the house, I'm planning on a return to blogging this year.... although hopefully not posts as long as this one because, phew, it has taken me a really long time to write!

So, friends, I wish you all happy reading and happy writing in 2012!

Number Four

2011-12-30T09:14:00.002-05:00

To follow up on the bombshell that we announced in the last paragraph of our Christmas letter: Yes, we are having Baby #4. I'm due on June 21, which puts me at 15 weeks right now.

There are so many things that just amaze me about this baby already. This baby is completely and absolutely a gift from God. I'm going to be very real and honest here to explain why I'm so surprised and happy about this baby and what a huge blessing he/she is.

People have asked me if this baby was "planned." I guess I probably have to say that the answer is "no." As those of you close to me know, I have miscarried three times: twice between Bryn and Shay and once between Shay and Liam. Ever since that first miscarriage, I have really been challenged to accept my children on God's time, not my own.

Obviously, we wanted another child before we got Shay. She was actually conceived only a month after my second miscarriage, and I had a very hard time being excited about her pregnancy until I was well into the second trimester because I was both afraid that something would happen with her and still grieving over the last lost baby. After the second miscarriage, I had made an appointment with a fertility specialist to research why I might be miscarrying. When I showed up for that appointment, I found out that I was pregnant with Shay. That wonderful doctor was able to monitor me closely throughout the first trimester and help me sustain that pregnancy. And thus, we got our sweet Shay.

The next time around, I miscarried about two months into my school year. I was teaching high school English. That was a very dark time for me. I had a lot of angst about not being able to spend time with my girls because of my teaching load, and I wondered if I could have even justified another baby if I wasn't going to be around. I wasn't very happy in that job, but it was a huge financial blessing to our family and allowed us to pay off all our debts. By the second semester of that school year, I was so anxious for another baby that we again sought the help of the fertility specialist. I went through six months of fertility treatments but was not able to conceive. However, I did feel terribly sick for those entire six months. With a month and a half left in the school year, I learned that my position was not going to be renewed for the coming year, and the rest of the year was a terrible struggle for me after that. Without my job, we could not afford to continue fertility treatments, so not only did losing that job cause me to cast all kinds of doubts on my professional capabilities, but I also had to let go of the dream of having a third child. In another complete miracle, Liam was conceived on my first cycle off the fertility treatments, and again thanks to the wonderful fertility doctors, I was able to sustain his pregnancy.

Honestly, I pretty much thought that was the end of the road for us. While we really wanted a fourth child, I was terrified of facing another miscarriage. Financially, we knew that fertility treatments were not an option, and they hadn't been successful for me anyway. Each successive pregnancy has been harder and harder on my body, culminating in terrible vaginal varicose veins that left me largely unable to get around at all during my entire third trimester with Liam. Once a woman gets varicose veins in a pregnancy, it's guaranteed that they will come back in successive pregnancies, usually significantly sooner. So while we wanted a fourth child, it didn't seem like that would probably happen.

As Liam got older, I thought a lot about how I wanted a fourth child and eventually got to the point where I said that we would do that "someday." But I was still completely shocked to realize that I was pregnant this time around. Shocked and terrified. I didn't even have a local OB after our move. Since I was only able to sustain Shay and Liam through the assistance of a fertility specialist, I was terrified that I would lose this baby. I called around to the OBs in Lafayette, and even after I begged and explained the situation, the soonest that any of them could see me was four weeks away. If this pregnancy went the way of my second and third miscarriages, I wouldn't still be pregnant in four weeks. I didn't know what to do.

So I called my old fertility specialist and drove down to Indianapolis for an emergency visit. They did an ultrasound and reassured me that everything looked good. They gave me prometrium (progesterone supplements) as a precaution as well. Even with their help, though, I had the huge worry of my thyroid to contend with.

I have severe thyroid problems since before Ben and I were married, and while they are not the sole cause, they are a definite contributing factor to my miscarriages. I started with subclinical hypothyroidism, and as my thyroid slowly dies inside me (wish it would just hurry up and finish the process!), I now swing from hypothyroidism to hyperthyroidism. I have to have my levels checked every six weeks, and I end up with an adjustment in prescription almost every six weeks as well. My condition is such a mess that it's almost impossible to keep me regulated; rather, we just have to play "catch up" with the results of each new blood test. I see a wonderful endocrinologist who is very proactive with my case and I trust and respect completely. All of that being said, the month that started this pregnancy was the worst I've had thyroid-wise in years, maybe ever. With our move and change in insurance, I admit that I had been pretty negligent about keeping up on my regular blood tests. I saw the endocrinologist two days before I found out I was pregnant, and my most recent TSH levels were basically off the charts. I had gained a huge amount of weight (almost 30 pounds) from my thyroid spiralling out of control, and my doctor worried that I might start experiencing body tremors or heart palpitations. She adjusted my medication accordingly, but obviously that would take some time to take full effect. To say the least, not the ideal time to find out that I was pregnant.

Against all odds, though, I have managed to sustain this pregnancy. In fact, assuming that everything else goes well, the gap between Liam and this child will be the only one that does not contain at least one miscarriage. Assuming that this child continues to stay put until the appropriate time, this pregnancy will tip the balance and I will finally be able to say that I have had more successful pregnancies than miscarriages.

The doctors say that I am now out of the "danger zone" and that there is no longer any reason to worry about losing this baby. In a mere 5 weeks, we'll have the "big" ultrasound and hopefully find out the gender. I am so, so thankful for all of the miracles I've seen in the past 15 weeks. My track record is none too good, and especially considering my out-of-control thyroid and lack of a local doctor.... Well, clearly this baby and all the circumstances surrounding it are straight from God!

Another couple "funnies" (it's definitely time to lighten the mood of this post!!) to demonstrate that this baby is definitely on God's timing, not our own.... For one, my due date is a mere two weeks before my sister's wedding... in which I am the maid of honor. Since all of my kids thus far have had to be induced (apparently I make such a nice comfy home for them that they don't ever want to come out!), I'm pretty much assuming that I will basically have to check out of the hospital with this baby and then drive directly to Peoria for the ceremony!

Secondly, as I said, my due date is June 21. Pause for just a moment to consider that we now live and work at a summer camp. June is pretty much the absolute worst time possible to have a baby! Everyone we know locally will be in their busiest time of the year, and we don't anticipate much slowing down on account of this baby!

So as I said, God is good! This baby is clearly on His timing, not ours. I could not be more thrilled about this child and just know that God has great things in store for him/her!

Christmas Letter 2011

2011-12-21T16:19:00.000-05:00

“As for meand my house, we will serve the Lord.” –Joshua 24:15

Dear family and friends--

Season’s greetings toall! 2011 has been a year of change forthe Meyaard-Pfanschmidt family. Ourfirst and biggest change of the year came to fruition in April, when Ben lefthis job in corporate finance at Ingersoll-Rand to accept a brand-new positionas the Director of Camper Support at Camp Tecumseh YMCA. In this position, Ben is in charge offundraising for camperships to enable kids of all different financialbackgrounds to enjoy the Camp T experience, which focuses on personal growth, alove of the outdoors, and personal relationships with Jesus Christ.

With the change in jobs camea big move for our family, from the Indianapolis suburbs to the rural settingof Delphi, Indiana. We were incredibly blessed to have a wonderful crew offriends to help pack us up in Brownsburg, and we were greeted by the Tecumsehstaff for unloading help in Delphi. After years of living in suburban neighborhoods, our front yard/cornfieldseemed HUGE, and the kids settled in to our “log house” and new adventuresquickly!

our "log house"

the view from our front porch

forging a new path

Amy and the kids spentmost of May traveling back and forth between Indy and Delphi, finishing up allof our activities, while Ben learned the ropes of his new job. The girls finished up the year at St. Andrew’sPreschool (Bryn’s third there), performed in their dance recital, and got tohave plenty of “last” trips to the Children’s Museum and the Indianapolis Zoowith friends.

June brought summer campand all of the craziness that goes with it! Amy attended Camp Tecumseh as a camper and Ben and Amy both worked thereas counselors, so we both knew what to expect, but our kids were blown away bythe fun of it all! They became bestfriends with all the counselors and spent the entire summer eating in the dininghall, singing at chapel, going on trailrides, playing at the lake, swimming inthe pools, hiking in the woods, exploring camp’s playgrounds, and attendingcampfires. We also managed to work in atrip to Peoria for a family wedding and a trip to Grand Rapids to see Ben’sparents’ new lake house and to meet our first niece, Elizabeth (daughter ofJill and Jim King). Most importantly,the entire past year has given us daily lessons on trusting in God and knowingthat His plan for us is infinitely better than our own.

our camp kids

fearless Shay

Liam explores Main Field

And now an update on each family member:

Bryn, age 6, startedfull-day kindergarten this fall at Camden Early Childhood Center, the localcounty kindergarten. She loves everylast bit of it: the bus ride, her teacher, her classmates, lunchtime, recess,and the academics, especially learning to read. Her favorite stories are the MagicTreehouse series, which she especially likes to listen to on CD. Bryn also had the opportunity to appear inher first two dramatic productions this year: as a squirrel in “Doo Wop RedRiding Hood” through the Delphi Public Library this summer, then as a youngcustomer in Delphi High School’s “Parfumerie” this November. She has also kept plenty busy with dance andgymnastics lessons. The best week of hersummer was when she got to be a camper at Tecumseh Day Camp!

Shaylee, age 4, is stillfull of energy and spunk (some might call it sass….). She has enjoyed her classes at SonshinePreschool in West Lafayette this fall, especially loving the crafts and music. However, the 35-minute drive each way hasgotten to be too much for us, so Shay will be learning at home with Mommy nextsemester, then enrolling in a local preschool next fall. In the interim, Shay made her dramatic debutin Delphi High’s “Parfumerie” this fall, and she also enjoyed dance andgymnastics lessons. Her favoriteactivity by far, though, is playing at camp—she loves taking every opportunityto eat in the dining hall, climb on Fort Discovery, and play with the animalsin the mini-farm.

Liam, now 21 months, hasdeveloped into quite a friendly, energetic, active, talkative little man. We think that growing up as “camp kid” isdefinitely going to make him fearless! Already, he loves splashing around in the pool (and putting his face in,which neither of his big sisters will do!), monkeying around on the furniture,and achieving daring feats on the playground. He’s also experiencing quite the language explosion, learning multiplenew words every day, with his favorite tricks being animal noises, countingfrom 1 to 10 (though not always in the right order!), and repeating everythinghis big sisters say. Liam has alsodeveloped some “favorites” of his own, including trains, Mickey Mouse, dinosaurs,cars, Diego, and animals—all welcome additions to our previously all-princesstoy collection! Liam eats non-stop andloves cuddling up with Mommy for a good board book.

Amyhas just finished up her third semester in the IUPUI Masters of Library Scienceprogram. She has loved taking advantageof this opportunity to read as much as possible! She has also done a good bit of writing overthe past year, and this fall, she published a book entitled God Can!, a collaboration with her dadand his pastor. She occasionally worksweekends at camp’s Leadership Center and has gotten active in the localcommunity. She co-directed Delphi HighSchool’s production of “Parfumerie” this fall and will be coaching theirAcademic Superbowl team this spring. Amywas also thrilled with the expansion of her extended family this year: herbrother Brian married a lovely woman named Lakshmi this October, and her sisterKristin got engaged to a wonderful Brian of her own.

Ben continues to enjoy hisnew job and just got back from a YMCA fundraising conference in theCatskills. He especially enjoys camp’sdisc golf course and hiking trails, and has already converted several othercamp staff to his love of complicated board games. He loves living on camp grounds, with lessthan a three-mile trip from home to office every day, and has occasionally evenbeen known to canoe to work. His jobwill take him on the road a lot in the coming year, so don’t be surprised ifyou get an invite from him for coffee or lunch!

Our family’s next bigchange will come at the end of June 2012, when (drumroll, please!) we welcomeMeyPfan Baby #4 into the world! Wecouldn’t be more excited about adding to our sweet family, and we look forwardto all of the adventures that the future holds!

Blessingsto you and yours—

Amy, Ben, Bryn, Shay, and Liam

God Can!

2011-10-07T09:33:00.002-04:00

Many of you have asked about the book that I recently published in conjunction with my dad, David Pfanschmidt, and his pastor, Calvin Rychener. It's called God Can! and contains nine stories of people whose lives have been radically changed by God.

The project began about 19 months ago, when my dad and Cal were having a conversation about how attendance at their church (Northwoods Community Church in Peoria, Illinois) was overflowing at Christmastime, yet declined again in the New Year. My dad suggested that Cal put together a book of the letters that he receives regularly from people whose lives have been changed by the church, then hand those books out to visitors. And Cal said, "I've got a better idea!"

Cal wanted to put together a book about people who had stepped out in faith and experienced amazing consequences. It took the idea of letters and expanded it; the book's chapters would not just be about one experience or the effect of one sermon, but rather a window into real people's real lives, and the very real power of a real God.

A similar approach was used by Jud Wilhite, pastor of Central Church in Las Vegas, for his book Stripped (alternately titled Uncensored Grace). But Cal wanted this book to go deeper, to look at the long-lasting effects and life change that come from a relationship with God.

So Cal identified nine stories in from Northwoods Community Church that he wanted to tell. Some were from individuals; some were from couples. Then my dad sent out to interview those people, to hear their stories straight from their own mouths.

That's when I got involved in the project. My dad and I were talking one day, and he said, "You know, I love doing the interviewing, getting people to open up and tell their stories. But I really don't enjoy the writing at all." Thinking back to my original college major of journalism, I said, "That's funny. I always loved the writing part of journalism, but I'd never want to actually be a journalist because I don't like the interviewing." "Hmm...." said Dad, and thus our collaboration was born.

To create the book, my dad interviewed the nine people/couples whose stories make up most of the book. He then sent me transcripts of their interviews, and I went to work writing. I chose to use many direct quotes, allowing the people to speak for themselves. But often they hadn't told their stories in chronological order during the interviews, responding instead to specific questions that my dad asked. So even when I used direct quotes, I often had to rearrange the order, cutting some parts and emphasizing others. I wove their stories together as a whole, including commentary on the lessons that Cal wanted readers to learn from each. Often this involved going back to the sources with more questions for clarification, or consulting secondary documents such as newspaper articles, blogs, or cds.

After each chapter was written, my dad, Cal, and the subject of the chapter read it over and noted any changes they thought should be made, and then I went back and cleaned it up. Meanwhile, Cal wrote an introductory chapter, explaining the goal of the book. He also wrote an introduction and conclusion to each chapter, emphasizing what he hoped readers would get out of each. My dad wrote a forward and conclusion to the book, and I reworked one of Cal's old sermons to turn into the final chapter.

Then we began the painstaking process of editing. Each of us went over the entire book again, and we each selected two editors from among our personal acquaintances. This left us with nine versions of the edits, which my dad then compiled and applied to the master version of the text.

Then, finally, publication! We had a pre-release party for the "chapter people" in Peoria on September 15, and we then released the book to the public at Northwoods' four services on the weekend of September 16-17. Copies are now available at the Northwoods resource center and Peoria's Berean Bookstore. In coming weeks, it will also be available online at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

If you'd like a copy now and don't live near the Peoria area, you can get one directly from the publisher by sending a check for $13.00 to:

Inspire Publishing
10518 N. Manchester Dr.
Peoria, IL 61615

If you order directly from the publisher, you will save the shipping cost of what Barnes and Noble and Amazon will eventually charge.

I hope you enjoy these amazing, heartfelt stories about what God has done in the lives of members of Northwoods.... and can do in the lives of anyone who follows Him.

The Call (Part 2)

2011-06-14T11:34:00.001-04:00

A few weeks after that brief conversation with Dave at the end of visit to camp, Ben and I drove up to Lafayette to meet Dave for dinner and discuss what all of us had on our hearts. As Ben and I made the drive, we were still completely uncertain about what the conversation might hold. We still felt God calling us to camp, but we had no idea what form that might take. As we drove, we brainstormed what either of us could possibly offer professionally to camp... and didn't come up with much. In spite of our years as counselors, we're rather lacking in "outdoor skills," and as far as we knew, there were no open positions at camp.

We had a really great conversation with Dave that night, during which he shared with us that he and camp's Board of Directors were contemplating adding a new position for a "Director of Camper Support." The person who filled this position would be in charge of fundraising for camperships, to enable kids who would not otherwise be able to afford it to attend camp. He said that he had been praying over the position for quite some time, and God had really put Ben on his heart as a good fit for the job.

Wow.... we were completely blown away. At the same time that God had been preparing our hearts to accept a role at camp, He had been working on the hearts of Dave and the Board to create just the right position. Truly God's plans for us are infinitely better than our plans for ourselves.

No decisions were made that night. The position didn't yet exist at camp, and there was a long process ahead of getting both the position and a budget for it approved. And of course, once the position was created, there was always the possibility that other people would apply for it, and maybe one of those people would be more qualified than Ben. For the time being, we all agreed to pray over the new position, to pray that if it was God's will for Ben to take the position and for our family to move to camp, that He would just keep opening the doors ahead of us.

And as the subsequent months passed, those prayers were answered. Every door opened ahead of us and every obstacle was conquered before it even became a serious concern. The call was clear.

The Call (Part 1)

2011-05-28T18:27:00.002-04:00

I've been off the blog for several months now, and our family has experienced some huge changes in the interim. Liam has turned 1. Shay has finished her first year of preschool. Bryn has "graduated" from preschool. I've wrapped up another semester of grad school, finished writing the bulk of the book that I'm doing with my dad and his pastor, and packed up my entire house. Ben has quit his job in corporate America and started a new career in fundraising. And our entire family has moved, from the suburbs of Indianapolis to the adventures awaiting us in the countryside surrounding Camp Tecumseh.

All of these things have their own stories, which I hope to catch up on in the coming days and weeks, now that the craziness of all our transitions is starting to slow a bit and allow me a little time to write. But to start, I need to begin at the beginning....

Truth be told, I'm not really sure where the "beginning" of this adventure is. Does the story of our move to camp begin when I was 11 years old and checked in at the Trading Post for my very first week at Camp Tecumseh? Or in the summer of 1999, when I had "the experience of the century" with my first summer as a counselor? Or does our collective story start in the summer of 2001, my third summer as a counselor, my first summer dating Ben, when he came to camp for the very first time, to visit me on a night off, and I couldn't wait to show him around the place I loved so much?

He started working weekends with me that fall, and we both worked as counselors in the summer of 2002. We volunteered for a week in the summer of 2003 before heading off on on our epic cross-country roadtrip. Since then, we've taken as many opportunities as possible to stay close to camp. I've brought school groups on retreats here. We've visited for reunions, bringing our kids. And all the while, our hearts have longed for something more.

Which brings me to one year ago. Exactly one year ago this weekend, we came to Family Camp. You can revisit my posts about it here and here. In those posts, I talked about what an amazing time we had, how much my kids loved camp already, how much I loved the effect that camp had on my girls. What I neglected to mention was that I cried all the way home.

I can't really explain the overwhelming feeling that took root in my gut that day. All I know is that it felt like a terrible separation, a physical tearing when it came time to leave camp that night. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were supposed to be at camp permanently, not just for a visit, but to let it shape the direction of our lives. I say this was a feeling in "my gut" because I can't really speak for how it felt to Ben, but I know that he felt it too. We both kind of had the sense of having been hit by a lightning bolt, of our direction and our purpose shifting.

It didn't make any sense. Liam was only 2 months old. Ben had just started a new position in his company, a position with more responsibilities and more pay. We had a beautiful 5-bedroom house in the suburbs. We loved our church, our friends, our lives. And I think that's why I cried all the way home that night, because I was just so overwhelmed by the feeling of what I knew God was calling us to--change so big and so improbable, when life right where we were was already so good.

Back in Indianapolis, Ben and I started talking an ongoing conversation about what we should do. We both heard God calling us to camp. We just had no idea how He could possibly want to use us. At that time, we actually thought that the call was for me. After all, I was the one without a job. I had more experience working at camp. We figured that, in theory, Ben could keep his lucrative corporate job and commute back and forth from camp if necessary. We began journaling back and forth to each other about the possibilities.

But of course, God's ways are not our ways.

As Ben and I prayed over the matter, we got a strong sense that whatever God had in mind for us would come before the next summer. I looked around at my Indianapolis friends, at our daily outings to the Children's Museum, the park, the zoo, and got a lump in my throat, wondering if I could give up the life that I knew and loved, even for another one that would be so good.

In mid-July, we came up to camp again. I spent the whole day at camp, volunteering at a special event for the anniversary of YMCA camping. Ben and the kids came up for a campfire at night. We had done a lot of praying before coming up that day, unsure what the day would hold, but we both had a nervous sense that whatever the future held, the next piece might fall into place that day.

Nothing happened for most of the day. Nothing, in fact, until we were loading our kids up in the van after the campfire and preparing to return to Indy. And then, just as we were about to leave, the executive director (Dave) drove by, saw us, and stopped to say hello. He gave us both big hugs and greeted us warmly. He and Ben chatted for a few minutes while I stood with the kids. Ben asked if we could get together to talk in the coming weeks, as we had something on our hearts that we'd really like to discuss.

Dave's response? "That's interesting. There's something I'd really like to discuss with you too..."

And that, I think, is the beginning of the story of God's call for our family and our subsequent move to camp. More to follow. For now, we have a campfire to attend.

My Funny Valentines

2011-02-14T20:43:00.000-05:00

Rebounding

2011-01-31T15:58:00.002-05:00

Many of you have heard me mention my frequent headaches before. A little over two weeks ago, I went to the neurologist for my six-month check on my migraines. While my migraines have gotten significantly better since he started me on Topamax as a preventative six months ago, I've still been suffering from nagging daily headaches, which I really didn't think should be the case if I was taking a headache preventative twice a day.

When I mentioned this to him, he was like, "What do you mean by daily?" Um, exactly what I said. Daily. "So how many times a week would you say you have to take medication for 'daily' headaches?" Um, again, daily.

So it turns out that's not normal. Which probably any of you could have told me.

After looking into my medical history further and testing some things, my neurologist (who I am really coming to love, because he's actually Fixing Things) determined that I am suffering from rebound headaches, most likely as a result of all the painkillers I had to take during my pregnancy with Liam.

So what is a rebound headache? Well, it really, really sucks. For more information, you can visit this very helpful website. The gist of it is that your body gets so used to having painkillers that it forms kind of an addiction. So you wake up feeling fine, but after a few hours, your body is like, "Hey, where are my painkillers?!" and develops a beast of a headache until you give in and take the painkillers that its craving. Every single day. And the kicker is that those painkillers then become utterly inefficient. Down the road, people can end up taking like 12 Advil a day and still having headaches, and even devloping chronic migraines, which means migraines 15 or more days a month, with medication utterly unable to touch them. So obviously, this is something you want to nip in the bud.

The problem, of course, is that there's really no way to get over it except to just quit cold turkey and not take painkillers anymore. Which means that I have had a helluva headache every day for the past two weeks. Thus my absence from the blog, as my head has been kind of pounding out of my skull after doing my reading for school and I haven't wanted any more reading/writing than strictly necessary.

The bad news is that I did a lot of whimpering that first week. The good news is that I think I'm over the hump and am feeling much better. The headaches did go into one medication-necessitating migraine last week, but they were manageable the rest of the time.

On the migraine front, I had heard so many good things about magnesium as a preventative that I had been hoping to switch to that instead of Topamax, but the neurologist says that magnesium alone basically won't do anything for someone suffering from rebound headaches. But he agreed that it's very helpful as a supplement and added a low dose of that to my regime. As I said, I've been feeling a lot better, although it's too soon to really say if that's due to the mag or just because I'm starting to shake the rebound headaches.

Anyway, it's nice to actually be seeing some progress health-wise. I'm hoping the good news holds for the next few days, as we've got major snowstorms moving in and storms of any kind are usually a migraine trigger for me. I guess this will be my chance to see if the magnesium works, right? Keep your fingers crossed!

Reference Pathfinder

2011-01-13T07:13:00.002-05:00

Yes, I'm still here....

The past few weeks (ahem , months...) have held a lot of craziness for the MeyPfan family, some of which will be chronicled in due time.

And thus I present the final product (or at least one of them) of my first semester as a student in the graduate school of Library and Information Science. For one of my classes, we were assigned to create a pathfinder, which is essentially a compilation of resources on one topic that we have evaluated and think would be helpful to patrons seeking further information in that area. We could choose any topic we wanted. Since I was in the thick of deciding whether to keep pumping for Liam or switch to formula, and then starting on solid foods (all of which we've done homemade), I decided to kill two birds with one stone and do my project on "infant feeding," with subtopics in "breastfeeding," "formula-feeding," and "introducing solid foods." I actually learned tons of great information (some of which I really wished I had known for my first two kiddos) and enjoyed the project... or at least as much as one can enjoy pulling together a high-stress final project in the last week of the semester while sick with a raging sinus infection. ;-)

If you'd like to view the fruits of my labor, you can do so at http://infantfeeding.wordpress.com.

2010 in Review

2010-12-31T20:41:00.002-05:00

As Ben and I ate lunch today, he asked if I knew what I wanted my 2011 resolution to be yet. Honestly, I haven't given it much thought. I was doing really well with most of my 2010 resolutions until I started graduate school, at which point basically all of them bit the dust. I think that 2011 is going to be a plenty big year for our family, so maybe my resolution should just be to enjoy it with as minimal stress as possible. We invite you to come along for the ride with us! In the meantime, here's my final check-in on my 2010 resolutions:

1. Read the Bible.Incomplete. It's really too bad that the "Bible in one year" plans always start with the Old Testament.... I'll be trying a new reading plan in 2011.

2. Read at least one pleasure reading book per month.Almost complete. I did not read a book in October, but I did read a total of 28 pleasure-reading books for the year. I'm keeping this goal for 2011.

3. Join some kind of musical group (a band or choir) and perform with them.Complete. In addition to the concerts that I've already mentioned, I had one in November (on my birthday, no less) and two in December. We're now on a month-long break and will pick up again in February. I'm really enjoying being back in a band again!

4. Blog daily (at least a picture).Incomplete. Did really well until I started my two grad classes online, and then spending any more time at the computer than absolutely necessary started to sound really unappealing...

5. Get back down to (at least) my pre-pregnancy weight.
Complete. Back to pre-pregnancy weight, and then down a bonus 20 pounds!

6. Get involved with some kind of theatre group and help out with at least one production.Incomplete. I'd still really like to do this, but I just never found the time.

7. Teach Bryn to read.
Incomplete. She can read a lot more words than she could a year ago, but I think that's really just word recognition rather than true sounding-it-out reading. She still loves learning and reading though, and I think that's what's really important.

8. Potty-train Shay.Incomplete. My stubborn little girl absolutely refuses to finish up the process. She is fully capable of doing it, but it equally uninterested in doing so. And thus the process continues...

9. Finish up some of my murals.Somewhat complete. Did some as gifts and have progressed on some of our own. Still at work.

10. Frame our portraits.Complete. At least the ones that I was referring to when I made this goal are complete.... We've recently gotten some cute new portraits of the kids that I could stand to get framed too!

11. Paint the kids' bathroom.Incomplete. I actually gave up on this one. New plans.

12. Get Shay into her big girl room.Complete, way back in January.

13. Breastfeed this baby.Complete. Nearly 10 months later, I'm still pumping and giving Liam 100% breastmilk. No formula for my boy! Two more months to go, and then I can be done and he can move on to cow's milk.

I hope you've all had wonderful 2010s as well. Wishing you all the best in 2011!

It's A Jungle Out There

2010-12-02T06:30:00.003-05:00

A week and a half later, I'm just now getting around to posting pictures of the girls' birthday party.... This year was actually the first time that Shay was slated to have a birthday party, since the first time that we let Bryn have a party was when she turned 3, so we were playing fair and doing it that way with Shay too. So we were a bit hesitant when the girls told us that they wanted to have their party together, wondering if we should do something special for Shay since it would be her first party and all, but since it was what they wanted, okay. Since they're in preschool together this year, they have mostly the same friends, which will probably not be the case in the future. With two November birthdays (and a stressed-out mommy in end-of-semester grad school crunch time), a combined party seemed like a great way to save time and money. Thus, the Great Diego and Dora Adventure Party was born.

My pictures posted in backwards order, but you get the idea. Here's the highlight reel of the party...

Shay taking a swing at the Diego pinata. We actually had both Diego and Dora pinatas (compliments of Nana's resale shop), so all 16 kids (we invited 22--yikes!) got to hit several times, as well as take home a good bit of bounty:

Bryn and Billy (yes, THE Billy) "rescuing" some animals--those little tablets that you put in water and watch turn into various kinds of animals:

Snack time with orange kool-aid, popcorn, and gummy worms--all snacks chosen by little rescuers:

Shay as Baby Jaguar and Bryn as an elephant--all the kids got various animal masks, printed by my dad and cut out by me and my mom (with many resulting scissors blisters):

"Rescuing" animals from the sandbox:

Part of our front room, all "jungled" up for the party:

Delicious chocolate Diego cake, decorated largely freehand by Ben's mom:

Equally delicious yellow Dora cake, decorated with slight aid of a computer printout by Ben's mom:

Shay watching Nana decorate the cakes. Can't you just hear her thinking, "My hero!"

Happy Birthday to Shay!

2010-11-27T21:39:00.003-05:00

It's hard to believe that in three short years, my sweet Shaylee Grace has gone from this...

...to this...

...to this...

...to this!

Happy 3rd birthday, Shay! We love you!

Growing Up at CEC

2010-11-07T15:40:00.006-05:00

On Bryn's birthday this year, I posted a picture of her and Ben and Chuck E. Cheese. Our actual family tradition is to take the kids out for a family outing to the birthday child's location of choice on their birthday night.... Thus far, the "location of choice" for Bryn has always been Chuck E. Cheese. I know I get a kick out of looking at her "grow up" through this series of pictures, so I thought you all might too. Happy birthday Brynie, years 1-5. Which years do you think show the greatest change?

October in Review - Amy

2010-11-05T06:24:00.002-04:00

1. Read the Bible.
Still reading.

2. Read at least one pleasure reading book per month.Fail. I was supposed to read The Help by Kathryn Stockett for my book club, but because I've been so busy, I haven't been able to finish it yet. I guess that *kind of* works out though, because I was also too busy to attend my book club meeting with all my wonderful friends last night. :(

3. Join some kind of musical group and perform with them.As I said in my last update, we had my second concert on the first weekend of October. I then gave myself two weeks off rehearsal (which gave me some much-needed study time), since I had a conflict and wasn't able to perform in our mid-October concert. I'm now back at rehearsals and getting ready for next week's concert!

4. Blog daily.I've given up on this goal, and I have two reasons to justify it. :) The first is that when I look back at old posts from before this year, they have lots of comments on them. This year's posts are pretty barren, most of them having no comments at all. So that leaves me to think that either no one is reading anymore (except the grandparents, who usually see all my pictures sooner or later anyway!), or that my readers are so overwhelmed by the volume of posts that they don't read them all. So I'm thinking that in either case, it's fine to cut back. Secondly, both of my grad classes* are online. I spend so much time working on them that by the time I'm done, the last thing I want to do is launch into another online project. Really all I want to do is slam the laptop shut and go cuddle my husband and kids.

* Speaking of cutting back, I am thrilled to report that I will only be taking one class instead of two next semester. I am hoping that this will greatly reduce my stress level. In the meantime, I am counting down the weeks until the end of the semester and Christmas break. If anyone is interested, there are five more....

5. Get back down to (at least) my pre-pregnancy weight.Did that. :)

6. Get involved in some kind of theatre group and help out with at least one production.
Maybe next year. Or when the kids are in college....

7. Teach Bryn to read.Her favorite "game" this month is sounding out words to spell them. She also likes having me read her chapter books during naptime (when I should be studying...). She also loves "reading" books to Shay and Liam. I think this one has inherited my love of reading!!

8. Potty-train Shay.
We've had such an up-and-down journey on this. Bryn was done in a single day (at age 3 1/2), but Shay is much more of a process. Huh, it's like they're separate kids or something.... ;) Although she was doing great last month, she really seems to have lost interest lately. Right now she asks to go as a stall tactic at bedtime or naptime, and she has actually requested diapers over Pull-Ups for the last few days.

9. Frame our portraits.All family portraits have been framed. Next job is to put together our "Year Six" anniversary frame and frame Liam's cute 6-month portraits.

10. Finish up some of my murals.
Still working on Noah's Ark. And by "working," I mean "looking at occassionally."

11. Paint the kids' bathroom.This project is officially on hold.

12. Get Shay into her big girl room.
Achieved in January.

13. Breastfeed Liam.In addition to pumped bottles, Liam now eats rice and oatmeal cereal, bananas, apples, pears, green beans, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, and vanilla yogurt. He has a very strong preference for fruit over veggies, to the point where he actually gags himself if we give him veggies straight up and has even made himself throw up a couple of times. Luckily he loves rice and oatmeal cereal, so if we mix the veggies with cereal, he eats them with no problem. He eats a ton at each meal though--that kid is a bottomless pit!!

The Big 0-5

2010-11-03T22:08:00.006-04:00

Happy fifth birthday to my sweet Bryn! She was completely thrilled with her day full of festivities...

... and presents....

... including a new hat and mittens.
We also made our annual family outing to Chuck E. Cheese, where the girls got to hug the Mouse himself...

... and we took our yearly picture of Daddy and Bryn in the entryway.

Me and my big girl!

Twosday Giraffes

2010-11-02T15:18:00.005-04:00

It has been a while since I've done a Twosday, but I thought these pictures were well worth it. Anybody need a double-take on these giraffes?
Hint: 2 of them are not from Halloween 2010.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T20:48:00.006-04:00

Carving scary pumpkins--

Our two butterflies and their Very Hungry Caterpillar brother--

Butterflies in pink and purple--

And our little giraffe--

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Fire Truck Day

2010-10-28T21:49:00.002-04:00

October always holds Fire Truck Day at the girls' preschool, and while Bryn spent most of this year's event snuggling up to her crush (see yesterday's post for photographic proof), they did still manage to take in the big red truck in all its glory.

Preschool cuties--look at them all well-behaved in that straight line:

Shay and friend Christopher:
Class portrait with the brave firefighters:

Best-Loved Boys (Part 3)

2010-10-27T06:24:00.004-04:00

I'd better enjoy doing posts like this while I can, because it won't be too many more years (or maybe just months) before Bryn will likely forbid me from doing so. But for the time being, she considers her crushes to be conversation for all, so I feel safe in doing the same.

Anyway, check out this cuteness. I got some adorable pictures of the class on Fire Truck Day (to be posted next) and couldn't resist taking a few of Bryn and her (perhaps unknowing) beau as well. There's some definite cuddling going on there.

And yeah, she's wayyyy closer to Billy than to the kid on her other side. Preschool love connection?

Ben says I shouldn't even entertain thoughts like this. I don't think he understands little girls. :)

Falling Into Fall

2010-10-26T14:45:00.003-04:00

So, so much to catch up on. Time seems to be slipping by so quickly these days. Perhaps it's my two grad courses sucking up all my time. Or maybe it's the three weeks I just spent grading SAT essays online. Or maybe it's my three children under the age of five (although not for much longer!). Whatever it is, I'm running behind (as usual).

To begin--fall is officially here. The unseasonably warm days are now behind us, and the leaves are changing color and falling off the trees. The girls love to hear the leaves crunch under their feet, but even more than that, they love to throw heaping armloads of leaves onto each other. Thankfully, they both greet this trick with peals of happy laughter--although I do have to keep reminding them that not all of their friends feel the same way. Our new-construction neighborhood has basically no leaves, so they think that the leaves on the lawn of their school are the greatest. And oh boy, you'd have thought they'd died and gone to heaven when we took them to Eagle Creek Park last weekend!

Here's the girls and their friend Christopher, rolling around one day after preschool, unable to contain their joy at the miracle of fall:

Over the (Blue) Moon

2010-10-16T22:09:00.005-04:00

One final note about our trip to Peoria before moving on to the rest of our (last) week. While we were there, my mom took us out to lunch at The Spotted Cow, this great little restaurant that also happens to feature awesome ice cream. Given the promise of being able to choose any flavor ice cream they wanted, the girls obediently devoured their lunches, which is a pretty impressive feat for my picky little eaters.

My mom took Shay up the counter and started reading her the names of the flavors..... and next thing we knew, Shay had a heaping cone full of bright blue ice cream! Apparently the years between "mom" and "grandma" created a little forgetfulness in Mom's understanding of a child's psyche, because she insists that all she did was read the names of the flavors. To which I reply, yes, but saying, "Ooooh, look at that blue one.... it's called Blue Moon..." is more temptation than a 2-year-old can handle. LOL!!

Photographic evidence that Grammy was totally responsible for the ice cream mess -
Shay was over the moon with delight at her Blue Moon ice cream -

Bryn opted for a more traditonal strawberry -
Seriously, though.... We love you, Mom. Thanks for a great weekend (and for putting up with our good-natured teasing). :)

Our Trip To Tanner's

2010-10-15T14:52:00.006-04:00

Last weekend, we went to Peoria to visit my family. This was kind of a red-letter event, as it was actually our first trip to Peoria since Liam was born.... 7 months ago. It's not that we're squeamish about traveling with a baby; Bryn traveled for her first Thanksgiving when she was 3 weeks old. It's more that the mechanics of travel have gotten much harder now that the kids outnumber the parents in our family. Furthermore, Shay stopped sleeping in a crib around the same time that Liam was born, and unlike Bryn, Shay is a bit of a nighttime wanderer. Basically, Shay needs constant supervision while traveling, and the lucky parent who supervises her doesn't end up getting much sleep. Then we also need someone who can get up with Liam in the night, since he still does that occassionally. And ideally, those two someones should not be the same parent, so Shay and Liam don't wake each other. And most places that we would travel to don't have enough space for us to spread out enough to separate each kid into a different room to allow them all to sleep, thus our utter lack of overnight travel over the last seven months.

But I digress. The point is, we finally made a trip to Peoria, and it went just fine. We isolated Shay in my sister Kristin's old room, and while she did utterly trash the room (sorry, Sissy) and I did have one panicked moment where the video monitor revealed that she was attempting to climb out the window (which was thankfully closed and locked, so she failed), everyone else got good sleep. We also had a great visit with my mom, as well as short side visits with my dad and stepmom, two sets of my aunts and uncles, and some old friends from my church growing up.

The absolute greatest thing to do in Peoria in the fall is to go to Tanner's Orchard. I'm sure that everyone else who grew up in Peoria will back me up on this.... after Tanner's, pretty much every other apple orchard in the world is a huge letdown. So I was especially excited that even though we haven't been to Peoria in a while, we were able to work a visit to Tanner's into this trip. Oh, and did I mention that it was 85 degrees and sunny? Here's some of our highlight reel:

Bryn and Shay driving their tractors -

Froggie teeter-totter... so handy to have a sister as a built-in partner! -
Grammy Tina watched Liam while the rest of us checked out the "dirt bikes"..... don't worry, it's all pedal power -
Shay and Bryn both found their way out of the corn maze all on their own -
Tanner's actually has dozens of gourd-headed scarecrows done up in the guises of all kinds of famous characters, but the girls liked Minnie and Mickey the best -
My favorite part was coming home with a trunk full of apple cider, apple fritters, carmel apple pie sprinkled with nuts, apple cider doughnuts, and apple butter, not to mention the apple cider slushie I got to sip on the way home. YUM!! Apparently my family agrees, because Ben has already demolished the entire carton of apple fritters (I didn't get to eat a single one!), and Bryn liked the apple cider doughnuts so much that when we ran out (in record time!), she insisted that I call Grammy (while she was listening) and ask her to bring more the next time she comes to visit. Yep, Tanner's is always a hit!

A Visit from Sunny

2010-10-12T21:11:00.002-04:00

Each year, the kids' preschool has a "class pet." This year, it's Sunny (aka Sunshine Bear) because the theme for the year is sunshines. Each kid in the class gets a turn taking Sunny home for the weekend and recording Sunny's adventures in the class book. This year we are extra lucky because Sunny will get to come to our house twice! Here are some of the fun things that Sunny did on Shay's weekend:

Played in Shay's "house" on the school playground -

Got to eat a delicious bowl full of dirt -
Got to play in our yard with Shay on an ujnseasonably warm day -

And got to go out to lunch at McDonald's with Lilly, Christopher, Bryn, and Shay (all of whom are in our preschool class, and also the MOPS group that we go to on Fridays) -

Happiness Is Overrated

2010-10-08T13:57:00.002-04:00

My friend Kristin read this post from a blog that I really enjoy as our devotion this morning at MOPS. The title is "I Don't Want My Children To Be Happy." I was really touched by it. These really are the values that we should strive to raise our children with.
(Of course, it also enforces my desires to run out and adopt millions of babies as well).

September in Review - Amy

2010-10-03T21:21:00.002-04:00

1. Read the Bible.
Still reading.

2. Read at least one pleasure reading book per month.In September, I read Baby Proof by Emily Giffin for my book club. I liked it, but not as much as other books I've read by her. I can't decide if I'm just getting sick of her or if I was just frustrated with this particular book. In either case, Something Blue remains my favorite by her. I also just finished up Mockingjay, the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I thought it while it was good, it was still the weakest of the trilogy.

3. Join some kind of musical group and perform with them.I performed my first concert with the Zville Concert Band on September 11. We actually had another concert today, so now I can check this goal off twice!!

4. Blog daily.I haven't managed daily, but I'm doing what I've got time for.

5. Get back down to (at least) my pre-pregnancy weight.
Last month I mentioned that I was interested to see if my winter wardrobe would fit, since I'm holding steady at 20 pounds lighter than my pre-pregnancy weight. This month I had to actually break into the winter wardrobe and subsequently learned that no, in fact, it does not fit. Good thing I have some belts. And good thing that Kohl's constatly runs sales.

6. Get involved in some kind of theatre group and help out with at least one production.This goal is officially on hold. I'm far too busy as it is.

7. Teach Bryn to read.She's learned a few more short words and enjoys practicing. She LOVES being back in preschool this fall and gives me a full report of what she learns each day. She loves to do her homework and turn it in each day!

8. Potty-train Shay.She's doing really well. She even goes at school! I actually thought she was ready to be in underwear instead of Pull-Ups, but when we prototyped this the other day, I realized that she's leaking more than I had previously thought. Back to the Pull-Ups, but she does go on the potty nearly every time.

9. Frame our portraits.All family portraits have been framed. Next job is to put together our "Year Six" anniversary frame.

10. Finish up some of my murals.
Still working on Noah's Ark.

11. Paint the kids' bathroom.This project is officially on hold.

12. Get Shay into her big girl room.Achieved in January.

13. Breastfeed Liam.More than halfway to the one-year goal! Liam is also now eat rice and oatmeal cereal, bananas, apples, pears, green beans, and vanilla yogurt. With the exception of the cereals, we haven't bought any baby food this time around; we're doing the whole homemade thing. Far easier than I had expected!

Liam's 6 Month Portraits

2010-10-03T21:10:00.002-04:00

Now that Liam is 7 months and 2 days old, it's high time that I get around to posting his six month portraits. For your viewing pleasure....

Best-Loved Boys (Part 2)

2010-09-30T16:49:00.003-04:00

When Shay got up this morning, I jokingly asked her, "So, are you going to kiss any boys at school today?"

Even in her sleepy state, she nodded that little blonde head of hers and unabashedly said, "Yep!"

"Who?" I demanded.

"Billy!"

Because apparently she needs to finish her hat trick.

*******

Ben drove the girls to school today, and as they arrived, they saw Billy walking in. He says that both girls started cheering. "Daddy, Daddy, Billy IS at school today!" As if he's usually not? But apparently it would be easier to kiss him if he was there.

I was surprised that Bryn wasn't upset that Shay was planning on stealing her boy. Or maybe she was just excited to see Billy and not been informed of Little Sass's plans.

*******

When I picked them up, the first thing I did was whisper to Shay, "Did you kiss anyone during school?" I'd had visions of her bringing chaos down on the classroom by chasing down Billy and kissing him, thus throwing at least Bryn, if not also Grant and Alex, into total tailspins. Thankfully, no kissing had occurred.

On the playground after school, both Bryn and Shay chose to play with Billy.... and when I say "play with," I really mean "follow around." Shay was far more outgoing, whereas Bryn kind of hung back adoringly. It's funny, because that's really how I see their personalities growing as they get older too--although of course things may change.

Anyway, I did fill in Billy's dad on the girls' dual crushes, which he found to be pretty amusing. So at least now the poor kid might get a heads-up on the power struggle being waged over him between the Pfan sisters. We also have five days before it's time to go to school again, so hopefully the hotbed of preschool hormones will cool before then. ;)

Best-Loved Boys

2010-09-29T20:54:00.002-04:00

I was reading a magazine article the other day that warned that around 5 or 6 years of age, kids are likely to start developing crushes. Really? Because Bryn has had crushes for.... well, forever. And I really noticed it in Shay over the summer as well, particularly at VBX. So maybe my children are just advanced, but each of them now has a list of "best-loved boys."

Bryn's "best boy" is, of course, her friend Christopher, as is evidenced here. A little over a year ago, she also developed a huge crush on a 13-year-old named Brenden who helps out in her Sunday school room. And there's also another little boy in her preschool class, Billy, who she talked about sometimes last year because he was so "funny," which is a very high compliment. This year she talks all the time about how "silly" he is (and she loves that "silly" and "Billy" rhyme), and she always tries to sit next to him during circle time, and we mommies even caught her winking at him on the playground today. Oh my....

By all of that is nothing compared to my brash little Shay. Immediately upon starting preschool, she decided that she like Grant. Please bear in mind that Shay is only 2 1/2 years old and one of the youngest in the class. Grant turned 5 right after the start of the school year (making him the oldest kid in the class), and Shay thought it was awesome that he had cookies shaped like dog bones at his in-class party. Clearly, it was love--at least on her part.

The next boy to catch Shay's eye was Alex, this cute little blondie who she loves to play with on the playground. I thought two crushes (thankfully both on very nice boys) was quite ample for the two-year-old's first month of school, but then Shay got wind of Bryn's crush on Billy. Apparently she thought that if Bryn liked Billy, well then, it must be the cool thing to do, so Shay should like him too, and she added him to her own "list." The other day, when she laid down for her nap, she told me that she "wanted to have a dream about Billy." Oh dear.

As a side note, please let me mention that all three of these boys were in Bryn's class last year (Grant for the last two years), and Shay didn't notice that any of the existed then. Nor did they notice her. I bring this up because I think this is pretty much going to be the way it's going to go from here on out..... sweet Bryn paves the way, then vivacious Shay sweeps in and steals all the boys' hearts. I think Ben and I have a rocky road ahead of us.... which brings me back to the scene on the playground today.

Billy left shortly after the winking incident, and Bryn was playing contentedly by herself on the top of a piece of playground equipment, singing, dancing, and just generally being a girlie-girl in her own little world. Shay, meanwhile, was running and screaming with the boys (Alex and Grant). After a while, they sat down and started playing in the rocks and jabbering away like kids do. I didn't catch the conversation, but it somehow led to Shay going over and giving Alex a big old hug. He got this huge grin, stood up, and threw a handful of celebratory pebbles in the air. You could practically hear him thinking, "Yeah! I got the girl!"

But then Shay gave him this disapproving little look, like either "Don't flaunt it!" or "I refuse to be tied down!" And she marched her little self over to Grant, said something in a conciliatory tone of voice, and, I kid you not, started giving him a backrub. Yes, my two-year-old gave her crush a backrub. Oh. My. Goodness.

And it gets better. Or worse, depending on your perspective. Alex exited to another part of the playground, Shay continued with the backrub, and Grant allowed himself to be won over. He grinned up at her (he was sitting on the ground), she smiled back down at him, and she leaned down and kissed him.

This was the point when all the mommies decided it was time to go home. So we all did, but there was much "Bye Grant!" "Bye Shay!" "Bye Alex!" going on. Sigh.

In the car on the way home, I pointed out to Shay that she had hugged one boy and kissed another. She did not seem to think this was an issue. I asked her which boy she liked best, and she replied, "I love them both!" At least Bryn only winked at one boy. Of course, that may be because Christopher went home before all the real romancing started.

I told Ben this whole story at dinner, and he about spit out his rice when I got to the backrub/kissing part. He turned to Shay and said, "You kissed a boy?!? No way! You do NOT kiss boys!" And then Bryn piped up from across the table and said, "Yes, Daddy! Shay can kiss boys if she wants to!" And the two of them got into a big debate about how Bryn thought it was okay for Shay to kiss boys, because after all, Shay liked to do it.... at which point Ben freaked out even more.... particularly when he learned that the reason Bryn was defending Shay was because Bryn, too, likes to kiss boys and didn't want him to prohibit her from the activity as well.

Did I blink and miss my daughters turning into teenagers?

Dreaming of Pizza

2010-09-29T18:34:00.002-04:00

An actual conversation during Shay's first diaper change of the the morning...

Me: What do you want for breakfast today, Shay-Shay?
Shay: Pizza!
Me: No, sweetie. How about some cereal?
Shay (happily): I want to eat pizza!
Me: Sorry, pizza isn't a breakfast food.
Shay (still happy): Yes! I do eat pizza for breakfast!
Me (slightly under my breath): Sorry, kid, not until you're in college.
Shay: Okay, I be in college!
Me: What?
Shay: I use my 'magination to be in college!
Me (silence, staring, then laughter)
Shay:.... So I eat pizza now?

Shopping with Grandma

2010-09-26T12:16:00.002-04:00

My brother visited this week from California (more on that in a later post), so Dad and Diane drove over to see him. While Brian and Dad went golfing, I figured that Diane and I would take the kids on some big outing. But she had the idea to take them shopping instead, to get ideas for birthdays and Christmas... and maybe pick up a few small goodies along the way. Yeah, I'd say they had fun!!

A note to dentists--only ONE package of this candy was purchased, and shared by Mommy and daughters.

No, Shay did not come home with these boots, which were about six sizes too big for her.

Sweet Boy

2010-09-26T12:11:00.001-04:00

All photos courtesy of the paparazzi known as Grandma Diane. :)

6 month stats

2010-09-22T09:37:00.000-04:00

Liam had his 6-month appointment this week. He handled the shots very well, hardly crying at all and not even needing Tylenol. Tough little guy!

Dr. Z was very impressed with all of Liam's physical skills. He's an incredibly active baby, and he definitely showed this off during his appointment, grabbing at everything within his reach and attempting to roll off the table. He's also quite the charmer, full of smiles and happy noises.

However, it does seem that my little hoss is slowing down with the growing. He's at 17 pounds and 4 ounces, which puts him in the 50th percentile for weight. Nothing to worry about, obviously, but that is down from the 75th percentile at his last visit. When I asked why he might have dipped so much, Dr. Z said not to worry, it's probably just because he's so active. The doctor pointed out that some babies his age aren't even rolling yet, whereas Liam crosses entire rooms, so he's definitely burning some calories. He's also been on just breastmilk, rice cereal, and oatmeal cereal up to this point--so bring on the fruits and veggies!

At the appointment, I was also kind of concerned about his length. He measured at 26 inches, which put him in the 25th percentile. The nurse looked at me, at all of 5'2", and told me that this was nothing to worry about. But I knew, with my 6'2" husband at home, that this was highly unusual for my kids, who had never been that low on the percentile charts before. I also knew that Liam had been in the 80th percentile for length at his last visit. When I asked about the sudden dropoff, the doctor just told me not to worry, that all kids go through growth spurts, and that he would even out. That made good sense, so I stopped worrying. However, when I got home, I did look up his stats from last time and saw that he measured 26 inches at 4 months as well. That basically leads me to the conclusion that the oh-so-precise method of "stretch the kid out, mark the white paper, and hope for the best" did not yield accurate length results this time around, as I know that Liam is longer than he was two months ago, since none of his pants fit lengthwise anymore. So really, I have no idea how long he is.

His head measured at 17 3/4 inches. But since it measured at 18 inches two months ago, I'm thinking that measurement was off too. Apparentently it was a rough day for the tape measure. Really, though, his noggin is still in the 80th percentile. When it's that big, who quibbles about a fourth of an inch?

We also measured the girls while we were there. Bryn weighed in at 41 pounds and 6 ounces and measured 3 feet and 7 inches. Shay was 30 pounds and 4 ounces and measured just over 3 feet. My kids are definitely growing up!!

Catching Up: Butler Band Day

2010-09-22T06:26:00.002-04:00

I think this is my last "catching up" post, as everything else I have to say has actually happened within the last three days or so.... assuming that I can get it posted in a timely manner. :)

This past Saturday was Band Day at our alma mater, Butler. Since Ben and I met in the marching band, we decided to go. This year, Band Day featured the clarinet, and the director put out a call for alumni clarinets to come and play with the band. Thanks to my recent return to my instrument, I was able to do this. We met up with our fellow band alums Mike and Kathleen(also the one who talked me into joining community band). Our kids played, kind of watched the football game, and cheered wildly for the band.... and a good time was had by all.

Bryn, Shay, and Emily check out the football field.

Clarinet feature--that's me and Kathleen on the end of the front row--

Ben and me in front of the newly renovated football field. It's very, very nice, but looks nothing like the Butler Bowl of our time.

Two couples of BUMB alums..... and six kids between us.

Catching Up: Tiny Dancer

2010-09-20T14:33:00.002-04:00

As promised last week, here are a few pictures of Shay actually in her dance class. She's pretty easy to pick out, as she's the one goth chick in with all the other cuties in pastel pink. She picked her own ensemble--but I approved it, as between she and Bryn, I've had about enough pink to last me a lifetime. LOL!!

Catching Up: Band Concert

2010-09-19T13:54:00.002-04:00

As I have discussed here each month, one of my resolutions this year was to join a band and perform in a concert. A couple of months back, I joined the Zionsville Community Band. Last Saturday was the first concert that I performed with them. We did a September 11 concert. I don't pretend that I played every note perfectly, but I'm still pretty proud of myself for having gotten this far. Here's a picture of the concert:

And Bryn and Emily congratulating me and Kathleen at the end:

And the girls' favorite part--getting to go on rides at the adjoining carnival afterwards:

Catching Up: Dinner with Parker

2010-09-19T07:36:00.002-04:00

I'm clearly a long way behind, because it was over a week ago now that we had dinner with Alicia, Suellen, and Parker. Shay had been asking for her friend Parker for weeks. And while Parker does love Shay, she may love Liam more. Like, more than anything. Check out this cuteness:

Catching Up: A Day at the Zoo

2010-09-18T21:28:00.004-04:00

While I feel like I have pretty much lived in front of the computer this past week, I have somehow not managed to find time to blog. I have, however, spent a lot of time learning about ready reference sources and how to evaluate databases, librarian style, for my two graduate courses. I'm taking both of them online, and I definitely think that I like the old physical style classes better. While my program is actually at a university here in town, the classes I needed this semester were offered either online or at times that absolutely did not work for me, so I decided to go the online route, thus resulting in me spending huge amounts of time staring at the screen. Combine that with my recent writing project (more on that at another time), my MOPS publicity stuff, and the bare minimum of keeping up on email, and I have basically no desire to do anything else online unless I absolutely have to. As a result, I'm way behind on blog, so here's my effort to get caught up....

Last week, Andrea and I decided to make the most of the gorgeous weather by taking the kids to the zoo for one last outing before our opposing preschool schedules prevented us from playdating for the rest of the fall. The "big girls" had a great time, as always, and were relatively good about letting Shay tag along.
Our lone boy had a great time with all his ladies. He's loving the cooler weather, as it means that I can take him out a lot more without fear that he's going to melt.

And check out this sweetness! Shay, Bryn, Hailey, and Hannah--
All in all, two thumbs up on the day. Fall is definitely the time to do the zoo. There was basically nobody else there, and the animals were more active than I've ever seen them--apparently they enjoy the cooler weather as well!

Two Dancers

2010-09-14T06:22:00.002-04:00

It kind of got lost in all the excitement about the first day of school, but I should mention that both girls did start dance class last week as well. Shay cried her way through most of her class, but I attribute that largely to her intense exhaustion at the end of her first day of school. Once she stopped crying and started participating, she had a great time and talked about it for days afterwards. And Bryn, as might be expected, has been practicing the moves that she learned in "ballerina class" all week long. (Please note that it's actually a ballet/tap/tumbling combo.) We've got class again tonight, so I'm hoping to get a few "action" shots, but here's what we got after the craziness last week, so you can at least see their cute ensembles.

Problem-Solving

2010-09-13T01:07:00.002-04:00

I've got several posts running through my head right now, but these are the pictures that are most accessible, so this one wins. :)

Last night we went to Fall Festival--where, among other fun, I played my clarinet in a public performance for the first time in nine years (woot woot!) and Bryn, in an effort to take commemorate the event, accidentally "took a picture of someone's bottom" (our director's). It's hard to say which caused more excitement among the kids.

But both of those events were topped by the absolute elation that ensued when the girls played the duck pond at the carnival and won these (ahem) gigantic, gorgeous plastic dolphins. Two of them, one for each daugther. I blame their friend Emily for the entire incident, as she picked both the game and the prize.

They insisted on taking baths with their dolphins last night--because clearly, dolphins love water. And there was much weeping when we would not tuck their dolphins into bed with them. But first thing this morning, the dolphins were back in the game. Their mission? To take some baby dolls for a ride.

Bryn was very discouraged that her baby doll could not ride on the dolphin without assistance. Bryn wanted to use both of her hands to steer the dolphin (and run through the house like a crazy person), not hold on to the baby doll. It was fascinating to watch the little wheels in her head turning as she tried to come up with a solution to this problem. First, she dug through her closet for her Horton the Elephant puppet, which she tried to stick on top of the dorsal fin. This was actually a really good idea, except that the puppet was slightly too small. Undaunted, she moved on to other ideas.

In the end, she dug around until she came up with this ribbon/scarf thing, and then, with no assistance from a parent, she tied her baby doll onto the dolphin's tail to ensure a secure ride.

What's perhaps even better is that when Shay caught sight of this set-up and wanted one too (as Little Sister wants one of everything that Big Sister has), Bryn promptly found a belt and provided an even more secure rigging for Shay's doll on Shay's dolphin. Bryn is really quite the little problem-solver. I'm very impressed with her methods!

August in Review - Amy

2010-09-11T07:36:00.002-04:00

I realize that this is, oh, about 11 days late in being posted. That seems to be the theme of my life lately--barely able to keep up. I'm sure you'll see that theme several times in this monthly check-up. I'm actually kind of embarrassed to post this, since I made such little headway in August, but here goes....

1. Read the Bible.Sadly, even further behind than I was last month. Still working on it though.

2. Read at least one pleasure reading book per month.Utter fail. I started several books but did not finish any of them (in the month of August). I've already finished one in September though (thank goodness for my Book Club; I'd never finish anything if it weren't for them), so at least I can check this one off for next month.

3. Join some kind of musical group and perform with them.I missed two weeks of rehearsal, one due to my terrible salmonella poisoning and one due to parents' night for the girls' preschool. So I haven't been a terribly good band member either. That being said, we have a concert tonight! So technically, I'll be able to check this goal off after today. :)

4. Blog daily.I'm sure that many of you loyal readers have already noticed my "falling farther and farther behind" theme on this one. But I'm doing what I've got time for.

5. Get back down to (at least) my pre-pregnancy weight.Holding steady at 15-20 pounds less than pre-pregnancy weight.... and pretty interested to see if anything in my winter wardrobe is going to fit!

6. Get involved in some kind of theatre group and help out with at least one production.This goal is officially on hold until sometime that I can breathe without having heart palpitations about how many things I already have to do.

7. Teach Bryn to read.She's actually really into math lately--and good at it! And she's "reading" in the sense that she has her favorite books memorized and can repeat them verbatim, complete with page turns at the proper moments. Quite the memory on that one!

8. Potty-train Shay.Slow and steady wins the race, right? She loves to "pee pee on the potty" and is doing so with more frequency, but largely just does it in response to our prompting. She will occassionally tell us on her own that she has to go, but not with regularity.

9. Frame our portraits.I framed our newest portrait; now just waiting for Ben to hang it.

10. Finish up some of my murals.Still working on Noah's Ark.

11. Paint the kids' bathroom.This is a sore subject. It is still sitting there with one pitiful stripe of blue edging. Does anyone want to just come over and do this for me? ;)

12. Get Shay into her big girl room.Achieved in January.

13. Breastfeed Liam.Me and my breastpump have now officially been together for six months. I'm hoping to keep Liam on breastmilk for a year, although we have enough frozen that this doesn't necessarily mean pumping for the whole year. So I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And he's now eating rice cereal and oatmeal cereal, and soon to be on fruits and veggies, so I will soon be able to slow production as well. ;)

Shay's FIRST Day of School

2010-09-11T02:18:00.003-04:00

My little big girl! After spending all of last year begging me to lift her up so she could "peek" through the classroom window at the "big kids," Shay finally got to enter the hallowed halls of learning herself. She has high expectations for this year, including, "I make friends with all the boys and girls" and "We learn every day." You get 'em, baby!

Our requisite front porch picture:

Shay decided she'd rather sit than stand:

I have a very similar picture of Bryn and Mrs. DeBoer from her first day of school. I love the individual attention the kids get at St. Andrews.

This is what Shay says was her absolute favorite part of the first day of school. A dad was reading The Cat in the Hat to a little boy (actually not his own little boy) and let Shay join them. This is her favorite book, so combining that with the much-anticipated first day of school sent her over the moon.
Shay and her friend Lilly (who she knows from last year) enjoying the playground after school.

Bryn's (Third) First Day of School

2010-09-10T20:56:00.003-04:00

Now that Bryn is in her third year at St. Andrew's, she's an old pro. She seems so assured and confident in comparison to my baby from the first year or even the little girl she was last year. Click on those links to see how she's grown, even just by way of comparison in our annual front porch picture!

This was actually the first "porch picture" we took this year... as you can see, she's feeling confident!

"Oh Prince Charming, will you help me with my shoe?" :) I actually posted this because it's the only one I got of Bryn and her friend Chris, who has been at school with her all 3 years.
Hard at play...

My "artiste" exploring the theme for the year--sunshines.

First Day of Preschool x2

2010-09-07T21:31:00.004-04:00

It's official--we are a household of two preschoolers! The girls LOVE being in the same class as each other. Shay was totally exhausted by the end of class today--I'm thinking the anticipation wore her out! Here are just a few of the very cute shots we got this morning:

Anticipation

2010-09-06T23:57:00.003-04:00

Remember the opening scene in "Finding Nemo," where Nemo awakens his dad by jumping on him in bed (okay, coral), shouting, "First day of school! First day of school!"?? I think our house might look a lot like that tomorrow morning.

After a summer of waiting, Bryn gets to return to her beloved teachers at St. Andrews for her third (and final) year of preschool. And after two years of peeking longing through the windows of big sister's classroom, Shay now gets to join the class and have a carpet square of her very own. That's right, the girls will be in the same class at the same school. They are both over the moon with excitement about this. Bryn has been prepping Shay on every single detail of what to expect, and Shay has been eating it up. I hope they're always this excited to start the school year! :)

In Search of a Study Spot

2010-09-05T20:56:00.003-04:00

With one thing and another, I did not get much of my grad work done during the week, and in short, I had a heap lot of homework to do today. I was actually really worried about getting it all done and submitted by the midnight deadline. (Don't worry, I did get it done before writing this blog.) I have learned that effective studying is darn near impossible to achieve with three kids clamoring for my attention, so around 11:00 this morning, I packed up a bag and headed out, in search of a location to study.

Since it was almost lunchtime, I decided that I should go somewhere to eat. Somewhere that I could sit, linger over my food undisturbed, read my assignments.... I then started having all these fond memories of college and late-night studying at Denny's. Lingering over my food? Sure. Undisturbed? Absolutely. And it would be a great trip down memory lane. So off I went, full of fond memories of my college friends.

Upon my arrival, I discovered my first mistake. Late nights at Denny's are ideal for college students because the place is basically empty. But apparently there are actually people who go there for Sunday brunch. So I actually had to wait for a table. Craziness! That was clearly not study time well spent. But I amused myself by contemplating how I'm just as tired at noon now as I was at midnight in college.....

Once I got settled in, I actually did get all my reading done while dining on my traditional platter of buffalo chicken strips. I also had an extreme confidence-building moment when my server, noting my textbook, binder full of notes, and the Butler t-shirt that I just happened to throw on today, asked me if I went to Butler. Um, no, I'm 31 years old and have 3 kids, thanks. But it was VERY flattering to be mistaken for a college student. :)

So I had a pretty good hour before running into two more problems. #1 - Denny's does not have WiFi, so I could not complete the rest of my assignments. #2 - my stomach does not handle buffalo chicken strips as well now as it did back when I was in college for real. Ugh.

I then decided to relocate to the Speedway library, which was just a couple of streets over. Upon arriving, though, I discovered that it is closed on Sundays. Grr. Back in the car, back to Brownsburg. I then headed to the Brownsburg library, which I knew from previous experience was open on Sundays.... and which I learned, upon arrival, was closed for Labor Day weekend.

I got back in the car, did some intense grumbling about how it was ridiculous that I couldn't actually find a library where I could study for my library classes, and drove to Starbucks, where I drowned my sorrows in a $5 frappucino, used their WiFi network for many hours, and did lots of productive work.

Ah, for the good old days of college, where all the distractions were of my own making!

A Family Album

2010-09-03T21:56:00.002-04:00

I would have to say that "The Freshman" by The Verve Pipe was easily one of Top 10 Definitive Songs of My High School Years. It was a great song. Still is. But I hadn't really heard anything about the Verve Pipe since then. Come to find out, they've been around all along and have actually done several albums that I missed. But what makes me wildly over-the-top happy is their newest album, appropriately titled "A Family Album," which my SIL Jill and BIL Jim introduced us to this past weekend.

I love it. Ben loves it. Our kids love it. I seriously cannot wait for Tuesday, when the girls start preschool, so that I can start waking them up every morning to the song "Wake Up." The other day in the car, I actually caught both Bryn and Shay headbanging to "Be Part of the Band" with no prompting from me whatsoever. Bryn, like her aunt Jill, is rather partial to "Cereal," while Shay's favorite is "Suppertime!" and my favorite is "When One Became Two."

For anyone who loved "The Freshman" back in high school--you've got to check this out. For anyone who has young kids--you've got to check this out. For anyone who is looking for a breath of fresh air--you've got to check this out. Yeah, that's you.

You can listen to all the songs and read the lyrics online. Let me know what you think! Here's the link:
http://thevervepipe.com/family/

6 Months

2010-09-02T16:35:00.001-04:00

I can hardly believe it, but my little man turned six months old yesterday. He decided to finish out five months in style, and within the last week, he has moved up to size 6-9 month onesies, cut his first tooth (bottom right), and babbled "da da da da da" so much that this jealous mama can no longer deny his first word (even though he doesn't seem to say it any more often in reference to Ben than to anything else). He's eating (and loving) both rice and oatmeal cereals, and we're just waiting for the official green light at his six-month check-up before starting fruits and veggies. He's pretty consistent about one short nap in the morning and a good long one in the afternoon, although he does occassionally take additonal short ones on top of that. He's a very laid-back kid and tends to just roll with the punches--exactly what we need with two little drama queens as older sisters! He's our smiley boy and really is just the best little guythere ever was. We love you, Liam!

Trip Highlights: Storytime

2010-09-01T15:00:00.002-04:00

No matter what attractions or outings any trip may hold, the best part of any visit with family is always seeing the kids get some good, old-fashioned cuddle time with grandparents, aunts, and uncles. And if that cuddle time happens to involve reading, then all the better! :)

Trip Highlights: Where a Kid Can Be a Kid

2010-09-01T14:55:00.002-04:00

With that title, I think you can all guess where we took the kids for dinner...
Who knew that chanting "Chuck E. Cheese! Chuck E. Cheese!" from the backseat was actually an inborn skill?"

Trip Highlights: Visit to the Zoo

2010-09-01T14:43:00.002-04:00

As I said earlier, I neglected to pack my camera cord on our trip to visit Ben's family, so I'm just now getting around to loading pictures. I thought I'd put up a few posts today with some pictures. Here are a few of my favorites from our trip to the Potowatomie Zoo.

Riding a statue of a giant turtle:

Wishing he could be out running around with his sisters:

Girls getting loved on by their Aunt Jill and Uncle Jim:

Me and the girls with the sleepy lions:

Momology

2010-08-29T17:08:00.002-04:00

Calling all Indy moms.....
For any mother of a child birth through preschool, check out this great video and, if the timing and location works for you, consider joining us for MOPS at Messiah Lutheran Church in Brownsburg this coming Friday, September 3 at 9:15 for our kick-off Open House and the beginning of our study of Momology.

Kids

2010-08-27T21:55:00.002-04:00

We're making an extended to visit Ben's family, and today's agenda included visiting the local zoo. Sadly, I forgot our camera cord at home, so I'm not able to transfer the vast majority of our pictures to the computer right now. With that in mind, I did snap a few on my phone today. I thought that these of the girls petting the goats at the zoo were especially cute.

I was particularly amused by our girls checking out this goat in the barrel. Ever since we learned that I was pregnant with a girl (when I was pregnant with Bryn), Ben has joked that whenever they start to display signs of becoming teenagers or being interested in boys, we're going to put them in barrels in the basement to protect them from the outside world. Apparently this goat mama had the same idea for her kid....

Shay contemplates her future as a girl in a barrel:

On The Road

2010-08-26T20:44:00.003-04:00

It's been nearly six months coming, but now it's nearly here.... our first road trip as a family of five! Stayed tuned for our adventures....

Gifts

2010-08-24T20:03:00.000-04:00

During naptime today, Bryn put some of her toys in various bags and boxes. Then this conversation commenced....
Bryn: I made Daddy a present!
Me (joking): Oh, and did you make anything for me?
Bryn: No, little kids are like presents to their mommies!
Me (laughing and hugging her): And where did you hear that?
Bryn: Nowhere. I just knew it myself. (pauses, thinks) I guess God told me.

On Becoming a Librarian: Part 1

2010-08-23T20:12:00.002-04:00

Today is my first day of classes toward my MLIS degree. (That would be Masters of Library and Information Science, for you uneducation folks out there.) It was actually fairly anticlimactic, as both of my classes this semester are online and both had course materials posted as of last week. But in order to celebrate my official first day as a degree-seeking library student, I thought I'd do a post about the very first time that the idea of becoming a librarian ever entered my head.....

I was about nine or ten years old. We were living in our house in Dunlap, and we moved there right around my ninth birthday, so I'm guessing my age based on those context clues. :) I was getting some office supply or another out of the top drawer of my dad's desk when I ran across a pamphlet that he had picked up, presumably, with me in mind. It was entitled (something to the effect of) "Great Careers for People Who Love To Read." I certainly fit the bill, and I started looking through it.

I remember mostly noting that "author" and "teacher" were both listed, and as those were my top two career choices at the time (and through the next decade), I was pretty happy. The list also mentioned "journalist" and "editor," which were ranked somewhere lower on my own dream list as well. But sandwiched in there with the other entries I had expected to find was another career: librarian.

I don't know why I had never thought about a career in library services until then. Goodness knows that I had spent more time in libraries by my tenth birthday than some people spend in their entire lives. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that Dad actually picked up that brochure at a library during one of our many trips....

Rear Facing

2010-08-22T21:26:00.003-04:00

We hit a milestone this weekend. Although Liam is still within the height and weight limits for the bucket seat, he's starting to get pretty close on the height end of things, and our little chunk is definitely getting too heavy for me to be lugging around everywhere in his seat. So out with the bucket and in with the convertible carseat! This is the youngest that any of our kids have moved out of the bucket, but then, Liam is also the biggest of our three, so I guess that makes sense. He seems to be enjoying it just fine, and the girls love having him look like a "big boy" in the car. Check out our little big man here!

A Preview of Coming Attractions?

2010-08-21T21:18:00.002-04:00

One more shot from the State Fair, but it was so cute that I thought it needed its own post. When we saw the girls in this pose, we parents were uncertain whether to be overcome by their cuteness or scared by how quickly our future is coming. Here's how we anticipate that Hannah will spend her teenage years--cruising with the Pfan girls!! (we do hope Shay will keep her hands on the wheel though....)

Fair Fun

2010-08-21T20:51:00.002-04:00

On Thursday night, we took the kids to the state fair with some of our good friends. While Ben joked that we might as well have just gone to a carnival because all we did was go on rides and eat, we did have a great time. And see, honey, there was some other stuff thrown in there too.... like, say, experiencing the wonders of Japan:

Here's our little blondies (Hannah, Bryn, and Shay) modeling some kimonos:

The MeyPfan family does the ferris wheel:

And BFFs Hannah and Bryn smile for the camera:

Double Duty

2010-08-19T23:15:00.001-04:00

This morning Bryn and Shay had a big fight--something involving the sharing of puzzle pieces. There was yelling, crying, and door-slamming. I eventually found Shay curled up in the big blue chair in her room. When I walked in, she looked up at me with a tearstained face and said, "I no like Brynie. I want you be my big sister now."

A Trip to the Gardens

2010-08-18T21:48:00.000-04:00

Today the kids and I met up with some friends at White River Gardens. It's rare that we do the Gardens without the zoo, but today was well worth it. We spent the morning enjoying the butterfly exhibit and the gardens, where my budding photographer Bryn got some more practice.

The last time we were there, one of the employees told us that the butterflies are more likely to land on people wearing bright colors, so Bryn picked out a bright yellow dress for herself and a bright yellow shirt for Shay. As you might imagine, Bryn was then over the moon with excitment when her "wish came true" and after she chased this butterfly around for a photo shoot, it then fluttered over to rest on her dress.

Here's the crew of kids, a little sweaty and worn out after playing chase while the mommies enjoyed a relaxing picnic in the gardens: Nathan, Christopher, Bryn, Sam, Shay, and Liam.

And the mommies: Cathy, Rachel, and me.

Lookalikes

2010-08-17T22:56:00.001-04:00

Yeah, my kids might look just a little bit alike.

Does A Body Good

2010-08-16T19:56:00.000-04:00

This morning marked a full week since the onset of this pestilence, and both the kids and I were fully sick of staying at home. I spent all day yesterday on the couch and in bed getting my strength back, and that helped a lot. My stomach really did seem to be far more stable since getting a few days worth of medication in there. And besides, even the USDA says that salmonella poisoning is only supposed to last up to 7 days and darn it, it had been 7 days.

All of this went through my head when making the decision to leave the house this morning. But to be honest, the true motivator was that I really just wanted to see my friends. Last week, I missed out on getting to see two separate dear friends (neither of whom I had seen in over five years) due to this illness, and I didn't want to miss out again. I had made plans for this particular Monday to drive up to Fair Oaks Farms to meet up with my wonderful friend Kristen (who is a little over halfway through her pregnancy with her first child, a baby boy), and I refused to let any silly salmonella stop me.

Thankfully, Andrea and I had planned to make a date of it. Our BFF daughters were wild with excitement at the prospect of spending a whole day at the farm together, and Andrea even volunteered to drive my car for me, making as many pit stops as necessary along the way (which turned out to be zero).

It ended up being just a perfect day. The weather was gorgeous--about 80 and sunny. The kids couldn't get enough of all the different play areas and kept running from one to another, having a blast at all of them. We grown-ups were able to sit in a sun and get caught up, which was wonderful. This was the first of all the times we've been up there that we haven't even made it to check out the indoor exhibits, which they usually love--but the kids were having so much fun with all the outdoor stuff that we just ran out of time!

And the food, oh, the food. I was initially more than a little nervous about this, since I haven't really been able to eat much for the past week, and even that has been bland foods only. And the food at Fair Oaks is far from bland--every last thing is rich and amazingly delicious. But I split a grilled cheese with my kids, and that stayed in okay. So then I got us some yogurt, which I also intended to split, but I got the lion's share of when they ran off to the playground. And even though I usually don't really care for yogurt, this was about the most amazing thing I had ever eaten. After that, I decided that caution be damned, I was going to have some ice cream too, because who knew when I'd get to eat something that good again? That final step did prove to be a little too rich for me and I did have a few stomach troubles, but not until after I had safely made the return to Indianapolis, and frankly, it was pretty much worth it.

Let me just say that it's a good thing for our family's budget that it is Kristen, not me, who lives near the farm. Because if it was me, I'd be eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner there every day. Yum. Fair Oaks Farms--does a body good.

Bedtime Prayer

2010-08-15T21:25:00.002-04:00

Bryn wanted to say the prayer for all of us tonight, and here's what she just said:

"Dear God -
Thank you for our mommy
and daddy
and little sister
and baby brother
and even for me.
And thank You for letting me know about You.
I would like it if everyone could know about You.
Amen."

Amen and amen!

Bad Eggs, Part 2

2010-08-14T20:59:00.000-04:00

When I woke up this morning with my guts still aching, I decided that things had gotten really ridiculous and I had to call a doctor. I had done somewhat better with keeping in small portions of bland foods on Thursday, but Friday was an utter fail in this area, and dang, that's a lot of days to be sick.

But first I did the thing I had been avoiding all week long and looked up the effects of eating bad eggs. Yep, I clearly have salmonella poisoning. Which, by the way, it seems is not technically food poisoning, but rather some demon-spawn bacteria of its own. And while every website that I read said that salmonella poisoning usually lasts 4-7 days, which I am still safely inside, I also learned that it can be extremely dangerous in people with chronic conditions, which, ahem, I happen to have a few of. So I called my doctor immediately, all the while cursing myself for being too chicken (no pun intended) to have looked all this up earlier.

And on the other end of the phone, I encountered an nurse who curtly informed me that there was NO WAY that I could possibly be sick five days later from having eaten bad eggs, and that it was clearly a virus. I resisted telling her that I was at that very moment looking at information from the USDA that said otherwise, since she was referring me to the front desk to book an appointment anyway. She was also my nurse when I arrived at the office, and when she told me the same thing there, I did correct her in person, at which point she rolled her eyes and said that it was unlikely, but if I insisted on thinking so, the only way to prove it was to do a stool culture, then walked out. Quality care right there. (As a side note, I have used this doctor for several years and have never had difficulties with any of the nurses before, so I think this one must have just been a Saturday fill-in.)

When the doctor finally did come in, though, he was great, as always. He immediately recognized the symptoms. He did say, though, that by six days after eating the offensive food and five days after first getting sick, I should be a lot better than I am. I swear I should have gotten my medical degree myself, because I knew the reasons I wasn't getting well, and he said I was right:

1) I am breastfeeding Liam (okay, pumping, but same effect). When I'm having such a hard time keeping in fluids, outputting so many definitely isn't helping.

2) the average person is not quite so dependent on daily prescriptions for their health as me. What with my myriad of health issues (all tied back to my stupid thyroid), if I can't keep in my prescriptions, I really can't get healthy.

3) the aforementioned "especially serious in people with chronic conditions" aspect

So he said that unfortunately, he has to put me on (yet another) prescription in order to fight the bacteria that are currently clawing out my insides (my words, not his). The reason that this is unfortunate is that the only prescription that will achieve this is Very Not Friendly to breastfeeding. It's normally supposed to be a 10 day course of medicine, but between me already having been sick this long and the breastfeeding, he prescribed an aggressive 5 day course instead.

So, now this aggressive medication gets to attack my already weakened insides. When I was reading Ben the side effects (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, intense headaches, fatigue), he started laughing and said, "Wait, those are the side effects or what we're trying to get rid of?" It seems that I may not feel a whole lot better right away, as has been indicated by the fact that nothing I've eaten today has stayed in and my raging headache. But my doctor did say that if I don't feel like a new person by Tuesday, I need to come back in and we need to do something else, likely involving a trip to the hospital.

Regarding breastfeeding, the medication will necessitate an entire week of pumping and dumping (five days while on the medication plus two afterwards to get it out of my system). Good thing I have literally 218 six-ounce bags of frozen breastmilk in the deep freeze (and, apparently, have been OCD enough to keep count of them). In spite of his voracious eating habits, I still don't think Liam will be going hungry.

As for going hungry, just let it be stated, for the record, that I think I would rather starve to death than ever eat a plate of scrambled eggs again.

Intellitainer

2010-08-12T19:56:00.003-04:00

About five years ago, we received this Intellitainer as a shower gift for baby-to-be-Bryn. It has received a lot of wear since then. It has been through both of our daughters, as well much use on game nights, some wear by the little boy I used to babysit, and loans to two sets of friends for their daughters. It seems like every time we move it down the basement, we're moving it right back out for someone or other. All told, an excellent purchase! It recently made its way back home after finishinh up its stint with the Julius twins, and it is now awaiting some play by Liam.
In the meantime, though, Shay has rediscovered it! I can't keep her out of that thing! Every time I turn around, she's climbing in it. She usually plays happily for a while (a great testament to the designers of the Intellitainer) before she starts making the face below and shouting (because she thinks that starting with a baby noise is required when in a baby toy), "Ga! Mommy! I stuck! Help me!"

Funny Girls

2010-08-11T18:39:00.000-04:00

Even though I still feel like crud, at least my daughters were able to introduce some humor to my day...

Shay (curiously): Mommy, where your dude?
Me (mystified): What dude?
Shay: Your friend. Babyliam.
(Because apparrently both girls think that "Babyliam" is his given name.)

******

Bryn (excited): Mommy, God can give us anything we need!\
Me: That's right, sweetheart!
Bryn (still just as excited): And if He doesn't, then we can go to the store and get it!

Bad Eggs

2010-08-10T20:32:00.000-04:00

We think that we have narrowed the cause of illness to some bad eggs. Of couse, we didn't know they were bad at the time, but as I was the only one that ate them, this seems logical.

When I got up this morning, I discovered that I had lost 6 1/2 pounds. Yesterday. And was still going. While I was not adverse in general to the idea of losing a few pounds, this is far from the ideal method. It would, however, be a very effective wartime torture method.

Today involved lots of laying around, as I don't really have enough strength to do anything else. I forced myself to take lots of teeny tiny sips of Gatorade, some of which were actually staing in by afternoon. As a side note, did you know that there are now three types of Gatorade, specifically designed for the level of exercise of the drinker? But as none of those are specifically labeled for the violently ill, they all tasted disgusting to me.

I managed to keep in some pretzels, eaten cautionsly over a painfully long period of time, for lunch. By dinnertime, I hadn't consumed any real food for 48 hours and was really hungry. Oddly enough, all I could think about was how I wanted a Jimmy John's sandwich (an obsession which started with the bread, but soon grew to include the whole sandwich), so Ben got me one on the way home from work. I thought I'd only make it through a few bites, but it tasted so good that I ate the whole thing, and while the following hours have involved some jaw clenching and some very stern instructions to my stomach to stop roiling, it has stayed in so far.

In short, I think I'm on the road to recovery and hope to even get out of my pajamas tomorrow.

Ewwww

2010-08-09T20:07:00.000-04:00

All I have to say for today is that I have managed to come down with a rather vicious case of food poisoning. I currently plan on never eating again. Which is good, since I can't even keep in water. Yuuucccckkkk.

Posting the Posts

2010-08-08T19:43:00.004-04:00

So I don't really know what happened, but I did notice an even lower than usual rate of comments this past week.... meaning zero. So I finally went out and looked at the blog and realized that none of my posts were there. So I went back in to Blogger and realized they were all kind of just chilling there in various stages of being "saved as drafts," but not posted. Not entirely sure how that happened, maybe some glitch in the system, or perhaps human error... I have been signficantly more tired than usual this week.... Anyway, I did get a nap this afternoon, so I'm now feeling much more alert, and I have now gone in a re-posted the posts, so you have a full week's worth posted below for your reading pleasure. :)

$13 Well Spent

2010-08-07T22:24:00.000-04:00

Last week, my friend Jeanine told me that the Chick-Fil-A two towns over was running a very sweet customer appreciation promotion, so being 1) a big Chick-Fil-A fan and 2) always on the lookout for a good deal, we decided to work past the drama of the last debacle caused by partcipating in a promotion at Chick-Fil-A and go for it. Besides, this one was in a whole different town, so hopefully they wouldn't just take one look at us coming and run for cover. ;)

And thankfully, it went off without a hitch. Earlier this week, I loaded up the kids in the van and drove the half hour over to the Chick-Fil-A hosting the promotion. We spent $13 on lunch for Bryn, Shay, and me, including ice cream for them. They got to play on the playplace, I got to relax at the table with my sweet little boy, and we all got to revel in a morning well spent. And I got to hang on to that receipt....

.... which then got us free admission into the water park tonight! We really love this particular water park but can't really justify spending the money on it when the kids are this little and need to be permanently attached to an adult. Plus they only swim for such a short time before they get cold and want to be done. But tonight was about perfect, as only people participating in the promotion were there, so it wasn't crowded at all and the kids could play to their hearts' content. This was precisely what our girls needed after a very long week of Ben being gone at work for regular hours, plus GenCon gaming convention in the evenings. They'd really been missing him, and something big and fun and memorable like this was ideal. They had a great time hanging all over him and had huge smiles all night.

So, to review, for $13, we got....
* lunch for 3, including dessert
* unlimited playground time for Bryn and Shay
* admission to the water park for a family of 5 ($28 value)
* unlimited brownies and drinks while at the water park
* games for the kids at the park
* 5 raffle tickets into a prize drawing (which we didn't win, but still)
* and lots of hugs from the cow!!

Boo-Boos

2010-08-06T20:17:00.000-04:00

I swear I do not beat my child, no matter what these photos indicate.

For the record, there are NOT injuries under all of those band-aids. Okay, under ANY of those band-aids. It's just that now that Shay sleeps in a big-girl bed, she really enjoys the freedom of being able to get out of bed and wander around her room. Today, that freedom entailed emptying two full boxes of band-aids onto her legs. And now I am left with the dilemna: do I peel them off? Because she might actually end up with some boo-boos if I peel off all those band-aids at once....

The William Triumverate

2010-08-05T11:04:00.000-04:00

A little over a year ago, I hosted a baby shower in Peoria for two of my dear high school friends, Melissa and Ashley, who were pregnant at the same time. At the time of the shower, I had just found out that I was pregnant with Liam, although that was still my little secret. Neither of them found out the sex of their baby ahead of time (wayyy more self-control than me). In short, we all had boys (Melissa in August, Ashley in September, and me in March) and all named them William. (Theirs are both Will and mine is Liam).

We had long been talking about getting together for a visit to introduce the William Triumverate, and the much-anticipated meeting took place yesterday in Urbana. We had a great time getting caught up on all the funny stories that come with motherhood, particularly that of parenting boys, which is a whole new ballgame for me. It was absolutely wonderful to see two of my dearest lifelong friends and meet their boys. We most definitely need to do this more often!! Bryn and Shay came along for the ride as well, and while they were confused by meeting two little boys with the same name, they actually held up pretty well, in spite of the long car ride and the scorching heat.

Here's the mamas and the Williams, photo compliments of Bryn:

July in Review - Amy

2010-08-04T18:37:00.000-04:00

When I sat down to write this post, I realized that I never got around to posting my kids' updates for June. I'll get on that in the next week or so. In the meantime, here's my own July update. Got to keep myself honest. :)

1. Read the Bible.
Ashamed to admit that I'm actually a few days behind on this one. Getting caught up is top priority.

2. Read at least one pleasure reading book per month.Like I said in my last update, I started this month by reading Something Blue by Emily Giffin, which I liked a lot more than Something Borrowed. I then read Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson. I actually remember looking at at this book on my seventh grade teacher's bookshelf and being intrigued by it way back then, but somehow, I had never gotten around to reading it. That being said, I didn't really like it very much, no harm done all these years. :) The absolute highlight of my month was reading The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. They were truly fantastic, and I cannot wait for the third book in the trilogy to come out at the end of August. I would recommend then to anyone!! I finished up the month by reading The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer, which was interesting as a side story to the Twilight series, but I really didn't like as a stand-alone story.

3. Join some kind of musical group and perform with them.See yesterday's post for details. Concert upcoming in September. :)

4. Blog daily.
I'm actually kind of rethinking this goal. Eight months into this goal, I'm largely running out of things to say! Plus I don't get very many comments on my posts anymore, which indicates to me that y'all don't have time to keep up with reading either. But I have to admit it would be pretty fun to see "365" as my grand total of posts for the year, so we'll see. I'll have to think about this some more.

5. Get back down to (at least) my pre-pregnancy weight.Goal achieved several months ago. No more weight lost. Of course, none gained either.

6. Get involved in some kind of theatre group and help out with at least one production.
Still no progress here. Given my current level of busy-ness, combined with how busy I will be this fall this my grad classes (more on this later), I may just need to accept that this isn't going to happen for a while. We'll see.

7. Teach Bryn to read.The closer that the start of the school year gets, the more she wants to "study." She hasn't learned to read yet, but she does love to learn in general, so I'm happy to oblige. :)

8. Potty-train Shay.I might call this month a bit of a setback, although I'm sure Shay thinks she's making progress. By this I mean that Shay has started trying to change her own diaper. (insert ominous music here) Whenever she wakes up from her nap and finds that her diaper is dirty, she tries to strip it off and change herself, often with disastrous results, especially when the diaper holds #2. YUCK.

9. Frame our portraits.I framed our newest portrait; now just waiting for Ben to hang it.

10. Finish up some of my murals.
I posted pictures of the last ones I finished (the princess ones for Hannah). I've now started on a scene from Noah's ark for the kids' upstairs playroom.

11. Paint the kids' bathroom.
I actually did get around to taping one wall and painting some of the borders, only to second-guess myself and think that maybe I don't want to spend the time on this project when there's so much else to do. So it's currently sitting there partially done. Sigh.

12. Get Shay into her big girl room.Achieved in January.

13. Breastfeed Liam.He's still on 100% breastmilk through the pumping method.

Practice Makes Perfect?

2010-08-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

Tonight was my third practice with the Zville Community Band. Aside from these three rehearsals and one practice at home, I had not played my clarinet since college, so it certainly stands to reason that I am WAY out of practice. What actually surprises me more is how much of it comes right back.

In high school, I played the clarinet every day. We had band rehearsal every morning, and while I'm sure our director, like all teachers, lamented about wasted class time, I will say that he made far better use of rehearsal time than most. At various points during the year, I did a few other ensembles that met in the evenings, and in short, music was a constant part of my life. Even during the summer, we rehearsed twice a week, and being the good, diligent student that I was, I practiced regularly on my own as well. (Seriously.)

In college, the fall still held marching band. Regular rehearsals were six hours a week, plus basically all day on Saturdays when we had football games. I won't say there was a lot of focus on musicality here. We changed up music and drills fairly often, and rehearsals were used for that, so it was assumed that by college, we were all good enough musicians to take responsibility for mastering the music on our own time. I will shamefacedly admit that this was not always actually the case for me. While I was a triple-major, music was not one of them, and I was actually kind of intimidated by the practice rooms at Lilly Hall. Pathetic excuse, I know, but true.

At any rate, my musical skills weren't exactly growing during college, but they weren't decreasing either. I played in marching band in the fall, basketball band in the winter/spring, and concert band in the semesters where my schedule allowed me to fit it in. I remember the semester that I studied abroad in Ireland as being the first time in about seven years that I had not been connected to a musical ensemble. I missed it desperately. One day I actually walked over to the music building on UC Cork's campus and stood outside a rehearsal hall, just listening. It made my heart ache just to hear the notes and not be part of it.

When I got back to Butler that fall, I actually was kind of worried that I'd have problems playing my clarinet. It had been about six months since I'd played. What if I sounded terrible, couldn't read music, couldn't make any sounds?? I didn't actually have any problems, but it's funny now to think how worried I was after just that short of a time.

As an adult, I am still an absolute sucker for marching band. My heart just thrills every time I hear a warm-up cadence on the drums. I've enrolled my kids in Kindermusik for several semesters, and Ben and I try to expose our kids to music in every way possible. But I have still missed being part of it myself. And now I'm back. Kind of.

Like I said, I'm struggling. It's frustrating when my slow old eyes can't keep up with the music, and even more frustrating when my fingers can't keep up with my eyes. I have never been terribly good at sight reading, and that's pretty much all I'm doing at this point. I'm much more of a "practice makes perfect" kind of girl, and that's not so much in the cards right now, given the large stack of music in my folder and the pitiful amount of "free time" in my week (most of which comes when my children are asleep, which negates noise-making activities on my part). But in spite of all of this, I am so glad to be doing something that I enjoy again. Thanks to Kathleen for talking me in to (finally!) joining!!

Five Months and Eating

2010-08-01T21:24:00.000-04:00

Liam turned five months old today! I can't believe my baby is getting this old. (And as Ben and I agreed, we can't believe how little we've gotten done in the last five months!)

But time marches on, and lately, every time the little man finishes a bottle, he's been looking at me like, "Seriously, lady, that's all you've got?" So at Ben's suggestion, we decided that the five month mark was a good time to try some rice cereal.

Ben hauled the high chair up from the basement, I went to the store and purchased some Earth's Best, and we were ready for Adventures in Feeding, Round Three. Liam's reactions proved that he was more than up to the task.

He sat very patiently and waited for his food.
Then he opened up wide for the spoon.

Mmm, that's tasty.

Seriously, guys, can't you just let a boy eat in peace?

And perhaps most importantly, then he slept like a champ. And everyone was happy. :)

Working

2010-07-29T10:36:00.002-04:00

Those who know me well, or even just those who have followed this blog for a few years, know that I have a very conflicted relationship with the balance between work and home. Before I had kids, and even when I was pregnant with Bryn, my students used to ask me if I would keep teaching after I had kids, and I would always respond with some degree of, "Of course!" I just could not see myself staying at home. I figured that I'd just be so bored.

Then Bryn was born, and my world turned upside down. I couldn't imagine leaving her, but I couldn't imagine leaving work either. I loved both with intense ferocity. By that point I was managing the Performing Arts Center and was the Director of Student Activities, and the up side of that job was that the far-from-traditional hours it entailed allowed me to keep Bryn with me much of the time. The down side of these hours was that I was basically living at my job, often logging 80 hours a week while still attempting to take care of a newborn. (A newborn, I might add, who nursed every 3 hours like clockwork and slept a grand total of 6 hours a day.) I was also making significantly less than I had been as a first-year teacher. I was willing to put up with all of this because I really did love that job, more than any other "grown up" job I've had before or since, and because my principal assured me that once we got past that first year (which was the first year that the position existed and was a bit of a "test run" for us all), that my hours would drop significantly and my pay would raise significantly. But at the end of that year, instead of these promises actually materializing, he told me that 1) my pay would not increase at all, 2) my responsibilities and hours would actually increase intead of decrease, and 3) I would no longer be permitted to take Bryn to work with me. Since my salary was not enough to pay for daycare for even one child for the hours I was working, I basically had no choice but to quit, in spite of the fact that I loved my job.

And thus I became a stay-at-home mom.

When I left that job, I didn't intend to stay at home permanently. I didn't want to get back into teaching at that point, so I started looking around for a job in another industry. And what I learned was that while all of my college advisors had told that that "you can do anything with a degree in English," I was actually qualifed to do nothing except teach. Of course, by the time I realized this, the school year had already started, and I was out of luck for finding a teaching job for that year, thus my stay-at-home status. I was not happy about this.

At that point, all of my friends were still working. We were in the process to a new community. I couldn't find a job, so I felt like a failure in the working world. We wanted to have a second child, but I had two miscarriages that year, and I felt like an utter failure as a mother. I dealt with a nasty case of depression. I didn't feel like I fit in anywhere. It was at that time that I started this blog as sort of an outlet--thus the title: "Neither Here Nor There." Not part of the working world, not really part of the stay-at-home world either. Random thoughts not really on one topic or another. (As a side note, also the title of one of the essays in Mommy Wars, which I had just finished reading at the time and perhaps provided some subconscious inspiration.)

In the spring of 2007, I took two college courses to renew my teaching license. I thought that re-entering the teaching world would help me to find a sense of belonging again. But just as I began to look for jobs, I was assailed by morning sickness, and little Shay made herself known. After much soul-searching, I decided to stay home for another year to have this baby and give it a good start. And I felt an overwhelming sense of peace at that decision. And I realized that, somehow, without me even realizing it, I had started to find my way in the stay-at-home mommy world.

Since then, I've danced back and forth between staying at home and working. I have been fortunate enough to have three teaching positions (two short-term and one long-term) fall in my lap, and while it has been hard to be away from my kids during those times, the financial boons that these jobs have provided my family have been absoutely invaluable in getting us through these years of economic uncertainty. These days, I look at our jam-packed calendar and can't imagine how I ever thought I'd be bored as a stay-at-home mom.... or, for that matter, why they call it "stay-at-home" when I'm constantly on the go.

But as this fall approaches, I feel a little funny. For the past three years, I have intended to stay at home with my kids, but in the past three falls, I have received phonecalls offering me teaching jobs out of the blue. I have been incredibly blessed with amazing friends and childcare providers who have helped make these jobs work for our family. But this year, it will be different. Recent college graduates can't find teaching jobs, so I seriously don't think that one is just going to fall into my lap. I think this lands me squarely on the "stay-at-home" side of things for now.

Obviously, I still have some ambivalence, or at the very least, some unresolved feelings, on this subject. Recently, my girls have made a couple of comments that make me wonder if maybe my own confusion about work has rubbed off a bit on them.

Situation #1:
While playing house, Shay announced that she wanted to be a boy. When I asked her why, she said, "I want be the daddy. I want go to work and make the monies." I explained to her that mommies can also go to work and make money and that, in fact, her own mommy has worked at several points during her life. Then Bryn chimed in and asked, "Oh, but if Mommy works, then does Daddy stay home with us?" I explained that this was true in some cases, like that of their friend Mary, but that in our family, when I have worked, Daddy worked too, and this was when Miss Lauren used to watch them. Shay had lost interest in explanations by this point and was happily "playing Daddy," but I could see that Bryn was really struggling to understand. She apparently didn't get it though, because....

Situation #2:
Lately, both girls have been talking about how they want to be teachers when they grow up, and they love hearing about how Mommy is? used to be? a teacher too. We've also spent a hefty portion of our summer at libraries, and as we drove home from our most recent trip, Bryn was talking about how much she loved the library. I thought this was a good opening, and I told her that yes, Mommy loves the library too, so much that Mommy is going to take classes to learn to be a librarian. Bryn's jaw dropped. At first I thought she was excited, but then she got all teary, and she asked, "But if you do that, then who will be our mommy?" I explained that I could do both, but she said, "No, if you work at a library, who will take care of us?" I tried to explain that my classes would take a long time to finish, and that at least she will be in school full-time long before I get my degree, but all of that went right over her head.

So really, even after four and a half years of trying to strike a balance between work and home, it seems that I'm still no good at it. I know this is a battle that all mommies--really, all parents--fight, and that there are really no easy solutions, especially because that ever-elusive balance is constantly growing and changing. I have been both blessed and cursed by getting to spend so much time on both sides of things and thus being able to understand both sides of the work/stay-at-home debate. At the end of the day, though, I guess that each family can only do what's best for them at that time, and recognize that what's best for them is not necessarily what's best for anyone else. For us, right now, what's best is me taking care of the kids while working to get a second degree that will make me more marketable when the time comes for me to re-enter the job market in a job that will actually pay for childcare. I wish you all the best of luck in your journeys toward striking that balance as well.

Budding Photographer

2010-07-26T22:06:00.002-04:00

Today we went to the zoo and enjoyed the butterfly exhibit. While we were there, Bryn asked if she could borrow my camera to take some pictures. Another mother standing nearby looked at me like I was crazy when I handed my over my nearly-new camera to my four-year-old, but when she takes pictures like these, why should I argue?

Does A Body Good

2010-07-25T21:23:00.000-04:00

This could be one of those milk ads....

Swimming Stud

2010-07-24T21:32:00.002-04:00

Today was the last day of the girls' swimming lessons so, to celebrate, our family and some of our friends stayed afterwards for a picnic and some additional swimming. We put Liam in his little swim trunks for the first time ever and took him in the water too. He looked like quite the little studmuffin! :)
Can't you practically just hear him thinking, "I'm too sexy for this carseat..."

Bedtime

2010-07-23T22:01:00.000-04:00

Bedtime is cuddletime!

Rockin'

2010-07-22T21:08:00.000-04:00

So here in Bburg, there is a music store. It's really a guitar and drum store, but they do carry other basic items as well. So I went there last night, with Bryn in tow, in search of a music stand and some clarinet reeds. As soon as we walked in, Bryn's eyes grew wide as she stared at the full wall of guitars. She pointed and said excitedly, "Mommy, I want to play that violin!" The music store guys cracked up. After that, they were endeared by pretty much everything she did, including begging to play the drums (which, for the record, I did not actually allow her to do). As we walked out, I heard one of them say to the other, "Dude, that was the cutest kid EVER." I think she may have made some friends for life.

Wordless Shearing

2010-07-21T21:29:00.002-04:00

Look at my little shorn sheep after her (rather aggressive) haircut tonight! What do you think?

Paintings Complete

2010-07-20T18:20:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me that I never posted pictures of the paintings I did for Bryn's friend Hannah after I finished them. They are very similar to the ones that are on the walls of Bryn's room, but on a smaller scale and with a purple background. I did have to take the mice out of the Cinderella picture because I couldn't get the detail right on the smaller scale, but I was happy with how the rest of it turned out.

Good Things

2010-07-19T16:40:00.000-04:00

Lest you think that our entire last week has been nothing but misery, here are some of the good things that have occurred:

1) On Tuesday night, I went to band practice with the Zville Community Band. My friend Kathleen has been in this band for several years, and I worked with them several years back from a scheduling standpoint when I was managing the Zville PAC. I really enjoyed the rehearsal and was somewhat shocked to discover that I was actually able to sightread some of the music. Not all of it, as we did play two Sousa pieces, which were out of my octave range even when I was good, but some of it. It was great to play with an ensemble again, and I'm looking forward again to going to practice again next week.

2) On Wednesday, I spent the day at Camp Tecumseh. Nationally, it was the 125th anniversary of YMCA (or now, just "Y") camping. Camp T celebrated with a few special events. In the afternoon, I helped run the whole-camp game of the "History Mystery," which involved cabin groups solving clues to guide them to various parts of camp that were built in each decade that camp has been open (starting in the 1920s). I worked the 1990s station with two other former counselors, and we had a great time breaking out our old '90s gear and rocking to '90s music for the event. Then Ben drove the kids up in the evening, and we all enjoyed visiting with old friends celebrating National Campfire.

3) On Thursday, I got to partake in a Girls' Night Out and a yummy dinner at the Cheesecake Factory as a surprise event / baby shower for my friend Carrie, who is currently pregnant with baby #2. It was great to have some time out with just the girls, and it was wonderful to catch up with some friends I hadn't seen in quite a while. And delicious, of course.

4) On Friday, Kathleen, Cathy, and I got to introduce our friend Tina to the joys of the Children's Museum. She was in town for a visit with Carrie and was instrumental in helping us set up the surprise shower, then stuck around for an extra morning to play. It had been far too long since the kids and I had been to the museum anyway, so it was a great excuse for a fun morning, and getting to play with Tina and her adorable little man Evan was just the icing on the cake.

5) Bryn spent the whole week attending VBS at Messiah Lutheran, which is the church where I do MOPS. She had such an awesome time! Very different than then 1000-person VBX at our church. While I adore our church, I'm so thankful that we also have close ties to this church, to allow our kids the chance to have some experiences in a small, close-knit church environment too. I love that they can just run wild with the other kids around this church, take themselves to the bathroom, and all that without me having any fear of them getting lost. Bryn sang the VBS songs all week, and since we purchased the cd and listened to it in the car, Shay knew them all by the closing ceremony on Saturday as well.

6) We've got some spoiled kids at our house, because they were lucky enough to have visits from both Nana Helen AND Grammy Tina this week. Ben's mom came down on Tuesday night and stayed with the kids on Wednesday while I was at camp. They had a fantastic time playing with her all day. Then my mom drove over on Friday night, stayed all day Saturday, and went home Sunday afternoon. We did a belated birthday celebration for her this weekend, and in addition to seeing her, we also got to spend some time with my sister Kristin and her boyfriend Brian, which was also wonderful. I think Shay might try to give Kristin a run for her money on Brian's affections though! ;)

Intertwined with all of that, we've kept up our usual repetoire of games, stories, craft projects, playing outside, and general fun. Perhaps not surprisingly, between all of our activities and dealing with everything with the dogs, we were all completely wiped out by the end of the week. We've laid low all day today, mostly just watching movies, doing some crafts, reading stories, and doing puzzles. Hope you're all doing well!

Reactions

2010-07-18T14:19:00.001-04:00

Telling the girls about the dogs was incredibly hard to do. Ben and I decided to tell them separately. We figured that Bryn, being older, would have more questions than Shay and wanted to give her the time to ask them.

We told Shay first. We stumbled through an explanation of how her doggies had started to get old and hadn't really worked right anymore and had, eventually, needed to go to heaven. We both started crying during that explanation, and it ended up with her comforting us instead of the other way around. She said, "Look--I be a crazy girl! I make you happy! I run!" And then she proceeded to run circles around our downstairs, checking in on us each lap, all the while telling us, "I be crazy! I make you happy!" And eventually we couldn't help but laugh at our beautiful little girl, trying to cheer us up in her own unique way.

Telling Bryn was harder. We started in to our explanation, but before we got too far, she stopped us and asked bluntly, "Are my doggies dead?" When we had to answer that yes, they were, it was instant waterworks. She kept saying, "But I want them to come back!" And there was nothing we could say except, "I know, baby, we do too," because it was fully true. Eventually she asked us if they were in heaven, and if they were with Jesus. She cried herself to sleep that first night. Honestly, I think we did too.

The next morning, neither of the girls brought it up for the first several hours. I felt like I was walking on eggshells, just waiting for one of them to say something, but we got out the door to our Kindermusik class without any incidents. On the way home, though, out of the blue, Bryn turned to Shay and said, "Our doggies are dead." Shay immediately responded with, "No they're not." I don't know if she was just trying to be contrary, or if she had just forgotten, or if maybe (gulp) Ben and I had never actually used the word "dead" in our explanation of "the doggies going to heaven," but in any case, I had to pull the van over then and there, climb in back with the girl, and explain as gently as possible that yes, in fact, the doggies were dead. And we had to have the whole thing out all over again.

Shay cried. Then Bryn cried. Then I cried. Bryn said she didn't want the doggies to be alone. I pointed out that they were with each other. She said, "No, I mean they need someone to take care of them." Before I could even think of anything to say, sweet little two-year-old Shay chirped, "It okay, Brynie. Jesus takes care of them for us." More waterworks on my part.

Ben and I had always viewed the dogs, not just as pets, but as part of our family, which is why making this decision was so incredibly painful for us. Apparently we passed this mindset on to our kids. Bryn kept talking about how she didn't want our family to be apart. Eventually, she said, "I wish the rest of us could die and go to heaven so our whole family could be together again." I did explain to her that it wasn't time for us to go, but I couldn't help but think that there was something kind of beautiful about this. Four-year-olds aren't afraid of death. Bryn trusts utterly in the fact that she loves God and will be going to heaven to be with Jesus. I don't know at what point people begin to fear and doubt those things, but I'm so glad my precious children aren't there yet.

At any rate, there have been a few more crying spells throughout the week, but the worst ones were those first few days. Bryn has taken to telling everyone she sees that her doggies are dead, and after seeing big sister do this a few times, Shay has started following suit. So if you see us in the next few days, don't be surprised to have the depressing news delivered to you very matter-of-factly. Thank you so much to all the dear friends that have expressed encouragement during this time. We miss our Dag and T very, very much, and we know that it will be a long time before we stop looking over our shoulders for our hairy black shadows.

Go hug your pets. Or your kids. Or if you're lucky enough to have pets and kids that can co-exist happily together, both.

******

Addendum: On Monday afternoon, when I went in to get Shay from her nap, I found her sitting on her floor. She had her toddler Bible open in front of her, and she was paging through it, looking intensely at the pictures. She looked up at me and said, "Mommy, I askin' Jesus to give my doggies back." So, so sad.

In Canine Memoriam

2010-07-16T21:28:00.004-04:00

It has been an incredibly rough week at our house. The sad conclusion to several rough months, actually. I'll just start at the end of the story and say that we are saying farewell to our beloved dogs, Dagny and Tela.

The dogs first came into our lives nearly eight years ago, in October of 2002. I was teaching at ZCHS and Ben was in his senior year of college. One one cold, blustery, fall day, we took an outing to the Humane Society. I really can't remember why we thought this was a good idea. I don't remember consciously deciding that we wanted to get a dog; I think we had actually deluded ourselves that we were going there "just to look." I do know for certain that we had certainly never dreamed of getting two dogs. I lived in an apartment and Ben lived in a rental house. We were not equipped for multiple pets, especially large dogs.

But then we saw them. Two little black puffballs of fur in a kennel together. The tag outside their door said "Meg and Peg," which we agreed were silly names for the gorgeous little things inside. After seeing them, we didn't even look at any of the other dogs. We took them each into the play room one by one. Both of them peed on the floor while we were in there playing with them, and we were so smitten with them that we didn't even care. We agonized over it, unable to choose between them. I forget which of us suggested it at first, but once one of us brought it up, it seemed the perfect solution to get them both. After all, they were sisters, from the same litter--it would be cruel to separate them.

So we took home two dogs. I'd never had a pet before, but it wasn't too long before both of them were living in my apartment. Ben named them both. Dagny got her name from the Dagny Taggart, heroine in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Ben's favorite author at that time. Tela was named after the heroine of Phish's (Ben's favorite band) epic song cycle of Gamehenge.

I let both dogs sleep in my bed at night. I spoiled them shamelessly. I adored them.

Over time, the little black puffballs grew up. They got bigger than I had expected. They grew to 50 pounds. 60. 70. An overweight 80. We went through obedience school with them. I moved to a rental house, where we lived with two roommates and their two dogs. Ben and I got married, and the dogs acquired roommates in the form of our cats Jag and Dashel.

When we first got married, Ben and I laughed about how we argued over who got to sleep with which dog on their side of the bed. More often than not, he got the cuddles and I got the "pointy end," all feet poking into my sides.

When I was pregnant with Bryn, Tela laid next to me on the bed and stared at me with those sympathetic, soulful brown eyes while I was puking up everything I put in my mouth and suffering from migraines. She snuggled in close and tried to reassure me.

When Bryn actually arrived, Tela and I started going grey together. Before that, both dogs had been all black, not a white hair on them, and in spite of the fact that Tela's features were more shepherd and Dagny's were more lab, people had a hard time telling them apart. But with a baby in the house, Tela kind of stressed out.

We had a ranch-style house. Bryn's door was directly across from ours. We slept with the door open, and we had a baby monitor in our room, so it was pretty much surround sound whenever she cried. But just in case we missed it, Tela would come bounding into our room, jump up onto the bed, lick us furiously awake, and stand there panting over us, refusing to let us have one more second of sleep while the baby was crying.

As a result of all this baby-induced stress, Tela started to turn white. At first it was just one tiny little patch, and we joked about how mothering Bryn was making her go grey. But by six months later, she was nearly half white. Strangers stopped us on walks to comment on our strange-looking dog; no one had ever seen one like her before. The vet could find no medical explanation for her rapid whitening except that, quite literally, living with a child stressed Tela out.
While Tela stressed, Dagny withdrew a little, but still in a very sweet way. In those early days, she took to sleeping under Bryn's crib. She didn't exactly want us to bother her, but she loved the baby.
When we moved to Bburg, it was a bit of a trade-off for the dogs. We have a smaller backyard here than we did at our old house, so they had less space to run. But we also have a full unfinished basement, and right away, they loved being able to retreat to the cool, dark cement floor when it got hot outside.
When Shay came along, they reacted in much the same way as they had with Bryn. Dagny looked at us a bit reproachfully, slept under the crib for a few days, and then proceeded with life as usual. Tela's whitening picked up pace again. Both dogs were patient with the antics of the girls, which often included, but were not limited to, chasing them around the house in efforts to hug them.
But the dogs weren't as happy as before. Part of it was that they were starting to get old and fat and cranky. Dagny's joints started to give her trouble, and she could no longer hop up on the bed to cuddle us, except every now and then when her overwhelming fear of thunderstorms would drive her to super-canine feats of strength. Tela got a couple of infections over the years, but nothing major. Mostly, they just sensed the slowly shifting balance of power from dogs to children, and they didn't like it.
And then Liam came along. Now children outnumbered dogs. Apparently our dogs considered this to be the final insult. Dagny didn't want to sleep under his crib. Tela didn't come get us when he cried. Instead, she took to the basement. Permanently. After he was born, she pretty much took up residence down there. She would go down first thing in the morning, immediately after eating breakfast, and refuse to come out until dinnertime. Not even to potty. At least once an hour, I'd try to tempt her out. Calling her, tempting her with treats, going down there and trying to haul her up. But she'd run away from me and hide in corners behind stacks of stuff, digging in all four feet and all eighty pounds, refusing to come out.
And as the months wore on, things got worse. Eventually it got to the point where she started to skip breakfast some days, dinner on other days. She started to sleep down there other nights. In fact, pretty much all she did was sleep, about 23 hours a day. She began to poop in the basement, then pee. Then sleep in her own pee. While this was absolutely repulsive, it was actually preferable to her only other method of relieving herself, which was sneaking up to the top of the stairs, peeing in our playroom, and then retreating back to the basement immediately. This made absolutely no sense, as we repeatedly tried to take her outside and she refused to go.
It was clear that peeing inside had become her preferred method. We got to the point where we were mopping up puddles of pee and steam cleaning our playroom on a daily basis, and all the while, Tela utterly refused to come out the basement and interact with us at all. Visits to the vet could uncover nothing physically wrong with her; it seemed that the baby-induced stress that had started four and a half years earlier with Bryn had finally driven her over the top.
It was then that Ben and I begab to dance around the issue of putting Tela down. Neither of us wanted to do it. We wanted to stick to our original plan of the dogs living forever. We used to say that since none of us would ever want to be without the others, we'd all stay together until someday, when we were all old and assembled on a nice shady porch somewhere, with Ben and I in rocking chairs and the dogs at our feet, we could just say, "1, 2, 3, die," and all go together.
But it had become clear that this dream wasn't going to happen. We weren't going to all get old together. Tela was so unhappy; her quality of life was just so low. And she wouldn't let us do anything to help her. She kept looking at us with those big, mournful brown eyes and heaving these deep, long-suffering sighs. If we managed to convince her to come out of the basement at all, she'd just lay down again immediately and heave a big sigh with the exertion it took. All she wanted to do was sleep. And really, how good of a life is that for anybody?
So as much as we wanted to deny it, it became clear that we needed to put Tela down. We did consider trying to adopt her out, but then, who would want an eight-year old, 80-pound dog that refuses to interact with people, pees all over herself, and does nothing but sleep? It seemed kinder to just let her go to sleep permanently than to put her through the chaos of staying in a shelter or the stress of adjusting to a new household.
But that left the question of what to do with Dagny. True, she was getting old, and true, she was overweight, but otherwise, she was healthy. Surely we could keep her. But we learned that in cases like our dogs', where they've been together for their whole lives, the remaining dog often becomes very depressed after one leaves, looking for them and waiting for their littermate to return, often wasting away themselves in the process. We certainly didn't want that for Dagny. And if that should happen, we didn't want that for our kids, to have to put them through the awful process twice.
And then the decision was sort of made for us. Dagny bit another dog and drew blood. She didn't do it maliciously; they were playing and she got a little out of control. But as easily as that can happen with another dog, it can also happen with children. Back when Dagny was younger, she had once bitten another dog then too, when she was in obedience school, and then trainer flipped out, suggesting that we put her down then, saying that dogs always know what they're doing with their mouths, that biting is never an accident, that a dog that bites is one that cannot be kept around. At that point, we decided just to watch her carefully, and she never gave us another problem until now. But all of that combined with our worries about how she'd do once Tela went made the decison for us.
And so our beloved dogs left us this week. It has been incredibly hard on all of us. Perhaps more on that at a later time, but I wanted this to just be about some of our memories of them. Here are some of our recent pictures of them, taking by our budding photographer Bryn:

Dagny Jane
Tela Marie

Diaper Drama

2010-07-11T21:05:00.002-04:00

I mentioned in my monthly update on this year's goals that Shay is progressing nicely with her potty training and is now in Pull-Ups. Then I wrote yesterday about how she now sleeps in a toddler bed and occassionally likes to lay out her own clother and remove her own dirty diapers. What I did not realize was that these things were a recipe for disaster.

This morning, I realized that Shay's trash can had gotten pretty nasty, largely because she had missed the trash bag when depositing some diapers in there. Ben took it downstairs to clean it, and I didn't give it another thought... until after naptime, when Bryn came running to find me, shouting that Shay "had dog poopy in her box."

Ben and I hurried into Shay's room and found her with no pants on, a Pull-Up around her waist, and a vile stentch in the air. It took us a few minutes to sort out what had happened, but apparently it was this:

Upon waking from her nap, Shay realized that her diaper was wet and, without calling out or letting anyone know she was awake, set out to change it herself. She got the dirty one off successfully, but when she went to put on a new Pull-Up, she put both legs through one hole, thus lodging the whole thing around her waist. She didn't realize this was wrong, though, and commenced to play and read stories to herself as usual, all while not making nosie or calling out, so no one realized she was awake. Unfortunately, she then had a poop. On her floor, because the Pull-Up was around her waist. And she panicked, because she realized that poop was clearly not supposed to go on the floor. So she tried to clean up after herself. She picked up the poop and tried to throw it away. But her trash can was gone. So she cast about for somewhere else to throw the poop, settling on the nearest empty container.... which happened to be a box that we had decorated as a bank during the week of VBX.

So when Bryn entered the room upon hearing Shay crying, she saw a box of poop sitting on Shay's table. While she was mistaken about it being dog poop, she got the basic note of panic in the story correct. Shay was crying hysterically, as the whole experience was pretty traumatizing for her, especially as she realized that her beloved VBX craft was now ruined. So after sanitizing both Shay and her room, we had to have a long talk about how only mommies and daddies change diapers; kids do not. And how if she wakes up, she should call to us so we can come get her. Yeah, the drama just never quits around here!

Sleeping Arrangements

2010-07-10T20:53:00.000-04:00

I just need to take a moment to brag on my sweet big girl, Shay. A few weeks back, she started intermittently going to bed in her toddler bed, but Ben always moved her over to her crib in the middle of the night. One night we decided to see what would happen if we left her in the toddler bed all night, and she was so freaked out when she woke up and found herself loose in her room that she cried and cried and refused to go to sleep in the toddler bed for a few weeks afterwards.

But last week we decided to give it another go. We talked it up, then put her to bed in her toddler bed. And she slept though the night. And in the morning, she laid playing quietly in her bed, looking at her books and waiting patiently for me to come get her. What a good, big girl!!

That day, she went down for her nap in the toddler bed without a murmur of dissent. Again, she stayed in bed at the end of the nap, waiting for me to come get her.

That night, she was a little anxious about going to bed in the toddler bed. She wanted her crib again. But Ben decided we weren't turning back, so he took the side off her crib, turning it into a "day bed." Since then, we've let her pick which one she wants to sleep in, which she gets a huge kick out of. She's actually fallen out of the "day bed" a few times, but she doesn't seem any worse for the wear. One morning, when I had to wake her up in order to be somewhere, I actually found her asleep on her floor, complete with carpet imprints on her face. But she's sleeping soundly at night and at naptime, so no complaints.

However, she has now started getting out of bed when she wakes up. I'm never quite sure what I'm going to find on the other side of the door when I hear her murmuring and go in to get her dressed. Most days, she's sitting and looking at books, but some days, it's a little more entertaining. Thankfully, she cannot yet turn door handles, so at least she's contained.

Yesterday, she had opened most of her dresser drawers and dug around in them until she had picked out her own clothes for the day. She had laid out a Pull-Up, jean shorts, her Daddy's Little Sunshine shirt, and purple socks. She had even moved the changing pad from the top of her dresser to the floor and put the clothes on top of it, so she was totally ready to go when we came in.

Today took the cake though. As Ben and I entered the room, she looked up from her bed, where she was sprawled with her feet in the air, looking at a book. She had stripped off her own pajama pants and wet diaper and was completely naked on bottom. Well, aside from the pair of Hello Kitty rain boots. Hi-stinking-larious.

I think we're going to have our hands full with that one.

God Bless the Good People of Chick-Fil-A

2010-07-09T14:01:00.000-04:00

Today we had quite the traumatizing experience.

The morning started off well enough. I loaded up the kids and headed over to the church where our MOPS group is held to have an outdoor potluck breakfast, visit with some of my MOPS friends, and let the kids run off some steam on the playground. Due to some rain last night, the weather was blessedly at least 15, if not 20, degrees cooler than it has been the last several days, and it actually felt great to be outside.

So breakfast was really nice. The kids had fun, I had fun. Good friends, good good, good fun. All that a morning should be. I should have quit there.

But no. Chick-Fil-A was having Cow Appresheeation Day, which meant free lunch for anyone dressed like a cow. And since we do love some Chick-Fil-A and we have a cow costume in size 2T (which both girls have now worn for Halloween) that will soon be too small for Shay to squeeze into, it seemed almost silly not to take advantage and go. My friend Kristin decided to join us, and she set to cutting out two sets of the cute printables from the Chick-Fil-A website in order to cow up herself and her daughter Audrey. In retrospect, this may have been where things very first started to go wrong, as Bryn discovered a deep mud puddle while Kristin and I chatted. Bryn lost interest soon enough, but before long, both Shay and Audrey (both of whom are a little, how shall I say? more adventurous than Bryn) were crouched on its edges, floating leaves in it. Then their hands. And then, in Shay's case, her entire lower half.

I dragged Shay off to the car to strip her down while Kristin took her kids into the church for a potty break. Shay's shoes were absolutely rank, so I just shoved her into the socks I'd brought for the Chick-Fil-A playplace and hoped that the cow costume would cover her feet--which it did not, as she is really too tall for anything in 2T. Kristin arrived back rather breathlessly from the church and stated that she'd had a hard time convincing Audrey that cows do, in fact, potty in bathrooms rather than on the ground. That one is her story to tell, not mine, although perhaps another indicator of the rough afternoon ahead.

We eventually got all the kids loaded and made the drive over the Chick-Fil-A, which was quite crowded with people dressed in varying ensembles of black and white spots. Kristin and I herded up our little bovines and ushered them through the door. Kristin was carrying her bucket carseat with 6-month-old Nathan in it and had 3-year-old Audrey in tow. I had Liam in the bucket seat, 2-year-old Shay, and 4-year-old Bryn. Shay was wearing a full-on cow costume, complete with stuffed rump, and Bryn was wrapped up in a large piece of cow-spotted fabric that I bought many moons ago with the intention of turning it into pajama pants, but have never seemed to find the time. Since basically every other kid in the place was just wearing black spots taped to white shirt, they were garnering lots of stares even before the drama began.

I didn't exactly see what happened. Maybe it was the sheer amount of people in the restaurant. Maybe it was the cow fabric. Maybe she was confused because we headed straight up to the counter to order instead of claiming a booth first like usual. Maybe it was just one of those things. But somehow, before we made it past the first row of booths, Bryn took a flat-out tumble, resulting in a rough bang to the head and splitting open her bottom lip.

Somehow I managed to get her on her feet while still holding the bucket seat, and Kristin and I managed to get all the kids up to the condiment counter, where there were less people and more space for me put down Liam and crouch down to check on her. She was crying hysterically. A woman appeared out of the blue and offered to get us ice. She returned, first with ice in a napkin, then with ice sealed in a sterile plastic bag. Bryn continued to wail. People continued to stare. Part of me wanted to make some remark about oh, she's fine, she's just a drama queen (because usually, she is), but darn it, there was enough blood that I couldn't tell how deep the cut was and I just wasn't sure. The same nice woman, whose family was about ready to leave when all of this happened), guided Bryn and I over to the table that her family was about to vacate, thus ensuring us a place to sit down in the midst of of the noontime crowd.

This was when the second drama occurred. Kristin didn't exactly see what happened. Maybe Shay panicked at seeing me led away. Maybe she tried to follow us too quickly. Maybe the cow costume got in the way. Maybe it was that she was only wearing socks and no shoes. In any case, Shay went down too, and now her wails matched her sister's in bringing down the house.

I ran back and scooped her up. In a show of absolutely superhuman strength, Kristin somehow scooped up both bucket seats and got both babies and Audrey to the table. We were clearly creating quite the spectacle, because when I got back to the table with Shay, the manager was there, placating the sobbing Bryn with a dish of ice cream. He put his hand on my arm and said, "Don't worry, ma'am, I'll be right back with some help for you." Before I could even wonder if he meant physical or mental (because that that point, I felt like I could use both), he was back with the sweetest little waitress. He introduced her and told us that she was there to take our order and that absolutely anything we wanted was on the house.

Wow. Talk about customer service.

First thing was first. As I held the sobbing Shay, she kept pointing at Bryn's dish and crying, "I need ice cream! It help me feel better!" And Audrey got some too, just so she wouldn't feel the need to go injure herself to get some later.

Kristin and I both felt a little hesitant to take advantage of this kindness and ordered our kids the smallest kids' meals possible. The sweet waitress kept urging us, "And what to drink? And what on the side? And what for you? And what to drink? And fries, right?" And in the end, we had full meals for all five of us (which is really saying something, considering that my kids usuallly split a meal). Plus books from the kids' meals for all 3 kids. Plus ice cream x3. Plus the manager came back with stuffed cows for my kids. Plus the big mascot cow came over to hug my kids, which sent Shay over the moon with excitement.

In short, I received better customer service at Chick-Fil-A today than I have EVER received at ANY other restaurant, no matter how fancy. God bless the good people of Chick-Fil-A!!

And although Bryn was left with a nasty gash on her lip, the bleeding did stop partway through the dish of vanilla ice cream, so I'm assuming that means she's okay. She is, in fact, okay enough that she requested to play in the playplace at the end of lunch, which I took as a good sign, so I let her go. Shay had long since recovered from her fall, which I think just scared her far more than injured her. So Kristin and I had about five minutes of blessed quiet to recover from all the drama. Then Bryn was back, crying that some girl in the playplace had told her that her name was "silly," and I decided that it was definitely time to go.

As I got Bryn's shoes on her, Shay eyed the chair I had pulled up to the end of the table. "I climb on that?" she asked. "Absolutely not," I replied in what was left of my firmest voice. "We've had enough injuries in here today to last a lifetime." No sooner were the words out of my mouth than she grabbed the back of the chair and tried to scale it. I dropped Bryn's foot, shoe and all, and tried to grab Shay, but not quick enough..... the chair fell backwards, pinning her to the ground, eliciting a fresh round of wails from her and stares from the other customers.

I scooped Shay up. "I need more ice cream to feel better!" she wailed. That one learns quick. "No!" I told her through gritted teeth. "We're going home!" I jammed Bryn's other shoe on her foot and grabbed the bucket seat, then headed for the door. When seeing that I meant business, Shay changed her shouts to "Daddy! Daddy! I want my daddy!", thus eliciting even more stares. Another sympathetic mommy got the door for me as I exited with all the dignity I could muster, bucket seat slung over one arm, a sobbing, squirming Shay clutched in the other, and a bloodied Bryn trailing behind.

"I'll see you later then?" Kristin asked sympathetically.
"Nope," I replied. "I'm never leaving the house again."

June in Review - Amy

2010-07-08T07:20:00.002-04:00

I'm a few days late posting this due to all the Fourth of July festivities, but here's my monthly check-in. I'm still not thrilled with my progress in some of the areas, but I guess I still have six months to go, right?? Or at least that's what I keep telling myself...

1. Read the Bible.
I did fall behind on this for a few days this month, but I am now all caught up.

2. Read at least one pleasure reading book per month.I finished reading Twelve Extraordinary Women by John MacArthur, which my Mom To Mom group started during the spring semester but never finished, as there were more chapters in the book than weeks we met. I'm really glad I finished it, as the chapters at the end really turned out to be the most interested to me, particularly the one on Lydia, who I knew basically nothing about before. I also read Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin (which I already talked about in a previous post) for my MOPS book club. For what it's worth, I liked her writing style (although not that book) so much that I've already read her next one, Something Blue, so I guess I can already check off this goal for July. :)

3. Join some kind of musical group and perform with them.
I actually got out my clarinet and played it. At first it was kind of rough, as I had basically no range at all for those first few minutes, but after a few minutes practicing, it all came back. My practicing did wake Liam up, which I feared would put an early end to my endeavors, but he played contentedly on his play mat and listened to me. Then Bryn refused to stay in her room for "rest time" while something so interested was going on, so she came downstairs and listened too, eventuallly getting out her recorder and joining me for an impromptu duet. All in all, I actually sounded much better than I had any right to hope that I would, although obviously not nearly as good as I did a decade ago, when I was in the habit of playing daily.
On the Fourth of July, our whole family went and heard the community band that I hope to join. The girls loved hearing the band and were excited to think that Mommy could be part of it, promising to come and clap for me. :) I actually planned to go to practice for the first time on Tuesday night and almost made it there, but then several family responsibilities intervened and I was unable to go at the last minute. I do plan on going this coming week though. So I'm getting closer to this one!

4. Blog daily.
I do think I've missed a couple days here and there, but my grand total numbers are still on track.

5. Get back down to (at least) my pre-pregnancy weight.The great weight loss of 2010 has now come to a halt. I really have absolutely no room to complain, as I'm now 15 pounds lighter than I was before getting pregnant. I'd ideally still like to lose 10 pounds, as so to be in my "ideal BMI" range, but I also know that would require fitting an exercise regime of more than just "chase my crazy children around" into my schedule, and that is just not going to happen right now.

6. Get involved in some kind of theatre group and help out with at least one production.Still no progress here.

7. Teach Bryn to read.
It's funny how often strangers ask me if Bryn can read. I can see why they are fooled; she carries around books and stares at them so intently that it looks like she's reading them. Her handwriting has improved vastly over the summer. But we seem to be stalled out on reading. I'm starting to wonder if it will be like every other milestone she has hit, where she just masters it one day out of the blue and we never look back.

8. Potty-train Shay.She's doing great. She's wearing Pull-Ups most days now and often tells us when she has to go potty. Whenever we sit her on it, she always produces something. Unlike her sister (who has just started pooping in the potty this summer), Shay already does #1 and #2 in there. She's incredibly proud of herself and can't wait to wear real "underwear like Brynie." She does still go in her diaper sometime, but she's making great progres.

9. Frame our portraits.
Finished in March. I'll have to frame our new portrait once we get it printed though!

10. Finish up some of my murals.Need to decide which ones to start next....

11. Paint the kids' bathroom.
Ahem..... someday......

12. Get Shay into her big girl room.Achieved in January.

13. Breastfeed Liam.
He's still on 100% breastmilk through the pumping method.