The Bible- Appropriate for children?

We have the comic-book-style Old Testament, and my kids love it.  There's some rocking good stories in there with strong narratives and bad ass prophets.  You've got Elijah's showdown with the 400-odd priests of Baal, calling down fire from heaven hot enough to burn up the sacrifice (even after he had his assistants pour buckets of water on it), the wood, and the stones of the altar.  You've got Ezekiel who ATE HIS SCROLLS to internalize the messages contained thereon.  And, after Daniel gets out of the lion's den alive, the king throws the evil priests (and their wives and children, which is a bummer) into the den to get eaten.  PAYBACK, JERKS!

With my kids getting a little older, we're starting to outgrow the comic books, and so when The Friend Magazine published a little chart to read the Old Testament with your kids, I thought this could be a good bridge to reading straight out of the good book itself.

However, we're running into a few issues.

Warning: When reading with children, do not stray from the selected passages.  Last night, we read the story of Abraham and Lot and his unfortunate wife.

I glossed over what exactly was going on in Sodom and the incident with Lot and the visitors.  (It's all in Genesis 19 if you need a refresher).  Lillian was way bummed out for Lot's wife, and I tried to explain the idea of "looking back" in that she was looking back with her heart, and wanted to go hang out with the naughty people, not just that she was interested in watching the fire storm.

While this was a little hard for her to swallow, plus the fact that the gentle, loving God that she has come to know was RAINING FIRE on people and burning them up, she was into the story, so I kept reading.

Lot flees with his daughters and hides out in a cave.  The daughters think that they are the only people left on the earth and are stressed about how they are going to find husbands so they decide to..... uh... nothing.  Time for bed!

No wonder there's the euphemism of knowing someone in the biblical sense, everyone is having sex all over the place.  And if they're not having sex, they're being destroyed by fire, or sold into slavery, or buying wives.

I'm not entirely sure that this book is appropriate for children. We might just stick with the comic book.

Uphill battle

I think about motherhood pretty much all day, every day, because that's what I do all day, every day.  Yesterday, I was considering the fact that children really are sociopaths.  They are the most important person in their universe, the only person in their universe, really.

In church, you learn that you should be like a little child, but this makes no sense- children are the greediest, meanest, least sensitive, little megalomaniacs out there.

My day sounds like this:



except times 4 and all day long.

One of my children made their bed yesterday without being asked and I was shocked.  SHOCKED.  This particular child has only ever made their bed without multiple requests, threats, taking away of marbles (we use marbles as a sort of point system, which they can earn and then "spend" on privileges like frozen yogurt and stuff), and being locked in their room until it is made.  It made me realize that my kids rarely do anything positive on their own.  They are programmed to be little chaos machines and fight tooth and nail when you try to get them to do anything non-destructive.

So, why did I have four kids?

It doesn't make sense.  I hate staying home all day.  I get resentful over the fact that I really can't work because paying for child care for 4 kids is pretty much equal to what I make.  I still could go, because I'd be getting out of the house and building my career, but it's a lot of work to balance all that child care and carpooling and who is going to make Lillian practice the piano?  As Liz Lemon says, "Murphy Brown LIED to us!"  For me personally, I can't have it all.  So, I grudgingly accept that this is the bed I made and now I'm sleeping in it, but I hate it.

So, I've come up with some theories about why I had so many kids.

1. There are 7 kids in my family and I LOVE having so many siblings.  I loved it growing up, and I love it now that I'm an adult.  I miss my brothers and sisters dearly and wish wish wish I lived closer to them.  I wanted to recreate that for my kids, and I hope that they grow up and are friends like us.  And I need at least one of them to take care of me when I'm old.

2. They do satisfy a biological need.  There is something deep down inside of me that gets immense pleasure from my children.  Deep inside.  Watching them sleep, you forget every crappy thing they did during the day, and the fact that you called your mother when you were on the verge of losing it and cried "I SWEAR THEY'RE DOING IT ON PURPOSE," and the fact that you swore you were done after that last kid and you whisper, "I want more kids."
     2.1 I read in Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies that baby smiles are evolutionarily engineered             to get us to fall in love with our babies, and I tell you- it works.

3.  I can't discount the social pressure of being Mormon.  Formally, there is nothing specifically taught about how many children you should have, just that you should have some because families are important.  Very important.  But, culturally, big families are the norm.  I do not regret marrying young and having Lillian at a young age, but that really wouldn't have happened if I wasn't Mormon where everyone marries young and has babies at a young age.  If I wasn't Mormon, I can't say for sure that I'd have 4 kids.

4.  For all their sociopathic tendencies, they really are hilarious.  They say funny stuff and their emotions are so real and pure.  There is no feeling like seeing them scream with pure joy when they unwrap that perfect gift on Christmas morning.

So for all the times when I despise staying at home, I remind myself that this too shall pass, and one day, I'll be surrounded by my warm, caring, happy, well-adjusted, loving children and grandchildren.  Right?  RIGHT?

Ward campout

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.

Best Homemaker in the World?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End

Thus ends my separation of Church and school.

Run and tell that

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.

My Thankamony*

*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):

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

Take That People

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

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.

SMACK

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.

Save me Captain Moroni!

Take a minute to look over the above picture. Let me briefly explain the story behind the picture for who have never read the Book of Mormon. The central figure of this story is Moroni who, in an effort to rally the troops tears off a piece of his coat and writes some inspiring words on it. "In defense of our homes, our wives, our children, our liberties," or something like that (Tyler also suggested "from hell's heart I stab at thee," but I think that he's getting mixed up). Moroni attaches this piece of his coat to a pole and calls it the Title of Liberty and rides around and inspires men to join his cause to fight off the enemy.

This is a moderately famous painting in Mormon culture, so it shows up a lot, like on the front of the church programs, or in the Gospel Art Kit (a collection of paintings about scripture stories) that we recently purchased.

Tyler opened to this painting and said, "when I was little, I always thought those pointy things were his ears, like he was an elf... and that it looked like all those people on the bottom were drowning in lava. (In a cartoonish voice) 'Save me Moroni, save me!' Actually, it still kind of looks like that to me."

I think this highlights a key difference between boys and girls as the only thing I ever thought was unusual about this painting was that he must have had a big coat.

Baby Naming

I'm having trouble coming up for a name for this baby we're cooking.

Problem number one is the Baby Name Wizard. A year ago, Bridget got me hooked on Laura Wattenburg's blog. My sister Anne thinks I'm silly for reading it, and frankly, before I started reading it, I thought Bridget was a little kooky for reading it as well. But, it's fascinating. As this will be the first baby I've gestated (and named) since becoming a fan, I can't help being influenced by Ms. Wattenburg. Not necessarily by the things she says, but by the trends she points out and the predictions she makes. For example, I like the name Alice a lot (and I have an ancestor named Alice Brooks who was in the Martin Handcart Company), but she predicts that it's going to take off in popularity due to Twilight and Alice in Wonderland. I can't bring myself to give the kid a trendy name.

Problem number two is I like naming my kids with family names. Lillian is named after my grandmothers and Nora's middle name is Allison, which is my sister's name.

To illustrate why this is a problem, here is a list of male names from our family tree going back to the great-grandparents:

Vaughn
Saul (unavailable: Saul Ball? Who would do that to a kid?)
Tracy (unavailable: too many Tracys - Tyler's uncle and brother also named Tracy)
Angus (do I really want to embrace our Scottish heritage that badly? Probably not)
Henderson
James (unavailable: I have no problem with my mother's brother Jim (James), but due to some business deals that went south (I'm probably going to receive a phone call about this), let's just say that he and my father don't exactly get along. And never will. Ever.)
Solomon
Ellis (I don't really like names that end in 's' because when you say them too fast it spills onto our last name: Elli Spall. It's going to confuse all the customer service reps in India and he'll have to spell and re-spell his name 10 times per call)
Franklin
Ashal (unavailable: too many Ashals running around as it is - my dad, my brother, my nephew)
Eldon (unavailable: my grandmother's first husband, and, although I've never gotten the full story, I think there were some very good reasons they got divorced)
Jesse (also unavailable: my dad told me that he abandoned his wife (my dad's grandma) and small children)
Paul (see Saul, above)
Ferdinand (can't do it. Ferdinand is the name of the duck on Babe)
Albert (The one semi-famous man in the mix, he was a supreme court justice on the Supreme Court of Utah. I read his auto-biography and I think he was a funny guy. But... Albert Ball has too many Bs. Plus... Albert.)
Hayden (Not to disparage my sister-in-law who has a son named Aiden, but I can't get in on the The Age of Aidens)

I'm also contemplating something that I haven't consulted my husband about, but predict he won't like, and I don't think I have the guts to do it: Name the kid Calder Ball. Ms. Wattenburg has written about this as well. My maiden name is Calder, so that would be a nice nod to his maternal family but I can't get over the pitfall mentioned in the article of people thinking that they just didn't hear his first name. Like he'd say, "hello, my name is Calder Ball." And the other person would say, "and, what's your first name, Mr. Calder-Ball?" Maybe we'll use it for a middle name.

So that leaves three or four candidates out of a field of 17. I can't even think about girl names. I've already named two girls and I'm completely spent.

Also gumming up the works is my pesky husband, who, for some reason, is actually being picky about the names I come up with. With the first two, he would just nod and say, "yeah, that sounds nice."

When perspective slaps you in the face

Tyler is going to be gone for what amounts to almost 5 days at the end of the month. He's going to work all day Monday, fly to Denver Monday night, be there until Friday morning when he'll fly home, then work all day Friday. Denver is where the people who are in charge of his project physically work, so he occasionally goes up there for some face-to-face time, just to make sure everyone is actually on the same page, and it doesn't just look that way, you know, on paper, or email, as it were.

I briefly considered my options as to what to do with my time. Option 1: drive to see my sisters and parents in Southern California. Pro: Sisters and parents. Con: both sisters and parents have full time gigs that would prevent most all socializing during the day. Also, 9 hours one way. Option 2: drive to see my other sister in Draper. Con: 12 hours in the car. No way.

Being that I was drawing my possible driving circumference at about 1 hour, I realized I wasn't going to go see anybody, except maybe my friend Emily, who lives about 2 miles away, i.e. I am going to stay at home. By myself. During Rodeo Week when there is no preschool. All day. Me and the kids. All. Day.

I started feeling sorry for myself, maybe, a little bit.

Then yesterday, I was transcribing some genealogical-type papers I got from my mom. They were typed up legal sized, and I wanted them letter sized so I could print it out easier. One was called "Sketch of Eliza Collins Hunsaker, Daughter of Allen Collins, a Welshman, and Mary Broady, Scotch." If you're Mormon, you are probably related to Eliza Hunsaker, or, more specifically, to her husband, Abraham Hunsaker who in the end, had 5 wives and over 50 children.

Eliza was Abraham's first wife and they got married in 1833, when she was 15 and he was 20. They joined the church in Illinois after harboring a number of members who had been driven from their homes by mobs. Soon, they too were driven from their home. They loaded up their wagon and headed for Council Bluffs (near Omaha), in preparation for striking out across the wide prairie to who knows where. (It ended up being Utah, if you don't know the story.) While at Council Bluffs, the call came for 500 men who were needed to volunteer to fight in the Mexican War. Abraham signed up and left his wife and six small children with aught but a covered wagon for shelter for OVER A YEAR. Eliza had a brother who lived in Council Bluffs who offered to house her and her children on the condition that she renounce her husband and her religion. Spurning his offer, she lived in that wagon (and later, a crude log cabin) until her husband had walked clear to San Diego and back. He was gone from July 1846 to the fall of 1847.

Yeah, so. Maybe five days isn't so long.

A few thoughts about some things

I've been thinking about coffee and/or tea. Being a life-long Mormon, I've only had coffee once in my life: I was in high school and we were sitting around a coffee shop that also sold smoothies and I reached down to grab my smoothie but accidentally got my friend's iced coffee-mocha-frappeé-chino-whatever that was in the same sized cup and took a sip. Eww. And until recently, I've never felt the loss of coffee: all through school, I never had trouble waking up early to study or felt the need to give up my precious precious sleep in order to study late at night (I'll just get a B on this test). So, there was a neighborhood block party a few weeks ago, and Lillian made friends with a little girl about her age. I started chatting with her mom, and she gave me her phone number. I haven't called because I have no idea what to do with her if she comes over to my house. On TV, this situation came up and the first mom said, "Why don't you come over tomorrow around 10 and have a cup of coffee?" Coffee! That social lubricant. It's perfect because it's something to do that doesn't take any planning or energy, and the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee is about as long as I want that first visit to be. In Jane Austen books, women are always coming over, drinking a cup of tea, and then leaving. This, obviously, isn't an option for me, (and not just because I don't live in Austen-era England, but because Mormons don't drink coffee or tea) but I can't come up with a good substitute. Hot chocolate seems sort of juvenile, although I wouldn't mind if someone offered me some. Chocolate milk in a frosty mug would also be delicious, but again, that seems not very grown up, and it's winter.

Any ideas?

I probably won't call for a while because we've had a rash of sickness at our house. Lillian woke me up early Sunday morning and had vomit all over her and in her bed. Gross. She threw up a few more times on Sunday, but then felt fine. Tyler stayed home with the kids from church. I was really looking forward to being able to listen to the speakers without having to play the fishing game and sing the hymns without my hymnal being snatched away to be used as a ramp for the micro-machines. I liked it for about 10 minutes... and then it was actually really boring. I kept looking around for something to do. I tried to entice the little boy behind me to come into my pew and share my strawberry newtons with me, but I guess his mom told him not to take food from strange women. Maybe I'm not that pious.

Then on Monday, I threw up, which is not news: I throw up all the time. But, I wasn't hungry, and that is not normal. With my morning sickness, I am starving and I eat and eat, and throw up, and then my body sends me signals that I must replace the food we just gave up so eat Eat EAT! I couldn't make myself eat hardly anything yesterday and I threw up and threw up some more, so I decided I probably had whatever Lillian had.

I'm so sick of being sick.

I woke up this morning and I felt marginally better, but I cracked while I was trying to get Lillian ready for preschool. Background: Lillian doesn't like bananas. It's not just that she doesn't like to eat them, she can't even been the same room as someone who is eating one, or where someone ate a banana an hour ago. Also, although we empty the dishwasher together almost every day, she's convinced that the dishes in the dishwasher are dirty, and the ones in the cupboard are clean; almost like, it's not the dishwasher that cleans them, it's the act of putting them in the cupboard. So, this morning. It was a fight to get her to go to the bathroom and get dressed (because she wanted to keep watching cartoons), then I was trying to get her to sit up to the table and eat a bowl of Kix. First, she didn't want to walk through the kitchen because Nora was eating a banana. She plugged her nose very dramatically and screamed that it smelled like "b-wana" and indicated that she was NOT going to go in there. After I got her sitting, I went to pull a bowl out of the (clean) dishwasher and she freaked out saying it was dirty. She sprung out of her chair and threw herself bodily against the dishwasher door to prevent me from extricating my hand with the offending bowl. I called my mom in tears and told her I was having a hard time. She was very supportive, even if she did laugh a little at Lillian's antics, and made the point that the fight is worth it because then she'll go to preschool and I can take a breather.

It was a good point, but turned out was incorrect because when we showed up, the woman doing preschool this week said she'd heard I was sick and was sorry, and then politely asked me to keep Lillian home.

So, Lillian is watching Hercules for the 5,000th time.

She's named all the muses except that one second from the left. I can't think of a good name for her. And, does it bother anyone else how they call the things Zeus throws "thunder bolts"? That doesn't even make any sense. They are lightning bolts, Disney. If you're going to botch up the whole of Greek mythology, maybe you could at least get one thing right.

Mormon Mafia

My friend Bridget posted this on FaceBook and said, "I can't stop watching this." I can't stop watching it either. The "moving my hips like 'yeah'" is so hypnotic. But, that's not what I want to talk about.

Both of us just know that this guy is Mormon. But how are we so sure? Sometimes I see women at the library or wherever and they look Mormon, so I casually look for clues. Nine out of ten times, I can spot some dead giveaway, like a Young Women's bag or a glimpse of their garments as they wrestle their kids.

It's not like being able to spot Mormon churches. One time, I was up in Half Moon Bay with Candie on a Sunday, and we were driving to church. I had never been to that building before, so we were driving along the street slowly, looking for addresses. I looked up ahead a little and saw it on the left and said, "oh, it's up there." It was probably 150 yards away and obscured by the building next to it, so Candie didn't believe me.

Me: That's it. Trust me.
Candie: But how do you know?
Me: I just. Know.

All the churches kind of have the same sort of architectural style with a steeple instead of a cross so once you've been to 40 or 50, they become pretty easy to pick out.

But, what about the people? Is it their squeaky-clean look? Their penchant for doing silly things like making a movie of themselves doing ASL to Miley Cyrus?

Or, is this my superpower?