A Time and a Place for Hot Chocolate

I love hot chocolate. Last night I was craving hot chocolate. And so, even though it is clearly past hot chocolate season, and it was 82 degrees outside, I made myself a cup. Drinking it kind of felt like being a full-grown adult and deciding to cruise main street. You thought it was a good idea, and you remember it being really enjoyable, but something about doing it now feels all wrong. I think I'll have to go camping to really enjoy that steamy chocolaty goodness again before October. Luckily, unlike teenage-hood, hot chocolate season is a reoccurring thing.

But there is good news. I also love SYTYCD. And though the hot chocolate season is over, the SYTYCD has only just begun!!! I knew I liked summertime.

Also, I was thinking summer should really be a season for reading. I was walking through Barnes & Noble with Kate and looking at all the novels that would make great summer fodder. And I was thinking, I want to do nothing this summer but swim with my children and read! I remember Sister Hinkley once talking about how proper childhood requires idle summer hours. However, since then I have proceeded to pack our summer full of lessons and trips and activities. Hmmm. Maybe next year.

Two Specials on the Credit Crisis

We've recently listened to two podcasts explaining the credit crisis that we've liked. From This American Life, The Giant Pool of Money tells how it all came crashing down in words a 3rd grader could understand. And from The Economist, A Special Report on International Banking also tells how we're trying to avoid making this mistake next time.

Happy Mother's Day

Brent makes a new picture for me every year and glues it in my Mother's Day book. This year's spelled out "Happy Mother's Day."I have really enjoyed everyone's Mother's Day Posts. I love what Tisha said about this "pleasant bump in the month of May that gives us all a chance to remember and reflect on Motherhood. Of course, I think of my own Mother…I try to follow in her footsteps while keeping balance, understanding that we are different people with different strengths, that my kids will hopefully still turn out alright even if I'm not canning dozens of jars of fruit while 9 months pregnant, or running a daycare while caring for 5 children of my own…I often think of my peers. The mothers who are my friends, my sisters, those who relate to the day to day insanity of living with little ones. And I stand amazed. All these fun-loving, carefree, interesting, strong, laid-back, intense girls, who sacrificed their body, their time, their hearts, so much of themselves to give life and rear another."

How nice it was for me to become a mother and suddenly notice I was surrounded by incredible mothers, both as family and friends. During many pieces of my daily routine, I think of other mothers. I think of my own mother, for example, when I catch myself being too dramatic, because she always made the job seem straight-forward, and always did the important things first, and did them all day long, and it was as simple as that. When I'm folding or making beds I think of my mother's mother, whose clothes folding is neater than oragami and bed making is smoother than wedding-cake fondant. How does she do that? When I start to baby my kids too much, I think of my mother-in-law, who raised four self-sufficient children. It goes on and on with friends I've met in each place we've lived. More than just mothering techniques, it's the feeling that I'm part of this group of dedicated and focused and upbeat women, happily losing sleep and cleaning up disgusting things and reading favorite bedtime stories over and over again.

The best part of Mother's Day was seeing that Kate really wanted to make me feel special on my day. She made and wrapped a pipe-cleaner and bead bracelet completely on her own. After Mother's Day, I couldn't resist the urge to call Andrea, and do what has become our yearly Mother's Day review of church. This came up the year after Andrea's ward got them nothing (is this right, Andrea?) and the talks were about tithing or something unrelated. This year I got a Sees truffle. And also a fantastic story about President Andrew Jackson's mother. It was great.

In church 4 years ago, a dad speaker said delicately, "I know some mothers don't enjoy Mother's Day, and feel guilty thinking about how good of a mother they could be." This shocked me back then, though I can understand it now. But I did make up my mind to just be happy on that day. I do have to say I kind of had ah-ha moment this year when I realized, if memory serves me correctly, that it was is the second mothers day in a row where Brent has found time to take a quick nap and I have been too busy "accomplishing things." That has got to change. So as a quick note to myself. Next year I'm going to accomplish nothing on mother's day, except a nap and time with ones I'm mothering and chatting with my mothers.

Kids Growing Up

Danny's Mickey Mouse play-dough sculpture.

I remember as a baby that each of my kids would go through these incredible developmental stages. My niece Natalie just went through one, where all at once she can walk and talk. And though she couldn't do it only weeks ago, I hear from her grandparents that it all seems as natural as if she's been doing it forever. For a parent, these moments of hyper-development are both exilerating to watch and a little bit sad. Exilerating to see the child you love making new discoveries and feeling so capable. Sad because you know your baby is growing up. I thought that once my children were older that these stages of startling development would slow down, be more gradual and blend in more with the rest of their lives. But it seems I was wrong.

The past few weeks I feel like I've had a wake up call for both Kate and Danny, at the same time. Suddenly Danny sits down to a piece of paper with intense concentration, and now expects that his drawings will look like something, where before he just made scribbles for five minutes until he felt bored. All at once, his play-dough sculptures look like what he says they are now. And he prefers to put his pants on himself as well as his shoes. His questions are better linked to concrete reality: "Mom, do I have buttons on my Sesamie Street keys? If I push them, will they open our van?"

It is the same for Kate. Yesterday at the playground Brent and I watched her try the monkey bars for the first time. Usually Kate plays timidly on the equipment, maybe managing to go one step further on the spiral climbing ladder than last time. But she persisted on those monkey bars like a law student studying for the bar. She tried them and slipped off, then sat to rest and thought them over, then tried them again, over and over. Until just before we left, she got all the way across. I thought I knew Kate so well, and never expected this persistence on anything physical. It is so strange to watch someone you spend so much time with do something unexpected. You start to realize these little people do come with a personality already mapped out inside of them, and part of your job as a parent is to shape them but the other part of your job is just to get to know them.

Dressing-Room Sermon

I found a shirt-style swimsuit top for Kate at Target (gotta have one for avoiding sunburns). We went to have her try it on in the dressing rooms when this little number fell out from underneath. Apparently it was part of the set. "Mom, look what fell out." This little string- bikini-top-for-my-five-year-old disturbed me on some deep level. I was livid. Usually in a dressing room I try to keep my own voice down and the voices of my children down for the benefit of the other guests. But this time the mama-bear in me came out. Anyone privileged enough to be in the dressing room at that time heard well and clear my feelings about bikinis and little girls the greater contexts of modesty and feminism and...actually I didn't get that carried away, but I wanted to.

President Uchtdorf and Brian Adams

I am so greateful to Elder Ballard for the talk he gave last Sunday. I got to hear about it before I listened to it. Last Sunday when it was given was our final day in Idaho. We spent a wonderful morning listening to conference (with family) and eating stuffed french toast (with strawberries). At noon we took off for California. As we drove through Nevada, the big sky above us and the desert stretched out around us, we tried to listen by radio to the afternoon session of conference. What we got was a signal that crossed the messages of Church leaders with classic soft rock. You know it's true, everything I do, I do it for you. We turned it off partway into the session. But soon after I got a call from my Dad and from Andrea. Both of these people know me well, and told me Elder Ballard gave a great talk, and that I needed to hear it. His talk, "Daughters of God," was, indeed, great. His words of understanding meant a lot to me: "I know something of a mother’s emotions that accompany her commitment to be at home with young children. There are moments of great joy and incredible fulfillment, but there are also moments of a sense of inadequacy, monotony, and frustration."

And for me, his talk fit in perfectly with an overall personal message I got from the conference, that the Lord's Church is constant, it does not change. Perhaps one of the reasons this message stood out to me was because we sustained a new Prophet, President Monson. And despite a new prophet, the Church's message remains constant. But I think the main reason the constancy of the church so impressed me was personal. As we grow older and our children grow up, the demands on our lives change. As we get new callings or meet new friends or neighbors, the demands on our lives change. And sometimes I manage to adjust right in time for my adjustment to be obsolete. Time to move on to the next challenge. So going into conference I noticed feeling nervous, nervous that it was time to make more adjustments. But instead I came away noticing that the Church has been giving the same counsel my entire life, and though the part of life I am in keeps changing, the counsel does not. And I've also noticed that the counsel always works.

I've always liked Helaman's words to his sons in Helaman 5:12, but I suppose am still learning the meaning of them myself.

I'm also curious now to read the author that Elder Ballard quoted, Anna Quinlen. I've added One True Thing and How Reading Changed My Life to my to-read list on GoodReads.

Let's Hear It for Beauracracy

I am addicted to podcasts. In fact, I'm surprised I have any friends left here, because half of what I say starts with "I heard on this one podcast that..." I can't believe I ever lived life without podcasts. How did I survive?

It was recently brought to my attention that, as far as U.S. government is concerned, we owe a lot to bureaucracy. I know almost nothing about political science, but I always thought a good candidate was one who could get things done. Down with bureaucracy. It's such a dirty word. It makes it impossible for anyone to do anything. But after listening to the following podcast, I found myself defending bureaucracy:

This American Life Podcats #353: The Audacity of Government
The podcast is somewhat liberal, and I am not so liberal, but the premise of this episode makes you stop and think. It seems that the executive branch in the U.S. has been finding more and more ways to bypass the checks and balances of the judicial and legislative, especially under Bush. There are ways to ignore parts of a bill that don't suit the President and ways to disregard treaties that no longer suit America's pleasure. And the final part of the podcast talks about which of the candidates, McCain, Clinton, or Obama, are most likely to take advantage of this unruly president supposedly set by Bush. (I won't ruin it for you and tell you who they think is safest.) I thought I wanted a president who just got things done, but now I'm not so sure. I want one who follows the rules. I'm sure most of you reading this know more about political science than I do, so don't laugh. Just explain to me if I should be worried.

Speaking of bureaucracy, here's a podcast about reforming the electoral process. I love it when economist-types talk about politics, because they seem to have such good ideas:
From The Economist Podcast: Democracy in America, 26 March 2008: A New Crusade for Lawrence Lessig