Camille Needs Her Own Blog Post

I'm stuck at home today while my car is in the shop (it failed the stupid safety inspection), and it's amazing the things I find to do when I can't distract myself by going to the store or the library!  I just finished scrubbing my stove top and putting away my food dehydrator!  Normally I'd just ignore those in the hopes that Craig might do them for me!  And now that those tasks are done and I've got a load of laundry in the wash and another in the dryer, I think it's time for some more blogging.

Because I need to tell you more about Camille.  They say that babies come with their own personality, and Camille is a shining example of just that.  I love her more and more every day as I get to know her better...

Where to begin?

For starters, she's super sweet.  She loves to give hugs and kisses to everyone and everything.  She's convinced that the (many) moles on my arms are ouchies and will lean over and blow copious amounts of kisses any time she notices them.  Sometimes, if she isn't close enough to actually give you a hug, she'll incline her head towards you, her version of a long-distance hug (or, as Craig put it, "She's blowing you a hug!").  She also loves to give good-bye kisses and waves, and has even been known to blow good-bye kisses to her poopy diapers as I throw them away.  What a nut.

She LOVES Big Bear and gives him a lot of lovin'

Giving Colton a lean-in hug, whether he wants it or not!

Carrying her elephant around

She's an awesome mix of girly and tomboy, and I love it.  The first thing she asks every morning is to wear a dress (she points at her closet and says, "DESS!) and her favorite thing is any ball.  If she sees one, she HAS to have it and carry it around with her.  Football, soccer ball, bouncy ball, basketball, pingpong ball...  She loves them all.  And she's loved them since she was pretty little (certainly before she was walking) so that's a fairly enduring love, for a toddler.  At the same time, when I finally managed to wrangle her hair into a little pony tail on top of her head, she wore it proudly all day and began sobbing when I finally took it out at night.  She also loves trying to wear my heels (which I don't even wear any more!) and necklaces and anything else she can find.  So yeah-- girly and sporty.  What a combo!

Just a baby, thrilled to be holding a football

With a ball she found at church

Trying to figure out how to pick up both balls at the same time

One of my favorite pictures ever.

Camille loves her brothers and loves to copy them.  She'd be great at improv, because whatever weird thing they start doing, she immediately joins the fray doing it, too, whether it means walking around with pieces of train track on your head or walking with arms outstretched, growling like zombie, she is GAME.  Every time.  (As I'm typing this, Colton just started hammering on the wall with a tiny Handy Manny tool and within seconds Camille was hammering away, too!)

Naked train time?

Camille's ready for it!

Jumping in the crib with Ryder

Sitting on Colton

She absolutely LOVES her little giraffe blankie (which she calls "Gah") and her binky.  If she's missing either one, she will wander around making that half whiny crying sound asking for them until she gets them.  But she still also loves throwing them at people to get their attention.  I washed Gah yesterday and when it was all clean and dry she was so delighted to have it back!  She wrapped her arm around it and just hugged that giraffe to her cheek.  So sweet!

Eating a bagel after church

Playing peekaboo while Daddy takes selfies of it

At the same time, though, once Camille makes up her mind about something, good luck changing it.  This girl is a force to be reckoned with.  This last week she woke up way too early from her nap.  I tried ignoring her for a bit.  I tried giving her her binky again and laying her back down.  No dice.  She was DONE with that nap.  I finally gave in and got her up, at which point my sister Tracy commented, "Oh, did she win that war?" and I could only shake my head and admit that Camille wins EVERY war.

Yes, sometimes she is less charming

She's learning new words faster than I can keep up with her.  Here, Nanas (bananas), Nuh-go (snuggle), go-gah (go-gurt)...  She's getting very good at telling me what she wants.  Which is nice-ish, depending on whether or not I want to give it to her!  But compared to Ryder who could only say six words when he turned two, this is a huge difference!  She also knows please and thank you and is probably better than all my other kids about remembering to say them.  She likes to use the words she knows, and will stand in front of you and begin pointing out her eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and head, naming each as she goes, and then pointing them out on your face, too.  (Watch out for when she gets to eyes, because she WILL jab her finger in your eye.  Ouch.)

She likes making people build towers for her so she can knock them down

I can't even say how much I loved this swimsuit that I found for her...

She's my fun girl who knows what she wants.  I love seeing her smile at me every morning when I pick her up from her crib.  She makes our home so much happier!

Race in Literature and Cultural Appropriation

Shortly after I posted about how hard it is to write fiction that includes people with different ethnicities, the fiction writer Lionel Shriver gave a speech about this exact same thing!

You can read (or watch) her speech here.  Not surprisingly, she offended a few people.  I don't think there's anything a person can do any more that won't offend someone.

Unlike my humble blog post, Shriver focuses on cultural appropriation, which I think is tough.  On the one hand, I would be angry, too, if I felt my culture was being mocked (oh, wait-- that's exactly what the Book of Mormon musical does!), but at the same time, I'm all for getting to share one's culture with others so that we all get to enjoy wonderful things together.  (Because really, more pad Thai for everyone probably would get us all closer to world peace.  And I stand by that statement.)  Even this kind of playground concept of playing nice is problematic, though, because who gets to decide whether or not any given cultural exchange is being done respectfully or mockingly?

And, honestly, the idea of cultural appropriation is already problematic because 1) there's not really any way to stop it and 2) even if you could, how far back would one be willing to go?  Can there possibly be a statute of limitations on cultural appropriation?

Does anyone else feel like our world is getting weirder and more complicated by the minute...?

Sports Terminology

We've got Bentley, Kendra, AND Ryder signed up for soccer this season.  I'm so in over my head on this.  The good news, though, is that each kid has a friend on their team, so there are lots of carpooling opportunities.  Otherwise this season would be made up of one big panic attack on my part.  As it is, I think we'll get by.  (Barely.)


But I have to share this bit of dialogue:

Kendra (telling Craig about her practice): At the end, we played a game called Spinach!  We split our team into two groups and then played a soccer game against each other.

Craig: Um, you mean a scrimmage?

Kendra: Yeah, that's what I said.  Spinach.

Kendra riding with two neighbor girls on her team

On Visiting Teaching

In our church, we have a couple different programs (for the women, it's called "visiting teaching" and that's what I'll be focusing on here) designed to get members out visiting each other.  Ideally, each person in the congregation would be visited every month by two other people, and they'd have a chance to sit down and chat, get to know one another, discuss spiritual things, and, if there is some sort of need, make it known so that the bishop or the relief society president, or the people doing the visiting can help them.  It's a really nice idea, but like most ideas, it can sometimes go terribly wrong.  And even in the best of circumstances, it certainly isn't easy.

Anyway, in Manassas I spent many many hours doing visiting teaching.  And it wasn't always fun or easy, but I always felt it was worthwhile.  Here, I have not had much opportunity to do it, and that makes me a little sad.  I was assigned to visit one lady who lives in my neighborhood who promptly explained to me that she hates the visiting teaching program, she finds it very phony to assign people to be your friends and she hates how awkward it is to come by with a "spiritual message" to share.  She said I was welcome to be her friend, but not because of this program.  Fair enough.

But I've thought about what she said.  Because in many ways, she's totally right: it can be a bit phony.  And showing up on someone's doorstep and then sharing a spiritual message usually does feel completely awkward.

So why do we do it?

And all I can think of is, it's still better than NOT doing it.

Let's address this concept of "assigned friendship" first.  Yes, I'd rather go visit the people who are already my friends.  I'd rather my actual friends come and see me, too, for that matter.  But what about the person who doesn't have friends in the congregation?  Or what about the new person who hasn't met anyone yet?  How are you supposed to make friends without ever visiting someone?  You have to get out of your comfortable space sometimes to meet new people, and this seems like as good a way as any to accomplish that.

And, most of the people I've been assigned to visit have become my friends through this process.  (Even this neighbor lady, who I haven't seen much of, is someone I genuinely like.  We discussed things to do in Charlottesville, which led to us talking about opera and her pointing me in the direction of the Met Opera Live Broadcasts!  So, yeah, how can I not like someone who helped me with my love of opera?)  It doesn't always work out-- there have been a few people I've visit taught who I didn't like and I was relieved when they got re-assigned to someone else.  But that's terribly uncharitable and un-Christlike of me, so let's not dwell on those stories.

What about this spiritual message bit?  Couldn't we just hang out with someone without having this weird forced conversation about religion?  I have at times been in favor of this myself, so this neighbor's argument certainly made sense to me.

But just now it hit me (and this is why I'm suddenly blogging about it, even though that conversation happened nearly a year ago), that it's also INCREDIBLY awkward to ask for help.  No matter how desperate your situation may feel, asking for help feels terrible.  Even from your friends.  But especially from someone who's been "assigned" to be your friend.  Perhaps discussing something as potentially awkward as your very personal beliefs helps open the door to other awkward things that might need to be discussed.  Like how you don't have the money to buy food next week.  Or that your husband and you are experiencing problems that could ruin your marriage and you don't know what to do about them. 

I visit taught one woman for over four years.  At first, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about our visits.  It took over a year before she opened up to us and divulged that she and her mother weren't on speaking terms, even though her mother lived close by.  It was a long and complicated story and she hadn't told anyone except her husband.  But she desperately needed friends who she could talk about this with and try to make sense of her emotions and how she should proceed.  It took a year for us to develop a trusting enough relationship that she felt comfortable talking to us about this huge scary thing that was going on in her life. 

So, yes, I'm a big believer in the visiting teaching program.  For all its flaws, for all it can be a little weird and challenging and sometimes leads to your neighbor chewing you out on her front porch, I think that the only thing worse than the visiting teaching program would be NOT having it.

Manassas Camp Out, 2016

Back in March we told our Manassas friends to count us in for the annual ward camp out.  As long as we've got an invitation, I hope we can keep making it to Shenandoah with our friends.

But then Craig changed jobs and stuff came up.  Namely, the first home football game of the season happened to be the same night as the camp out.  And that was something Craig absolutely could NOT miss.  We texted back and forth about what to do about it.  Craig suggested we just camp the next night (technically it's a two-night thing, but most people only do the first night), but that would mean missing the Saturday morning breakfast, which is really the best part.  I thought about it for a bit (probably not for nearly long enough) and announced that I would go without Craig.  He could join me super late that night whenever the game finished.

So that's what we did.

I texted my friends who would be there and asked for their (or their husbands') help setting up our tents.  I figured I could set up tents or I could watch my kids, but I probably couldn't do both at the same time.  They said that would be no problem, so we were all set!  Craig was sweet and hauled our camping gear up from the basement for me the night before.  We decided that without Craig and since I wouldn't be doing much cooking, we didn't need our car topper (which was good, since I'm kind of short to get stuff in and out of it very easily, and if there was a problem where it fell off the car or something, there's NO WAY I would be able to muscle it back up again).  I loaded everything.  I packed the very little food we needed.  I picked the kids up from the bus stop, told them to grab all their stuff (backpacks, water bottles, pillows), double-checked they'd actually done it, and off we went!

The drive up was smooth sailing and when we arrived, only the Scoresbys and my friend Patty Atkins and her kids were there.  Within fifteen minutes we had my tents up and I was good to go!  I kept it simple-- hotdogs and s'mores for the kids and then bedtime.  And Bentley and Kendra were both super helpful about getting hotdogs cooked for their little siblings, so that was awesome.  I love having older, helpful kids!  And, camping is a lot more fun now that Camille can walk and doesn't need to be held the entire time!

I'd hoped everyone would settle down easily since Colton hadn't had a nap and Ryder is exhausted after school each day, but no such luck: they were messing around inside the tent until WAY too late at night.  But eventually (after much threatening on my behalf) they did go to sleep.

And then I got to hang around the campfire chatting with my friends in exactly the way that I like best.  It was a great time!

After 11pm I turned in, but sleep was impossible-- bad combination of people still talking around the fire, being a little cold, having a bit of a headache, and sort of wanting to go to the bathroom but worrying that that would wake up Camille...  Eventually I gave up and re-joined everyone still talking around the fire (I also took some Tylenol, put on some extra layers, and made a trip to the bathroom, so that made everything better) and settled in to wait for Craig to arrive, which turned out to be at 1:30am (poor Craig-- the game had gotten delayed twice, then it had run really long, and then it had gone into overtime!) and everyone headed to bed shortly after that.

And, of course, the kids were probably up around 6?  Ah, camping-- you will not sleep, no matter what!   But other than that it's so great!!!

In any case, we all got up and Crystal had organized a great breakfast.  Everyone sat around eating and chatting, and eventually most of the Dads (and some of the Moms) took the kids hiking while I stayed with Camille and Colton and a few other Moms with kids too young to enjoy hiking.  More of sitting around talking (this time under shade with a net to keep the bugs out-- fabulous!).  The Johns, other good friends of ours, came up just for the breakfast and hike, so it was really great to see them again, too.

Eventually it was time to get going.  Craig and I were both so exhausted that I really don't think either of us were very safe driving home, but we made it okay.  And then I collapsed onto my bed, dirty camping feet and all, and napped for two hours before I could function enough to bathe the kids and start on the laundry.

It was an exhausting weekend.  But it was SO fun and wonderful to see everyone.  And I am kind of proud of myself for pulling off so much of it without Craig (even if I did get plenty of help from other people).



It sure was nice when he showed up, though!  I like that husband of mine...

I feel so lucky to have so many great friends who I still get to see occasionally.  And man, you really can't beat Shenandoah in late August-- so cool and beautiful and refreshing.  It was a great weekend.

Race in Literature: A Catch-22

Years ago I read an essay by Amy Tan wherein she addressed a complaint someone had against her writing: all she ever wrote about were Chinese-American women!  It was sort of implied that she'd found a niche market and was cashing in on it (as if that alone were a bad thing).  She explained, though, that she wrote about Chinese-American women because that was her experience; she didn't feel that she could write about what it was like to be an American Caucasian woman because she had never been one and did not know how it might feel different to be one.  She went on to say that she felt that stories should have a universal appeal whether rice or potatoes were being served for dinner.  (I'm totally paraphrasing here based on my memory-- truly I ought to go and re-read her essay and give you some direct quotes.  But I'm lazy and this book is in the library; I will say that The Opposite of Fate is a wonderful read if you're interested!)

I think what she said makes a lot of sense.  It's hard to write accurately about something with which you have no experience (although I guess there's a lot of sci-fi out there that does just that).

But the flip side of this is problematic to me.  I've read books that featured racially ethnic characters (is that even the way you say that now?) and reviews were very critical that the (white) author did not get it right.  The example that comes first to mind was a Korean-American woman who was incensed at Rainbow Rowell's portrayal of a half-Korean half-Caucasian boy in Eleanor & Park because she felt everyone was too accepting of Park!  This critic promised that any Korean-American boy growing up in Iowa (I think?) in the 1980's would have been made fun of for being Asian and she was annoyed that this was not a part of the book.  (And her review had plenty of "likes" so I don't think she was just one lone crazy voice.)

At the same time, another book I read recently had a character (who is supposed to be kind of a jerk, and who feels threatened by a biracial character) make some rude comments such as, "He's half-Korean.  I wonder which half?" and I saw reviewers who were very unhappy with this character for being racist (and for the author for stooping to such a level).

So writers are in trouble for not being realistic when they don't portray racism, but are also criticized for including racism in their novels.  Is there any way to include race that will not upset people?  The only thing worse would be to not include people of various races at all (this is only okay if it's historically accurate, such as in a Jane Austen novel, I suppose).

One of the few examples I can think of where an author managed to successfully straddle this line is J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter books.  She portrays race, but so subtly that it rarely comes up as an issue-- for example, there are the Patel twins who seem to be of Indian origin based on their names, but Rowling leaves it at that.  Also, these books deal with their own form of racism-- pureblood wizards versus wizards that come from muggle families-- so the kind of racism we deal with it sort of a non-issue.


But if you're not writing about the wizarding world, how does one accurately write about an ethnically diverse group of people without angering your readers?

First Day of School

Since I was about nine months late posting last year's first day of school pics, I'm trying to do better this time around.  It was just barely more than a week ago!

I got off to a great start by sleeping in.  (In my defense, Camille broke my alarm clock by pulling out the volume knob.  I thought I'd fixed it, but I'd somehow made it silent.  Which is about as worthless a feature in an alarm clock as you can get, come to think of it...)  But we got everyone out the door on time anyway.  And here, Craig leaves with the kids-- as opposed to Manassas, where he left for work about two hours before we left for school; getting to have him around in the mornings is a real treat for us!  So Craig took pictures while I got Camille dressed so we could all go to the bus stop.  (After that first day, I'll just be letting Craig take the kids while I stay home with the little ones.)

Anyway, here they are:

This pretty much sums up my kids' personalities, right here...

And adding in Colton and Camille

I like this shot

Ryder is so excited for kindergarten!

Bentley is my big 5th grader!

And Kendra is my sweet 3rd grader!

#Iwokeuplikethis  (and apparently we didn't get Colton dressed???)

All lined up and ready to go

All the bus stop parents taking pictures just like us

And he's off!

And finally...  This one was a bit of a surprise to me!

Craig with his fellow assistant principals and the principal, showing off their school spirit for the Albemarle Patriots!

Craig hadn't even told me that he would be dressing up for the first day of school!  This was especially funny because the school administration where he was a teacher placed a huge emphasis on being professional and wore shirts and ties more often than not.  This is a bit of a change!  It was even funnier when Craig found news footage of the principal (2nd from the right) being interviewed about the first day.  I was kind of impressed that he could give a serious interview dressed like that!



The kids came home very happy that afternoon.  And I enjoyed shopping with only two kids while they were gone!  I think we're all in for a fun year.  But maybe especially Craig!