Another 2011 Recap

It seems like all of my friends have done their year recaps already, so I thought I'd do mine.  First thing, my three goals.  I don't remember exactly which order they went in, but they were:

1) Move out of my parents' basement.

2) Submit something for publication.

3) Lose a pound a week for an average weight loss of 52 pounds.

As many of you probably know, I accomplished 2/3 this year, and that's not bad.  I didn't lose 52 pounds.  It went really, really well at the beginning of the year and in the first two months or so I lost 15 pounds.  Then in March I fell off the wagon and over the course of the summer gained most of it back.  Thanks to morning sickness, I'm down to about where I was again, but now that I'm in my second trimester, I'm pretty sure that will be changing.

Here are some of our monthly highlights:

January: In one month, I wrote about 98% a 75,000 word novel.  I've never been prouder of myself as the moment when I typed "The End."  Of course now I have plans to rewrite from the bottom up, but I think we can safely say that one's first full-length novel, no matter how bad, is an accomplishment!

February: Not much happened.

March: Still not too much going on.

April: Will and I decide that it's really time to move out.  He calls his old boss in Utah who says, "Sure you can have your job back."  We celebrate Easter and Joci's first birthday early because Will left Ohio a few days before both.  I spend the rest of the month packing, getting ready for a garage sale, and relying heavily on my parents for help with my kids.

May: After about three weeks which consisted entirely of packing, garage sale prep, and more relying on my parents to keep me sane, the girls and I boarded a flight to Utah.  Even though I thought Joci would be the problem, Chaela's handful of drop-to-the-floor, scream-her-head-off tantrums proved me wrong.  Thank goodness for kind fellow travelers.  When we finally arrived and I saw Will standing in the airport, I literally cried with relief.

June: We settle into life in Utah, reacquaint ourselves with the area, and reconnect with some great friends.  Thanks to the fact that most of our stuff is still in Ohio, we live a fairly spartan lifestyle, and for the first time in my life, I keep our apartment clean all the time.

July: Not too much goes on.  The girls and I head down to SF reservoir with Rosalie and hang out with her a lot.  She is a life saver while Will works those 10-14 hour summer days!

August: More hanging out.  I talk to some other women in my ward and we organize a Joy School (a small pre-school taught by the moms).  Had an INCREDIBLE girls' night/sleepover with some old friends from high school.

September: Chaela begins Joy School, which is her favorite thing in the world.  Pretty sure it was around the beginning of this month that Joci finally began to walk at 16 and 1/2 months old.  My parents brought out all of our stuff, and Kristin, Lindsay, Rosalie, and families all came out to help.

October:  This was the month I accomplished my goal to submit something for publication, which also earned me my first professional rejection letter, which I may frame.  At the end of the month, when I found out I was pregnant with baby #3!  For Halloween I made the girls some pirate costumes and we had a ton of fun trick or treating with Rosalie and her kids!

November: Chaela turned four, which she seems to think means she's an adult.  She had a fun little party with her friends and I had a fun little party with their moms.  Saw some of Will's family for a pre-Thanksgiving weekend, awesome!  For Thanksgiving itself  we visited my sisters and discovered that Kristin could, indeed, cook a turkey.  Also during this month, morning sickness ruins my life.

December: More dealing with morning sickness, but mostly preparing for the holidays.  We had a great Christmas and were thrilled to see family, not as thrilled to see them move out-of-state.

So that's pretty much year.  It's been fun, and I'm looking forward to the next one!

Baby #3!

I posted on facebook a few days ago, so I'm guessing everyone who reads this blog knows, but we found out a few months ago that we're expecting baby #3 next June!  I'm excited, even though for the past ten weeks it's been difficult to feel much but sick.  I'm hoping that will clear out within the next two weeks, though, and we can get back to normal around here.

I've told the girls.  Chaela is pretty excited, but every time we ask Joci if she wants a new baby in the house she says, "Uh-uh baby!"  I think she'll be a great big sister, though.  She loves all the babies she sees at church and she's getting a new cousin about two months before our baby is born, so we'll use him as a sort of practice-run for her (sorry Kristin, ha ha).  Chaela is an old hand at being a big sister now, so I'm not worried about her, she's really a loving and helpful girl.  I will probably keep our bedroom door shut for the first few weeks the baby is home, however, because when we brought Joci home from the hospital, we woke up the next morning to find Chaela in the pack and play with her.  It was both terrifying and amazingly cute.  

We don't have names picked out yet.  I looked a lot at first, but sort of gave up for a while.  We have plenty of time, and now that I'm past the first trimester and S-L-O-W-L-Y starting to feel like a person again I'll probably restart the hunt.  It's such a pain trying to find something Will and I agree on.

I also put up a ticker under Joci's picture on the sidebar.  I know some people think this one is creepy, but I love seeing a representation of what the baby actually looks like.  And I would love to hear name suggestions in the comments; it's always fun to hear what people say!

Well it's been almost a month since I blogged, but not too much has been going on.  We're gearing up for the holidays, and I'm sure there will be more to talk about with those coming up.  The person in our family who has been changing the most lately is Joci, because she's learning a lot of new words.  Here are some of them:

Hot! (usually followed by her blowing on whatever it is)
Soo (soup)
Hot soo! (blowing noise)
Shoe
Show
Pop
Juu (juice)
Mine!
Bye Pooh!
Bye Joe!
Bye sis! (these are all said randomly)
Ball
Yay!

So that's Joci.  She vocalizes constantly, but for the most part it's babyspeak.  Sometimes between her and Chaela, though, I think I might invest in a pair of earplugs.

"Well, I didn't ask if I could have cookies!"

A funny story from today.

It was my turn to teach Joy School this morning (a preschool taught by a small group of mothers, way cheaper than traditional if you've got the time).  Halfway through, I got a migraine.  Ugh.  It was awful.  But I went along with the lesson as long as I could.  I made it through snack time, which was two Halloween Oreos I bought especially for this the night before, one candy corn pumpkin each, grapes, and crackers. When it got too bad, I put on "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown," which got me through until parents arrived.
By the time the kids left, it was bad.  I could hardly see, couldn't focus, had a pounding headache, all the lovely things that come with a migraine.  It was lunch time, but I could hardly stand, so I gave my kids a cheese stick and made Joci a cup of milk and stuck her in bed with it for her nap.  Thankfully, the milk filled her up and she slept.

I told Chaela that I was sick and had to lay down for a while, telling her, "Sweetie, if you need anything, wake me up and I'll try and get it for you, ok?"

"Ok, mom!" she said, then sat herself at the computer, which she loves to play on.
Too far gone to care about the daily recommended amount of screen time for young children, I collapsed into bed.

I woke up when Joci did about two hours later, feeling much better.  Chaela came into my room and we had this conversation:
"Hey, honey, I bet you're really hungry since we missed lunch!" I said.
"No," Chaela responded.  "Not really."
"What?  Are you sure?  You're not hungry at all?"
"No."
Silence.
"Chaela... what did you eat?" I asked, suddenly suspicious.
"Um, I don't know, ha ha!" she giggled.
"Yes you do," I said.  "What did you eat?"
"Ha ha!  I don't know!"
"Chaela," I said in my 'mom' voice, "Tell me what you ate."
"Well..." she said, "I didn't ask if I could have cookies."
I remembered I had left the bag of Oreos on the counter, at least 1/2 full.  I remembered Chaela's propensity for using a stool to reach things she wasn't supposed to have.
"Chaela, did you eat that entire bag of Oreos?"
"Ha ha!  No.  There's one, two, three left!"
"You ate all the cookies but three?"
"Yeah!  And some pumpkins!"
"The candy pumpkins we had at snack time?"
"Yeah!  I put them in a bowl!"
I rubbed my face with my hands and sighed.  There's one thing to be said about being sick, it makes me much more mellow.
I sighed.  "Alright, well I'm glad you weren't hungry the whole time.  No more candy or cookies for the rest of the day."
"Ok mom!"
And she bounced away.
When I walked into the kitchen, I saw she'd even poured her own glass of milk and had obviously been dipping the Oreos in it.  She hadn't spilled a drop.  If she hadn't left the gallon out on the floor, I might have missed the fact that she'd done it.  And no, she never got a stomach ache or acted like she felt sick.

Kids.

Bucket List

Inspired by my friend Maya over at Musings of a Marfan Mom I decided to post my bucket list.  I don't think I have before, but if so, oh well!  She did it as part of a contest so check that out on her blog if you're interested, but I'm just posting mine for fun.

 1. Own our own home.
 2. Finish and publish a novel, preferably with some measure of success.
 3. Get some dogs, probably Siberian Huskies.
 4. Get a Master's degree.
 5. Become a more patient and kind mother.
 6. Travel to Hawaii, Alaska, the UK, Australia, Japan, and a bunch of other places.
 7. Get back into drawing and painting.
 8. Be in a musical.
 9. Make exercise a part of my daily (or at least every-other-daily) life
10.Always maintain a reasonably clean home.
11.Live in forested mountains in a house that has a loft with a sliding glass door that leads to a balcony.
12.Do something meaningful with my degree in linguistics, like help preserve a dying language.
13.Pass my passions, loves, and beliefs on to my children, if they're willing.
14.See the world from the cockpit of an airplane, or from a helicopter, or some view that's wider than an airplane window.
15.Learn to be conversational in Spanish, French, Japanese, and for fun and shock value, Welsh.

Costumes 2011: Complete!

The sewing is finished!  Here is Joci's costume... a little different from the picture but still cute.  I only hope she deigns to keep the hat on, or else the effect won't be as good.  We'll see.  That floppiness at the top is supposed to be a hat (the pink thing inside is a bandanna... her head needs all the warmth it can get).

So all I have left to do is get them some shirts to wear underneath and see if a friend has some fake plastic swords I can borrow!  I'm excited!

2011 Goal #2: Submit something for publication - Complete!

Well, as virtually all of you saw on facebook, I reached 2/3 of my goals for the year when I submitted a short story entitled "Faerie's Child" to Daily Science Fiction yesterday afternoon.  I haven't heard back from them yet, but I should within three weeks.

I'm planning on a rejection because, as I've said before, rejections are what happen.  If I get one, I'm going to print it and hang it on my wall to motivate myself to do better.  As the title character said on Castle this past Monday, "Rejection isn't failure; giving up is failure," or something like that.  It was a timely episode for me.

I'm so paranoid I just checked my email to make sure I hadn't gotten rejected while writing this blog.  Being a writer is going to be bad for my nerves.

And I can't remember if I've said this on my blog or not, but I've decided that if I can't get published professionally after a few years of trying, I'll self-publish.  That way all you people who feel bad for me can buy my stories for pity dollars which I will use to buy myself a pity Pepsi every now and then. : )

"The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell."

Orson Scott Card said that.  It both speaks to me and disturbs me.

Weight Loss Derailed

Ok, I was looking at some old pictures of Will and I on facebook today.  Look at this:

That's us in the summer of 2006, five years ago.  Now (oh, man, I really don't want to do this...) look at this:

This is us at Christmas in 2010.  There's one where you can see us a lot better, but I just can't handle putting it up.  I know they say that weight gain is a sign of a happy relationship, but this is ridiculous.  I have lost a few pounds since this picture was taken, but I am not going to reach my goal of losing a pound per week (52 pounds) this year.   You really can't tell with Will, but he's matched my weight gain almost pound for pound, it's just harder to see.  Probably because he's a guy and six feet tall.

Anyway, I'm tired of this.  I'm tired of feeling like a frumpy mom.  I'm tired of using my kids as a facebook profile picture because the ones of me are heinous.  I'm tired of being afraid of running into people I haven't seen since college.  I want to feel good about myself again.  I've let myself go since being in Utah (gained back about half the weight I lost at the beginning of the year).  It's time to recommit myself.

I recently bought a scale.  I think being able to see myself gaining or losing weight will be exactly what I need. I wish we'd bought one sooner, then I wouldn't be starting behind... again.

There are twelve weeks left in the year.  I would like to lose fifteen pounds by the end of it.  This goal scares me, but if I can accomplish it, I will have lost a total of twenty pounds in 2011.  That's not horrible.  I would like Will to participate, but I haven't asked him yet.

I will attempt to accomplish this goal by controlling how much I eat and incorporating exercise into my routine.  The exercise is going to be hard, because our place is small and my kids are underfoot.  Not to mention I'm already trying to balance writing, housekeeping, sewing, cooking, and actually being mentally present with my daughters on a regular basis.  Oh, and spending time with Will (ha ha, love you).  Anyway, if people who do all of the above plus work can make time to be healthy, so can I.  

Right?

Winner!

Ok, not exactly.  But I wanted to post that I entered my first-ever writing challenge on one of the two writing forums I frequent.  Thirteen people entered; many of them have been writing for years.  One or two are published.  The contest was to take the "trigger" and write the first 13 lines of a potential novel.  The trigger this time was the noir/hardboiled detective genre.

Guess what?  I got SECOND PLACE!  The only person who beat me is one I know has been published.  I just wanted to put up a little "yay me!" post, because I'm proud of myself.  It's nice to have a little validation... like maybe this goal of being a writer isn't completely crazy.  Maybe someday I really will be published!

We'll find out soon enough.  Within the next few days, I'll be submitting a short story to an online magazine.  I'm planning on it being rejected, because that's what happens.  But maybe it won't sting as much as it would have.

: D

Rewrite.

I'm going to let my story rest for a while, then I'm going to write it over.

Yes.  I'm going to rewrite the whole thing.  Why?  It's not working.  It's not... enough.  This story means a lot to me, and I'm not good enough to write it yet.  The manuscript has a  thousand little snarls that I can't untangle.  Not plot problems, just... oh, I don't even know how to explain it.  It's not right yet.

I care about this story, and I don't want to put it out there until it's as good as I can possibly make it.  I think this is the way to do it.

In the meantime, I'm going to revisit my first attempt at a novel.  I still think the story could be a good one, and I have a few random ideas that will make it better.  I'm not giving up my goal to submit something for publication in 2011, either.  I have a flash fiction piece (a VERY short story) in the works, and I know where I want to send it.  I will submit it by the end of the year.  I'm also toying with the idea of starting a new novel, so I feel like I'm moving forward instead of backward.  I hesitate to do this is because I don't want to feel like I'm starting, starting, starting, and never finishing.  At the same time, something fresh might renew my writing spirit.  I do have a few intriguing ideas I'd like to hammer out.  We'll see.

Costumes 2011: One down.

Here's a picture of Chaela's completed costume!  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, though I wish I'd had enough of the stripped fabric to do the whole shirt.  Oh, well.  I like it anyway.  I made a shirt, two skirts, a bandanna/head scarf thing, and a shawl for tying around the waist.  Love it.

Next up: a break.  Then Joci's.

Time to make the costumes!

If you've followed my blog for more than a year, you might know that Halloween is important to me, and the most important part is the costumes.  Not mine, my kids.

Here is a look back at the costumes I've done for the girls since Chaela's first Halloween:

2008: Medieval Princess

She went trick or treating to one house.  She didn't wear the veil.

2009: Fairy

My camera had a smudge on the lens, but you get it.  To be honest, it's my least favorite to date.

2010: "Scary" Witch and Black Cat

My ultimate favorite so far (though I'm hoping to outdo myself this year).  I wish I had a better picture.

Mostly rode in the wagon.  It was freezing last year.  There's a tail, too, you just can't see it.  I liked this, but it ended up a little too small and I kept having to pull it apart and add more fabric.

Coming Halloween 2011

Pirates!

Once again, I'm designing the girls' costumes, using patterns for select parts and inspiration.  Luckily I have a ton of fabric left over from other projects, so I'm pretty sure the only thing I'll need to buy is trim (lace and fringe).

Here are the designs and fabric (the colors don't really go in the drawings, but I only had  crayons, so bear with me):

Chaela:

Joci:

Oh, yeah!  More on these as they develop.

Dear Mom,

I'm going to take a spoon and eat all that raspberry freezer jam you left.  In fact, I may mix it with Nutella and eat nothing else for a week.  If I send you the empty container, will you send me more jam?

Your daughter,
Caitlyn

P.S. Don't forget about my offer to become rich and build you a little cottage with an enormous garden somewhere on my estate.

P.P.S. Or I guess when you get home from CO maybe you could email me the recipe, if you have time.

Love you mom!

:)

Joci's Words

Well it's been a while since I've posted an update on Joci.  At 16 months, she's in that stage where she is constantly changing, and it has a lot to do with language.

New words:

bayey!! - "Bath" (always said with at least two exclamation points, usually while trying to strip)
yah - "Yes"
Buu - "Blue's Clues" (or "I want to watch TV," it could be either)
Bye + wave - "Bye" or "I want to leave."

And possibly : Chuh - "Chaela," but that one isn't consistent, so I'm not positive.

Ok, there aren't many of those.  But though she isn't saying much, she is understanding a lot.  Here are some words/phrases that Joci knows:

Are you hungry?
Eat
Nap (or ni-night)
Bath (obviously)
Pickle
Fruit snack
Bread
Get dressed
Shoe
Blue (as in Blue's Clues)
Wait a minute
Stop
Toy
No
Go outside
Swing
Book

There are others, including family member's names, but this list is good enough.  In addition to verbal things, Joci is picking up unspoken language, like shaking her head no, pointing, waving, giving kisses, and giving hugs.

One phrase she doesn't seem to get is "come here," which can be frustrating when she's running away from me butt naked and dripping wet.  Oh, well.  In time.

Continuing Education

When started my first story (I cringe a little at the pretentiousness of saying 'book,' 'novel,' or even 'manuscript' when right now it's more like the equivalent of 'doodle') sometime during the year of 2008, I didn't have a clue what I was doing.  My fiction writing knowledge looked like this:

That was it for a really long time.  In fact, that was it until the past month or so, when I started paying attention to blogs and articles by real writers giving advice to posers like me.  There is a lot to learn, but for once, my brain is working.  I haven't felt like this since I was in college.  At long last, after reading dozens upon dozens of articles, blogs, and books and writing for hundreds of hours , my knowledge looks like this:

I have come a long way; I still have far to go.

Chaela Speaks

Woo hoo!  Look at me, two blogs in less than a week!

Anyway.

For those of you who don't have the opportunity to be around Chaela on a regular basis, let me just say, she is verbose.  The child never stops talking, not from the time she wakes up in the morning to the time we force her into her bed at night.

Lately, Chaela has picked up some new words.  Some she's heard from us, some from TV, and others, I assume, from being out and about in the world.  When I was growing up, there were two kinds of words: "bad words," and "all the other words."  Now that Chaela is meandering through the labyrinth of language, however, I find myself making up categories.

It all started with "Stupid is a mean word."  Because it is, and Chaela will tell you so, because it's the only context in which she can use the word 'stupid' without getting in trouble.  I didn't want to tell her it's a bad word, because it's not.  'Stupid' can be applied to situations without a problem.  It's when it's applied to people that we don't use it, but for now, Chaela is too young to understand the difference.

She's sworn before ("That's my medicine, it goes on my a**!") but she was too young for explanations.  A few weeks ago, however, we were presented with a parental teaching moment.  Will and I were watching a comedian one night after she was supposed to be in bed, except she wasn't.  The comedian swore, and Chaela said, with a question in her voice said, "Sh-?" only to be cut off by Will's hand clapping over her mouth (and me leaving the room because I was laughing so hard).  That's when she learned about 'bad' words, which are words we never say.

The next category is "serious" words.  These are words we never use unless we mean them.  Mostly it was brought on by Chaela screaming "HELP, HELP!" every time we go out in public, but it's also been applied to the word die/dead, which she's begun using in an unintentionally morbid fashion ("I'll just go be DEAD in my room, MOM.")

Lastly, we come to "words only grown-ups can say," or "words Mommy uses frequently and doesn't think she can stop saying."  In this category: the word 'crap.'  I know, it's a gross word, and I really should drop it from my vocabulary, but seriously, I NEVER swear.  I feel like I should have something to say when I'm mad!

In our house we now have mean words, bad words, serious words, and grown-up words.  I don't know if it's her personality, my paranoia, or a combination of both, but I am a much less laid-back mother than I thought I would be.

Of Blog Neglect and Novel Writing.

I know I've been neglecting my blog for a long time now, but it's mostly because I don't feel like I have anything to blog about.  I hang out with my girls all day, my husband at night, and for the past little bit, work on my story, which I know isn't exciting to pretty much anyone but me.  However, it's what I'm doing, and I know there are about three people out there who care, so here's an update.


I've been doing a read-through.  Well, I was trying to.  It works in fits and starts.  When I got to the second half, I had to stop and edit a bunch of it because it didn't match the beginning or the end and I was too bothered to carry on.  I fixed the content, but what really needs work is the pacing.  It's basically this: three days where you see everything, skip two weeks in a lengthy summary, EXAMINE EVERY SINGLE DETAIL of the next few days, during which time the storylines separate and more time seems to pass for one character than all the others, exciting climax.


Storytelling is hard.  For reals.  However, a good thing to come of this is that the closer I get to the end, the better (IMO) the writing gets.


For a long time I've felt like, "Why bother doing this?  It's not very good, it will never see the light of day."  While that may still be true, it's not as bad as I thought it was, and I will definitely finish it.  Because you know why?  Writing is FUN.  You know that thrilled feeling you get after doing something AWESOME, like riding a wave runner or a roller coaster, or arriving in that place that means more to than anywhere else in the world (MOheckyes!), or after a really deep, satisfying conversation with your best friends?  That is how I felt last night after working on my book.  I <3 making crap up!  I wish to do it for a living.


Anyway, this is all I have to blog about, and I must needs feed mine chilluns.  BUT I think since I've spent all this blogspace talking about my book, I want to post a sample for ya'll.  Hold on.  Ok, kids are fed.  I will now try to find something excerpty.  Warning: I am a nerd, and this is a fantasy.


Oh man, now I'm nervous.  Don't judge me.  Do, however, shoot my a sympathetic, private email if it sucks.  Here we go:


A grinding, shrieking roar wrenched Kai out of sleep.  She jumped, flailed for half a second in open air, then grunted as she hit the ground.  Spitting earth from her mouth, she grimaced.  A dirt floor?  Where was she?

The blood-freezing scream rent the night, and instinctively she pressed her face into the soil, digging her fingers into the hard-packed earth. Her heart pulsed faster than a strobe light.  

The most primitive, visceral part of her brain reared up.  You are prey, it squealed in a piercing whine.

Outside, there were shouts, a series of barked commands, then silence.  The haze of confusion lifted, and through her fear, she remembered; the girl with the broken leg, the camp, the strange meeting…

That didn’t explain that ear-splitting, demonic noise.  She turned her face to the side and gasped a breath, scrabbling to reassert higher brain function.

She pushed her shaky way onto hands and knees and crawled to the shuttered window.  She pressed her forehead to the cool stone, inhaled, and raised her eye to the small opening between the slats.

The campsite was abandoned.  Nothing remained of the fire but a few embers casting a weak, red glow on the rocks ringed around them.  Weird, she swore she’d heard the others.  

The roar shattered the night again, and she slammed herself backwards, accidentally shoving open the shutters in her haste to get away from them.  Terror cracked through her like lighting, every hair on her body stood on end. 

She was about to die.  

Another of the horrible cries echoed off the mountain and Kai clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. 

Suddenly, in the patch of sky framed in the open window, a column of white fire blossomed, searing itself into her retinas.  The afterimage smoldered behind her eyelids, a negative of two vast, impossible shapes.

She dug the heels of her hands hard into her eyes.  When the glare faded, she crept to the window and peered out once again.  

She had to look. 

The white-hot fire blazed and died like the flashbulb of a camera.  To her exhilaration and horror, they appeared.

Dragons, one red, one black, battled in the coal-dark sky.

Resolution 2011 Mid-year Update

It's been a while since I blogged about my three New Year's resolutions.  Yes, I still remember them.  Here is an update (I don't remember which order they were in):

1. Lose an average of 1 pound a week for a total of 52 pounds:

I'm not sure how this one is going, because we don't currently own a scale.  Let's just say I'm not as slender as I should be by now.  However, I lost some weight and will keep this as a goal.  Even if I don't get to 52 pounds, anything is better than nothing!


2. Move out of my parents' basement.

Check.  For those of you who didn't notice, we moved.  To Utah.


3. Submit something, anything, for publication.

This is another goal not achieved YET, but I think this one is coming along.  A summary: throughout the month of January I completed a first draft of a novel with approximately 75,000 words.  My initial goal was to send the manuscript to agents or publishers by my birthday (April 6th, I like chocolate).  Fail.  First of all, I got lazy, second, I got thrown off by the move.  Will was gone for a month, I had to pack everything, excuse, excuse, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, we're settled here now and I'm out of excuses.  I haven't written much recently, but I didn't stop thinking about my story.  Trust me, it's better now.
I've also discovered a gem of a thing called AutoCrit, an online editing tool that tells you when your writing sucks.  (Statistical analysis, yay! .)  Not that this will help with any major problems, but now the final product will be super shiny.  I'm very excited.


How are you all doing on your resolutions?

You might be a Mormon...

Since being back in Utah, I've been bombarded with the... interesting facets of LDS culture.  To celebrate that, I thought I'd start a "You might be a redneck" inspired list.  Feel free to add your own in the comments.  My non-LDS friends, prepare to be anthropologically enlightened.

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If the first question you hear after you get engaged is, "So when are you going to start having kids?" you might be a Mormon.

If the second question you hear after getting married (after "So when are you having kids?") is, "So, when are you starting your blog?" you might be a Mormon.

If you have a brick with the word "Nauvoo" imprinted on it displayed on your mantle or a table in your foyer,
you might be a Mormon.

If you are 21 and single, but all your old roommates are married and you refer to yourself as a spinster, you might be a Mormon.

If you have ever been told to dance a "Book of Mormon length" away from a member of the opposite sex, you might be a Mormon.

If you exhibit bizarre behavior, such as honking, waving, offering lemonade, or screaming, "HEY ELDER!" when you see random young men in suits and black tags wandering around your town, you might be a Mormon.

If you have an entire shelf of books written by Gerald Lund, you might be a Mormon.

If your best and/or only friend who does NOT attend your church is Catholic, you might be a Mormon.

If you have been on vacation to obscure rural cities in Illinois, Ohio, and New York, and Missiouri,

you might be a Mormon.

If you name your child something that you came up with by combining the names of other people you are related to, you might be a Mormon.

If you have multiple children by the age of 24 and you did it on purpose, you might be a Mormon.

If you know several people with names like Nephi, Lehi, Mosiah, Ammon, Moroni, or Mahonri Moriancumer, you might be a Mormon..

If your blog features tutorials for home-cooked meals, unbearably cute crafts, sewing, canning, gardening, child-rearing, and links to your Etsy shop and the official church website, you might be a Mormon.

If you have a Pyrex dish etched with your last name and a unique design so you don't lose it at potlucks or when taking dinner to sick people, you might be a Mormon.

If you have a younger sibling the same age as your oldest child, you might be a Mormon.

If the first half of your sports nickname is Stormin,' you might be a Mormon.

If people look at you blankly when you tell them the full and correct name of your church, you might be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

If your family and friends often try and involve you in summer sales and/or pyramid schemes, you might be a Mormon.

If you have enough food in your basement to feed 10 people for a year, you might be a Mormon.

If you live east of the Mississippi and decide to go to college in Utah or Idaho, you might be a Mormon.

If your husband is a white guy who speaks a language from Asia, Africa, South America, or a Pacific island, you might be a Mormon.

If you were born after 1990, but the dances you go to are still playing "Macarena" and "Cha Cha Slide," you might be a Mormon.

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Well, that's all for now.  Like I said, add your own in the comments!  If you're not Mormon, add one from whatever culture you feel you belong to the most.  Its always good to be able to laugh at our quirks.

Little Miss Joss

Kids are The Great Mystery.  From the moment I found out I was pregnant with each of them, I pondered What They Would Do, but more importantly: Who Would They Be?

Babies often taunt their parents with tantalizing hints about their adult selves (or at least, that's what I'm assuming, but my oldest is only three... and you know what assuming does... anyway...).  I've known for a long time, for example, that Chaela is too bright for her own good, or my sanity.

But now Joci is old enough that the fog of babyhood surrounding her personality is dissipating, as well.  Here are a few things she has revealed to me:

1. Joci loves shoes.  There is only one pair that fits her, but she brings it to me every morning, shoving them towards my face while lifting her chubby foot in the air.  "Bf! Bf!" she insists, and how can I resist that?  It's very persuasive.

2. Joci loves clothes and accessorizing.  Right now, the girls don't have a dresser, so all of their clothes are folded and neatly stacked on their closet floor.  Every morning when it's time to get dressed, Joci makes a beeline for the bedroom and picks out her own clothes.  I am not exaggerating.  It all started with a pair of socks... now it's her entire daily wardrobe.  The kid can't walk, but she can coordinate outfits like a boss.

3. Joci loves chocolate.  In fact, Joci has a sensing device in her body similar to bat echolocation.  But instead of finding bugs, Joci finds chocolate, ice cream, and candy.  Woe betide anyone who thinks they don't have to share.  Unless you want to have your eardrums burst with her ultra-sonic banshee power screams, you give that child what she wants or put it away until she is in bed.

4. Joci won't take no for an answer for longer than 3 seconds (ignore Chaela picking her nose, we're working on it).  In this picture you see depicted the first Epic Battle between my second daughter and I.

Me: Joci, get away from the T.V.
Joci sits down.  Joci stands up.
Me: Joci, sit!
Joci ignores me.  I get up and pull her down by her pants.  She lands on her diapered butt.
Joci: Bf!
I sit down.  Joci stands up.
Me: Jocelyn!
Joci looks back and me and smiles.
Joci: Hi!!
Me: JOCELYN EVE!
Joci sits down.  Joci stands up.
Etc.

What does this mean for the Joci of the future?  Super model?  Probably not.  Sorry, honey, thanks to mommy, you probably won't break 5'5.  Fashion editor, though, or designer?  Could be.  Stubborn chocoholic on the formidable level of her Aunt Lindsay?  Almost definitely.

Joci, I am so excited to see the woman you will turn out to be.

Bonus pictures!

Perhaps where Joci gets her diva inspiration?

One of the most rewarding parts of being a mom is that my girls are friends.
Note the socks on Joci, she picked them out herself.

What if you could live to be 1,000?

Ok, check out this article.  The gist of it is that there's a scientist claiming that within 25 years, we might have the capacity to virtually do away for the aging process, perhaps extending the human lifespan to 1,000 years or more.

What do you think about this?  Would you want to live forever?  What about population control?  Getting a job if no one has to retire until they're 900?  Is it natural?  What other issues would arise from this?

I know you're all thoughtful, intelligent people, so I'd love to hear what you think!  Discuss.

Learning "L"

Anyone who has heard Chaela speak knows that she's pretty good.  She can say /s/ and /r/ and most /th/'s without a problem, but she's had issues with /l/.  Lately, however, I've noticed that she is consciously working on it.  It all started while she was watching "Pooh's Heffalump Movie" and started running around yelling "Yumpy, Yumpy!  La!  Lumpy! Yumpy!  La!  Lumpy!  LUMPY!" (fun times for my upstairs neighbors).

Anyway, she's been doing well, especially with word-initial /l/ (L's at the beginning of the word... yay linguistics jargon!  Use that degree!).  Recently she's even started picking up on the /l/ within words... except for her own name.  This was a conversation we had this evening:

[Conversation starts with Chaela exaggerating the L in a word I can't remember.]
Me: Wow!  You're getting really good at saying your L's!
Chaela: YEAH!
Me: So can you say Chaela?
Chaela: YEAH!  CHAYA!
Me: Ha ha, not quite.  Chay-LUH.  Llllll.  Luh!
Chaela: CHAYA!  I did it!
Me: Yeah, good job honey.  How about this, say Chay...
Chaela: Chay.
Me: Luh.
Chaela: Luh.
Me: Chay... luh.
Chaela: CHAYA!  I DID IT!  Chaya!  Chaya Kafrin HAIR!
Me: *sigh*
[five minutes later, to herself]
Chaela: Ha ha, Chay-LUH.  That's silly.
Me: *facepalm*

A blog to keep... and show to boys in 13 years.

Alright, a funny story for you all.

Ever since Joci has been drinking from bottles (in December) Chaela has taken to imitating her when we give her something to drink.  She does it every single time.  Observe:

This is the position I'm talking about, only with Chaela and a sippy cup.

 No problem, right?  Right.  Because sippy cups have lids.

Regular cups, however, do not.

So, Chaela and I were hanging out because Will is working tonight and Joci was already in bed.  She asked for a cup of water, so I got her one.  Not a sippy cup, like I usually do, just a normal one.  Chaela's really good with them; she usually has them with meals at the table.  This time she was sitting on the couch.

Now, I don't know if she was extra tired because it was a little past her bedtime, or maybe it was her first honest-to-goodness blonde moment.  I will never know.  What I do know is that within ten seconds of me sitting down at the computer, Chaela screamed.  I jumped up, wondering how on earth she managed to hurt herself that badly laying flat on the couch (never doubting, however, that she could find a way).  She threw herself into a sitting position and gasped, "MOMMY!  I have water ALL OVER ME!"

By this time I was next to her.  Yes, indeed, she was soaked.  I attempted to muffle my laughter as the truth dawned.

"Chaela... sweetheart... um, [snort] did you just try and [giggle] drink that open cup of water laying down?"  I couldn't help it.  I barely made it through the question.  My intelligent, precocious three-and-a-half-year-old had just dumped a cup of water on her face.  Now I had tears streaming out of my eyes.

"Yes," Chaela replied, with a tone and expression I can only call prim.

I lost it.  Ok, it's probably just me, or maybe you had to be here, to hear her scream of shock and horror when it happened.  Or it could be that I'm really, really tired.  Either way, I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.  Even now, writing this, I can't get over how awesomely hysterical it was.

Thank you Chaela, you made mommy's night.

Joci!

Joci turned one on April 20th this year, making her close to 13 and 1/2 months now.  She's not walking, but she does pull up and cruise, so I'm still holding out hope it will happen eventually.  I've decided one of the things I'm going to do is work on it with her, because part of me wonders if she doesn't walk because I carry her everywhere.  I'm not too worried about it, though the pediatrician did say they might want to look into it if she isn't walking by 15 months, so my goal is to have her on her feet by then.  We'll see.

What Joci does do is communicate.  Her favorite way to do this is an obnoxious scream that sounds like 500 nails on a chalkboard.  However, she also says a few words:

Hi!
Mama
Dad
Uh-oh
Ki (kitty)

She signs for:
All done
I want that (it's the milk sign, which we taught her for bottle, and she decided meant "I want")

She also nods her head yes and no, but I'm not sure if she's quite got the point of it yet.

She might be saying:
Sha! (Chaela)
Buh (Blankie)
Ba (drink, the ba sound coming from "bottle")
Yaya (Love you)

She'll repeat a word if you ask her (not perfectly of course), which I think is pretty cool.

So that's our Joci.  She's such a fun girl!  I a little high maintenance, maybe, but when she smiles, she can light up a whole room.

Pictures

 Hey everyone.  I just posted about 50 recent pictures on Facebook, so if you want to see them, go check it out!  Here are some favorites:

 

Coming soon!

So the girls and I have been in Utah for almost a week, and a few people have asked for pictures of the new place and things like that.  Don't worry, they're coming!  Now that I have the fast computer back, uploading won't be such a pain.

Will hasn't worked much because there's been a lot of rain, but as soon as he gets back into work and we settle in to a routine of some kind, I'll post more.  For now, though, things are going well and I'm glad to be back with my husband again!

Things work out.

Everyone probably knows this since I'm pretty sure all of my non-accidental readers are friends with me on Facebook, but in case you're not, or you don't check, our move to UT has taken a turn for the better again.  We got a place to live!  Instead of Bountiful, we'll be living in Orem, which will save us a lot in gas, as that's where Will's work also happens to be.

I'm not really sure what it looks like, since I haven't been there.  From stalking it on google maps, it seems to have a fenced-in yard (or at least it did in 2007 when the picture was taken), and that's pretty exciting to me.  Even if it doesn't, there's a park with an affordable pool within walking distance.  Yay!

Now I have to head back to the basement and get packing.  Don't forget about the garage sale in our neighborhood on the 13th and 14th if you live in the area!

Things fall through

Well, I've just been informed that we can no longer live in the house that we were going to live in when we moved to Utah.  It is now 12 days until the girls and I are flying out there.

I'm not really sure why, not because the reasons aren't valid, just because at this point I'm only getting 3rd hand accounts and no one really seems to know what is going on.

The most upsetting thing to me is kissing all those awesome plans to fix up that house and yard good bye.  I had so much to do that I was looking forward to.  Deep breath... I'm letting it go.

Luckily, Will is making a bit more money than we had anticipated, so paying rent will be doable.  We found out about an hour and a half or two hours ago, and we already have leads on a few places, all of which have yards (which I've decided is a requirement).  So we will no longer be living in Bountiful, and our search is once again directed to the helpfully vague "somewhere between Provo and Salt Lake," which may be upgraded to "somewhere between Spanish Fork and Salt Lake."  We shall see.  In the meantime, your thoughts and prayers are appreciated.  I'll keep you posted.

What's New.

Hello all,

I just wanted to let everyone know what's going on.  The girls and I have an official date to leave: May 17th!  Yay!  We're staying here long enough to sell a bunch of stuff (hopefully) at the neighborhood garage sale (remember, May 13th and 14th, 9am-4pm in Jefferson Farms... tell your friends!) then leaving OH the evening of the 14th to head to Chicago for my cousin's baby shower.  Then on Tuesday, the 17th, we'll fly out of Chicago to SLC.  The tickets have been bought.  This thing is official. We should be able to afford to move everything else out there in July sometime.  It means a few weeks of sleeping on an air mattress, but it will be worth it to be with Will again!

In other news, Joci has picked up another word, "kitty."  Yes, it sounds more like "zzzgh-dii" at the moment, but she says it consistently says it while pointing at the cats, so we know that's what it means.  Fun times.  She's also pulling up on stuff all the time, not quite cruising yet, but soon!

I have to say, my time alone with the girls has been... difficult.  Pretty much all my fears of becoming the Worst Mother Ever have been confirmed, since I feel like I'm spending all my time yelling at my kids.  Yeah.  I'm trying to work on it.  And it doesn't help that literally every day above 65 degrees here has meant severe thunderstorms for the past month, and that big, fat bumblebees have taken up residence somewhere on our deck, so I can't let Chaela outside to run off any of her energy.  Ugh.

Happy First Birthday, Jocelyn Eve!

Today my baby turns one.  We already celebrated, since we wanted to do that before Will left for Utah, but I have a gift that I made for her, so she'll get something.  Since I've never posted about Joci's acheivements, I wanted to do that, as well.

Joci, at one year old you:

-Can talk, and have been talking for just over a month.  Your first word was "Hi!"  You can also say "Uh-oh," "Dad," "Mama," and "Hi, dad!" (which she says to everyone, not just will... I'm pretty sure she thinks this is a longer version of "hi.")
- You shake your head 'no' and can sign 'all done.'  You don't point, but you reach for things you want.  If I ask you if you want to go to bed, and you do, you reach towards your bedroom.
-You and your sister play constantly, and I have high hopes for you being best friends.  She takes toys from you every five seconds, which I do my best to stop.  You used to just let her, but lately you've been screaming your infamous banshee scream any time she tries, and you've started snatching toys from her.  Not sure if this is good or bad.
-You can pull up on the table/let yourself back down, and army crawl.  You show no interest in actual crawling, and you don't walk yet.  I'm not really surprised, since you didn't care even to be held in a standing position until after you were six months old.  But, you're making progress!
-You are obsessed with electronics (a true daughter to your father) and if you see my cell phone or iPod and I don't give it to you, you banshee scream in my ear.
-Speaking of that banshee scream, you do that ALL THE TIME when you don't get your way, especially if someone won't give you something you want, usually food or electronics.  I'm surprised I don't have any hearing loss.
-Because you don't walk or have much hair, because you're little, and probably  because you're my second baby, I feel like you're much younger than you actually are.
-Everyone agrees that you look exactly like your sister, and everyone loves your smile; it completely lights up your entire baby face!  You're my beautiful little girl.
-You and I already fight about what you wear, as you absolutely refuse to wear headbands.  I put them on you anyway, then make you keep them on all day.  You probably miss your dad, because he would take them off of you when I wasn't looking and hide them from me.
-You love music, especially relaxing music.  Your dad plays Enya for you on his iPhone to get you to go to sleep.  You love it when I sing to you, and you almost always start 'singing,' too.

There's so much more I could say about you, but I should probably get you, since you're standing there banshee screaming at me.  I can already tell you're intelligent, beautiful, cheerful, and stubborn.  I'm so happy you're part of our family.  We love you!  Happy birthday, baby girl!

Day One

Well, as I've announced on Facebook, we're moving to Utah.  It's kind of complicated, because we don't have enough money right now to move like normal people.  So here are the steps to our plan, for those of you who are curious:

1) Will takes a car full of stuff (computer, electronics, etc.) and goes to Utah to work for an old boss doing road construction while staying with a friend.
2) a. Will works and makes enough money for us to move our stuff and looks for an apartment.
    b.The girls and I stay in Ohio and I try not to be the Worst Mother Ever.  I also go through our stuff and get ready for the Jefferson Farms neighborhood garage sale (May 13th and 14th, EVERYONE TELL YOUR FRIENDS!) then pack whatever is left.
3) When we have all the money we need, Will finds an apartment.
4) Here in OH, we rent the largest U-Haul trailer available, cram it with all of our stuff, then pack my dad's SUV to bursting and haul everything, including myself and the girls, out to Utah.  This (fingers crossed) happens around the beginning of June.

So, that's the plan.  Will should be in Utah sometime tomorrow in the early afternoon, and I'll still be here.  Sigh.  I'm glad that I have more time with my parents and with the Young Women I work with at church, but at the same time, I wonder how I'll cope without Will to remind me every few minutes that there's no reason to be cranky all the time.  So far I'm doing ok, but we went to church right after he left and Joci's been sleeping since we got home, so when she wakes up the real test will begin.

Aside from selling pretty much everything extra we own and packing, there are a few things I'd like to accomplish while Will is gone.  I'm hoping to have a little more time to work on my book, and maybe pick back up on my weight loss.

I feel bad for my girls.  I don't know if they really understand what's happening.  Chaela has already asked about 50 times where her daddy is.  We did try to explain it to her, but I don't think she gets it.  Thank goodness for modern technology, though.  Chaela and I have already talked to Will on the phone once and we're planning on skyping often.  I'm so glad I can at least see his face and hear his voice, and this small, one-time separation is nothing like what military families go through. 

More Books

Hey everyone,

I've been reading a lot again instead of writing as much as I should (even though I have a feeling I'll be starting again soon), and I've stumbled on a few authors in the YA fantasy/romance genre I feel I can recommend.  So if you're someone who asks me which books they should read (meaning, if you're my sister Lindsay) this post is for you!

Bree Despain - The Dark Divine (series)
Kind of typical, but with a few interesting twists that I won't give away.  The reason I'm recommending this series is because the female protagonist didn't get on my nerves (my main problem with this genre) and, as most of my readers that I'm aware of are LDS, these books are very clean.  Bonus: the female lead is also religious, so she faces a lot of moral quandaries that are glossed over or ignored in other YA books.  And she has a family who remains present throughout, so not only is she dealing with the normal, "Oh, I'm in LOVE!" stuff, but family issues as well.  When it comes to family, most YA fantasy/romance books use an easy way out by saying the main character is an orphan/only only child/in the foster system/their parents are kidnapped/they are kidnapped/they have a broken home and hate their parents/they go to an enchanted boarding school, etc.  I like that she kept it in, and that the relationships felt real.  It did incredible things for fleshing out her protagonist.

Alex Flinn - Beastly and A Kiss in Time
I have to admit, I read (well, listened to, it was an audiobook) Beastly because my mom and I saw the movie and I was curious.  The book is better than the movie.  In fact, as I was listening to it/playing Angry Birds, I kept thinking to myself, "Why did they change that?  Why didn't they include that?!" over and over again.  Let's just say the movie was a shiny, high school version of a dark, much more interesting book with an action-packed ending (as opposed to, SPOILER: Oh, no, I came outside and the whole SCHOOL can see my UGLY! wekisstheend).  The entire book was told from the perspective of the Beast, which is way more emotionally fraught than Beauty's story and probably what made it so fascinating to me.  All in all, a good read, or listen.  The movie, which was fine when I saw it, is now kind of a let-down, because they could have made it so much better.  There was some cheesiness, but over all, good.
I read A Kiss in Time because I liked Beastly.  I read them both in one day.  Now, I don't know if Kiss is as deep as Beastly, but it was fun and entertaining and I still enjoyed it a lot.  It's more of a romantic comedy.
Alex Flinn also has several other books out, but they're not in this genre, so I haven't gotten to them yet.  Currently I'm very narrow-minded.

Let me know if you've read anything good lately!

Lessons from the Potty War

I know I posted a long time ago about the difficulties we'd had potty training Chaela.  What many of you don't know is that, up until a few days ago, we were still having problems.  At almost 3 and 1/2 and after over a year of attempting to potty train, Chaela was officially considered "delayed of resistant" (as diagnosed by the internet). 

Over Christmas and up until I went back to work at the very end of January, she seemed to be doing alright.  Then work started, and everything crashed and burned.  She was going through upwards of six pairs of pants per day some days.  Not only is that annoying and a pain to clean, but she just doesn't have enough clothing to be doing that, because I'm not a 'laundry-every-other-day' kind of mom to begin with.

We tried several things, from anger and punishment to reward her for good behavior to every combination in between.  Nothing changed.  Work ended, and I thought that might be enough to get her back on track, but it wasn't.  It didn't matter what we did or didn't do, or how we talked to her about it, or how we reacted to her accidents, she just kept having them.

I couldn't take it anymore.  Well, no, I was way past that.  I felt hopeless.  So I sat down at the computer and did a google search for "potty trained kids having accidents" (or something like that).  The search got a ton of hits.  Yay!  I'm not alone!

There are several reasons why a child might be resistant to potty training, but as I went down the lists on several websites, one reason stood out over and over again:

"Most children who are resistant to toilet training are enmeshed in a power struggle with their parents. The cause of the power struggle is usually reminder resistance – an oppositional response to excessive reminders to sit on the toilet. In addition, most resistant children have been held on the toilet against their will. Many children have also been lectured too much, and some have been spanked or punished in other ways for not cooperating. Many parents make these mistakes, especially if they have a strong-willed child. Most children who are delayed in toilet training have a difficult, strong-willed temperament." (Quoted text taken from a pediatrician's website)

All of this sounded familiar.  Yes, we had constantly reminded Chaela to go to the potty, we had lectured her, forced her to sit on the potty against her will (in our defense, it was because she was dancing and holding herself, and she DID go), and yes, she'd been spanked for accidents.  The last part sounded especially familiar: "Most children who are delayed in toilet training have a difficult, strong-willed temperament."

"Holy crap, that's us!" I thought.  I eagerly scrolled down, excited that this was a real problem other people were having, and with high expectations for the solution.  Imagine my shock when every website I looked at basically said that the solution to potty-training a strong willed child was to stop potty-training them.

What?

I laughed out loud at the first site that told me that, but then the next place I looked said the same thing.  Then the next, and the next, and the next.  Stop.  Stop bothering your child.  Stop reminding them to go.  Stop asking them.  Stop reacting when they had an accident.  And absolutely under no circumstances should they be punished.

So we stopped.  I had one last, very brief talk with Chaela.

"Ok, honey.  We're done.  Mommy and daddy are done telling you to go to the potty.  If you need to go potty, you're in charge.  And you're in charge of changing your own panties.  And if you have an accident, we'll help you clean up, but you'll have to do that, too."

The first thing that happened surprised me.  I felt a change.  I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders.  No, she wasn't potty trained, but it was no longer my problem, or my fault.  It was her issue to deal with (and in my opinion, Chaela is both old enough and smart enough to do so, so while I did feel some guilt initially, it didn't last).  The best thing that came of this was that I was no longer angry when she had an accident.  If she came to me with wet pants, I could just shrug and tell her to go put them in the laundry basket and put on clean ones.  This was a huge deal, because sometimes I scared myself with how angry I would get at her for having accidents.  Now I wasn't angry, because it wasn't my fault.

Then something else happened that surprised me.  IT WORKED.  After only about a week of Chaela being in charge of her own potty-training, she's pretty much stopped having wet panties.  It used to be that even when her pants were dry, her panties were a little bit wet.  Not anymore.  For the past two days, she's had almost completely dry panties.  Hallelujah.

Anyway, this is a huge long blog post about something most other people probably won't care about, but I wanted to post it, just in case anyone else goes through something similar in the future (I know a lot of my friends have kids that will be potty training soon).  But I also wanted to get this out there because talking, or writing, as the case may be, allows me to crystallize my thoughts, and this taught me something important about Chaela, and about motherhood.

I can't control her.  Even now, Chaela is not a complacent, obedient child.  I can only assume that as she gets older, her stubbornness will grow.  I can't punish it out of her, and I can't positively reinforce it out of her.  If Chaela ever does anything, it is expressly because she decided it was a good idea.  I'm so worried about dealing with her as a teenager, and I'm glad I had this experience, because I think it will help me. 

I have to teach her correct principles, and then (the hardest thing I'll ever have to do) let her govern herself.  I have to trust her, and I need her to trust me.  She won't ever trust me if all I ever do is punish her, so I have to back off on the unimportant things and choose my battles wisely.  I have to let her do her own thing, even when it seems completely counter intuitive (like with potty training, where my instinct was to force her to sit on the potty more often, remind her more often, etc.).  I have to trust that she's smart enough to do things on her own.  All this, of course, taking into account her age and her safety.  I am a control freak when it comes to my kids, so this is going to be difficult for me.

Parenting is hard.

Weight Loss 2011: Weeks 11 and 12

Well, I'll be honest... I didn't post last week because I totally fell off the wagon.  I regained a pound.  However, this week I am down 1.5 pounds, bringing my total weight loss to 12 pounds.  I'm right where I'm supposed to be, but my "safety" pounds are gone.  Scary, because from this point on I'll actually have to work to meet my goals.  Sigh.  Effort is hard.

Weight Loss 2011: Weeks 5-10

So, I haven't posted a weight loss update since I started work, but now that I'm finished, I have no excuse.  I'm happy to report that I have managed to lose 4 more pounds.  It's not as good as it should be, but it's not as bad as I'd feared.  I'm still just barely managing to stay ahead of my goal, with my 11th week starting on Monday and my total weight loss at 11.5 pounds.

I'm pretty excited.  I think when I reach my half-way mark (21 pounds lost) I'm going to do something special for myself, like by a new shirt or something.  Hopefully now that I'm not working, controlling my eating habits will be easier again.

Pants-on-the-ground: A Chaela Story

A funny thing happened a week or two ago when our home teachers came for their monthly visit (home teachers are just guys who go to our church who are assigned to check in with our family once a month, visit, make sure we're doing good, etc.). 

We were sitting there, talking (as Mormons do... a lot) when Chaela ran in with one of her dolls, a Cabbage Patch knock-off in a purple outfit.

"Is this your doll?" Ben, one of our home teachers, asked.
"Yeah!" Chaela screaked (a scream/squeak, I just now invented the word).
"What's her name?"
"PANTS-ON-THE-GROUND!"
All the adults in the room looked at each other.
"Pants on the ground?"
"YEAH!" Chaela screaked again, then started to sing, "Pants on the ground, pants on the ground!  You look like a fool with your pants on the ground!"

That doll is still called Pants-on-the-ground.  It's the first thing she's ever named.

That really happened.  The end.

A Learning Experience

Only seven days of OGT tutoring left, thank goodness.  I have to say that this time I've learned a lot more from the kids I tutor than they did from me... the question is: did I really want to know?

I know a lot of this stuff was going on when I was in high school, too, but not in my world.  Does every generation freak out this much about the upcoming youth?  This is the first time I've been old enough to worry about it.

There's a lot I'd like to say that I don't really feel is right to put on a blog.  Most of the kids I like and/or worry about, but some of them...  ajk;laldifjaoirenf!  That's how frustrated I am; there are not even words.

Anyways, this is part of the reason my plan to be an author/hermit is so important; authors don't have to interact with other people on a regular basis.

: P

Just a blog.

The worst things about getting to work and not having students show up is that 1) Facebook is blocked here by the school and 2) It's so early there's no one on skype to chat with.

Oh, well.  OGT tutoring is halfway done this week.  Four weeks down, four to go (if I come and proctor the test like I did last time).  I will not miss getting up before 7 am.  I don't know how all of the real teachers do it.  After having to deal with this, my respect for educators has grown exponentially.

In other news, Joci is getting closer to crawling.  Yay!  She's gone from rolling around the floor to scooting like an inch worm.  I have a video, but it's not very good.  I'll try and get a good one and upload it sometime, because she looks crazy when she does it.

Sorry there aren't any pictures, I'm at work, so I don't have access to any recent ones.

I haven't posted a weight loss update in 2 and 1/2 weeks, because my job makes it basically impossible for me to weigh-in on Monday mornings.  However, the last time I weighed myself, I was still on track, and I updated my little widget thing on the side to reflect that.  Last week I was up to 9 pounds lost.  Or 9.5, I can't remember.  Anyways, I might shift my weigh-in day to Saturday or Sunday for the next few weeks.

I'm still working on my manuscript pretty much daily.  Unfortunately, I didn't realize that my second draft would be just as difficult (if not more so) than my first.  All of the stuff I skipped over because I didn't want to take the time to do real research now must be researched.  I have to officially decide on a time of year, physical descriptions, ages, and more detailed histories for each character, as well as write in several new characters I just kind of tossed in at the end.  I've also added in several non-characters (I'm sure there's an official name for it, but I don't know what it is), who are people important to the characters in the book (like family members), but who don't actually appear in the book at all, except as motivation/explanation for real characters' behaviors.  They all have to be fleshed out, as well.  This is all aside from the complete rewrite of the earliest scenes of the villain and a few added scenes for the protagonists.

My third draft is going to be cutting, cutting, cutting, because by the time this one is done this story is going to be way too long.  I still don't know that it's any good, but when it's done I can definitely say that I've given it my best!

Oh, and I haven't found the right title yet.  I need a title.

First Draft Complete!

Well, as of 2:30 am, my first complete draft of a novel is FINISHED!  It's been a crazy, intense month spent working on it, but it's done.

I wrote a freaking book.

78,904 words, 390 pages in Courier New font, double spaced, one inch margins.  If published, it would probably translate into something like 340-360 pages.

I can't believe I wrote a freaking book.

Not that it's done yet, I still have a ton of work to do, most of which will involve adding several characters to the beginning that I invented towards the end, cleaning things up, checking for consistency, and adding a more detail.

But I wrote a book, and I'm dang proud of that, even if nothing ever comes of it.