Us and Things

Ward campout

2011-11-19T13:43:00.001-07:00

In August, we geared up for our second ever family ward campout. If you don't remember, our first attempt at the ward campout was an unmitigated disaster which made it on to my top-10-worst-night's-sleep list.

This time, we pulled out the big guns- we borrowed our neighbor's 8-man tent and brought the port-a-crib. I think it paid off. My kids slept all night. The ward children? Not so much.

Have I told you about how our ward has over 100 kids in it? At any given second, at least one of those kids was crying. All. Night. Long.

I would hear someone crying, wake up thinking it was Ethan, remember that he was sleeping 2 inches from my head and that he would be much louder if indeed he was crying, and then try to fall back asleep.

Repeat 500 times.

Also my kids woke up at 5, hence the only pictures I have are of the sunrise. We were the only ones awake and out of our tent.

It does give me hope that if we went with just our family, or maybe one other family, we could manage a pretty decent night. Maybe.

Mt. Lemmon is usually about 10-15 degrees cooler than Tucson proper, which is really nice on normal mid-year days when it's 100 degrees in the city. However, we went when there was a heat wave and it was 112 in the city, thus 100 on the mountain. We had planned to hang around and do some hiking, but hiking with our kids is bad enough, there was no way we were going to attempt it with the triple digit heat.

What kind of rash spreads from the groin?

2011-11-13T20:15:00.001-07:00

I worked 3 in a row one week in September. When that happens, I don't see the kids at all for 72 hours. When I came home on day 2, Tyler told me that Ethan had a little rash in his groin folds. He described it as mottled and flat. I guessed it was probably heat or diaper rash (it's still hot here in September, remember?), and to just tell Holley to try to keep him really dry. By the end of day 3, Tyler called me and told me the rash had spread. Spread where? Um, his whole body.

I couldn't get a really good picture of it because he was all squirmy, but the first picture is his back, and this is his belly. It was all over his trunk and arms and legs, up onto his occiput and ears but not his face, hands, or feet. It wasn't in his mouth/lips or eyes. It was splotchy and slightly raised, but it didn't seem to bother him at all; he didn't cry if you touched it and wasn't really extra crabby, just normal crabby. He didn't seem to be scratching and he didn't have a fever.

I knew it wasn't measles, rubella, impetigo, scarlet fever, or chicken pox. It probably wasn't dermatitis because we didn't change anything soap-wise. He hadn't been stung by a bee or eaten anything out of the ordinary, plus he wasn't having any itching or swelling, so I didn't think it was an allergy.

I decided to take him to the doctor to see what they thought. Because we go to the pediatrics center at the UofAMC, we have to be seen by a resident before we get to see the attending. I was lucky enough to get a first-year. (Side note, I'm always amazed at how little the first-year residents know, what they heck do they teach you in medical school? Also, they are very awkward talking to patients and asking the nurses for things. Don't they practice that? Along the same lines, I'm amazed at how "smart" they become by the time they are fourth-years.) I went through the whole thing about how I didn't think it was A, B, C or X, Y, or Z, but I wanted to come in mostly because it was Friday, and I didn't want it to turn into something crazy over the weekend and have us end up in the ED.

The resident mostly just agreed and said he had no idea what it was. He brought the attending in, and she was a little smoother in saying that sometimes kids get "little viruses" that manifest like this, but it would be difficult to tell exactly which virus he had. She predicted that it would spontaneously clear in 48 hours.

And it did. It went as fast as it came.

Crazy, huh?

De-Lurk Day! Hello? Guys?

2011-11-11T15:22:00.001-07:00

I have had this feeling for about a year now. A feeling that I am no longer funny or interesting. This may be a by-product or the cause of my lack of regular blogging. I think it's sort of a self-perpetuating cycle. Sure, my kids are cute, but there are lots of Mormon Mommy bloggers who have cuter kids, fancier cameras and hours to spend in post-production and coming up with witty captions. And their kids all have big hair bows. I can't compete with that.

Anyway, I get the feeling that many of the people who used to read my blog have abandoned ship... hopefully to be replaced with new readers who just don't like commenting. Right, guys?

Hello?

So, it's time for a new De-Lurk Day!

If you read and never comment, today is day to de-lurk yourself. Even if you're fairly sure that I know that you're a reader, comment anyway, it makes me feel good about myself.

Sonora Desert Museum

2011-11-10T14:27:00.001-07:00

Tyler's parents came to visit for a week some time in September, I think. During which time, we finally got a proper visit to the Sonora Desert Museum. We have tried to go on multiple occasions but were foiled every time.

The Desert Museum isn't really a museum, it's like 30% museum, 70% zoo, but with only animals from the Sonoran Desert in it.

Tucson has a lot of bats. I love bats.

I think it has a lot of fossils too. Here's the little area where you can discover a dinosaur.

This picture is sideways because I was holding the camera at a funny angle. Isn't she precious?

Somehow this was the only animal picture I managed to take. It's a mountain lion. I think I had my camera out because I was hoping that the mountain lion would pounce on the squirrel that wandered into the pen. He didn't. He just watched and watched.

Also at the Desert Museum, you can learn all about the 5,000 different snakes and insects that live here, like the kissing beetle that likes to eat the soft, thin skin on your face and mouth while you sleep. Welcome to Arizona.

When we first moved here, I was pretty sure that the environment was doing everything in it's power to kill me. From scorpions to kissing beetles and jumping cholla, I knew I would be dead in 5 minutes if I ever got lost out there. Now that I've learned a few of her secrets, I think I would last at least 45.

Thanks for visiting Mark and Darlene. We'll see you at Thanksgiving.

Biblical Birth Order

2011-11-09T08:05:00.002-07:00

One of my patients at work started talking to me about birth order and the Bible. I'm not sure why... as far as I can remember, she told me that she was from California, and I asked what part, and she said that she was from Ojai, which is sort of near Santa Barbara, which is where I went to school for 2 years. She said her daughter still lived there and that she home schooled her kids. I said I could never home school, not because I don't want to, but because I'm fairly sure that Lillian and I would just fight and that she benefits from the peer pressure of all the other kids. So she started in on birth order and personality traits according to the Bible.

Apparently, the oldest child is supposed to be very controlling and bossy. I don't want to point any fingers, but my oldest sister's job title is Controller. Just saying. It's not that Lillian is bossy, she just refuses to be bossed. She is the boss of herself, and that is final.

The second child is supposed to be very eager to please and sweet. This fits Nora perfectly. She is naughty sometimes, but mostly I just want to squeeze her until her head pops off because she is so cute and sweet.

For these first two, she kept coming back to the example of Jacob and Esau. Which, I'm confused about... was Esau controlling? Was Jacob sweet? At face value, I would say that Esau was greedy and that Jacob was tricky. But, she was so sure of herself, she might as well have said, "The second child is always sweet, like Jacob. QED."

Moving on. The third child is supposed to be "happy-go-lucky." Anyone who has met Ethan knows that this description is the exact opposite of him. He is not happy or go-lucky. He mostly cries a lot. I keep reminding myself that he probably won't cry forever, but some days... Our conversation got cut short by my Ascom phone beeping, so I didn't get the chance to hear the Biblical evidence for that one. Any ideas?

Ostrich Farm, Part 2

2011-11-08T09:55:00.002-07:00

As promised, the monster truck. OK, I'm a few days late... see what happened was I was planning on writing Sunday's, Monday's and Tuesday's posts on Sunday, because I worked Monday and Tuesday. But, actually I worked Sunday and Monday, and so I didn't get a chance. I was about to promise to post extra, but we'll see.

There were goats. Oh my, were there goats. These were the kind with creepy-looking rectangular irises. But the kids wanted to stay and feed them all day long, which I think would have been fine by the goats.

We need to get one of these for the backyard.

All right, enough with the goats already. They also had lorikeets. Admit it, you didn't see that one coming.

They gave you little cups of something they called nectar to feed them. The lorikeets are not shy or very nice, and they get very mad if you try to pet them.

If you come visit us, we'll totally take you.

Ostrich Farm!

2011-11-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

Last month, Tyler decided we needed to go to the ostrich farm. It's about 45 minutes away from our house right next to Picacho Peak. I've driven past it maybe 20 times thinking it would be fun, but I never felt like driving that far. Then, a family in our ward went and posted pictures on Facebook, and just like that, Tyler decided it was high time we went out there.

They have many different kinds of animals at the Rooster Cogburn ostrich farm, and you can feed all of them. You start out with these nice deer.

By the way, Ethan has no fear. He climbs up the ladder on the big kid slides, the loopy-twisty kind that Lillian isn't even all that keen on, and goes down face first making all the other moms at the park nervous.

Then you have mini donkeys. This isn't the first encounter I've had with mini donkeys. Somehow, I'm really fuzzy on the details, my Chinese friend Patrick's parents, who now live in Hong Kong, lived for a short time in the unspecified past in San Luis Obispo, where I went to school and met Patrick. During their time there, they somehow befriended a couple who own a mini donkey farm out in the sticks by Templeton, not really all that close to SLO. They became good enough friends that this couple hosted a BBQ in their honor every time they visited the states.

Being friends with Patrick, I had the privilege of being invited to a few of these occasions, which always left me puzzled and not able to get a straight answer of how this relationship was formed.

But the mini donkeys were always great. These ones were greedy and nipped at the kids fingers.

Again, Ethan didn't care.

And then come the ostriches.

I was not brave enough to feed the ostriches out of my hand. There were signs all around warning that they bite. For chickens like me, they had little tubes that went through the fence.

For those brave enough, the ostriches can get over that fence, no problem.

They also have monster truck tours of the desert. I'm only posting half our pictures today as a) I have a lot and b) I'm afraid I'm going to run out of things to write about before NaPoBloMo is over. The point is that I didn't get a picture of the outside of the monster truck until right before we left, so you'll see it tomorrow.

The tour was fun and informative. I now know more about ostriches than I ever wanted plus, I learned that barrel cactuses tilt SSE.

Yes, this picture is in the running for the worst shot of my family. But you get to go ostrich fishing on the monster truck tour, which was fun.

Basically, they stick quartered grapefruit on a nail on a rope on a pole, and you tease the ostriches with it.

Then they get it and swallow it whole. You can watch the lump move all the way down their throat. Check out that ostrich's neck on the right there. The kids thought it was great, until Nora dropped her pole. That was devastating.

48 Roses Dance Party

2011-11-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

Untitled from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

These 29 seconds reveal many things about my life:

Ethan loves dancing. If he hears music anywhere, he'll get up and bob up and down.
Tyler is bizarrely in love with this song 48 Roses by a band called Mariachi el Bronx. I heard a news story on NPR about them, and I'm probably botching the details, but they were/are a punk band called The Bronx (I think). Somehow they had to appear at an "unplugged" event and they thought it was lame, so they dressed up like a mariachi band and did their music mariachi style. They liked it so much, that they got way into it and created an alter-ego band. Now that I've listened to the song 3 or 50 times, I like it too.
Notice how he stops dancing mid-way and starts crying. He makes that noise all. day. long.
Also notice how he comes over to maul me. He must be touching me at all times. Sometimes, I can distract him and sneak away for a few minutes, but, if I walk back into his line of sight, it's all over. I'm not sure why he's so crabby. I'm hoping that his new-found walking skills will increase his autonomy and decrease his need to have his face plastered to mine.

Update Time

2011-11-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'm working my way back with the pictures. I'm not sure why we took these ones, but they are pretty cute, so I'll put them in with a general update.

Amanda: I'm working full time, which means three 12-hour shifts per week. I leave the house no later than 6:18 and I come home sometime around 8:15-8:30. At first, I had a really hard time making my brain work for such a long stretch. Once, as I was reporting off to the oncoming nurse, I was telling her about the last pain medication I gave. "I gave it at 18:30 and it's every 4 hours so he can have it again at.... .... .... uh... can you do the math for me on that one?"

Its getting better and my mind isn't so sloshy by the end of the day, but that doesn't mean that I know what I'm doing or am confident at my job at all. I'm still afraid of my boss; I'm afraid that she's going to find out that I'm totally just winging it and probably screwing it all up.

The floor I work on is a surgical specialty floor- women's health (which is a lot of gynecologic oncology (cervical cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, etc.), urology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transurethral_resection_of_the_prostate">TURPs, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, urosepsis, etc.), and ear-nose-and-throat (throat cancer, tongue cancer, esophageal cancer). "Wow," you're saying, "that's a lot of cancer patients." I know, right? Who knew that's what "surgical specialty" actually meant.

We do get a lot of "medicine overflow" which means the whatever patients who come in through the ED. I've had several http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIWA">CIWA patients, a guy who had a chronic wound in his scrotum that I swear you could have put a golf ball up inside of it, there was a lady who didn't know there was a sawed-off shotgun in the back seat of her car and it went off and shot her in the buttocks, and the lady who was pregnant and diabetic and decided to fast for Ramadan which put her into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DKA">DKA.

After working there for 5 months, all I can say is that it's my new mission in life never to get cervical cancer and as soon as my girls are old enough, they are totally getting the HPV vaccine.

Tyler: Tyler still has a job although they've changed his responsibilities around. Apparently, he gets to use power tools now, or maybe he's just by the power tools, so he's spent the last several days watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-hz1GpFpXA">safety videos.

Ethan: Ethan has been able to walk for several weeks now, but had chosen to continue crawling. In case you're keeping track, he turned one in July. Then, on Tuesday, he decided it was the day to make the switch. He's about 50/50 now which is a big improvement from the 99/1 that he was on Monday. He only has 4 teeth and is still super crabby. The doctor asked me at his last check-up how many words he said. "Uh.... zero?" He just grunts. He makes a distinct grunting noise whenever he sees a dog, so I'm going to go ahead and count that. A mother at the park said that her pediatrician counts signs, in which case we can add bananas and grapes.

Nora: I'm just going to go ahead and say that Nora is the cutest little kid I've ever seen. She's generally happy and bounces when she walks. Her little giggle and her chunky baby legs just make me want to eat her. She sings little songs to herself and like cuddling. Her current favorite movie is Jumble Book.

Lillian: Lillian is really learning a lot in kindergarten. She's one of those kids who will perform for other adults, but will do nothing for me, so it's sort of amazing what her teacher can get her to learn- which is pretty much what I've been trying to teach her for 2 years to no avail. Her report card showed pretty good marks in everything except "Uses Time Wisely," in which category she got the lowest grade possible. Yeah, that sounds like her. She lives life at her own pace and refuses to be rushed.

She is getting to be pretty funny, though. The other day, I was planting a new flowering vine in our backyard. It is going to have little purple iris-looking flowers. "This plant is silly mom. Why did you want one with purple flowers?" (Also, she questions everything. "Why did you want this bread?" "Why did you do your hair like that? "Why did you say it was time to go to bed?")

"Because I thought the purple flowers would look pretty."

"Yeah... pretty silly."

The only other question you have is, "what do you do with your kids when you're at work?" I know this because everyone asks me this question. A lady I know from church who has kids approximately my kids' ages takes Nora and Ethan all day. Then a different neighbor picks Lillian up with her school-aged children and hangs on to her until Tyler gets home. It's kind of a lot of juggling, but we make it work.

Halloween with the Flynn-Fletcher Family

2011-11-02T11:37:00.001-07:00

There's 104 days of summer vacation

and school comes along just to end it.

So the annual problem for our generation is finding a good way to spend it.

Our costumes are only funny if you have a child 4 years old or above. Because if you do, you've probably watched your fair share of Phineas and Ferb. I'm not going to lie, I love that show. I think it's hilarious and allllmost as funny as The Simpsons.Certainly it's my favorite of the kid's shows and whenever the kids ask to watch TV, I try to talk it up, or force it on them. "Sorry, Strawberry Shortcake is broken, only Phineas and Ferb works."

Lillian actually made the costume assignments some time in August. She is Ferb because she's taller, Nora is Phineas, Ethan is Perry the Platapus (we were trying to track down a fedora for him so that he could be Agent P, but it was a FAIL), I am Candace, and Tyler is Jeremy. The picture doesn't really show my hair, but I spent more time than I'm willing to admit trying to get it to come up in a point.

After the ward trunk-or-treat, where we took the above pictures, we went to an adult Halloween party without the kids. Because we had lost our accessories, no one knew what we were and quite a few people assumed we weren't even wearing costumes. I'd like to think that Tyler wouldn't wear white tube socks with shorts like that or that I wouldn't wear a pillowcase turned into a skirt, but you never know.

I had to work on actual Halloween, so I didn't get to go out with the kids, but from the fact that they can't stop talking about how amazing it is that you can knock on someone's door and they will give you candy, I think they had fun.

NaBloPoMo 2.0

2011-11-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

I feel like this sometimes.

I wrote a post about jury duty, but it vanished as soon as I hit "Publish." I'll give you the gist in 4 points.

1. I successfully put off jury duty for 6 months.

2. I finally did have to go.

3. I did not get selected.

4. It was very boring.

I wrote this post because I want to (attempt to) do NaBloPoMo this year. I make no guarantees that I'll succeed, or that I won't cheat and write multiple posts on one day and then have them appear on consecutive days. But, seriously, I have been depriving the internet of about 6 month's worth of pictures and I've got to fix that.

What's one or twenty tattoos, he's still my son.

2011-10-26T11:47:00.001-07:00

I keep replaying two work moments over and over in my head.

1. I was caring for an elderly woman who had a wound that needed daily dressing changes. The dressing changes were a little complex and she told me that her daughter was doing them. "That's nice," I thought. Later, I walked in and there was a younger woman in there wearing a tube top and daisy dukes. Her hair was ratted up about 6 inches and she had multiple facial piercings. I immediately thought that if this was her daughter, there was no way she was stable (or capable) enough to do these dressing changes and that I was going to have to set up home health to come and do it. In talking with them, I came to see that she was actually very involved in her mother's care and performed the dressing change with a practiced and caring hand.

2. I got report that I was going to get a new patient from the OR. He was a 20 year old male with his jaw wired shut after getting it broken in a fight. He came up by himself and he was what I imagine your typical gangster from South Tucson would look like- old English tattoos, tattoos of naked women, tattoos of guns, miscellaneous scars, etc. He was polite to me and said thank you when I showed him how to suction his mouth and how to order smoothies from the cafeteria. Pretty soon his visitors started showing up. For the next few hours, there was a steady stream of hermanos, tias, sobrinitos, primos, y dos abuelas. The unit clerk asked me if he was really sick and that's why everyone was coming to see him, and I said no, he'd be going home tomorrow.

Prior to getting this job, I was inclined to think that having strong family ties was a good way to make sure that my kids didn't end up wearing tube tops and getting facial piercings, or getting tattoos of naked women on their back (oh I forgot he also had multiple tattoos of kisses on his face). I guess not. And if they do, it doesn't mean that I should love them any less.

Clinadmycin

2011-10-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

"I'll give you the pills because the elixir is really disgusting."Nora has had a boil on the back of her leg for a while. She didn't mind it so much, so I was just kind of waiting for it to go away. She started complaining that it hurt, and Tyler thought it was getting bigger, so we went in today. After popping it like a huge, disgusting zit, the doctor recommended some antibiotics as, he felt, it was probably a staph infection. Being that I am a healthcare worker, he thought maybe it was MRSA. He recommended clindamycin. He was confident that I could just open the pills and mix them in with some pudding or something.I filled the prescription, brought them home, opened it up and mixed it into some applesauce."Come here, Nora..."Bite. [unintelligible screaming]First, anger. "Get back over here and eat these two bites!"Then, logic. "honey, if you don't eat this, you might get more sores."Then, bribery. "I'll give you a chocolate chip for every bite you take."Last, example. "Look, I'll take a bite to show you it's not so [unintelligible screaming]"Oh. My. Stars. It was like chewing 5 aspirin at once. Even after I've had dinner, I can still taste it.

Sneak attack

2011-09-12T11:32:00.001-07:00

When Tyler and I were first married, I discovered that he and I had different concepts of the passage of time. It became a problem mostly after I had Lillian. For example, if I knew that Tyler got out of class at 3, we lived 10 minutes away, I would expect him at about 3:20 or 3:30. Early in the morning, I programmed my patience to last until 3:30. Then, he would often call at 3:45 to tell me he would be 15 more minutes and I would freak out at him. I'm fairly sure he thought I was crazy, and I was, because I had used up all my sanity. I explained to him several times before it stuck that if he would have called me at 2 and told me he was going to be late, I could have reallocated my resources, and then I wouldn't be crazy when he came home.

Now we have the reverse problem: Two Fridays ago, I ended up having to stay a little late because I messed up something right at the end of the day. I called when I finally left, around 9:00, to tell Tyler I was on my way. Oh ho ho, I got a talking to. I'm supposed to be HOME by 9, blah blah blah. The kids go to bed at 7 or 7:30, so I'm not sure why he was so upset, but I felt really bad about it the whole ride home. As I pulled up, I was marshaling my arguments/apologies. I knew that our friend Elizabeth was driving down from Flagstaff and was possibly there already, which would have called for a change in strategy, so I was mentally preparing for that as well.

I walked in the front door, and there were like 10 bags there. "How long are you staying, Liz?" I asked as I walked around the corner, my eyes still on the bags. As I turned my head forward, I saw not Liz, but Myriah, who lives in Chicago. I was so surprised, I dropped everything I was holding and screamed quietly, because the kids were sleeping.

Elizabeth set it all up and was so sneaky. We had a great weekend which involved me breaking into the dog park (seen above) and other adventures.

Maybe I'll post more pictures if I have time, which seems unlikely. Sorry.

Done, maybe.

2011-08-07T13:50:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, I turned in my last undergraduate assignment, and you can bet I'm going to be putting BSN after my signature. After I hit the "Done" button for the last time, I started mentally reviewing the year. Here are some things people have said to me over the past year:

"How do you do it?!" Really, I feel like I didn't have a choice. Of course I wanted to finish my degree one day, but when Tyler almost lost his job and I was pouring my heart and soul into finding one and no one would hire me, I felt like I had no other option but to go back and finish. Specifically how I did it was to sneak off and do homework every spare minute I had; I did homework pretty much every night after my kids went to bed from 8 'till 10; and every Wednesday, I did homework for 5 hours while my neighbor had my kids, then I took his kids for the next 5 hours. Also, and this one took a while to get used to, I said no a lot. I'm sorry, I can't go up to DI to volunteer, I've got a paper due. I'd love to be able to come to the service project, but I've got homework. Going to the zoo/pool/children's museum/your house/movies/etc sounds like so much fun, but I've got to do research.
"My husband would never let me do something like that, how did you talk Tyler into it?" I'm sorry, what? The first time a woman said this to me, my jaw about hit the floor. Then another woman asked, and then a third. This is very bizarre to me. How did I "talk" Tyler into it? I said, "I applied and got accepted, and I start in July." Maybe they don't really mean it like it sounds. Here's an example of how things work at my house: Tyler plays on various city-league sports teams (without my "permission"). Last Spring, he played soccer on Wednesday nights... after he had Scouts. So he would work all day, come home to eat really fast, go to Scouts, then go play soccer. On one of those long days, I called a friend to save my sanity. She asked why I allowed Tyler to do this if it was so hard for me. Uhhh, because he loves it? Because he's happier in the long run when he exercises? Because then when I tell him that I'm going back to school full time, he has no problem with it?
"You look like you do it all, I'm jealous." I had a lot of help. First, I have really great kids. I was on the fence about Ethan for a while, what with the lack of sleeping and the general colickyness that hung around him for like 9 months, but he's turning out OK. Lillian and Nora are really good helpers, not terribly destructive, good at entertaining themselves, and very forgiving when I let them loose in the backyard while I write papers. Second, Tyler never complained. When we had grilled cheese sandwiches multiple times in one week, he didn't say anything. When the floors got sticky or the laundry piled up, he would quietly get out the mop. Sometimes, he would get a little mopey when I worked night after night on the computer instead of spending time with him, and when he found out how much this whole affair actually cost (as opposed to my beginning estimates), he got a little miffed. But that was it. I also had many friends who invited my kids over for playdates, like the afore mentioned John, the kid swapper. I probably couldn't have done it without him.
"It sounds like a lot of work, was it worth it?" I now have a full-time job at a magnet hospital, something I've wanted for 7 years. I agonize about leaving my kids to go to work and it breaks my heart when I have to peel a crying Nora off my leg as she is screaming, "MOM DON'T GO!" But now the time we do spend together is so much sweeter. I now know I'm made of much stronger stuff than I previously thought, I'm more organized, I love my kids and husband more, we're more financially stable, and better prepared for the future. Yes, it was harder than anything I've ever done, but it was very worth it.
"Woo Hoo! Now you're done forever!" Um... I may have decided to become a family nurse practitioner. Check back in 3 years to see if I actually do it.

Lost and not found

2011-07-25T17:13:00.002-07:00

Tyler in the Sahuarita Sun

For one of my classes, I have to make a portfolio of my accomplishments. They want me to include any degrees, certifications, and professional qualifications in addition to any awards, professional thank you notes, scholarships, and grants. I kept all of these things in one box- a purple shirt box. It had my high school diploma; all my scholarship awards and dean's list notifications; my high school swimming, thespian, and physics awards; notes from nursing professors; notable papers I've written that I was especially proud of; etc. I've looked for this box on and off for the last 2 years to no avail. I wasn't ready to accept that it was lost.

On Sunday, I made a systematic effort to find this box and I have to conclude, after 2 hours of looking, that it was lost in the move. I was surprisingly sad about this, given my complete lack of sentimentality. I think it's the whole assignment part of it- I have to prove that I have a life besides my kids, and I can no longer do it. As far as durable accomplishments go, having 3 adorable kids is not bad, but, you know.

Two things that DID turn up in the search: 1. My goggles. 2. The above newspaper clipping of Tyler playing softball. As you can see, the throw was late and he didn't make the play, but that doesn't mean he's not good at softball.

Picture, not pitcher

2011-07-15T20:23:00.003-07:00

I'm writing my Personal and Professional Philosophy, which goes under the heading of "Assignments That I Think Are Useless." Maybe they are useful for people who aren't Mormon or religious at all. But, I've been thinking about my Personal and Professional Philosophy in one form or another my entire life. Which makes this thing pretty easy to knock out... except when I outsmart myself.

Here's one of the prompts: "I believe that my personal and professional philosophies are congruent (not congruent) because..."

Did you mentally translate that 'not' to 'as opposed to' and then spend 2 minutes trying to figure out the difference between 'congruent' and 'congruent'? After concluding that they were spelled the same, did you spend a few seconds trying to think of homonyms for congruent? Did you look it up in the dictionary to see if there were words around it that were spelled almost the same but with wildly different meanings to make sure that you wrote about the congruence the professor was looking for? Like maybe, she misspelled the homonym and accidentally just wrote the same word twice. Then, did you read the sentence 4 or 5 more times before you figured out that you needed to put the emphasis on the 'not' instead of the 'congruent' for it to make sense?

I believe that my personal and professional philosophies are congruent (not CONGRUENT)...

I believe that my personal and professional philosophies are congruent (NOT congruent)...

No? You got it the first time? Yeah. Me too.

Baby Man

2011-07-10T12:31:00.002-07:00

Happy birthday Baby Man.

Now that you're one, am I going to have to stop calling you Baby Man?

Crafty Us

2011-07-10T10:46:00.002-07:00

My Mom was a kindergarten teacher for a looooong time. She switched to 5th grade shortly before she retired because, as she said, "I can only tie so many shoes, do up so many flies, and deal with Annica gluing her paper to the desk SO MANY TIMES, before..." I'm pretty sure I know what would have happened if she had to deal with Annica one more time, because I feel that way almost every day around 4:45, so I didn't ask her to elaborate.

Anyway, I've been making out like a bandit with all my Mom's kindergarten bric-a-brac. Like this little ironing board.

She apologized for it not having a cover or an iron, items sacrificed to the kindergarten gods. I wasn't worried, because when our powers combine--

Ta Da! I made the cover in about 4 minutes from a scrap of fabric and some elastic. Tyler worked a little harder on the iron, but not much. I'm guessing it took 30 minutes.

He even put little steam holes on the bottom.

Rooourul

2011-07-07T18:50:00.004-07:00

My nephew Jack riding in Challis, ID

Tyler and I have disagreed for a long time on how to pronounce the word rural. This question came to a head just now when I read a post from my sister about visiting her in-laws in Idaho. Challis, Idaho- a rural town.

I wish I could record us saying it so you could get a good picture of what exactly is going on, but I'll do my best to replicate it.

Tyler says either "roo-rul" or "rur-al," depending on how he's feeling at the time. (Another word pronunciation he changes depending on the context- route). As for me, I can't quite figure out what's going on in my mouth. Something like "ruh-(r)ul."

I looked it up in the dictionary, and they said that it should be "roouh-ruhl." I can't even make my mouth say that. I wish I was a better writer so that I could explain the look on Tyler's face as he watched me attempt to say it properly. Go ahead. Try it. You'll see what I mean.

How do you say it? Bridget, I'm looking in your direction.

Affordable Care Act

2011-06-29T16:57:00.003-07:00

I'm doing a project on the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. The more I read and learn about it, the more baffled I am at the white-hot hatred that the Act inspires.

I get that there were many back-room deals made in getting it passed, especially after Obama said that he was not a back-room deal kind of guy... so he lied about that, or well, maybe he was a little idealistic in thinking that this sort of thing could be done without cutting deals.

Yeah, that's irritating. And that whole Nebraska thing is annoying. But that's not enough to cause this burning fury that people have.

When I first looked at the reforms, I thought that most of them were really good ideas. But people were so hopping mad about it, I thought maybe that I was missing something. Or, maybe there was loophole or extra measure buried in the 2,000 pages that I didn't know about. Now that I'm doing this project, however, I kind of think that I'm more educated about this than the average person, and I still think the reforms are pretty good.

Is it an ideological thing? Like, it's not the purpose of government to meddle in healthcare? Did they think that the private insurance companies really were doing a spectacular job and the government is going to screw up a good thing?

I get that the United States has the best facilities and healthcare options available, and we got that way by having a free market, but we continue to rank in the 30's and 40's for all healthcare markers. What good are all those state-of-the-art MRI machines if they are not making us healthier? Why is President Obama such a villain for trying to fix a system that is obviously broken? I don't get it.

Things that are impossible to explain

2011-06-27T07:39:00.002-07:00

Lillian, like any 4-almost-5-year old asks a lot of questions. Most of them I can answer fairly easily. For example, Tyler just left for 4 days to Houston (as in "Houston, we have a problem"). Well, he'll only be in Houston for 3 days, but he's leaving from work this afternoon, so it might as well be 4. Anyway, Lillian was very concerned about where he'll be sleeping as Houston is too far away to come home every night. Except, she calls it Fuse-ton. "Are there enough hotels in Fuse-ton for Daddy to sleep in?"

"Yes, honey. There are plenty of hotels for Daddy."

See, easy. But, sometimes, she asks things that I know the answer to, but I can't come up with a way to explain it in 4-almost-5-year old speak. Like, "Why can those bugs walk on the water?"

Well, you see, there's something called surface tension... and um... molecules... and they're... polarized...?

Other things she's asked- Why can you blow out candles? Why does the sun go down at night? Why do plants need sunlight? Why do we need to breathe? And, the other day she asked Tyler why you lean when you go around corners in the car.

I can tell she's not satisfied with the answer "because the sun needs to go to bed, just like you," but she doesn't even understand the concept of a map, how the heck is she going to understand the idea of the Earth?

Scrubs, right...

2011-06-24T17:23:00.004-07:00

Have I told you how freaked out I am to start my new job? Have I even told you that I got a job?

No? Sorry, I've been busy what with school and getting a job and all.

I've wanted to work at The Hospital for some time. Of course, I applied to all the hospitals, including The Hospital, to no avail. I ran into a girl I kind of knew who worked at The Hospital, and she, knowing of my fruitless job search, offered to put in a good word for me with her manager.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, I start July 18th.

I've had to have various meetings with sundry HR people and Security personnel. At one of these meetings, I was made aware of yet another meeting I would have to attend prior to my start date. "But you don't have to wear business clothes, you can just wear your scrubs."

"Scrubs... yeah. Good."

See, I don't own any scrubs, except nursing school ones. I'm supposed to be a nurse, and I don't even own any scrubs. I think this is highly symbolic of my total ambivalence towards working.

Now, I could have just gone to a uniform store and purchased some, but what's the ~~procrastination factor~~ fun in that?

I went to the Wal-Marts to purchase fabric, where I requested uno y tres cuartos of each.

One set down, two to go.

Tyler, He Like Sandwiches

2011-06-19T12:56:00.002-07:00

To celebrate Tyler on this Father's Day, I interviewed Nora to find out more about him. I think her answers might have been a little biased by the fact that he had just made her a sandwich.

Untitled from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Baby or kid

2011-06-10T14:15:00.002-07:00

Lillian often asks me when Ethan is going to grow up and be a kid.

I think it's happening faster than we expected.

Did you...

2011-06-09T06:46:00.001-07:00

"Nora, Did you eat the paint?"

"No Mom. It spilled into my mouth."

"I promise."

Bathtime 3.0

2011-06-02T16:19:00.001-07:00

CPR Win

2011-05-24T07:40:00.002-07:00

Sometimes I think about the people in the Bible or not that have had dreams as visions, and I think "That's not me." Here's one from last night.

Tyler and I were trying to fit a couch in the back of our 4Runner. We were buying it off Craigslist and picking it up at the park. Somehow, we decided I needed to sit in the back and hold on to the couch so it didn't fall out of the open hatch. We tied the hatch down so it was open about half-way, and my feet stuck out the bottom. It's only a few blocks away, and this is Arizona, right? No one actually cares about seat belts, right?

No sooner did we pull out on to the main street, than a motorcycle cop came up behind us and started flashing his lights. I craned my neck to yell at Tyler to stop the car, but I saw that he was driving from the back seat and couldn't stop the car. (Driving from the back seat is a surprisingly common theme in my dreams. This shows up at least once a month, maybe more.)

More and more police men showed up and I started yelling at Tyler to climb into the front seat and stop the car. He finally did, and he pulled off the main road onto a rural street and stopped. Surprisingly, all the police cars just kept on going.

We decided to ditch the car as we were fugitives now, and walk the rest of the way home. We walked down a street that looked remarkably like See Canyon in San Luis Obispo, and as we passed a barn that looked like this:

I saw a lady in a big truck parked out front yelling for help. I ran up there and saw that her son was sprawled across the back seat in V-fib (not sure how I knew that without a monitor, but I just KNEW). I started CPR, even remembering that they changed it to CBA instead of ABC, and totally saved his life.

His parents were so grateful, they bought me a $23,000 Cadillac, which I gave to the neighbor girl Grace to pay for her college.

The end.

Any hidden messages?

Easter

2011-05-22T08:29:00.002-07:00

I'm not touching that.

Seriously, this is as close as I'm getting to that guy.

Hidden Message

2011-05-08T20:39:00.001-07:00

See if you can spot the exact moment when Nora was no longer interested in taking pictures.

Oh, I love her

2011-05-06T16:07:00.002-07:00

Let me tell you why my friend Candie is awesome. I read a book called Candyfreak by Steven Almond. I liked the book: I thought Almond was a funny writer (most of the time) and I like candy, so win-win, right? The problem: the book is about candy that is regional or hard to find. The whole time I was reading the book, I wanted to eat all the things he was talking about, but few of them are available for purchase in my little corner of Arizona. GooGoos? Valomilks? The book needed to come with a sampler.

The biggest problem with the book came when Almond visited the Lake Champlain Chocolate company, makers of the above-pictured 5-Star Bars. I wanted these. Needed them. I went to the website and thought about ordering some, but they are $3.50 each for what looked like something slightly larger than a fun-size Snickers. I couldn't justify it. Saddened, I mourned for my unattainable chocolate fantasy and mailed the book to my friend Candie, because she understands.

The thing about me and Candie is, we shouldn't be friends. We met in high school French class. I was a frumpy awkward pseudo-intellectual geek who liked to knit and and had ugly glasses and braces until my senior year, and she was a tall, tastefully-dressed graceful member of the dance team who went to the kind of parties that high school kids go to in the movies that I didn't think really existed in real life (where are the parents?). We didn't hang out at school. Not because we were embarrassed (at least I *think* she wasn't embarrassed of me), we just knew that I wouldn't like her friends and vice versa. After school and on the weekends, I joked about moving in with her, we spent so much time together.

I still talk to people that I knew before her, but for sure Candie is my best oldest friend.

Sitting on my porch the morning, as a present for Mother's Day, was a 5-Star Bar sampler from Lake Champlain Chocolates, thus solidifying her 1st place in the "Awesomest Friend" category.

(The hazelnut was incredibly delicious and the granola was spectacular. I'm going to have to exercise some self-restraint or else the rest of them will be gone within the hour.)

Silly Poem

2011-04-25T07:47:00.003-07:00

I must be starting to lose it. This morning while I was nursing Ethan at 5:30 as I was drifting in and out of sleep, my thoughts started moving to the rhythm of the rocking chair. This was more or less what my half-asleep brain came up with:

Runny noses,

Snotty faces.

Hints of urine waft through

Certain places.

Sticky fingers,

Gummy smiles.

I feel my heart

Stretch out for miles.

Endless cleaning,

PB&J.

At least one person

Crying all day.

The heart is a house

With many rooms.

Look, my children

One for each of you.

To do

2011-04-21T11:59:00.004-07:00

To do before midnight, Sunday:

Create 4-slide presentation on the feasibility of creating a community "victory garden" on the Navajo reservation in partnership with the Indian Diabetic Initiative
Finish editing paper on providing pictorial-based documents to illiterate diabetics in Tucson
Finish making what is essentially a power-point scrapbook of "how I spent my semester in my Public Health Nursing class" (I need approximately 10 more slides)
Write a critical analysis of a mainstream article about Mormonism
Find a mainstream article about Mormonism to write about
Contemplate DEEPLY (I loathe my professor's use of caps, and the word "deeply") the issues surrounding how the Church views and treats its history
Write 200 words about how such views and treatment make it difficult to attract new members (or something).

Also:

Take care of my children
Sweep and mop my floors because they are driving me crazy
Figure out something to cook for the missionaries tomorrow
Go to the store and buy ingredients for said dinner
Make some time on Saturday so Tyler can work in the backyard, because I want this thing to get DONE. I'm SOOOooooOOOOooo sick of the dirt.

Bike Ride Fail

2011-04-18T08:25:00.003-07:00

Lillian on Christmas day, riding her new bike

Lillian likes the idea of riding a bike. She likes to find her shoes and put on her helmet. She proudly rolls her bike down the driveway, and that's mostly where the bonhomie ends. If I actually make her get on her bike, she starts crying. If I coax her to pedal, she starts to scream.

If you ask her what the problem is, she'll tell you any number of things: the wind is blowing too hard, and she's afraid it will blow her over; a car might come and run her over; the garbage truck will come and hit her (this is a surprisingly strong phobia); she'll forget how to break so she can't go very fast; and so forth.

I got tired of the dramatics, so I told her she couldn't ride her bike until she was over it. We waited a few months and on Friday, she begged and begged to go for a ride. We got on shoes and helmet, marched the bike to the end of the driveway. She got on and biked about 3 houses down, then started freaking out. I told her that she just needed to bike down to the for sale sign a few more houses away, and then she could turn around. That done, she got back to her original 3-houses-down-freak-out spot. She got off her bike, crying that she couldn't do it anymore. I told her that she could get back on her bike and take it home, push it home, or we could just leave it there and someone might steal it, but I wasn't going to take it home. Oh the tears. The stamping of the feet. The hysterics.

My neighbor peeked out of his house to see if I was torturing her. She was screaming so much, she wet her pants, which caused more screaming. She cut such a pitiful picture, I took her home and put her in her bed, and I did, in fact, push her bike home.

We tried to give her a "brave necklace" (courtesy my lovely sister-in-law Chantel), and that worked wonders for a while, but it doesn't work for bike riding.

I guess we'll be walking to kindergarten.

How's your backyard?

2011-04-14T07:25:00.003-07:00

This represents about 4 weekends of work. By Tyler. He's nice to have around.

Toy Purge

2011-04-06T08:20:00.002-07:00

Lillian likes to explode her toys; she pulls out the bins and dumps them out in rapid succession. I think this is fairly common, but it drives me absolutely crazy.

On Monday, I told Lillian that I would help her clean up the toy room for 30 minutes, and whatever wasn't picked up, we were going to take to DI. "Oh good, let's take them all," came her reply.

No, really. You will never. see. them. again. "I know mom, let's do it! I'll find a box."

I helped her clean up by walking around and saying things like, "OK, let's find all the cars and put them into the car bin. Oh! I see another one over here!" and when the timer went off, she had only picked up about 2/3 of the toys.

So, I did it. It was kind of an empty threat at the time, but I knew I had to follow through. I got a big box and Lillian was very enthusiastic about putting the toys in. I saved a few prized toys and parts of sets (I rescued a few of Handy Manny's tools and some errant puzzle pieces), but everything else went in the box. I tried to make Lillian feel some sort of loss by pointing out the toys as I put them in, but it didn't work. She didn't care, and as far as I can tell, she hasn't missed them.

I like her not having very many toys as it brings out more of her creativity. In the top picture you can see our well-loved Weeble-Wobble tree house. This has alternatively served as a tree house, cash register, carnival ride, doll house, baby crib, grocery store, and stove.

This picture is what remains of the Wonder Pets mobile that Lillian and the neighbor boy made yesterday. It had a sail made out of a triangle of paper and a pen, but I think Nora destroyed that part. I cut out the sail and gave them the tape, and they constructed it all themselves. They were pretending that the afore mentioned Weeble-Wobbles were the Wonder Pets and came up with all sorts of elaborate rescue scenarios. I tend to think that this sort of creativity is good for their brains, thus making the toy purge win-win by forcing more creativity and resulting is less toys for me to clean up.

I do have a problem, but it's not that bad

2011-04-05T08:56:00.003-07:00

Have I ever told you I have something like obsessive compulsive disorder. I've been diagnosed, but that was by a doctor who spent all of 3 minutes talking to me. So either I have it so bad that it is completely obvious in 3 minutes of conversation, or he got it wrong. I learned in nursing school that to have a diagnosis of OCD, your compulsions need to take up an hour or more per day, and I don't have that, so I'm thinking that he got it wrong, or just, not quite right.

Let me tell you 3 stories that illustrate my problem.

1. It was my junior year of high school. That was a hard year for me; my parents got divorced and my mom and I moved out of my dad's house on the day that I was scheduled to take the SAT II. I was thinking that the ward members coming over to help were mostly going to move family things: couches, pots and pans, lamps. I was frazzled and I got all the way to school and realized that I forgot my ID, which I needed to take the test. I sped back home and saw that one of the ward ladies had started boxing up MY things in MY room, probably thinking she was being helpful because I had been studying and hadn't started packing. I freaked out. Fighting back hot tears, I told her to stop packing and that I would do it. Then, in the car I started sobbing. I called my mom and in a fit of teenaged self-centeredness I asked her how DARE she let someone touch MY stuff. I felt really bad as soon as the words had left my mouth because the day was undoubtedly stressful and incredibly sad for her as well.

2. When I was 19, I went to the doctor for some problem that I don't remember what it was. The doctor, probably in an effort to be friendly (or maybe it had something to do with my problem) was asking me about my personal life. I was going through a kind of rough patch with my then-boyfriend (not Tyler), and was probably reluctant to talk about it. I dealt with my anxiety by picking at a loose string on my jeans. The medical problem was such that I had to come back a few days later, and it was that visit that the doctor told me he had been thinking about our conversation, and that he strongly felt I had OCD and told me I should go on medication. I took the prescription, but never filled it.

3. Last night. It was the first Monday in the new quarter, so it was flip the bed day. I took off the sheets, flipped the bed, and washed the pillows and mattress cover. I got busy with my day and didn't put the bed back together. After dinner, I sat down to do homework, and I could hear Tyler upstairs putting the sheets on the bed. I like him. (Note: We have a duvet on our bed. It's getting hot here, so we took the comforter out of it, and just put the cover on the bed.) When I came up to bed, I saw that the duvet cover was inside out. On the bed. Inside out on the bed. Made. I had a strong desire to take it off and fix it, but Tyler had put it on, and my keen wife senses told me that it would hurt his feelings (and discourage him from helping out in the future) if I re-did it. So I got into bed. I laid awake, knowing that the cover was on wrong. I tried to convince myself that it was silly, but I had a hard time falling asleep. When I made the bed this morning, I took it off and fixed it.

That's the kind of thing that is sort of funny later; Tyler can't figure out why it would bother me, and I can't figure out how it doesn't bother him.

In short, I realize I have a problem, but it's not that bad.

Pencil thing

2011-03-29T07:47:00.003-07:00

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...

2011-03-27T20:34:00.003-07:00

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?

2011-03-19T13:38:00.008-07:00

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

2011-03-02T08:47:00.003-07:00

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.

Sleepless Night

2011-02-08T07:20:00.006-07:00

Last night, while not in the top 5, was for sure in the top 10 worst night's sleep.

9:30 Fell asleep watching a webinar from The Council to Improve Food Outbreak Response.

10:00 Tyler woke me up suggesting I move to the bed, apparently I declined.

11:00 I went upstairs.

11:30 Ethan woke up with a fever and a cough. He coughed so much, he puked on me.

12:15 Ethan cried in his crib until he fell back asleep.

3:00 Both girls had to go to the bathroom; Tyler handled this one.

6:00 Ethan woke up again. I fed him so he would go back to sleep.

7:15 Ethan was up for the day.

To top it all off, Tyler was having so me sort of exothermic reaction going on, so he was about 500˚ next to me (it's not a fever, it happens to him kind of a lot, I think it's how he stays so skinny). I also had a crazy dream where my friend Michelle was on a French cooking show talking about how to make roast duck, but she was acting like Dan Akroyd acting like Julia Child.

I've cut the dickens out of my finger.

Dent and Ding

2011-02-06T09:18:00.006-07:00

I've never been very good at haggling with people over prices. If I think something is priced too high, I usually just don't buy it. My only real experience with haggling came when we were shopping for a house. Obviously we were dealing with a hefty chunk of money and nobody ever pays the full price for a house. After making a few offers, I could feel myself getting more comfortable with my dormant yard sale skills. However, I think yesterday's events will go down in history as one of my best deals ever. I was at The Shop which is a soccer and rugby store in Tucson looking for some soccer socks that didn't require pantyhose-like effort to put on over my shin guards (and no, I've never put on pantyhose before, Amanda simply was offering up her expertise when I was having a hard time putting on my socks). I found the cool ones I was looking for and noticed that they were $18!

Really? For socks? Then I noticed one of the pairs looked suspiciously like they had been used and returned and hastily put back on the rack (they were a little dirty and the package was taped back together). Knowing that these socks would soon be dirtied by me anyway, I didn't really care if they came a little broken in. Instead, I took the opportunity to see if they would take a few bucks off the price. The guys behind the counter were convinced they hadn't been worn before, but that they got dirty like that in the store. Yeah, sure guys. But when they took it out of the package, the manager-like guy said they were filthy, and gave the following discount:

Best discount ever. At least for me. Anyone else have any good stories about getting a good deal?

You better fix this!

2011-01-27T10:50:00.005-07:00

I was pregnant, I went to the hospital, and then I had a baby. I couldn't really remember any of the specifics about the labor and delivery, but I was so tired taking care of this new infant, I didn't really care.

Then months went by. I started asking Tyler questions like, "how long did I push with this one?" and "did they end up giving me Pitocin? I don't remember."

He would always change the subject or bat the question away. I began to be suspicious when I realized I didn't really remember being pregnant; all I could remember was being big, I didn't remember any of the discomfort, pregnancy insomnia, sickness, or fatigue. Did I really go to the hospital? How did I have this full-term baby when Ethan is only 6 months old?

I looked into it further and did some detective work. Turned out, Tyler had a mistress who got pregnant and then died in childbirth. Tyler knew he would be responsible for this child, but was afraid to tell me about the other woman, so he had my memory altered to make me think it was mine.

When I put all the pieces together, I confronted Tyler. I explained how I figured everything out and how it was no use lying to me anymore. I finished my tirade by saying, "Now, you say your sorry to me, then call the bishop RIGHT NOW and FIX THIS so we can make this baby part of our FAMILY!"

Apparently, in my subconscious, fathering a child with another woman and not only lying to me about it, but having my memory altered is still not a deal breaker. Tyler is now wondering what he could have been getting away with this whole time.

The little ones

2011-01-27T09:53:00.004-07:00

As I was procrastinating writing/reading any number of school things, I was looking through old blog posts of Lillian when she was a baby. I posted a lot of pictures of her doing cute things. Eating. Sleeping. Laughing.

Why don't I do that with my other kids?

I should start.

Nora was sad about something. Lillian stole a toy? Got in trouble for trying to climb the bookshelf? Wanted ice cream for lunch? Who knows? To fix it, I told her we'd take her picture. You can see the glistening tear remnants under her eyes.

Ethan sits now. I know, it snuck up on me too. A few days ago, I realized that, as he is sitting now, I should stop waiting for him to chunk up. Sitting is just weeks away from crawling, which means crawling up the stairs and pulling up and burning calories, and it is just a few months away from walking. This is the stage that Lillian and Nora started thinning out.

While I'm sad that he never chunked out, I'll still keep him.

Because he's so cute, sometimes you just want to squeeze him and laugh maniacally.

Fun, More Fun, and Most Fun

2011-01-22T15:50:00.008-07:00

As far as activities we have available for the kids, some are more fun then others. Take for example the sandbox:

Max capacity: probably like 10 kids
Possible injuries: Sand in the face, maybe a sliver
Fun Rating: 6.0

Then we have the bakers rack:

Max Capacity: 1.5 children
Possible Injuries: Kicks to the face, smashed fingers, bonked heads
Fun Rating: 7.2

Finally we have the wagon:

Wagon Ride from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Max Capacity: 3 (although we almost had 4)
Possible injuries: minor smushing, faceplant on the driveway, flattened by passing car
Fun Rating: 9.8

Note: No child was injured in the making of this post.

P is for Projects

2011-01-22T15:16:00.006-07:00

We're big into letters around here, but that's not what this post is about. On rare occasions, I (Tyler) have time to be handy and make stuff. Here's a couple of the recent ones that I wanted to show off:

First we have the train set. Lillian came home from preschool one time with a train set she made out of toilet paper rolls (the cardboard on the inside) and milk carton lids for wheels, all held together with brads, string, and a little glue. Sadly, the train didn't last through the night. After many tears, I told Lillian I'd make her a new train, a BETTER train.

Second, we have the shelves. You many not know this about our brand new house, but we only have one (1) closet that is not in one of the bedrooms: the Harry Potter closet under the stairs. And although large, it was deep and impossible to get to anything in the back. In with the shelves and now we have an extended pantry/food storage/place for the games/camping stuff and we still have room to walk in and out.

Finally we have the spice rack. Amanda apparently had no problem finding spices when she had them scattered willy nilly about the cupboard. It drove me crazy trying to find anything so I built this double decker rack. It may not be perfectly flat, but I think if you check out the video you'll see that it gets the job done quite nicely.

spice rack from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

A Day in the Life

2011-01-19T14:33:00.006-07:00

I gave Lillian the camera. She took about 400 pictures, these are the greatest hits. We did laundry.

And changed the sheets. I wish I could remember what she said that made me laugh so hard.

Ethan woke up and I changed his diaper.

Nora woke up from her nap.

More laundry.

Messing around in the kitchen.

Has Lillian talked your ear off about Toy Story 3 yet? No? Just wait.

The turquoise horse is Bullseye because I'm such a mean mom, I won't buy her a real one.

Oh, hey Ethan.

Skype with Anne. She was at her nerd conference.

I like baby feet.

End

2011-01-17T12:25:00.002-07:00

Thus ends my separation of Church and school.

Run and tell that

2011-01-12T07:58:00.003-07:00

While we were in Fresno, we went to church with my sister-in-law. The man that was teaching Sunday school was... old? He kept saying those odd Mormon lore-type things that have no doctrinal basis, like that the reasons babies can't talk is because they would tell us all about the pre-mortal life. He didn't say that, but it seems like he could have. He did keep saying that there are no coincidences. I don't remember what he was trying to connect, but it was a long rambling string of events. "And I just knew it wasn't a coincidence. There ARE NO coincidences. Believe that." I couldn't help but add a mental "homeboy," it sounded so ridiculous.

I am unaware of any doctrine on coincidences, but I do know about Tender Mercies.

Quick note. I don't usually talk about the serious side of my religion because it makes me really uncomfortable to do so outside of church or my home. It reminds me of what I heard a (gay) comedian say once. He was talking about how some people say things like, 'you know what? I don't care what you do at home, I just don't want to see you being gay in public.' He said he often wants to answer, 'Well, I don't want to see you being straight in public.' This is how I feel about people showing off their religion. I don't care what you do at home, but I don't want you to try and convert me as much as you don't want me to try and convert you. Even though being Mormon is awesome. But, this blog is as much a record for me as it is entertaining for you, and I feel like I want to write this down.

In the tender mercies talk, Elder Bednar comments about the first time he had to speak in General Conference as an Apostle. He was understandably very nervous. Right before he was to speak, there was an intermediate hymn, Redeemer of Israel. He says if he could have picked one hymn out of all the hundreds of hymns, he would have picked that one. He knew that the music selection was made months in advance and he only found out he was speaking 3 days previous but, because this hymn had such special significance for him, he knew that it was meant for him. That it was God's way of letting Elder Bednar know that He was mindful of him at this stressful and huge point in his life.

I had a hard day two days ago, I wrote about it, and then I felt better, a little. Literally seconds after I hit 'Publish Post,' I got an IM from my friend Elizabeth. She lives in Flagstaff, and usually attends the Snowflake Temple.

Her IM said, "Jacqueline and I are going to the Mesa temple on Saturday. If you and Tyler want to do a session, I'd be happy to watch your kids. I know it's short notice but we just decided this morning."

This is huge. This is my equivalent of Redeemer of Israel. Tyler and I haven't been to the temple to do a session since I was pregnant. With Nora. The problem is that the temple is 2.5 hours away, and it takes about that long to do a session, plus the drive back makes it an 8-hour deal. I've had little babies for a long time, and I can't be away from them for 8 hours as Ethan doesn't take a bottle and my body has caught on to the fact that the breast pump is a fake. The only other way to work it is to have someone watch your kids at the temple, but we don't know anyone who lives close to Mesa and/or who doesn't have kids of their own. Elizabeth is doing us a huge favor. There's no way she could have known that I was having a mommy meltdown. She didn't know that this Saturday is our 6th anniversary. She didn't know how badly I need this. I really feel like Heavenly Father knew, and this is His way of telling me that He knows about me and my problems, and that it's all going to work out.

Go upstairs and come back with a different attitude

2011-01-11T09:21:00.002-07:00

I woke up a little off today. Usually, I'm really patient with the kids until about 4 or 5 (which is good because Tyler comes home at 5 or 5:30), but Lillian started right up I'm coooooooooooold!! I'm huuuuuuuunnnnngry. I don't waaaaaaant oatmeal. Nora hiiiiiiiiit me. and I couldn't handle it. I was snapping at her left and right and threatening to spank her bottom if she didn't quit whining. Usually the I'm-going-to-spank-your-bottom threat doesn't come out unless things get really bad.

I took a step back and said to myself in my best mom voice, "you need to go upstairs and come back down with a better attitude." So, I did. I shut myself in the bathroom (while Nora very helpfully slid some magazines and small toys under the door, in case I got bored), sat on the edge of the tub, said a little prayer, and thought for a minute.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm stuck in the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles as the Steve Martin character, and my kids are collectively the John Candy character. In the movie, Steve Martin is trying to get home for Thanksgiving, but things keep happening, some natural (there's a blizzard and his plane is re-routed) and some (most) are caused by the John Candy character: he spills beer on the bed, he gets them into a car accident, he lights the car on fire, etc. This is my life.

I was trying to make dinner yesterday while talking to my friend Myriah, and during our short conversation (I called her because Tyler was running late and I was starting to go crazy), there were like 10 different disasters: Nora and Lillian were fighting over the slinky and then stretched it out, which caused a separate melt down all it's own, Nora had to go to the bathroom 3 or 4 times, then she needed her jacket off RIGHT THEN, then it was WHY, OH WHY DID YOU TAKE MY JACKET OFF, I HATE YOU, then Ethan was crying and Lillian was saying, "MOM THE BABY IS CRYING" over and over again, plus there was the "Mom, mom, mom, I'm hungry. Mom, I don't want to eat that. Mom, I'm huuuuuuungry. Mom, I haaaaaate broccoli soup."

At the end of the movie, Steve Martin and John Candy are good friends and can laugh about it all, which is how I felt last night watching Nora do her little dance to the "L says llllll, L says llllll" song that the alphabet toy plays. It was so cute, my heart about exploded.

But the underlying frustration is still there. I'm frustrated that I can't get anything done. And by anything, I don't mean like... I can't volunteer for Doctors Without Borders or Literacy Volunteers of Tucson, both things I really want to do, but realized a long time ago it wasn't my season of life. I'm talking about the fact that I tried for 3 hours yesterday to mop my floor, something that should only take 45 minutes at the most, and it still didn't get done. Plus, Lillian dumped two pocket's full of sand out right after I had finished sweeping.

I know, I know. It will get easier, but for today, it is hard. And, I need a better attitude.

2010 Book Round-Up

2011-01-03T17:37:00.003-07:00

When Tyler and I were in the car together for 10 million hours a few weeks ago, we discussed a lot of things, including, but not limited to, our favorite memories/accomplishments of the last year. I thought back and couldn't really come up with anything. "What the heck did I do last year?"

I was pregnancy sick for the first 3 months, then in labor for the next 3 months, then I went back to school and had an infant for the next 6 months. So... the answer is, I didn't do a whole lot besides vomit, sleep, breastfeed, and write papers. I did manage to read a bit, and so I present my 2nd Annual Book Round-Up.

Noah’s Compass, Anne Tyler (Book Club). I want the 10 or so hours of my life back that it took to read this book.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Laurie R. King. Recommended by Kylie. The funny thing is, I don't know Kylie; she's a friend of my friend Myriah. But, I think we'd be friends in real life if we ever lived by each other. We don't, so I blog stalk her, and read the books she likes on Goodreads. This book is fun and interesting and stressful, but not too stressful. A good book to read during my mom job.

When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead. Recommended by Miss Nemesis. I liked this book a lot, and I can't wait until Lillian is a little older, then I can read it to her and talk about time travel and the theory of relativity.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Rhoda Janzen. Recommended by Big Mama. Big Mama really loved this book and I thought it was boring and lame. This was just a small example of why Big Mama and I have gone our separate ways this last year.

Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout. I read this for my old people book club, and I'm not quite sure why it won the Pulitzer.

The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman. Recommended by Adrianne and Shannon. If you asked me out of the blue if I liked fantasy novels, I would say no way. Ever. I'm firmly against fairies and dragons and men with long hair and too many consonants in their name (with the notable exception of Ioan Gruffudd). But, I liked this book a lot.

The Help, Kathryn Stockett. I resisted this book for a long time because I thought it would be like one of those email forwards from your grandma with the kittens wearing sweaters. Not that either of my grandmas send me those kinds of forwards, but the type of grandmas who would seemed like the type that liked this book. It wasn't that type of book. It was a sort of To Kill a Mockingbird sort of book, but only about 75% as good.

True Confections, Katharine Weber. Goodreads recommendation. Just OK.

North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell. Like Bridget said, "it's like Pride & Prejudice, but with a social conscience." I liked it, but I thought it suffered from the soap-opera-like quality that serial stories get, as if they start making up random plot shifts and enter long dialogues on things like 19th century union problems in Northern England just to make the story last longer. I liked the movie much, much more.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows. I read this last year, and then again this year for book club. Still good the second time around.

La’s Orchestra Saves the World, Alexander McCall Smith. This was a quick read that I read literally in one sitting while I was being held hostage at the hospital as the doctors were trying to decide whether or not to stop my "labor" (I was only 5 month's pregnant). They didn't stop it, and I went right on being in "labor" for the next 4 months.

The Eight, Katherine Neville. Again for book club. I'll never forgive this book for the scene at the end when the male protagonist has a major head wound and instead of taking care of that, he instead chooses to be intimate with the female protagonist on the deck of their boat. Then she's got his blood all over her and it was gross. Head wounds bleed a lot, he could have died. Plus they were on a boat, didn't all that salt spray sting?

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, Alan Bradley. Another Flavia deLuce mystery. I don't think I liked it as much as the first, but it was a good time, nonetheless.

The Underneath, Kathi Appelt. I read this book more towards the beginning of the year, and I've mostly forgotten what it was about. I think it has a dog and a cat in it. Two cats? Oh yeah, and their owner is really mean...? I think I liked it at the time but felt it was a little slow.

Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn. Recommended by Miranda. Another quick read.

Non-Fiction

The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs. I laugh every time I think of the most polite stoning in the world.

Diaper-Free Before 3: The Healthier Way to Toilet Train and Help Your Child Out of Diapers Sooner, Jill M. Lekovic, M.D. I don't know if this book helped or not because it seemed like it pretty much advocated doing the same things that I did with Lillian (who, as you may recall, was not fully out of diapers until she was 3.5), and Nora was diaper-free before 2. I think it's because I have all tile and I was more willing to just let her go.

The Kindness of Strangers, Don George (Editor). Vivian sent me this book in a chain-mail-type book exchange. It took me a long time to read because I lost it (it was behind the couch). It's a collection of short stories about the kindness of strangers to people who are traveling. It reaffirmed my faith in humanity a little bit.

How to Sew a Button, Erin Bried. Or, "how to do things that you should have listened to you mom when she said, 'one day, you're going to want to know how to do this.'"

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, Julie Powell. Skip the book, the movie is much better. The real Julie has a potty mouth and tells her friends to cheat on their husbands.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Mary Roach. A long time ago, I was in high school and working part time at the ice cream shop. I spent this income mostly on food and books. (Ah, to be so young and carefree again!) I was browsing Borders and I came across a book that caught my eye. It was called Stiff and it was about cadavers. I bought it and loved it. I've read pretty much everything by Mary Roach ever since. I've actually read this one before, but I've been looking for this fact about wood sprites that I read once and have been trying to relocate for quite some time. It wasn't in this book.

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Recommended by Amy. I was really surprised that I liked this book so much, especially because I pretty much thought A Midwife's Tale was the most boring book I've ever read in my life.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach. I like Mary Roach, OK?

Eureka Man: The Life and Legacy of Archimedes, Alan W. Hirshfeld. Archimedes was one smart man.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void*, Mary Roach. This one isn't quite finished. We got it as an audio book to listen to on our trip. Until right this second, I thought they had Mary Roach herself reading it, and I was going to say that her voice got kind of annoying after a while, so I could only listen to it for so long. But, I looked on YouTube for a video of her talking to prove my point, but she actually has a very normal voice, so I'm not sure why they chose the voice talent that they did. Interesting, but not my favorite book of hers.

NPR Books

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, Randy O. Frost & Gail Steketee. Before I switched to nursing, I studied psychology at UCSB. I decided to swtich because the kinds of things I wanted to do required a lot of schooling. I picked nursing because it combines some of my favorite aspects of psychology (science, physiology, biology) with interpersonal interactions and it (theoretically) only took 3 years to finish. Eight years of school later, I may as well have just stuck with psychology. Then I'd be doing fascinating work like Randy O. Frost and have super interesting stories to tell at parties.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot. I was thinking of this book the whole time they were drawing up the cord blood after I had Ethan. They didn't ask if they could have it and they never told me what they were planning on doing with it. The thing is, they don't need to: if you go to the hospital to have something removed be it tumor, limb, or placenta, they have to ask your permission to take it out, but after it leaves your body, it NO LONGER BELONGS TO YOU. They could be using my cord blood to make two-headed babies for all I know.

The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall. Recommended by Slate Magazine. This was such a beast of a book, I'm very surprised that I liked it so much.

Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist’s Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions, Susan R. Barry. Another psychology book. Susan R. Barry was born with a lazy eye which was fixed cosmetically with surgery, but because her eyes weren't exactly lined up, she only saw in 2 dimensions. This book is about how she taught herself how to see in 3D.

School

Sunset Western Garden Book. I even took a whole class on gardening, and I still killed my garden.

Professional Nursing: Challenges & Concepts, Chitty & Black

Health Promotion in Nursing, Maville & Huerta

Evidence-Based Practice for Nurses, Nola Schmidt

Technical Communication, Mike Markel. This was the first class I took that Tyler actually helped me a lot. Turns out, I wasn't very good at writing technical documents.

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. I feel like I read this thing front to back, and yet I still made APA errors on my term paper.

And I believed her!

2010-12-27T15:23:00.003-07:00

Some of this post might be considered an overshare, so don't read if you are sensitive to that sort of thing. Also, I realize that this will automatically repost on Tyler's Facebook page so Note: this is Amanda typing.

I've asked my mom, mother of 7, why she had so many children. At different times in my life, I've received different answers. One time, she said, "I just couldn't turn it off. Every time I turned around, I was pregnant again." I think I was a teenager, or maybe in my early 20's because I answered, "you know mom, they have things that you can do to take care of that problem."

And now, here I am, 3 kids in 4 years later because I just couldn't turn it off. Something had to be done, so I decided to get an IUD. My doctor, whom I know and love, told me that her office no longer stocks Mirena because they cost $800 and they were losing too much money on them. So, if I wanted one, I would have to buy it myself, have it shipped to her office, and they would put it in. She made it seem like no big deal. I called Blue Cross to see if such a thing were possible, and the lady on the phone actually said, "Oh Yeah! That's FINE. Just go online and fill out forms X, Y, and Z and send in a copy of such and such paper and we'll send you a check." I was apprehensive because it seemed all too easy, but she was so confident that this would be no problem; she knew which papers to fill out, what to photo copy, she used sentences like, "ask your provider for a copy of the superbill." Surely this woman knew which way was up.

I called CVS/Caremark and ordered the thing, had it sent to the office, they put it in. I filled out form X, Y, and Z, made the appropriate photo copies, and sent it all in. I waited. And waited. Meanwhile, CVS/Caremark was deducting $35 a month from my account and would continue doing so until I paid them $800. I received a notice from Blue Cross stating that my claim was denied. Excuse me?

I called and an hour on the phone later, got it all sorted out. Did I mention that this was in September?

Since then, I've received notices, placed phone calls, and made more copies. I called again today to get a status update.

"My records show that we sent you a check for $326 on November blah-bi-di-blah."

"Yeah, I never got that. Did you send it to blee-bi-di-bloo?"

"Yes. Well, because it was never cashed, I'll just put on a stop payment and send you a new check."

"Great. What about the other 400-some-odd dollars?"

"I'm sorry?"

"The device (this is what you have to call it when you call in, so you know) cost me $800."

"Well, Blue Cross only allows 500-blah-blah dollars, your deductible was met so we'll pay 80%, leaving you to pay 200-blee-bloo dollars."

"Um... what?"

"[Starts to explain allowances]"

"No, no. I get that. What you're saying is that I'm stuck with paying not $200, but actually almost $500."

"Um.... Right... well [starts in on some lame explanation about pharmacy benefits vs durable hardware benefits]."

"[Enter a rant about how I CALLED and MADE SURE that this would work and the woman said it would be NO PROBLEM and now I'm stuck paying what may as well be the full price for something that IS COVERED and HOW IRRITATED I am and that I HATE Blue Cross.]"

"[Clearly flustered] I'm sorry ma'am. That does sound irritating. You're more than welcome to appeal."

"YOU AND I BOTH KNOW THAT WON'T WORK! I'll get a nicely worded letter about how I am ultimately responsible for knowing my coverage and that I have a copy of the plan, and that they have no record of me ever even calling in, and that it says in article B section 13 that I shouldn't base my insurance coverage decisions on what the insurance-coverage specialists say."

...silence...

"Is there anything else I can help you with?"

I apologized to the woman on the phone because she didn't do this to me. I probably will send out an appeal, but really, it probably won't work.

On one end of the customer service spectrum is Costco. I once took back some Cuties because they tasted a little funny, and they gave me cash back, no questions asked. In the middle is Target, where they require a receipt, a picture of you buying the item, and your first-born child before they'll give you cash back. And then way way down at the other end of the spectrum is the insurance company, who doesn't even give money to people who deserve it who are dying. Why would they give me my money back?

Phew.

2010-12-25T17:36:00.001-07:00

From Here to Claire from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Eight days, two states, lots and lots of juice boxes.

This shouldn't be that hard

2010-12-14T15:56:00.003-07:00

I was making cupcakes for Nora's birthday (holy crap, she's two). I wanted to halve my cake recipe because I only wanted 12 cupcakes. First item: 3/4 cup butter. I remembered the visual up on Mr. Malloy's wall in AP Calculus that some student had drawn of the denominator of the fraction smashing through the bigger division line and multiplying itself by the divisor. Make sense? No? In this case, the 4 of the 3/4ths would grow arms and smash through the line drawn below it to find the 2 waiting. It would be so happy that they would hug and multiply in a completely plutonic sense to make 3/8ths. (If the two was a fraction, it's own denominator would feel stilted by the numerator's newfound love that it would grow wings and fly up to the three on top of the whole problem, and it's life would have meaning again. Why no, I didn't pursue a career in math, why do you ask?)

Luckily for me, the butter stick is divided into eight tablespoons (eighths!), so I went to go cut 3 tablespoons off. I looked again and thought that 3 tablespoons looked a little small. I looked at my math again. Sure enough, 3/8ths is the answer, so 3 tablespoons.

I could not figure out where I had gone wrong. I puzzled about it for a while, then decided to come at the problem from a different angle: 3/4 cup butter is 12 tablespoons, so to halve it, I wanted 6.

I called my mom to see what had failed in my calculations. We decided that my math was sound but that I had forgotten that a stick of butter (the eight tablespoons in question) is only a half a cup.

And now, I feel dumb.

My Thankamony*

2010-12-13T07:47:00.003-07:00

*Only funny if you're Mormon.

Yesterday, I did Sharing Time in Primary (like Sunday School for kids 3-11). We have over 100 kids in our Primary, so it's a little bit crazy. Actually, a lot crazy.

My lesson was about the gifts that Jesus Christ gives us. To introduce the topic I said, "Christmas is about giving......" then waited for the kids to raise their hands and answer "presents." But, a kid in the front row yelled out, "THANKS!"

"Um... I was going for presents, but you can say thanks too."

After it was all over, and my sanity returned, I started thinking about giving thanks, and I have a lot to be thankful for (this list is by no means inclusive):

My family. This includes ALL of my ever expanding clan. It starts out with my husband who is more awesome than I can say; includes my children who are healthy as horses, funny, cute, loving, and say besos instead of 'kisses' (Ethan can be included even though he's on my crap list for not sleeping because he is freakin' adorable); stretches out to my mom who, pending her feeling better, is going to watch my girls for 4 days while Tyler and I go to a wedding, and is always there to commiserate and offer good advice; and my brothers and sisters whom I wish wish wish I lived closer to. I think a lot about my family I've never met, my great-grandparents and think about how they had to have been good people, because they passed down their awesomeness to their kids, who passed it to their kids, who passed it to me, and I am free to pass it on to my kids. Thanks guys.
I'm thankful for my husband's job that pays for our house and food. I'm thankful that I get to stay home with my kids, even though they drive me crazy sometimes, I wouldn't want it any other way.
I'm thankful for the community I live in. We've got great neighbors and as most of us transplants, we're all bent on taking care of each other. Plus, when I see things like this:

It makes me really glad I suffered through the 5 months of heat to get 80˚ Decembers.
I'm thankful for the neighbor girl who comes over and holds my baby so I can do the dishes and start dinner. She can talk your ears off, and sometimes shows up a little too much, but those 20-minute breaks she gives me are invaluable. Plus, yesterday she showed up with a big bag of brand-new, tags-still-on clothes from the Childrens' Place, in exactly Lillian's size that she says her mom bought last year for her cousin and forgot to mail.
I'm thankful that I get to work with the kids at church. It does get crazy, but I love those little guys.

My kids are freaking out, so that will have to be it for now. But I'm also thankful for food, especially this. So. Good.

The Purloined Sandwich

2010-12-10T08:16:00.002-07:00

On Wednesday, we had a picnic at the park; I packed peanut butter & honey sandwiches for the girls. Lillian ate everything besides her sandwich, so I took it home and stuck it in the fridge.

Then yesterday, Nora told me she was hungry. I went to the fridge and took out the leftover sandwich. Who could foresee this would happen?

The Purloined Sandwich from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

But they're extinct!

2010-12-04T08:34:00.002-07:00

Tyler sometimes gets irritated because I can't watch movies that are too scary and/or stressful or else I'll get nightmares. Sometimes, I get them anyway. Here's a rundown of the dreams I had last night:

1. Nora and I were held hostage in a men's bathroom by a man with a shotgun who had shot the other man in the bathroom with us and he was bleeding out and I was frantically trying to stop his bleeding, but he only spoke Spanish. "Mas despacio, por favor" was all I could remember how to say.

2. Tyler and I were spies or something in South America with our next-door neighbor Vic (who speaks Spanish) and we had to cross this busy 8-lane highway to get to the traveling circus on the other side. Instead of walking down to the corner, Tyler decided to just run across really fast, "It's what they do here," he said. He got hit right before he made it to the other side and I screamed "TYLER ARE YOU DEAD!?" over and over again. He wasn't and we stumbled into the circus where we were looking for this very attractive blonde woman. We saw her and she saw us, and she started to run. She ran into the nearby fortune teller tent and while we were arguing with her about how she had to come with us, a short-faced bear (pictured above) showed up and was trying to get in our tent to eat us. "BUT THEY'RE EXTINCT!" I yelled. "TELL THAT TO HIM!" Tyler yelled back. Then the baby woke me up.

3. I was in high school, and we were assigned a battle to reenact. I was assigned the Battle of Azízes, which a quick googling tells me is not a real thing. (There was a thing called the The Bloody Assizes wish is similar, no?) In the fictitious Battle of Azízes, a woman was captured as was going to be forced to marry her captor. She threw a rock at him when he dragged her before the phony priest. The prince was hiding in the shadows and was impressed with her spunk and killed the evil captor, rescued the fair maiden and they lived happily ever after (which, now that I think about it, is not really a battle). I recruited two of my friends for the project and I was to play the maiden fair. When we were rehearsing, we were going to use swords, but my friends decided it would be fun to use guns, like in Romeo & Juliet, the movie. One accidentally shot the other, and it turned into all-out gang warfare, and everyone had a gun but me. "Why didn't I bring my gun?" I thought. And right when I was getting shot at for starting this whole thing, I woke up.

When I told him about my dreams last night, he said, "So, can we watch stressful movies if you're going to get nightmares anyway?"

Future Picasso

2010-12-01T18:33:00.003-07:00

On the right is Lillian's classmate's mittens, representing more or less how the craft was supposed to go. On the left is what Lillian made. Yeah.

Turkey Trot

2010-11-30T13:03:00.004-07:00

On Thanksgiving, we participated in the 17th annual Thanksgiving 5K at Reid Park.

Tyler's game face. That kid in the elf outfit actually placed 5th or 6th out of all the men. Quick little guys, those elves.

It was promoted as a "European-style" 5K with obstacles, which is why we decided to do it. But this water feature/hay bale combo is 3 hay bales short of the sum total of all the obstacles. Tyler is behind that guy in the white shirt.

Hey Elizabeth. Sure, come visit us for Thanksgiving. While you're here, surprise! You can wake up at 6 to watch our kids while we go running. And it will probably be something like 40˚ outside, so bring a jacket.

The girls were such pansies when it came to jumping these pools. I'm in the middle looking decidedly uncool. They were all of 3 cm deep but everyone wanted to run around them, so there was a traffic jam on both laps. Come on ladies, live a little.

Tyler got 29:00 and I got 37:17. I would have been faster except I got a wicked cramp around mile 2 and had to walk it off.

Sweater Re-Fashion

2010-11-29T12:25:00.002-07:00

I like how I look surprised that I'm taking my own picture. "Who would take my picture while I'm still in my pajamas with bed head?"

I've had this sweater for a long time, and it's cool, but a little frumpy and big.

So, in honor of not being in school, I decided to get crazy with the sewing machine.

And this is the result. Still couldn't be bothered to clean off the counters for the picture, though.

I shortened the length and made a ruffle with what I cut off. I also took in the sides. I originally was going to be brave and fix the weird shoulders, but that would have meant taking off the sleeves, which, when it came down to it, I was not prepared to do.

Take That People

2010-11-18T15:03:00.001-07:00

Take That People from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

We reenacted Samson pulling down the house with the Philistines inside like 5,000 times.

Candy Bomber

2010-11-14T12:27:00.002-07:00

The number of living legends I've met has gone from zero to one.

Gail Halverson is in my ward and he's the coolest nonagenarian I've ever met. He came and talked to our primary and told the story of how he became the original candy bomber.

I missed the beginning part, so I'm not sure what he was doing by the fence, but he was standing outside the fence that separated East and West Germany during the Berlin airlift after WWII. Whenever he was in uniform walking around in the States, kids would mob him asking for chocolate, so he was really impressed that the group of kids who had gathered on the other side of the fence were just looking at him. He felt prompted by the Holy Ghost to give these kids the two sticks of gum he had in his pocket. He quickly dismissed the notion as he felt it would cause a riot and he didn't want any of the kids to get hurt. The feeling persisted, so he broke the two sicks in half and passed them through the fence.

There was no riot. Instead the kids distributed the gum and then passed the wrapper around to the kids who didn't get any so they could smell it. This made Brother Halverson want to help them even more, because they weren't greedy like American kids. He worked out with the kids that he would come and drop chocolate in a few days and they would know it was him because he would wiggle his wings on approach. He convinced some of his buddies to give up their chocolate rations and he tied handkerchiefs onto the chocolate bars because, as he said, "getting hit in the head with a Hershey bar going 110 miles per hour would make the wrong impression."

He did this for a while in secret (the kids nicknamed him Onkel Wackelflügel (Uncle Wigglywings)) until a German newspaper picked up the story. He thought he was going to be in trouble because his commanding officer looked upset when he called Brother Halverson into the office. He didn't get in trouble, quite the opposite, the project was expanded into Operation Little Vittles.

I hope I can be that cool when I'm 90.

Babies

2010-11-09T06:50:00.003-07:00

I think about babies a lot. I have a lot of babies. We just watched the movie Babies. Most all of my friends have had a baby at least within the past 5 years. Rachel (her baby is coming up on 2) was telling me about the The Business of Being Born, and I started thinking about how my babies were born. Ethan woke up at 5, and I laid awake for a long time after he went back to sleep trying to decide why I choose to have my babies the way I did (all 3 in the hospital with epidurals, 2 with pitocin). It would seem from my everyday track record that I would be first in line to have a natural birth: granola, cloth diapers, clothes line, tofu, compost pile, the works.

I decided it was because my pregnancies were so awful, I just wanted the baby out as quickly and as painlessly as possible. If I had to give birth tomorrow, I think I would be in my right mind enough that I would do it naturally. But, after 5 months of vomiting plus 4 more of [prodromal] labor while being gigantic and exhausted and everyone commenting that I must be due any day now, I am just done.

I kept thinking about this day on the beach. I was 8.9 months pregnant with Lillian. It was July and hot, so we went to Avila. I was laying on my side on a blanket reading Ethan Frome of all things when Tyler said, "Amanda, fix your suit, you're falling out."

"I don't care."

"I care! Everyone can see your boobs."

"I. Don't. Care."

And I didn't. Some freak sandstorm could have come and ripped my whole suit off and I would have lain there naked until I finished my book and was ready to leave.

I also had two thoughts about my doctors:

1. I'm really glad that they let me try to push Nora out instead of making me have an emergency c-section. Nora was facing the wrong way, and the doctor grabbed her head and turned her while I was pushing. My L&D nurse of a sister-in-law says that at her hospital, they usually make those women have c-sections as a matter of course.

2. I wish that I was more with it when I was having Ethan and I could have asked the doctor whether or not I really needed the Pitocin or if she just wanted the baby to be born so she could go home. I don't think that she would have done that, and every one of the 5,000 people who checked me as I was in triage said the baby was positioned funny, I just wish I would have asked.

How?

2010-11-03T08:50:00.002-07:00

"What? How did I get up here? Um, well, I was washing my hands..."

Not our usual fare

2010-11-02T07:05:00.003-07:00

I'm taking a class called The Art of Nursing. Putting aside how I feel about it, I had an assignment to create my tapestry of influence, seen above. I had to choose the virtues, and then decide who helped me develop that virtue.

I'm supposed to let these people know that they contributed to my development, but some of them I have no idea how to get in touch with, one of them is not a person, and another one, I don't know personally. So, I thought I'd go with public ~~embarrassment~~ acknowledgment.

Feel free to stop reading at any time if you think it's too sappy or long.

Caring: Amy Sanchez. Amy is my sister. She is the oldest of us 7 kids, and she is an amazing lady. She's 10 years older than me, and was more like a super cool aunt than a sister. When I was in my tween years, she had already moved out, but lived close by. Every Saturday morning, she'd pick me up and we'd hang out. We'd go to Target or to the swap meet. She gave me helpful hints on how to move away from childish things toward more grown-up things. Practical hints like how often to shave your legs, what deodorants smell the best, and that you should use the time that it takes to fill up with gas to throw away all the trash in the car; to more nuanced things like how to handle falling outs. It's been 20 years since all that, and she's continued to care for me and everybody she meets.

Resilience: Austin Calder. Austin is my older brother. We are great friends now, but when I was growing up... not so much. He teased me mercilessly. M e r c i l e s s l y. It's all water under the bridge now, so I won't go too much in to it, but it made me stronger and more able to handle the vicissitudes of life.

Enthusiasm: Allison Plummer. Allison is my older sister (I promise I'm not related to the entire square). Allison is 8 years older than me, and much like Amy, she took me under her wing and hung out with me a lot. Allison taught me how to have a zest for life. Here's one memory of hundreds: she had a Simon and Garfunkel tape in her car and we'd dance and sing along to Keep the Customer Satisfied as loudly as possible. The memory brings about a feeling of pure joy and happiness, that I have to smile when I think about it.

Focus: McConnell's Creamery. I worked there in high school, and on week nights, there was just one employee. It was the first time that there wasn't really an "I'll do it later" option. I had to work until all the people got their ice cream, cash drawer put away, ice cream put away, fruit prepped for the next day, marble clean, dishes washed, and the floors swept.

Courage: Scott Callister. Bishop Callister was my bishop once. He knows what he did for me, and I just want to let him know that I'm very grateful and I think about his wise words all the time.

Humor: John Gruver. John was one of my best friends in jr. high and high school. We met on a class trip to Washington D.C. and we got to laughing so hard in the Air and Space Museum that I had tears rolling down my face and I couldn't breathe. He's a funny guy, and he made high school a lot more enjoyable.

Creativity: Myriah Cohen. I love Myriah. If you are in have any influence over hiring at an ad agency in Chicago, you should hire her. She's creative and funny and once, she put gummy bears in brownies. Just so you know, they make little lava-hot pockets of tongue-burning sugar.

Awareness: Dr. Bishop. Dr. Bishop was my high school photography teacher. His introductory speech was about how you have to look around to see things in order to take their picture, i.e. you have to walk with your head up. I was a freshman and in my extreme awkward phase, and after that class as I was walking to my next one, I realized that I did look down at the ground a lot when I walked. After that, I made an effort to keep my head up and look around at the world. I've seen a lot of great things, because I was looking.

Honesty: Charles Pearson. Bishop Pearson was our bishop right after we were married. He also said some wise words to me once that I've never forgotten. Thank you Bishop.

Dependability: Tyler Ball. Tyler is my husband, and he's fantastic. Dependability is one of his many many great qualities, and it's probably the thing that moved him from 'dating material' to 'marriage material.' If he says he'll do it, he will. Before we met, I was probably average dependable, if I said I'd do it, I probably would have, eventually. This went double for school assignments. If I thought the assignment was particularly lame, I'd procrastinate, do a lame job, and then talk my way into a decent grade. Also, I hardly ever went to class. Boring. I became a much, much better student after we got married.

Curiosity: Vivian Thomas. Vivian was my first roommate when I went away to school. I had a suburban childhood and knew very little of the great outdoors. Vivian is from a rural town outside of Fresno and knew tons of ways to have fun outside. We went exploring on the bluffs in Elwood Beach, up mountains, and down into caves. I've loved being outside ever since.

Accountability: Tauscha Johansen. I cleaned Tauscha's house when we were desperately poor college students. Once, I overheard her talking to her daughter, who was a teenager at the time. I guess her daughter was supposed to have cleaned her room, but didn't, and Tauscha, without any anger in her voice, said, "you didn't clean your room as per our agreement, so now you cannot go out." I really liked how she didn't yell and how it was more matter-of-fact, like a business relationship. I suppose this has influenced my parenting more than my professional life (which is pretty non-existent), but being a parent is so much of who I am, I wanted to include it.

Confidence: Barbara Arczynski. Mrs. Arczynski was my sophomore Honors World History teacher. At the end of the year, she handed out pencils for different things like highest grade, best attendance, and the like. At the end, she announced she had a special award for someone who she just knew would do something great with her life, and then she called my name. This came as quite a shock to me as I felt I was possibly just slightly better than average. After this point, I was more confident that I was fantastic, and I've thought about Mrs. Arczynski many times over the years to make sure I wasn't letting her down.

Empathy: Steven Levitt. I've never met Mr. Levitt. He is an economist and co-authored the book Freakonomics. This book was published in 2005 and the chapter on baby names made a big impression on me. My father is a staunch Republican and I can remember him railing against affirmative action, asking why, oh why, should his children suffer and get their spots taken in colleges and jobs when he's worked hard and raised them right and those spot taker's parents are all... well, not exemplary in their parenting skills. (he had a few more choice words to say on the subject). The chapter on baby names talks about how the name one is given can have a big impact on one's prospects in life. It got me thinking about how life is so much more complicated than whether or not you were read to in utero.

Reason: Claire Ashby. Claire is Vivian's sister, and I lived with her after I lived with Vivian. She has the same curiosity and love of the outdoors as Vivian, as well as a love of learning and reasoning (which I'm sure Vivian has as well, I just remember it more in Claire). I loved living with those guys and wish I could see them more often.

Generosity: Marti Shelley. Marti is my mom. If it weren't against the spirit of the assignment, I would have put her name in every single box. She is an amazing lady and I hope I can be like her when I grow up.

Body part scavenger hunt

2010-10-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Where's Your....? from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Healthy Competition

2010-10-18T07:00:00.002-07:00

So, I don't know if it's good for our marriage or not, but Tyler and I love a good competition. Not competitions of skill or strength, because we all know I am a sore loser, but competitions at appointments. Previous places we have competed include the blood bank (until Tyler vowed he'd never go again, and before they sent me a letter asking me never to come back. Ever.), and the dentist. At the blood bank, they record your start and finish time, and we'd try to see who could fill their bag faster. Healthy? Probably not.

At the dentist, it's always a good time to see who has cavities or gets yelled at by the dentist for not flossing.

This week, we entered a new event: dermatology. Tyler has gone to the dermatologist a number of times to get various things looked at and/or removed, but I never felt the need to get my many freckles/moles looked at because they were all brown and boring and round.

I have one mole that's um, in a sort of sensitive area; an area that I couldn't see when I was pregnant. I've had it since I was very little, and in my memory it was brown. Now that I'm not pregnant, I can see that it has turned purple. Bizarre, right? So I made appointments for us to go to the dermatologist.

I totally feel like I won because she looked me up and down, said we'll "watch" the mole, pronounced the odd brown spots that showed up during my various pregnancies to be barnacles (which "normally show up in middle age" (lame)) and sent me on my way. Tyler had one mole removed and a number of warts burned off both his knees. I totally feel like I won.

Because, it's better when you win it.

Murder Mystery Party

2010-10-17T21:47:00.002-07:00

Tyler was a vampire and I was a zombie. I totally guessed the murderer.

Happy Halloween

Transcend that!

2010-10-06T13:42:00.000-07:00

Amanda Ball: "This connectedness transcends physicality as both Judy, Larry, and his mother experience a unity that is beyond death and space-time"

Amanda Ball: why am I paying to read this?

Tyler Ball: sounds like a star trek episode

Tyler Ball: next they'll be sucked through a black hole and have to relive it all over again

Tyler Ball: transcend that!

I am not dead

2010-09-28T06:51:00.003-07:00

My mother-in-law emailed me yesterday to find out if I had fallen off the face of the Earth. Also, I skyped Allison yesterday, and she was surprised at what Ethan looked like. I guess I haven't taken any pictures of him.

So, no. I'm still here. Turns out, having 3 kids under 5 and going to school full-time is a lot of work.

Here's a quick rundown:

Tyler plays softball in a city league and is having fun playing with all his new woodworking toys.

Lillian is an excellent big sister and is constantly begging me to let her help. She's learning to write and is really solid on L, H, and A.

Nora is 80% potty trained. She can stay completely dry with a bare bottom, mostly dry with panties and not at all dry while she's sleeping or if someone is not right there to take her. That's right, SHE can tell ME when she needs to go. I like that Lillian sometimes says, "when I was a baby, I had to learn how to use the potty." In my head I answer, "honey, I tried when you were a baby, but you didn't want to do it until 6 months ago."

Ethan is still a crabby baby. He sleeps ok at night, but horribly during the day, which is draining for everyone. He's good sized- the 3-6 months clothes are getting a little snug (he's 2.5 months old), but then again, we only know how to make really fat babies. Aaaaand... he's crying.

Two malapropisms for you:

2010-09-08T13:01:00.006-07:00

malapropism: an act or habit of misusing words ridiculously, esp by the confusion of words that are similar in sound.

one

On Saturday, I went to a baptism. For those not familiar with Mormon baptisms (or Mormon meetings in general) we love programs, the physical piece of xeroxed paper. For most every meeting, there are programs printed up, even if they just say who is saying the opening and closing prayers. At the baptism (where I had my program in hand), we sang the opening song, someone offered an opening prayer, and then the man conducting got up an announced, "We have an altercation on our program..."

That would have been awesome.

two

For school, I have to participate in an online discussion board every week with a certain number of required posts. These posts have to be "substantive" in nature, which means, pretty much, we're all just trying to sound smart to make them longer. Earlier this week, I made the point that it is appalling to me that the medicaid system doesn't have a program in place to track expenses or recognize fraud. Ashton (gender unknown) replied, "Amanda, I must conquer; Medicaid is inefficient."

Again, I want to be there when that goes down.

Composting

2010-09-04T15:54:00.004-07:00

A few people have asked me about composting, so I thought I'd enlighten the world about how we compost, Ball style.

First you get a tub like this:

Then you drill lots of holes in it. The holes are about the size of my pinkie, maybe a little smaller. Make them in all the sides, the top, and the bottom too.

This is the stuff I put out this morning. There are all kinds of lists people have posted about what is and what is not compostable. Mostly, it's all organic matter that isn't dairy or meat.

To have successful compost, you need to have about equal parts brown matter and green matter. You can think of it like this: the stuff from your kitchen is green matter, the stuff from trees is brown matter. Some examples of brown matter are: sawdust, shredded bills (this is very satisfying), torn up newspaper, dead leaves, etc.

I keep the small tub of sawdust next to the compost and pour in a couple handfuls every time I add stuff from the kitchen.

Then you shake it all up. Air is very important to the compost, as well as water. You may have heard that Tucson is a desert, so I wet down the compost about once a week. It should be as wet as a wrung-out sponge. If you live in a place that is more humid, you may not need to wet it down.

Your compost will have arthropods in it, this is a good thing. If you can't handle that, composting is not for you. It doesn't smell if you're doing it right. I did have a period where mine was attracting a lot of flies, but I don't think I was putting in enough brown matter, and it was right after I made jam, so the compost was like 80% strawberry tops and hulls. I haven't had much of a problem since then.

Also, notice at the bottom of the last picture, I put a sun chips bag in there almost 2 months ago, and it's still fully intact, crinkling as loudly as ever.

Garage Update

2010-09-03T09:39:00.005-07:00

My parents came to town for a little over a week in August to help out with the new baby. Well, actually my mom came with my niece Courtney to help with the baby, while my dad came to play with me. So I took the week off work and most of the time was spend working on this:

It may not look like it to those with untrained eyes, but this took most of the week (in the garage in AZ in Aug mind you). I'd estimate we made at least 10 trips to home depot and drank at least 20 gallons of water each.

Last weekend I was trying to do something in the garage and I decided it was a little cluttered so I utilized some empty space in the garage like so:

So maybe I put a few extra things on those hooks, but it sure did open up the garage. It even had Amanda saying, "Awww, its like we have a grown-up person garage!". Finally, I have a proper place to shed my blood, sweat and tears. Thanks dad.

When you sit down

2010-09-02T13:23:00.002-07:00

If you sit down to feed the baby, your toddler will start throwing herself bodily against the refrigerator to alert you to the fact that she's hungry.

So, for fear of injury, you'll put the baby down and get the toddler some yogurt. (This interruption will cause your baby to scream.)

After you sit back down to finish feeding the baby, your toddler will eat approximately 10% of the yogurt, and apply the remaining 90% to her body and hair.

As you take the toddler to the sink to rinse her off, the running water will remind you that you've had to go to the bathroom for the last hour.

So, you'll walk into the bathroom only to be greeted with the smell of cleaner, and you'll remember you tried to scrub the toilet earlier that morning but got no farther than putting the cleaner in the bowl.

As you're scrubbing the toilet, your oldest child will materialize and inform you that she has to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW and needs to use the toilet you are presently cleaning and she is NOT going upstairs because it's an emergency. You leave her to it and try (unsuccessfully) to get your toddler to put her shirt back on.

She'll climb up onto the toilet, but will perch on the very edge even though she's been fully potty trained for over a year and knows not to do this and knows that it will make you very angry when she pees all over the ground.

As you are cleaning up the pee, your baby will start screaming because it's been 30 minutes, and he's hungry. Again. And if you sit down to feed the baby...

Spectacle

2010-08-23T08:48:00.002-07:00

Tyler asked me once why I always insist on making a spectacle out of myself. I maintain that it happens organically without any help from me.

Take, for example, what just happened. I woke up at 6:30 and actually got dressed in real clothes. Lillian and Nora woke up about 7:30 and I brought them downstairs and got them set up for breakfast. Nora got Cheerios with yogurt instead of milk, with which she made quite a mess. She had it all over her, and proceeded to rub her yogurty face all over my shorts. I got her cleaned up, and then decided to put a load of laundry in, so I just took off my shorts and threw them in.

I went downstairs and sat on the couch with a book - the couch that's right in front of the front door, and blinds on the little window right next to the door were open. Right then, my neighbor John knocked on the door. I could see it was him due to the open blinds. I couldn't run past the door to go upstairs to get some shorts real quick, because he'd see. I looked around in vain for some sort of cover up, and then just decided to open the door a crack, and hide. I was so flustered, I'm afraid I was a little rude as I took the flash drive that Tyler left at his house, awkwardly explained that I wasn't wearing any pants, and then shut the door as soon as possible. John, being super nice, just laughed it off, but it was awkward.

See how this wasn't really my fault?

Monsoon Birthday

2010-08-06T17:16:00.002-07:00

Untitled from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Mother Nature was kind enough to give me a pretty rockin' monsoon for my birthday.

Idle Prattle

2010-08-04T07:15:00.003-07:00

Antlers

Lillian has reached the age of idle prattle. She's been here for a while, but it seems to be reaching some sort of fever pitch.

Last night, I was trying to watch the last 5 minutes of Plain Jane, a show I had not so much as heard of 30 minutes prior, where they take shy, plain women and teach them how to flirt and be assertive and pluck their eyebrows in order to help them get the guy. We were at the getting the guy part: the exciting, dramatic part, and Lillian starts up with her chatter.

"Lillian, be quiet for just a minute, I'm trying to watch this."
"I have to be quiet, or Nora?"
"You, be quiet for just a second."
"You're watching this?"
"Yes, I'm watching this and you keep talking. Be quiet."
"What is this show?"
"It's my show. Shhhhhh."
"It's a quiet show?"
"Lillian, stop talking."
"Can I use a whisper voice?"
"Sure, how about you whisper in the other room?"

She did this for the last five dramatic, guy getting minutes. Solid. No let up.

Actually, she does this all day long. Solid. No let up. My mom pointed out that it's not so much that she talks and talks and talks. It's that she expects you to answer. Every. Time. And there is much distress if you ignore her, or, heaven forbid, you're in the bathroom, or trying to sleep, or on the phone.

I like her though. Don't let my irritation fool you.

Look down, now look up. Your kids are now in a sandbox.

2010-08-01T17:41:00.004-07:00

One of my projects I had while away from work when Ethan was born was to build a sandbox. Lillian and I bought all of the materials and sand and cut and assembled it in most of one day. Lillian spent most of her time playing with my hand tools, but she did hand me a screwdriver every now and then. It just so happened that I found a smokin' deal on a plunge router a day or two before I built the box, so I decided to make good use of it and put the kids names on the side: "See Amanda, we did need a router." Hopefully I don't have to have another child before I have time to build something again.

SMACK

2010-07-27T14:13:00.004-07:00

See more pictures of Ethan, and ogle my friend Phil's super photography skills here.

Things are going at our house. Where they are going, or what they are going to do when they get there is to be decided as soon as I can remember what day it is and/or when I get more than 3.5 hours of sleep in a row. We're going on day 17 here, not that I'm counting.

Ethan isn't colicky, most days, which I am very thankful for. He just does the usual baby things like not sleeping very much and needing to eat every 5 minutes, which is not very restful, especially when you have Nora the Destructor alternately destroying everything in our house, as her name would suggest, and needing more water. That girl is thirsty.

I had a little bit of the new-mom-crazies this past week and I felt like yelling and crying and hugging/hitting everybody. Saturday night, Ethan was awake from 2:30 until 6. I may have admitted that I was having some buyer's remorse and maybe said that I wanted to take him back. We went to church and I had Ehan in the wrap. A gaggle of kids ran up and asked if they could see the baby. I bent down and up ran Joey, he's 4, I think. Joey's mother had a baby last month, but the umbilical cord tore during labor causing extensive damage from blood loss. The baby died a week later.

"Your baby is beautiful, our baby died."

And then he scampered off as if he hadn't just blown me away.

Dear Nora

2010-07-17T08:26:00.002-07:00

Dear Nora,

I understand you are having kind of a hard time with Ethan. Pretty much, as you see it, he's a devil baby that has come into your life as some sort of punishment for some unknown crime. He's stolen me, your mother: my lap space, my time, my energy, and my love. I feel unexpectedly guilty about this. You are so small and so cute and it breaks my heart for you to feel thusly abandoned.

However, as I thought on this, I realized that I was you once. My mom had a baby 18 months after she had me. I was that older baby: abandoned by her mother for someone smaller and more helpless than myself. And, you know what? In my conscious memory, I cannot think of a time when I felt it. I don't remember thinking that my younger brother was a devil baby. I don't remember ever feeling like I didn't have access to my mother's love or time.

This gives me hope that this phase will be short-lived, or at least, that you won't remember it.

With love,
Mom

Ethan's Heart: Everything is Fine

2010-07-14T14:59:00.003-07:00

In case you heard through the grapevine about Ethan's heart:

By the way, we named him Ethan Tyler. In the end, the deciding factor was that I liked the sound of Ethan Tyler better than Levi Tyler after saying them about 20 times each.

Anyway, the first day he was born, the doctor gave him a clean bill of health. Then, he started breathing really fast. It's my understanding that babies should breathe about 60 times per minute, but Ethan was up to 80. This, plus the fact that the doctor heard a murmur earned Ethan his first echocardiogram, which showed he had a murmur (tricuspid valve regurgitation), patent ductus artriosus (pictured above) and a patent foramen ovale (pictured below). You probably all know that babies hearts have a physiology before they're born than after and it's supposed to switch over when they take their first breath.

But, sometimes it doesn't. Like with Ethan.

They did a follow-up echo the next day and the PDA was closed but the PFO was still, well, patent. He doctor wasn't really worried, so I wasn't worried and they let us go home.

Today, we saw the pediatrician and he couldn't hear a murmur. We'll follow up with the cardiologist in a month. Other than that, we're doing great, except for the fact that he was up every hour an a half between the hours of 11 and 4:30 and was under the impression that he was STARVING every time.

We'll have to work on that.

Baby Ball 3.0

2010-07-10T16:40:00.002-07:00

As we all know, I've been in labor since May. But, last night around 7, I started thinking maybe these contractions were stronger. Maybe. Then I had a little bleeding, but really nothing to get excited over, especially since I had been to the doctor earlier that day and she'd checked me (I was 3 cm). I sent Tyler to the pool with the kids and set about packing my hospital bag, just in case we were going to go.

I debated back and forth about calling someone to come over because I was pretty sure that if we went to the hospital, we'd get sent home because my contractions were strong, but I wasn't screaming, as Tyler kept pointing out. I decided that I'd call my friend Rachel and we'd go because night was approaching and I didn't want to have to call her at 3 AM.

On the ride there, the contractions slowed down to every 8 minutes, and I was sure they were going to send us home. We got to the hospital at about 10, and they were really full, so we waited in the waiting room for about an hour, during which time, the contractions picked up in intensity and frequency, but I still wasn't quite sure that they'd keep me.

By the time we got hooked up to the monitor, I was having to hee hee hoo it through, AND I was dilated to 4 cm, which is the benchmark for admission. We got into the L/D unit at around 1 AM, and Tyler and I were a little goofy from staying up so late. My nurse was pretty funny and was cracking jokes left and right. I had an epidural at around 2, (I think I told the anesthesiologist that I loved her), and we tried to get some sleep. Between the beepy machines and them coming in every 30 seconds to ask me questions and/or poke at me, it wasn't terribly restful. My doctor showed up shortly after and recommended some Pitocin as the baby wasn't coming down properly. At 4 AM, she did an exam and my water broke. By 4:15, I was seriously considering pushing. With both girls, I didn't feel anything with the epidurals, but this one was "less dense" and I could actually feel quite a bit. They made me wait until 4:30 to start pushing and Baby Boy Ball was born at 4:53.

7 lbs, 9 oz
20 3/4 inches

The doctor said I had a "small tear" and let the resident sew it up. I'm not entirely sure how many closings the resident had done previously, but I'm going to bet it was maybe only one ever before. So, that took a long time, and it seemed like they did 5,000 stitches, which I'm fine with, because my doctor kept saying, "take your time, do it right."

The baby and I are both doing great, just chilling out here in the recovery room. He was really gaggy and was having a little trouble getting out all that mucus in his system, so they took him and suctioned out his stomach, which I'm sure he hated, but I didn't see it.

We took more pictures, but didn't bring the cord to upload them onto the computer, so you'll have to wait until I get home tomorrow.

Mostly for my family

2010-07-09T11:58:00.002-07:00

I went to the doctor this morning. I'm "a good 3 cm." This plus the facts that I feel like the baby is dropping, my hips are all loosey goosey, and my feet are the size of footballs all make the doctor think I'm going to have the baby sometime within a week.

"Don't make an appointment for next week," she said. "If you're still pregnant by Thursday, just go to the hospital."

Job Update

2010-07-07T07:48:00.003-07:00

We're breathing a big sigh of relief: yesterday, right when he was leaving work, Tyler's boss came around his desk and told him that they were finished with the lay offs. I think about 12 people were let go.

So, for now, Tyler still has a job, I'm still going to go to nursing school, we're not going to move, and Lillian is still going to ask 5,000 times a day if she can watch another movie. But, that last one has nothing to do with our employment status, she'd do that anyway.

Depressing Marco Polo

2010-07-06T13:24:00.004-07:00

My family was having a family reunion last week. We had already decided not to go because I'm hugely pregnant, and contracting, and hoping that I go into labor any second. Then things happened at Tyler's work. They asked us to be discrete, so I can't go into any details, but they asked him to take some furlough time and rather than sit around the house for almost a week, we decided to go catch the tail end of the reunion.

My family was, as always, super fun to hang around. I took only one picture the whole trip: when we crossed the Colorado river into California, Lillian wanted me to take her picture in California because you never know, you might look different. My sister-in-law took a whole bunch, so I'll probably steal some from her. Actually, she was quite dedicated. She followed Nora around for a good 20 minutes in order to get a picture of her smiling. Mission accomplished.

We lounged around the pool at two separate pool parties. Lillian had fun forcing her cousin Soren to play Snow White and dance with her. There was brownies and food and catching up and texas sheet cake and all manner of salads and nothing even close to triple digit temperatures.

There were fireworks, which Lillian almost missed. After we had waited in line for a good 3o minutes to use the questionable port-a-potty and walked all the way back to our blanket, she told me she had to go again. Kyle suggested we walk over to the Von's and use their bathroom because there was no line. It was Tyler's turn, so he took off 15 minutes before the fireworks were supposed to start. Ten minutes went by, they still weren't back. The fireworks started, they still weren't back. Ten more minutes went by, and they walked up; Lillian had picked that exact moment to have some bowel difficulties. I was preemptively stressed out about how much crying and whining was going to happen from Lillian upon learning that she missed the fireworks, but the show was about 30 minutes long, so she didn't realize that she missed anything. Whew.

Also, Grandma Marti put Lillian's hair in braids like Jesse on Toy Story, and then this morning, Lillian wanted ME to do it. Turns out, I'm still really, really awful at french braiding hair. There was a lot of "OUCH! YOU'RE HURTING ME," and "I DON'T WANT YOU TO DO IT ANYMORE." Maybe I can get one of those beauty school heads to practice on.

One word about Tyler's job. Yes, he might lose it. About 10 people in his office of 50 have gone so far, and it's not over. We won't know for sure for a while. He said it's like some depressing game of marco polo where he's sitting at his desk with his eyes closed calling out "marco," except if you catch the people calling out "polo," you get fired.

If it does happen, we'll figure it out.

Super Ultrasonic

2010-06-30T09:01:00.003-07:00

I was actually a little disappointed by the news we got at our ultrasound yesterday: the baby is perfectly normal. Maybe a little part of me was hoping that they'd find something that meant we'd have to get that baby out RIGHT NOW.

This is the misery that is the final weeks of pregnancy- wishing birth defects or complications on your unborn child just to make. it. stop.

The baby is measuring at only 7 lbs 3 oz, and my doctor tells me that late-pregnancy ultrasounds tend to predict a few ounces on the big side, so we'll go with 7 pounds for convenience sake. At this stage, babies gain about a half a pound a week, so even if I went all the way to 40 weeks (Lord, help me), the baby would only be 9 pounds, which is not that big of a deal. I mean, it's still a huge baby, but nothing that would require me and this baby to part ways early, unfortunately.

Instead of listening to everyone who's predicting that I'm going to go early, I'm just going to accept the fact that I'm going to be pregnant and sweaty for 4(!) more weeks.

Applesauce Brain

2010-06-26T07:14:00.003-07:00

We don't have cable, so I have to get my World Cup (Copa Mundial) fix via Univision. This works out most of the time, except for when there's when there's a weird call like in the US vs Slovenia game, and it's not totally obvious what's happening. And, it goes without saying, the Spanish announcers are WAY more interesting to listen to than the stiff-upper-lip English ones.

Anyway, I put the kids down for a nap yesterday, and sat down to watch the game. On the score graphic, it was ESP vs CHI. The ESP team's uniforms were black, red, and yellow so I caught on pretty quick that it was Spain. The CHI team's uniforms were bright red, so I immediately concluded that it was China. Our TV isn't that big, so it took me a while before I started seeing that the CHI players didn't really look Chinese... they looked Hispanic. A Hispanic country that starts with CHI....? Is there one? Does it start with CHI in Spanish and not English?

I won't tell you how long it took me to figure this one out because anything longer than 3 seconds is just embarrassing.

Pregnancy progression

2010-06-25T08:37:00.003-07:00

32 weeks

34 weeks

Almost 36 weeks, today

The 35-week picture almost looks bigger, but I think it's just the shirt I'm wearing. My sister Allison pointed out that she was bigger and I'm a cry baby and I need to suck it up. Actually, she didn't say that last part. Her baby was 11 lbs.

I have a doctor's appointment today and another ultrasound on Tuesday to figure out how big this baby is and/or what the heck is going on in there. The most frequently asked question is: So, if you find out the baby is 10 lbs, are you going to get a C-section? (Or it's close cousin: are you going to get induced early?)

The first person that asked me, I was just confused. "No...? Why...?" Then 3 people asked. Then 5 people. Then 10 people.

Is this common? Are we women so wimpy that 10 lbs is beyond anything we're willing to try? I could see if you were a really petite Asian woman who was married to a tall, strong Prussian type and the doctor told you that no way was this going to work out naturally (it's called CPD), but 10 lb babies are no new thing. My sister did it. My mom did it. I'm a pioneer woman. I can do it.

And, as far as getting induced early, it's far more important to me (and probably to the doctor) that the baby is fully cooked than my extra two weeks of discomfort. But, ask me in two weeks if I still feel the same way.

My babies!

2010-06-23T18:40:00.002-07:00

For school, we had to create an application packet for a job that we would theoretically want to apply for upon graduation. Considering I've had this assignment about 5 times before, it wasn't too difficult to modify my existing résumé and cover letter to fit this newest job. The only difference was as I was doing it, I started FREAKING OUT.

For ever since I started nursing school, before I had children, I knew that I did not want to work full time. I have very fond memories of my mother being home and eating dinner as a family and learning things at her knee and all of the other adventures that come with having a stay-at-home mother. I felt very strongly that this was the sort of atmosphere I wanted to recreate for my children. But, I wanted to work a little. I felt like nursing would be the perfect career: you can work as much or as little as you want: down to one shift every other week if you want. This sounded good to me, so I went with it.

Then, once I graduated and was attempting to get one of these types of jobs, I found out that the hospitals want you to work full time for a year before moving down to part time. I made my peace with it back then, but then no one would hire me.

As I was typing up how my clinical experience in nursing school prepared me for a job on the floor, I started thinking. Now I'm going back to school in order to get a job. A job that will take me away from my babies. For a year. MY babies. The ones that I birthed, and soothed, and fed, and rocked, and held, and laughed with, and cried over. I started to cry.

I suppose this violent emotional reaction took me completely by surprise (must be the hormones). I mean, I was ready to deal with feeling guilty over going to work, but not ready to not want to do it. Maybe a few more tantrums will change my mind... I think I hear one brewing over the Mr. Potato head.

Lillian turned 4!

2010-06-20T16:14:00.003-07:00

Shhhh, don't tell her that her actual birthday isn't for another month. It's just than in another month, I'll have some kind of really small infant and won't be up for birthday parties.

For being thrown together at the last minute (a few of her friends left this week for 2 week vacations), I think it turned out really nice.

Tyler drew a Woody for "Pin the Star on Woody." The kids didn't really get this one, and I think that some of the older ones could see through the blindfold.

We also played Toy Story bingo, which was a little bit of a disaster because I had them marking their cards with mini marshmallows. You can probably guess that the game too for-ev-er because the kids kept eating the marshmallows instead of putting them on "Hamm-4." Also, I think the kids had never played any version of bingo before, so the whole concept was totally lost on them.

Number one game, which Tyler made up on the spot: see how many balloons you can get to stick to you.

Lillian had lots of help opening her presents.

And we ate alien cupcakes.

Nora was way into hers.

It wasn't very cutsie-pie or slick, but that's not my style. The kids had fun and Lillian hasn't stopped talking about it ever since.

I can't believe she's four already.

The other day, we were on a walk, and some teenagers were being rowdy nearby. "Are those grownups?" Lillian asked.
"No, honey. Those are teenagers."
"Am I going to be a teenager?"
"I sure hope not sweetie."

She will one day, probably. I'm already irritated about that. But, I'm glad that, for now, she's still my sweet, whimsical little girl who pretends that her feet are friends with each other.

Labor Strike

2010-06-17T08:05:00.003-07:00

I was trying really hard to put myself into labor yesterday. My sister Amy thinks that this is just a matter of walking "a good mile." I think she's the only one for which this works. I walked that good mile, and then I did all the dishes, and then I played hide-and-seek and I got my contractions to come pretty strong every 3 minutes. Then I sat down to play bubbles with Nora and they stopped. Like that. Lame.

It would have been really convenient to have the baby last night. I have a paper due on Friday, but it's mostly already written, so it would be almost a week before I have anything due. I was also ignoring the fact that the doctor thinks I'm only 34 weeks and would probably try to stop my labor if I went in. (According to my ultrasound, I'm 36 weeks, but the doctor somehow doesn't believe in changing my date. Thirty-six weeks sounds much better and I just pretend that that's how it is.)

Anyway, as I was planning how this was all going to go yesterday, I realized that the baby still has no name. Of course, I knew this, but the full weight of it hit me as I was scrubbing the pans.

The baby has NO NAME. I pictured the L/D nurse standing there with the little card, looking at me over the rim of her glasses with her sharpie poised and me saying, "I don't know... um... I haven't had enough time to think about it...?" (Incidentally, Lillian calls them "pointies" which I find unbearably cute.)

The problem is that when we named the girls, I had a gut feeling about the names. Lillian came right off the bat. I KNEW that was her name. Nora took a little while longer, but I could FEEL that her name was Nora.

This baby... there's names that I like, and names that Tyler likes, and a few names that we both sort of like... but none of them are THE name. I tried the the Nymbler again this morning, but after suggestions like Alpin and Tiernan, I gave up.

I feel like we're looking for a house all over again. When we were going around with our real estate agent, he kept asking me what I was looking for so he could help narrow down the options without us having to look at every single one. I couldn't tell him because the list of things I wanted was so undefinable and certainly googleable: I wanted all the bedrooms to be on the same floor so I wouldn't have to trudge up and down the stairs in the middle of the night. I wanted the bathroom to be far away from the living room because no one wants to hear you doing your business. I didn't want to be able to see the TV from the front door. I wanted the kids' bedrooms to be far away from the play area.

See what I mean? I want a name that's common, but not too common. A name that sounds fresh, and yet everyone will have heard of it before, but that doesn't sound too dated. And, most important of all, I want it to be THE name. Is this too much to ask?

So far, my front runners are Brigham and Collin (although, I'm souring on Collin), Tyler likes Ethan but since he decided he liked Ethan in 2006 when I was pregnant with Lillian, EVERYONE has named their son Ethan. This isn't a problem for him, but I can't get on board with it.

Kids that are kids.

2010-06-16T12:36:00.003-07:00

I kid you not, I put these books away, went to the bathroom, came back and found this. I'd be much more inclined to clean if there weren't little hands following me around, undoing everything I did literally seconds after I do it.

Lillian came into my room like this and said "FLOUR POWER, ACTIVATE!" Actually, that didn't happen. What actually happened is I heard this flour bag crinkle for 3 or 4 minutes, then Tyler said, "Nora, come here. Put your arms up." At which point, she started screaming. I wandered out of my room to see what was going on and encountered a red-faced Nora with the flour bag on.

Turns out, she hated the flour bag outfit. Lillian, however, was way into it.

Applesauce

2010-06-10T08:10:00.002-07:00

Lillian watches Sid, the Science Kid in the mornings sometimes. I really dislike this show, but it is very educational and if she got to watch something, I'd rather it be that than Bokugon or whatever those round ball things are that the kids play with incessantly in primary. Bakugon? Anyway.

The other day on Science Kid, they were talking about how heat changes food and cooks it. To illustrate the point, they made applesauce.

So, Lillian decided she wanted to make applesauce.

Neither of my kids have ever liked applesauce, but I was thinking maybe the peer pressure from Sid combined with the excitement of making it herself might sway Lillian. I mean, she decided she liked bananas after years of hating them just because she watched a Blue's Clues episode where Steve talked about how great they were.

Turns out no, she still hates applesauce. Also, notice in the above picture, she's taken to dressing herself. If you see her, there's a a 99% chance that she not only won't match, but she'll be wearing something so alarmingly mis-matching that you'll have to blink a couple times before you can focus on her. As long as it's weather appropriate (the other day, I had to draw the line at the opaque red tights under her pink skirt with purple polka-dots and light blue and yellow shirt), I really don't care.

Allison asked me what Nora was up to, and I'd have to say that it's a lot of this: mischief. Here, she found Lillian's box of crayons and ate a few before I found her. The other day, I called poison control for the first time because of her. She ate the cake of dishwasher soap that didn't fully dissolve during the cycle. (She was fine.)

She can walk really well and run a little. She says a few words and uses a few signs (mostly just more and milk). She can use a spoon to feed herself, sort of, and follow one-step directions pretty well (throw this in the trash, put this in the sink, bring me your shoes, take this to daddy). When she's not doing those things, she does a pretty good job at getting into everything and tormenting her sister. Lillian is not very physical and as such has no idea what to do when Nora steals toys from her, or tackles her. She just lays down and whines, "Moooommmmmm... Nora's on meeeeeeeeeeee." I'd be lying if I didn't admit that sometimes I say, "You're bigger than her! Push her off!"

Which is not to say that Lillian doesn't dish it out sometimes. The other day, she came and found me while I was in the shower and told me that I should go see Nora. "Oh yeah, what's she up to?"

"I made her into a tape ball."

After trying to clarify what, exactly, a tape ball was, I saw first hand: Nora walked in covered head to toe in scotch tape. Sadly, I didn't have my blogger brain on and failed to get a picture of the blessed event. The funniest part was that Nora was way into it like, "check out the awesomeness of this tape!"

The other question you all want to ask is: how are you feeling? "Pretty much, awful" is the answer. I seriously debated about whether or not I should go to the hospital yesterday, but I decided they would just want to keep me there for 6 hours to decide that I wasn't in labor, which is a waste of everyone's time, so I just stayed home and forced my kids to watch 4 movies in a row.

Tyler thinks that the baby is working out in utero, which is what is taking up all my spare energy and oxygen. This actually would explain why my pulse races and I'm out of breath all the time. Not like, normal pregnancy out of breath, like, I'll have to sit down while brushing my teeth because I'm too tired to stand and hold my arm up.

Baby steps to mid-July.

To my new neighbors

2010-06-03T07:18:00.002-07:00

Dear Neighbors,

I know you just moved in, and I want us to be friends, but there are a few things you should know about us.

We sort of hate small yapper-type dogs, of which you have three. That's fine for you, but when you let them out to yap for 30 minutes at 5 am, it's a little bit much.
We have a shotgun in our room, there is a clear view from our room into your backyard, and my husband is a very good shot.
I have a reputation for being a little bit irrational when I am woken up at irrational times.
My husband is pretty suggestible when he is woken up at irrational times. Anything to make the noise stop, if you catch my meaning.

I'm just trying to be up front about this, and I hope you still feel comfortable borrowing eggs from us.

Sincerely,
Your neighbors

My first school assignment

2010-06-01T09:04:00.002-07:00

I just wrote my first school assignment in two years. Pretty much the only thing I'm freaking out about is the fact that I have to do 16 weeks' worth of work in 4, but other than that, this thing should be cake, right?

The assignment was 300-600 words on "Who are you and why are you in this class?" (the instructor might have phrased it a little nicer than that). Here it is:

My name is Amanda and I am trained as a nurse, but I currently stay at home with my two little girls and little boy on the way. We moved from the central coast of California down to Tucson almost two years ago which, honestly, broke my heart. But, I’m learning to see the beauty of the desert and appreciate all the things that Arizona has to offer.

Since the day that I brought my first baby home from the hospital, there has been a growing disparity between the things that I like to do, and the things that I actually do, but such is the reality of having small children. Gone are the days of week-long backpacking trips, body surfing at the beach, and wandering around just to see what there is to see. Here to stay are the days of wiping noses, reading Where is the Green Sheep? 5,000 times, and making peanut butter sandwiches. Of course, to frame the trade off like that is not fair: along with the peanut butter sandwiches, I get to raise two incredibly cute girls that fill my life with laughter and love and a sense of completeness that I never got from even the most majestic mountain in the Sierra Nevadas.

I’m taking this class as a prerequisite to the RN to BSN program. I became an RN while in California, but between moving to Arizona and having baby number two, I never worked. By the time I was ready to go back to work, the economy crashed and there were no jobs for new grads. The fact that I couldn’t find work was disappointing, but not catastrophic as my husband had a steady job working in the aerospace industry on the Orion project. Then, a few months ago, President Obama announced that the Orion project would be cut from the budget and the steady job looked not so steady. So, we decided I would go back and get a little more education in order to open more job opportunities in case of the worst case scenario.

I love writing and I’m excited that this class will help me learn how to be better at it.

Wacky Baby Dreams

2010-05-31T07:17:00.005-07:00

I walked into stake choir practice last night, and several old women, independently of each other, joked that they didn't think I was going to make it to stake conference in two weeks. Ha ha. Ho Ho. I still have 8 weeks. Thanks.

Even my own mother, in that delicate-mother way that they have asked if maybe the doctor had said something about maybe I was a little big... maybe...? But, no, she hasn't said anything. And that's the thing about OB/GYNs when you're pregnant. Most EVERYTHING is normal during pregnancy and it only gets worse until the baby comes. So you go and complain about the fact that sometimes, your right leg goes dead for a few seconds and you can't walk, then comes back to life like nothing and she says, "yeah... your baby is pinching your nerves, that's pretty common, just try to sit down." Or you complain about how you see stars every time you stand up. Or that you have pretty much been in labor for 2 months and still have 2 months to go. Or that you have heartburn that makes you cry it's so painful. And, she says, "yeah... that's pretty common. Try to sit down and drink a lot of water."

Another thing that is totally normal: crazy-vivid dreams. They are long and super realistic. And, I'll have slightly different versions of the same dream 4 or 5 times in one night. Last night, in the beginning of the night, I dreamed that my friend Mandy and I trained and participated in a triathlon (probably because the big city-sponsored triathlon is today). I went through the cycle of us discussing the possibility of doing it, meeting at the pool to swim, her helping me pick out a bike and practicing putting my feet in the clips, and a lot of running. I had this dream at least 3 times, one right after another with only slight variations. Fairly innocuous.

But, far more common for me is to dream about something awful over, and over, and over again. This morning, after the (insert expletive) birds woke me up at 5, I drifted in and out of sleep, dreaming 3 or 4 times that Nora drowned in the bathtub. I put her in the tub, but then I had to leave the bathroom for something: the doorbell, Lillian needed help, the phone. All the time I had anxiety and I strained to hear her chattering or splashing. I don't hear her, so I run back upstairs to find a blue baby, face down in the tub. I pull her out and start CPR and yell at Lillian to go get the phone but she's too scared to move. In one variation, I had the phone in my pocket; in another, I forgot how to do CPR.

All the time, I dream stuff like this and it's most always horrible things happening to my kids. I've dreamed that Lillian was kidnapped and sold into the sex trade, or that she fell of the jungle gym and broke her neck, or that Nora wandered into the crossfire of a gang fight in South Tucson and got shot. I stopped watching any sort of crime drama in hopes that it would help this problem, but it hasn't. I guess, I know it's a dream, so it's a little less stressful, but not really by much.

My sister told me that she dreams that she gets shot and has to call 9-1-1, but can't get through. Does this happen to anyone else besides us?

Top 5 worst night's sleeps

2010-05-20T07:59:00.002-07:00

Our house has been a den of sickness this past week. On Saturday, Nora felt a little warm, but was acting fine, so we loaded up to drive into town and run a bunch of errands. Twenty minutes into our trip, we weren't quite at Destination #1 yet, and Nora threw up all over herself. We weren't equipped to handle that particular disaster, so we gave up and went home. She proceeded to have several instances of what I would chart (if I were her nurse) as N/V/D (nausea/vomiting/diarrhea). Sunday she felt fine, and so did everyone else, so I thought it was a one time incident. Not so. Tuesday, Lillian started throwing up. A lot. I felt like an old-timey nurse because I was just running around changing sheets and mopping. I think I did 4 or 5 loads of laundry. Yesterday, she had less of the N/V and more of the D problem. Also gross. Plus a temp of 103 that came down to 101 with Tylenol.

Then, I started feeling sick in the afternoon. Plus, I had heartburn really bad. I called my mom in tears, and I think I sounded sufficiently pathetic that she's decided to drop everything and fly out here. I heart her.

Anyway, last night was I think the last stand of Lillian's sickness. I felt really bad for her, she was so weak and tired and sad and feverish, so I agreed to let her sleep in our bed. This has never happened before. I think I got about 2 hours of sleep.

My friend Carrie pointed out once that it's not a lack of sleep that makes a bad night. I've stayed up all night writing papers or that one time I watched all 6 hours of North & South, and sure you're tired the next day, but it's not so bad. No, a bad night is one where the promise of sleep is constantly being made and broken. Last night, I think, was my 4th worst night sleep.

#5: 2001. Both my roommates were out of town and I was by myself in my apartment. In the dead of night, I could have sworn that a man opened my front door, talked loudly for a few seconds, then left. It's probable that I forgot to lock the door and some person (probably drunk, I mean, this was Santa Barbara) accidentally came inside, realized it wasn't his house and left. But I was so freaked out. It being the middle of the night, I started coming up with all sorts of crazy theories like the drunk guy was just an excuse for one of his friends to slip in and hide in the shadows until I fell back asleep, at which time he would murder me in my bed. There was a young married couple who lived down the street and I called them and made them come get me and I went to sleep at their apartment, where I slept soundly for the rest of the night.

#4: 2010. Last night. I had a fever, heartburn, big baby belly, kept having to get up to go to the bathroom, and I was being muscled out of my bed by Lillian, who was really hot because she had a fever too.

#3: 2006. My dad was going to come visit and spend two nights at the Madonna Inn. My memory is kind of sketchy about what happened, I think Jeri got sick, so he ended up not being able to come. For some reason he couldn't cancel his reservation, so Tyler and I went to spend the night there. I was pregnant with Lillian, but I'm pretty sure that had nothing to do with the awful sleep we got. It was the most uncomfortable bed I've ever been in with the firmest, tallest pillows ever. At about 3 AM, I looked over and saw Tyler was awake too, so we turned on the TV and watched that movie with Jimmy Fallon where he really likes the Red Sox.

#2: 2006. The night I was in labor with Lillian. I had been having serious contractions all the previous night and day and by the time we went to the hospital that night at around 8, I think, I was zero dilated. I cried. Because the doctor felt my contractions were pretty strong and that I was in a lot of pain she gave me a shot of morphine. I remember them asking if I wanted it, and me being like, "YES PLEASE," but now it seems a bizarre thing to offer. It made me hallucinate and get even more wacky. Then, I remember swallowing a pill, which Tyler told me later was Ambien. So all that night, I was SUPER tired from the sleeping pill plus not having slept in 36 hours, hallucinating, and contracting every 5 minutes. Tyler told me I'd be dead asleep, wake up and scream for a minute, then fall dead asleep again. I sort of remember the doctor breaking my water and I vaguely remember the anesthesiologist coming in to give me an epidural. Mostly I remember he asked if I had ever had surgery before, and I told him that I couldn't keep my eyes open. And Tyler fainted when the doc stuck the needle into my back. After the epidural, we slept for about 5 hours until they woke me up and told me it was time to push, so I was rested for the actual birth part, which was nice. This night would be #1 worst, but I was so out of it, I don't really remember a lot of it.

#1: 2008. We had just moved to Tucson and in an effort to make friends, we decided to go on the ward campout. I was pregnant with Nora and we only had a 2-man tent. I suppose that counts as the first time Lillian slept with us. She was so fascinated by the novelty of sleeping in the tent, outside, on the ground, in between Mom and Dad that she didn't sleep all night. She talked, she wiggled, she played with her stuffed animals, she wanted to touch all the zippers. At one point, Tyler took her stuffed bunny and threw it to the bottom of the tent in an effort to get her to stop going 'boing! boing! boing!' on his head, which was very distressing to her, and needed it back RIGHT NOW but I couldn't find it in the dark. Plus, there was someone snoring really loudly nearby. Plus, I was pregnant sleeping on the ground. We couldn't just pack it in and leave because we had given our neighbors a ride, so we had to stick it out.

In the morning, I tried to be optimistic and say maybe if we got another tent, or a bigger tent it would be better but Tyler announced that we'd never go camping EVER AGAIN.

Am I the only one who keeps track of this sort of thing?

Secret revealed!

2010-05-15T11:11:00.002-07:00

What Nora did while Claire helped me write my application essays

I have a secret that so many people know about, it's not really a secret anymore: starting in August, right after the baby is born, I'll be going back to school.

I'm crazy. I know.

This being my third baby, I also know one other thing: from birth, they only get harder and more work until they're about 3, and then it starts going back down. And, babies sleep a lot.

The program is 12 months long and is all online.

You may be thinking, "but Amanda, you're already an RN." This is true, but I only have an associate's degree, even though it took me 4 years to get. As an RN, you are pretty much confined to staff nursing, which is fine and something I want to do until I'm not afraid I'm going to kill someone, but I don't want to do it forever. We're thinking that by the time I'm good and ready to go to work, I'll have my bachelor's degree and (hopefully) that means I'll get paid more so I'll (hopefully) be able to afford to work less. Get it?

I still have yet to be accepted into the actual program, but I'm working on it. Wish me luck.

Hostage Crisis

2010-05-11T07:30:00.002-07:00

On Sunday, I was feeling really tired. Not sleepy so much, but like I was moving around in tar. I couldn't stand up for very long and I had no energy to move around, or chase after my kids, or walk up the stairs. Lucky for me, it was Mother's Day, so I could just lie around and not feel guilty about bossing everyone around. I thought maybe I was dehydrated, so I tried to drink and drink and drink.

Monday morning, I was going about the business of getting ready and I walked up the stairs. When I got to the top, I felt a little dizzy and short of breath and I thought, "man, it feels like my heart is beating really fast." It was: 120 bpm. "That seems like kind of high for just walking up the stairs," I said to myself, so I did something entirely uncharacteristic of me: I called the doctor.

I never call the doctor because I know what they are going to say. They always say the same thing, the thing they said to me yesterday, "COME IN RIGHT AWAY! RIGHT THIS SECOND!" So I did. My friend (personal saint/super hero) Emily watched my kids and I headed up to the hospital.

By the time I got there, my heart rate had come down to 87, and I felt fine. They hooked me up to the monitor, did an EKG, and drew blood. The EKG looked fine and while they were waiting for the lab results to come back, they noticed I was contracting regularly, something I told them, on arrival, has been happening to me for at least a month, maybe more. I was in the triage room behind a curtain and I could hear them calling the doctor about me, "Mrs. Ball is preterm and is contracting regularly... yes... I see... fFN... OK." Bah! The fFN test takes like 2 hours for the results!

The nurse came in wheeling her little cart and I tried to explain to her that I've been having regular contractions for a month, like I said before, and I'm not in labor and I don't really need a fetal fibronectin test and if they would just call MY doctor, she would tell them all this. Maybe they don't believe me when I tell them that I am a nurse and that I know what I'm talking about, but my nurse was not to be deterred. I rolled my eyes and said, "OK."

Then they wanted to check me every hour to make sure my labor wasn't progressing, but the baby was laying funny, or something and made it very difficult to tell. So, my nurse called in another nurse. Then an hour later, they both came back to check, but they couldn't be sure. So, they wanted the doctor to come in, but she was off doing her doctor stuff, so I had to wait some more. "Wow, you're baby is laying funny and I can't really tell... here... maybe if I jam down as hard as I can on your belly. No... no.. maybe if you sit up a little bit. Um... can you roll over a little?" It was like getting your school picture taken, except 5,000 times more painful and awkward.

The whole time, they kept coming back and asking me about my heart, but I told them it only happened when I was walking up the stairs, and for the last 5 hours, I have been in bed, so no, I feel fine.

When they f i n a l l y let me go, the nurse gave me her discharge instructions: come back if you feel any contractions. Yeah. Right.