Dancing with Daffodils

Last year on March 29th I was hoping to deliver a baby.  My other two had been relatively on time so I anticipated number three would be similar.  Eleven days later she finally arrived.  This week as I was thinking of celebrating her first birthday, this swell of frustration overcame me.  Those eleven days were so miserable.  The waiting, the anticipation, the [wonderful] parents who every day asked when she was going to come because we’re only here for two and a half weeks, the discomfort and a great need to just have my body back all contributed to this frustration.  A year later and I can still feel it. I recently went to the library and as I went to check out my books, a librarian came over to help me.  Inwardly I groaned because it was the mean librarian.  I have dubbed her so because two or three years ago when I had a small toddler and a crawling baby, we had a bit of a run-in that I’ll sum up by saying I was frazzled, she was not very ...

Just to warn you, this post gets a bit personal.  This is something I’ve been wanting to write about for almost a year but every time I decided to go for it, I get nervous, but this time I’m not wimping out. There are women out there who need to know they are not alone so I’m just going to say it.   I loath breastfeeding. I took the class before I was to become a mother and I was committed because breast is best and all of my sisters had done it so I could do it too.  Then I had a baby with a terrible latch and even with three visits with a lactation consultant (despite the fact that I am rather modest and was totally uncomfortable with someone besides my husband watching me try to nurse) and months of effort, it still hurt.  I pushed her feedings for as long as I could and tried all of the creams but she never nursed without clicking her tongue and I never nursed without pain.  After three months I got used to the pain but getting her on was always a p...

I am all for moving forward, upward and onward in life.  I was thrilled to go to college, get married, become a mother, and while I dislike the process of moving, six of the eight times I’ve had to do it I’ve been excited for the new adventure that awaited me. What gets me is the lateral changes; the times when things are just different than they used to be but aren’t necessarily any better or worse.  Those changes take time for me wrap my mind around and figure out if I like or not.  Right now we’re in the situation of having three children and two rooms and trying to figure out who shares.  Our first try was putting the baby with the 4-year-old who is a super sleeper.  Turns out that baby wakes up too early when she sees her big brother in the room and starts yelling to get him up to play with her and even he couldn’t sleep through that display of noisy affection. Try number two is going to happen this weekend where we’ll put the older two together an...

Four years ago today the Vancouver Winter Olympics were going on and I took my 18-month-old daughter to the doctor for her check up.  I was also supposed to be having a baby boy.  After three years of fertility treatments, I was finally able to get pregnant with my daughter.  I adored her and she was the perfect little baby.  When she was about 10 months old, I realized that I was unusually tired, a tired that persisted no matter how much I slept.  I had an extra pregnancy test laying around so I thought I’d take it just to rule it out but you cannot imagine my shock when it came back positive.  I had never seen a positive result before and I’d taken close to 50.  It was so exciting and overwhelming and seriously surprising.  We had recently moved here and I started calling around to OBGYNs trying to get an appointment for confirmation with my hands shaking as I dialed. My husband was out of town and when he returned home a few days late...

Valentine’s Day is one of my very favorite holidays. I’ve loved it since I was a child and my parents would give me a valentine and we’d have chocolate and a special dinner.  I enjoy sharing love with my family and friends, plus I love covering my house in pink and red hearts.  There is so much positivity about the holiday and I believe love is worth celebrating.  I know some people are bitter because they don’t have a significant other to share the holiday with but I think Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate all love, including siblings, friends, cousins, parents, and children.  Even likable co-workers deserve a chocolate heart or two.   One of my favorite Valentine’s Day memories is from the year after we got married.  Josh was a full-time student and I was a temporarily unemployed graduate.  We had decided even while dating not to exchange gifts but to do something fun together as a way to celebrate the holiday. Unfortunately that ...

Please tell me that I'm not the only one who often comes home from [insert any social event here] feeling uneasy about something that I said.  Call it insecurity, call it self-centeredness, call it what you will, but I often stew and worry and think over and over again about what I said in a public setting and how it will affect what people think of me or even just feel the frustration of not having actually made the point I wanted to make. This is why I am a writer.  I can read something over and over again before anyone else reads it and I can make sure it is saying exactly what I want to say before I announce those feelings or thoughts to anyone else. But I digress.  I was at church on Sunday and we were having a fabulous lesson on tithing during our Relief Society (the women's organization) meeting.  I had read the lesson beforehand and discussed it with my husband and parents who were visiting, so I had already given some thought to this topic.  When I r...

One evening last week I read a message with my children from a church leader on ways to keep Christ at the center of our Christmas celebration.  He suggested reading scriptures, listening to the words of sacred carols and sincere acts of love.  In an effort to reach out and show love, I had gotten a catalog from heifer.org and asked the children if they would like to pick out an animal to give to a family in need as a Christmas gift.  The flock of chicks or the hive of bees were very reasonable but my children picked a sheep, one of the more expensive animals.  In that moment I felt an inner conflict with my own selfishness. Here I was trying to teach my children to be unselfish but it was more than I was hoping to spend.  Yet they both agreed and were determined and united in their choice, so we bought a sheep.  It hit me later how appropriate their choice is for Christmas.  Christ is the Good Shepherd and it was the shepherds who first heard of Jesu...