Pencil thing

The pencil thing always makes Nora laugh.

Untitled from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Fickle and mercurial child. I like that she goes from laughing to demanding that I stop, and then back to laughing again.

Albuer... Albuqur... Alberquirk...

We headed up to Albuquerque to see one of our good friends marry an awesome girl.

Here's a little slideshow of our pictures, plus some other stuff we did this month.

Untitled from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

The funniest part: At the fancy pants luncheon after the ceremony, Patrick said his Bishop asked him why he wanted to marry Sarah, and in a round-about way, he answered because he loved her. The Bishop asked *why* he loved her, and he said he had no idea, but he has eternity to figure it out.

The longest part: The drive home. We sang every verse I could think of (and make up) to The Wheels on the Bus, Old McDonald, , and every other song I know (which if you realize that I'm my mother's daughter, that's a lot).

The happiest part: Watching the look on Sarah's face during the ceremony- she looked like she was going to explode with glee.

The tastiest part: The raspberry sorbet with the lemon cookie is tied with those delicious home-made crescent rolls. I jokingly told the girl helping with the food that I could eat 5 or 6 more, hoping she would bring 5 or 6 more, but she only brought one.

The most well orchestrated part: Sarah arranged babysitting for us during the temple ceremony AND during the fancy pants luncheon. She's awesome.

The best part: Being with a lot of good friends.

Best Homemaker in the World?

This week, my Current Issues in Mormonism class and my Home/Community-Based Nursing class have combined in a bizarre way. For my Mormon class, I wrote a short essay on President Beck's Mothers Who Know and why I thought it was so controversial. Here's what I thought, the 30-second version: President Beck lays out a formula that is very black and white: (M=V)=(C=R) where M equals mothers, V equals virtue (as defined by President Beck as leadership, teaching, homemaking (which specifically includes housekeeping), etc.), C equals children, and R equals righteous. Thus, Women who are Virtuous will have Children who are Righteous. Because President Beck made no qualifying statements, women felt that it was implied that the reverse is also true: that if your children are not righteous, you were not a virtuous woman, which is false. Also, women hate the conflation of housework and righteousness, or the implication that if you are a poor housekeeper, you don't love your kids, or something.

But, what if that is sort of true? For my Home/Community-Based Nursing class, we have been studying about environmental health, and I learned that I should be vacuuming and dusting once a week. Once a week? Every week? When I read that, I couldn't remember the last time I had vacuumed. Pickles.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that regular vacuuming, along with other interventions like non-permeable covers for mattresses SIGNIFICANTLY reduced asthma and allergy problems.

Both the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America both recommend dusting and vacuuming once OR TWICE a week if you have allergy or asthma sufferers in your house. Which I do.

So I am making this a school project. For the love of your lungs, vacuum and dust once a week!

And, because this is academic, it has to be measurable. Please take a minute to take my survey so I can show that I really changed your perceptions about vacuuming. Or I didn't.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

No (wo)man can serve two masters

How are things? I haven't heard from you in a while. Just calling to see how you are doing. How's school? You haven't updated your blog in a long time, have you been busy?

I have never been this busy in my entire life. The whole thing. Never.

I have two full-time jobs:

My mom job involves taking care of 3 children 4 and under. I get them up in the morning; I make all their meals (except I switched to store-bought baby food for Ethan. Best. Decision. Ever.); I am in charge of all their bathroom needs and I have to monitor the cleanliness of their underwear/diapers; I make sure they get enough naps, that they are engaged and active while awake, that they are learning and growing; I make sure they maintain a good balance between socialization and quiet time; I help them learn how to do chores; I clean all their clothes and wash all their dishes (except the dinner dishes); I pick up toys, dust, vacuum, sweep, mop, and scrub toilets; I plan all their meals and buy all the food they eat, while making sure they eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; I keep them clean and groomed by washing faces, brushing teeth, giving baths, brushing hair, and keeping track of endless hair bows; I am in charge of making sure they are safe by watching them as much as possible to make sure they don't run into the street, get into a stranger's car, eat dishwasher soap, touch the hot stove, sit on each other's faces, etc; etc.

My school job involves reading, reading, and more reading; researching things like how to get college students to increase their condom usage or whether or not educating expectant fathers on breastfeeding techniques will increase exclusive breastfeeding rates at 3 months postpartum; writing 1 or 2 8- to 10-page papers per week; going on "field trips" like going to a rehab facility for prostitutes, visiting an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, or going to a grocery store in a low socioeconomic part of town to research food disparities; watching lectures; making power points; more reading; completing about 5,000 self-study modules put out by the CDC about things like intimate partner violence and arsenic poisoning; watching about 8,000 documentaries on the health-wealth gradient; and more reading.

Now, do them together. Oh yeah, and my baby forgot how to sleep through the night. So, I do all this while sleep deprived.

Also, about 2 weeks ago, my kids were exposed to the neighbor girl who was later diagnosed with RSV. It looked like this for about a week in my house:

Except with more crying and whining, plus a sick baby.