Californ-I-A

I went out to Los Angeles this weekend for a super quick visit with my friend Carla. Carla has been fighting cancer for a while now. And while she is still fighting very hard and we are hoping and praying every day for her, the doctor's pronouncement that her cancer is incurable and that she will need to be on chemo for the rest of her life scared the crap out of me. I hadn't seen Carla since her wedding and hadn't met either of her two children yet. Clearly this needed to be remedied sooner rather than later. So away I went.


Craig was really nice about letting me ditch him and the three kiddos all weekend. And I missed them all like CRAZY the whole time I was there. (Especially when I was driving around, which surprised me. I thought I'd enjoy the peace and quiet, but instead I was just totally bored. Boo for California's no-driving-while-talking-on-the-phone laws and boo for not having my kids to entertain me!) But it was SO good to finally see Carla again! I also had the added bonus of staying with my cousin Anne and her husband Simon, and getting to meet their three children (for the first time for all three of them!), and I managed to squeeze in a quick visit with my buddy Shaun from BYU, so that was also great.

Some highlights, lowlights, and general thoughts from the trip:

-Everyone has totally cute kids! And somehow I managed to not take a single picture of any of them-- gah! But trust me, there are oodles of adorable children in LA these days. It is worth going to LA just so you can see their cute kids!

-I like California drivers way better than Virginia drivers. Any time I needed to change lanes, I would signal, and people would just let me in! It was like magic! In Virginia, if you signal, they usually speed up so you can't get in. It's really awesome. It's led to me developing a technique of driving wherein you look for a really nice car (like a BMW or a Mercedes; a Lexus will do in a pinch) and then cut them off. In a game of chicken, you know that the beemer is going to brake before the 10-year-old minivan will.

-I learned that if you are prone to motion sickness, you shouldn't fly into the Windy City when they're having a particularly windy day. And you especially shouldn't do it with a crazy early flight which makes it impossible for you to eat breakfast. And if you're dumb enough to ignore that advice, then make sure you have an air sickness bag in your seat pocket. Otherwise you'll have nowhere to throw up but all over yourself. Which is really, really gross. (Good thing I hadn't checked my bag and was able to change clothes in the airport before the next leg of my journey. Ugh.)

-I like the California freeway system. Even though they have 500 times as many people as DC, their traffic isn't any worse. (Really, I just looked up the population of each and did the math. That's no exaggeration). Clearly, they're doing something better than we are. Maybe DC should try making the freeway get wider the closer you to the city, instead of narrower. And stop wasting all the room at the shoulder for cops to sit on and give you tickets, and just use that space for cars to drive on. Just a thought. (I never saw a cop on the freeway the entire time I was there. And consequently you didn't have people slamming on their brakes to look at the police. I think there's a cause and effect relationship going on there that needs to be explored.)

-It's hard to be a lot of help to someone who's so sick, so I was kind of proud of myself for any little thing I found to do. Carla was sweet about acting like I was a big help (instead of, say, getting angry when I offered to push her wheelchair super fast through the parking lot). Things I found to do: get cough drops as needed, give leg massages, talk so much that she didn't have a chance to nap (she said that was a good thing because then she slept well that night. I'm not sure if that was just her being charitable or not), push the wheelchair (at a normal speed), open bottles of water. I had this idea in my head that I could help out with her kids some, but they're just at that age where you have to know them to understand what they're saying, so I mostly ended up trying to keep out of the way so their Grandma and Daddy could get them what they needed. Ah, well.

-Speaking of kids, it's good for me to miss my own kids so much. It's good for me to remember just how much I really do love them. But I felt bad for how much they missed me. Craig took this picture to illustrate their sorrow at my absence:
It's hard to see, but Bentley is wrapped in a blanket under the table. Apparently he spent 45 minutes moping there. And this was while Daddy was making sugar cookies with them!

-A really great way to introduce yourself to the couple you'll be sitting in the middle of (apparently she likes a window seat and he likes an aisle seat?) is by asking the flight attendant for a sick bag the second you sit down. They'll be so excited you chose to sit with them! (I managed to not be ill on that leg of the journey, thank goodness. I think the couple was quite relieved. I was, too, actually.)

-I drove on Sunset Boulevard for about 150 feet. It's kind of embarrassing how excited I got over that. Same thing when my friend Shaun showed me the view of the Hollywood sign at the retirement home he manages. I've spent just enough time going to California as a kid that I think I should be immune to the touristy stuff. But I guess I'm not! (Just for the record, I don't include Disneyland with the touristy stuff that I should be over; you can never be too excited about going there!)

-One last thing about how great California is: the weather. It's to die for. It really is perfect all year round! If the whole rest of the world didn't know about that and hadn't already moved there, I would definitely be pushing to move there myself. As it is, I think it's probably too crowded for me to ever take the plunge. But I do love California.

-I certainly wasn't the only one anxious to visit Carla. A few of her roommates from when she lived in St. George came on Saturday to see her, too. It turns out that the Cheesecake Factory is a great place to eat on a Saturday afternoon with a whole gang of girls. We had a blast. And ate so much I nearly exploded. But in a good way.



-With all the people clamoring for Carla's attention, I was very pleased to get an hour of just the two of us. It was nice to be able to talk freely about how she's feeling about this whole ordeal. We cried a lot, we laughed a lot. But even with the added tears (and the lack of hair, and the screws she's been sporting in her head-- which come out today!), it was nice to be reminded that through it all, Carla is still Carla. She's still-- and always will be-- my best friend. Even cancer can't take that away.



Love you, Carla!

Pride. And then a tangent about human nature.

Let me begin by saying that since this whole running thing began back in July, I have never thought of myself as a Runner. And I probably never will. But there have been a few things I've noticed recently about my running that please me no end. At the risk of making you hate me, I'm going to brag for a bit:

~Before I started running, I considered anyone who could run a mile straight without taking a break to be a true "runner." And something of an athlete. And I can do that now! It's not even that hard! And it makes me happy.

~There have been two mornings so far that, after I finish my run, the remote control for my car is FROZEN. Yup. I'm tough enough to run when it's that cold outside.

~One morning, as I was driving home from my run (yup, I drive to Vangie's house. How lame is that? But there were a bunch of break-ins happening in the neighborhood, and I figured it was better to be safe than sorry), I drove by a woman out jogging. I saw her and my knee-jerk reaction was, "Wow! Who gets up this early to go jogging??? That woman is so hard-core!" And then I realized that I had done just that, too. And I flushed with pleasure at my own hard-coreness.


All this leads to a totally different point. My friend Juliana wrote to me recently and mentioned that, although she was had been running all summer, she would not consider herself a runner because what she was doing was really just some slow jogging. And I read her email and nodded to myself, thinking, Well, that is exactly true for me, too. I'm certainly not out there sprinting! And that's why I'm not a Runner! But then I thought some more. Based on my pre-running definition, what we were doing definitely should have counted as running. It just didn't seem to count in the same way now that we could do it.

Why is it that as soon as we reach a milestone, we immediately decide that the milestone was too easy or should be moved a bit farther away or just doesn't count? I'm not sure if it's human nature or some weird way of being humble or what, but I see myself doing this all the time. I tell myself I can't cook. I work hard to try new recipes and get a lot better at cooking. But I still don't consider myself anything like a good cook. I have a bunch of kids and I work and work and work at trying to be a half-way decent mother to them. But I still don't think of myself as being much of a mom. I spend a lot of time looking around at other moms and trying to understand what they're doing, because I'm sure it's got to be better than whatever I'm doing.

I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing. When there's so much room for improvement (and it turns out there's room for improvement in EVERYTHING we bother doing), it only makes sense to keep looking for ways to improve. It would be pretty sad if I just let myself be satisfied with whatever status quo* I've already managed to reach. But what I am saying is that maybe it's okay to let ourselves actually reach some of those milestones and goals.

Maybe it's okay to think of ourselves as being kind of good at the things we're learning to do. We can do that without turning into snobby, prideful people, right? Without falling into the pit of feeling smug and better than other people? Maybe I should be trying to think of myself as a runner. Or someone who can follow a recipe with some level of competence. Or even a decent mom.

I mean, why not?



*I have to say it: "Because the status is NOT quo!"

Keep Smiling (breathing optional)

I'm sort of freaking out right now. I've been spending the last couple of days dealing with way too many bureacracies and/or people who are out to take as much money from me as they can-- banks, the DMV, and auto mechanics. Plus, I found out yesterday that Kendra has pneumonia. Ryder is doing great, so I'm sure she will be soon, too. But still! She's probably had it for a while. The doctor assured me that without her running a fever or acting particularly sick, there was really no way for me to be able to tell, but I still feel terrible for not knowing sooner.

So rather than dwelling on all the things that are making me miserable and about to start hyperventilating, I'm going to blog about things that have made me smile recently. Maybe that will help me to keep breathing. Here goes:

-Kendra's birthday was on Saturday! She's my big 4-year-old now! For the most part she had a lovely day. At the very end, right as we were dishing up cake for her, she complained that her ear hurt and she wanted to lay down for a bit before she ate her cake. So we just put her to bed without cake-- sad, huh? And I'm pretty sure that was the pneumonia that I hadn't been noticing... (This was the reason that I took her to see the doctor, just for the record.)

Gotta love a big stack of presents from Grandma and Grandpa!

-A few months ago, Bentley asked me if I'd ever seen a tornado. I told him I hadn't, but that I wanted to. He immediately began spinning in a tight circle and waving his arms all crazy around himself and announced, "Well this is your lucky day! Because you get to see a tornado!" Tornado Bentley. I love it.

-Also on Kendra's birthday, she got a balloon from Red Robin, but it popped in the parking lot. This sent her into a crying fit (pneumonia? what? sick kid who cries over silly things? huh?), and I hurried back inside the restaurant to get her a new balloon. (Normally I'd be tougher and explain that sometimes balloons pop. But it was her birthday, so I didn't feel the need to be overly heartless.) Fortunately they had some more balloons by then, and all was well. Yesterday, Bentley set about on another one of his projects. This time, he made a paper balloon for Kendra, and attached it to the string of the popped one (which had been left in the car). He pointed out to her that this one was even better, since it couldn't pop. He's a good brother!

This picture just makes me laugh. That's the cake she didn't eat until the next day.

-And one more Bentley art project for you: a couple weeks ago, the kids got up and let me sleep a bit late. When they finally burst into my room, they announced excitedly that they'd made the Star-Spangled Banner! Sure enough, they'd been hard at work on an American flag for me! Bentley even taped 4 pieces of paper together to make it bigger. They were trying to replicate THE Star-Spangled Banner that is currently on display at the Museum of American History. I guess that trip wasn't a complete waste of time after all!

-I forgot to mention before, but one of the things Ryder likes to do is to scoot backwards. It's not that impressive: when he's crawling, he'll suddenly just switch to reverse and begin pushing himself backwards. But every time he does it, he'll just grin and giggle maniacally as if he is doing the trickiest thing in the world. That makes me laugh.

Phew. I'm feeling better now. What are the things that keep you smiling?

More Doctors Visits

This has been another sleep-deprived week around here. Ryder, just barely over hand foot & mouth disease, developed a cough on Saturday which quickly grew into a fever that wouldn't go away. Monday's visit to the doctor revealed that he had pneumonia. Pneumonia! That was a bit of a shock, honestly. No one in my family has ever had pneumonia, so it just wasn't what I was expecting. (I was expecting the usual, "Yup, it's a virus! It will go away in a few days. Call if it gets worse!" sort of news. The kind where you wonder why you bothered dragging your kid into the doctor's office at all.)

I guess we're fortunate that the doctor decided to do a chest x-ray, even though that was no fun to watch Ryder endure (for babies, they pull their arms as high above their head as possible and then buckle this huge plastic restraining thing all around them so they can't move at all. It's very effective and keeps them still for the x-ray, but Ryder screamed bloody murder the entire time. And then it was time to draw blood!).

The doctor started him on the strongest antibiotics right away, and by the next day he was already so much better. At his follow-up appointment the next day, the nurse took his temperature and it registered exactly at 98.6. I hadn't realized that I was pretty worried until I saw how relieved that number made me. I kept grinning stupidly and thinking, "What a beautiful temperature!" What a miracle those drugs are, huh? It's funny, because recently I've been reading a lot of stuff about how so many drugs are unnecessary and if people just ate more nutritious food we wouldn't need them so much. And that's probably very true. But for those times when you DO need drugs, I am very thankful for modern medicine! I'm also thankful that Craig called the doctor when Ryder's fever stayed so high. What if I would have decided to let it go for a few days???

Anyway. The important thing is that he's on the mend now.

The other important thing is the great Kendra-ism that came out of this. When the doctor arrived to look at Ryder, Kendra pointed at Ryder's nipples and mentioned off-handedly, "He could feed himself with those!" I've never seen a doctor try so hard not to laugh! He was even still laughing about it the next day!

Milk Time

Usually when Ryder wakes up, he snuggles in my arms while he drinks his bottle. But today there were too many fun things on the floor, so he wiggled down to look at them. Then he wanted his bottle again, allowing me the chance to snap these pictures:

Snuggling with his doggy.

I am certainly not a photographer. But I think this shot is beautiful.

My New Shoes

Yup. I bought them! They just arrived yesterday.

I'm so excited to try them out. But unfortunately, they arrived during a "wintery mix*" of rain and snow, just as night was falling. And while they're supposed to be great for your feet and knees, I'm pretty sure they're not designed for a romp through freezing cold wetness! So I haven't tried them out yet.

Anyway, my transformation into being a complete hippie draws ever nearer. But along with refusing to try cloth diapers, I'm pretty sure I'll also never homeschool (which, a couple of you pointed out, means really leaving mainstream America behind!). I read this blog post about a woman who homeschooled her children for approximately 20 minutes. It sounded so much like me that it was sort of eerie just reading it-- especially her image of how it would go and the direct contrast to how it actually went. I'm just going to count her experience as my own and learn from it.

Anyway, back to the shoes. It's beautifully sunny outside today (albeit cold), so hopefully when Craig gets home I'll have time to at least run around the block or something. Dinner is already cooking away in the crock pot, so that buys me some extra time in the afternoon!

After I ordered my shoes, a friend sent me this hilarious video. I haven't even used the shoes yet, but that guy sounds way too much like me. In fact, I should be issuing apologies if you've been victim to my incessant talking about the book Born to Run!!!! (Truly, I'm sorry!) Oh, and don't be put off by the title-- the video is completely G-rated, I promise!




Don't worry, no matter how converted I become to these shoes, I won't make you call me Barefoot Alanna!



*Is it just me, or does that sound like it should be a salad or something? Or perhaps a salad dressing to go with iceberg lettuce? I dunno...

**And speaking of Born to Run, it was especially fun as I was reading it when it talked about Abebe Bikila, an Ethiopian marathoner who won the 1960 Olympics running barefoot. I guess Vibram is going to ignore the fact that he-- apparently-- later injured himself running barefoot, too. In any case, I had wondered where the name for the model of shoes I picked out-- Bikila-- came from. It's always nice when those knowledge gaps get filled in!

Ryder: an Update

I keep meaning to do a post about Ryder, and then I keep getting distracted by facebook. Curse that social network! I waste more time there...!

Anyway, Ryder is an absolute delight, except when he's sick. Like he is right now. Which started yesterday, when he woke up from his nap with a temperature of 102. I didn't do much about it at the time, other than putting him down for another nap sooner than I normally would have. I usually figure a little bit of fever will help his body fight off whatever bug he has. But when he woke up from the second nap he was burning up-- just picking him up he felt like he was on fire. I took his temperature again and now it was 104. So then I panicked and called the nurse hotline while giving him tylenol. She agreed he should probably see a doctor, and got the doctor to squeeze him in that day.

The good news is that it's nothing too serious and should go away in a few days. The bad news is that this put a screeching halt to my plans to visit my friend Carla in Los Angeles the next day. Carla has been fighting cancer for close to two years now, so me exposing her to Ryder's virus would have been very bad. And I was going to stay with my cousin, who just gave birth to a beautiful little girl on Wednesday. The brand new baby probably didn't need virus-carrying me around, either. So that trip has been pushed back a couple weeks and we'll hope for better health all around then.

But enough about that! How about if I tell you the fun stuff about Ryder?

-He is completely uninterested in walking. I have to persuade him to even walk holding my hands these days. And don't even think about asking him to try any steps without something to hold onto!

-Instead, he is much more interested in climbing up and down the stairs. He's been climbing up for a while, and then at the Museum of American History, was practicing climbing down the three stairs he found there. Unfortunately, he was going down head-first, which would not have worked well on our stairs which are steeper, longer, and made of wood. So last week Craig taught him how to crawl down feet-first, and now that's all he wants to do. When I close the baby gate, he'll hold onto it and scream until I finally relent and let him go down again. One of these days we just need to take down the gates, but he still slips just often enough and those wooden stairs are so hard that I'm really dreading it. I fear the bumps and bruises whenever he finally falls without me there to catch him...

-He's very opinionated now. This is a good and a bad thing. It's kind of fun when I offer him something he wants (like goldfish crackers) and get to watch him kicking and grabbing with his hands in anticipation. It's kind of annoying when I offer him something he doesn't want (oatmeal), and watch him shake his head No at me. Or if I ignore the head-shaking and try to feed it to him anyway, he'll push my hand away, turning his head and pursing his lips. There really isn't any way to make him eat anything he doesn't want. But at least he knows what he likes!

-He loves loves LOVES dogs. Any time we see one, he'll get all excited and point and squeal, "Ah-dog-uh!" It's close enough to correct that I'm counting that as his first word, actually. This makes our walks to and from Bentley's school very exciting, because we pass several houses that usually have dogs in the yard. Ryder knows where they all are and will crane his neck around trying to spot his furry friends.

-He also loves Bentley, Kendra and Daddy, naturally. Actually, his word for Daddy is remarkably close to his word for doggy. Okay, it might be the same word. So does that mean he has two first words? Anyway, they all do a great job of taking care of him and loving him right back. At the doctor's, when they kept taking his temperature, Kendra would dutifully feed him goldfish crackers to calm him down. And then when it was time for bed, Bentley offered to let him sleep with Teddy. And of course, Craig is just the best daddy all the time. Obviously.

-He loves the song "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." When I sing it, he starts busting up laughing at the part about "washed the spider out." I don't really know why. As soon as I'm done singing, he points one finger in the air-- his way of asking for me to sing it again. (He doesn't do this for any of the other songs I sing. Just this one.)

-Between his birthday and Christmas, he learned how to unwrap presents. It was pretty funny watching him go to work on each present-- he would just dutifully begin tugging at the wrapping paper, but with none of the joy and excitement that older kids display. And then he would move on to the next one!

-He likes to play peek-a-boo. He's been doing this for a while by turning his head away and assuming that was enough to make him disappear. But now he'll suddenly put his hands over his eyes and then pull them away with a smile. It's great.

-Sometimes when he's really enjoying his food, he'll make humming noises with every bite. That's when you know that he's happy.

-Similarly, when I do something that he likes, he'll turn to me and murmur, "Mammammam..." It means he's perfectly content. And that makes me pretty happy.

-He suddenly figured out the toy car he got for his birthday and now he LOVES to sit on it while I push him back and forth. He just grins like he knows that he's hot stuff with his wheels.

-He likes to look at me, crinkle his nose, and then snort through it. And then I do it right back to him. I'm not sure what we're saying, but it's some form of communication! (It also reminds me of my little sister, who used to make that noise trying to imitate a hog in labor, so that always makes me laugh to myself.)

-He also likes to squeeze his eyes shut and smile at people. It's pretty goofy, but also really fun. He's a nut. But I love him.


-And overall, he's just a really happy, sweet boy! Except when he's sick. Like today. So I'm praying for a speedy recovery!