My Hood-lums

I love these boys.

Daylight Savings

I believe daylight savings was created by the housecleaning elves for one purpose: to force me to dust my clocks twice a year.

Having grown up with plenty of daylight in Arizona, we never felt the need to force our bodies to adapt to unnatural time changes semiannually. Even after 7 years in Utah it still strikes me as odd. The only thing I've gotten better at is remembering how to change the clock radio in my car. Since having a child, the concept of deciding the time has changed strikes me as even more bizarre. Every fall we turn to our children and say: "guess what! you get to sleep in tomorrow! fall back!" and they of course proceed to wake up at the exact same time as always as kids are not so easily fooled. As parents, we respond with patience and maturity by gasping in horror at the clock that now reads 6:05. Eventually, they adjust to the time change in bedtime and nap schedules just in time to spring forward again.

When did science decide that politicians should have a say in natural phenomena like sunrises? I want a recount.

The Scottish Report

This is what happens when you buy a 2 lb. bag of Swedish Fish to get your husband through a week of tests:

Eric thinks it's so funny that he makes Scotty sign "fish" before giving him just about anything. Our son will now grow up thinking that anything gummy--like fruitsnacks--are fish! Oh, well, it is pretty hilarious.

The 18 month stats:

Weight: depends on the number of fishies he's eaten. Last week it was 23.5, a few days ago it was just under 22....?

Height: talk about a growth spurt! they measured him at 32", which is a jump from 5th percentile to 50th.

Teeth: still just 12, plus two permanently swollen gums...

Words: he now attempts to say "apple", "up", and "ow-wow" (as in, "what does a dog say?") but pretty much sticks with sign language. Thus, we've graduated from Baby Signing time to regular signing time, which has songs even more likely to get stuck in my head. He picks up almost a sign a day, with this week's highlights being thank you (which he started on his own!) and cracker.

Best trick: whenever he needs a diaper change he walks into his room and brings out all the supplies (including wipes if he's messy!) and lays on the floor waiting for me to change him. It's practically as glorious as being potty trained.

Favorite book: The Hungry Caterpillar (thanks Papa!) but he's mostly just into turning pages really quickly and rarely has time for actual stories.

Food of the week: April's chicken salsa fajita mix--this kid is not squeamish about spice! he happily downs chips and salsa with us as well :o)

Funniest moment: I was in a hurry to get ready this morning and head to Provo high to help in the chemistry department. Scotty looked up at me as curiously, pointed, and then signed "milk." That ship has long since sailed, kid!

And last but not least, amount of poisonous lead destroying his perfect little body: zero! Living in our cozy little cottage has made us a little nervous about potential lead from pipes or paint, so we had him lead tested and everything came back totally negative. No more worries, Nana.

Friends

I find myself rewriting my definition of a friend as life goes on.

It used to be that a friend was someone who shared her candy and invited you over to play.

Then a friend was someone to sit by at lunch who wouldn't laugh at a bad hair day.

In high school a friend was someone to confide in, who would tell you when you were being a jerk and had food in your teeth.

When I got married, a friend was any couple both Eric and I liked spending time with.

When I was pregnant, a friend was someone who would tell you how beautiful you looked and would drop everything to come over and paint your toenails.

With a newborn, a friend was anyone willing to hold your squirming baby so you could have just a minute to go to the bathroom alone.

Today, a friend was someone willing to come watch my baby in the bath so I could clean the oatmeal he barfed up all over the house.

Thanks, Katie.

Love yourself!

I heard a sad advertisement on the radio this morning that really made me think. According to the ad: "42% of women are disgusted by their bodies." My first thought was "that's not me! I think I'm healthy and beautiful! except...."

Why is it so easy to find things we don't like about ourselves, especially our physical appearance? We wish we could have her hair, her figure, someone else's cute feet, her sense of style and fashion... no matter how beautiful we are we would always change something!

I am totally guilty of this. Especially with pregnancy, nursing, and "getting my body back" I realize that I will never be the same size or shape I was before, for good and for bad. If I focus all my time and energy on what needs "fixing" I forget to appreciate what I have now.

I love what Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said about this in October General Conference, 2005:

"I plead with you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not! But as one adviser to teenage girls said: “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is staring at you. When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power. … The key to feeling [confident] is to always listen to your inner self—[the real you.]” And in the kingdom of God, the real you is “more precious than rubies.” Every young woman is a child of destiny and every adult woman a powerful force for good. I mention adult women because, sisters, you are our greatest examples and resource for these young women. And if you are obsessing over being a size 2, you won’t be very surprised when your daughter or the Mia Maid in your class does the same and makes herself physically ill trying to accomplish it. We should all be as fit as we can be—that’s good Word of Wisdom doctrine. That means eating right and exercising and helping our bodies function at their optimum strength. We could probably all do better in that regard. But I speak here of optimum health; there is no universal optimum size.

Frankly, the world has been brutal with you in this regard. You are bombarded in movies, television, fashion magazines, and advertisements with the message that looks are everything! The pitch is, “If your looks are good enough, your life will be glamorous and you will be happy and popular.” That kind of pressure is immense in the teenage years, to say nothing of later womanhood. In too many cases too much is being done to the human body to meet just such a fictional (to say nothing of superficial) standard. As one Hollywood actress is reported to have said recently: “We’ve become obsessed with beauty and the fountain of youth. … I’m really saddened by the way women mutilate [themselves] in search of that. I see women [including young women] … pulling this up and tucking that back. It’s like a slippery slope. [You can’t get off of it.] … It’s really insane … what society is doing to women.”

In terms of preoccupation with self and a fixation on the physical, this is more than social insanity; it is spiritually destructive, and it accounts for much of the unhappiness women, including young women, face in the modern world. And if adults are preoccupied with appearance—tucking and nipping and implanting and remodeling everything that can be remodeled—those pressures and anxieties will certainly seep through to children. At some point the problem becomes what the Book of Mormon called “vain imaginations.” And in secular society both vanity and imagination run wild. One would truly need a great and spacious makeup kit to compete with beauty as portrayed in media all around us. Yet at the end of the day there would still be those “in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers” as Lehi saw, because however much one tries in the world of glamour and fashion, it will never be glamorous enough.

A woman not of our faith once wrote something to the effect that in her years of working with beautiful women she had seen several things they all had in common, and not one of them had anything to do with sizes and shapes. She said the loveliest women she had known had a glow of health, a warm personality, a love of learning, stability of character, and integrity. If we may add the sweet and gentle Spirit of the Lord carried by such a woman, then this describes the loveliness of women in any age or time, every element of which is emphasized in and attainable through the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ."