annesley, the BIG girl

Miss Annesley Aliyah, the joy of my life and pretty much constant companion for the past 2 3/4 years has decided to become a BIG girl! What is a BIG girl you ask? It is a baby that makes the BIG decision to not nurse anymore and to fully enter the world of childhood.

To celebrate her BIG decision she got to pick out a Big Girl bike. It is bright green and she is loving it. She is still working on mastering pedaling and steering, but she is getting the hang of it.

I am super-duper proud of Miss Annes. This is a big step in her life and after the first two days she is handling it really well. At first, she was asking to nurse every 30 seconds or so, then I would ask her if she had changed her mind and didn’t want to be a big girl. She would say “No, me BIG girl” and calm down. Thirty seconds later she would ask again and the same conversation would repeat. Today she has only asked to nurse once and I didn’t even make it to the conversation part before she started giggling and saying “Me Big Girl, Me Don’t Nurse!”

Some people wonder why I nurse my babies and especially why I nurse them past the first year. Here is a a list of 101 reasons why breastfeeding is such a large part of my mothering.

While all those things on the list do wonders for my research-lovin’ brain, what it really boils down to is this – it feels right, it feels like this is exactly what babies need, what God created mothers to do, and the best process I know of to learn how to be a mother.

I am so grateful for my breastfeeding experiences. I know I would be a vastly different mother if I had chosen to bottlefeed. I easily could have become a bottle-propping, leave-baby-in-bed while I do more “important” things, but instead breastfeeding forced me to slow down, to gaze into my baby’s eyes, to feel the prolactin and oxytocin rushing through me, and to learn that motherhood was the most important thing I could be doing.

I have now nursed for 143 months of my mothering life. That is almost 12 years of providing nourishment for my children. Twelve years of being touched much more than even I am comfortable with. Twelve years of wearing nursing bras (and let me tell you, Bravado Nursing Tanks are BY FAR my favorite nursing bra!). Twelve years of sleeping with babies. Twelve years of having super-amazing antibiotic milk to treat cuts, infections, and rug burns. Twelve years of seeing my children’s cute little faces light up with joy at the end of a nursing session. Twelve years of wearing shirts that don’t tuck in.

Twelve years…unbelievable.

number ten and the saga of the hair gone bonkers

I haven’t wanted to talk about this. I haven’t been willing to face it. I haven’t wanted to admit it. But now, I feel I must be open and honest about events of recent days.

I was pregnant. I wasn’t excited about it. Although I want a baby desperately and much of my life revolves around figuring out the mystery of how to help my body stay pregnant, at this moment in time I was not excited. I kept thinking, “How will I be able to support Blythe in Shakespeare if I am giving birth right during her play? How will I do gym? How will I get my children to their classes that they are so excited about? How will I teach classes at iFamily? How will I tell all 75 of my gym students I cannot teach? How will I break my contract with the gym? Will they let me or will I have to pay them rent even if I am not using it? How will I homeschool my children? How will I ever survive the months of throwing up, the constant feeling of needing to throw up, the heartburn, the pelvic pain, the possibility of my midwife not attending me, the cost of having a baby, the reality of Richard working 12 hour days, six days a week. How will I meet the needs of my other children? How, how, how?”

I was overwhelmed at first. I knew I had ovulated twice and I was doubly worried about having twins. I mean, I think twins are fun and all that, but I was full of fear that my body simply would not be able to carry twins successfully. That I literally would be unable to walk because of my pelvic issues. That I would not be able to do it. The big IT, meaning everything that every mother makes bigger than it really is when we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the hugeness of our responsibilities as mothers.

Then I started to get excited. I started thinking that because of a quite miraculous conception, a full week after my fertility signals had disappeared, that God must have intended this baby to stay. I started to be full of hope that this time, this pregnancy would not end as so many other pregnancies have ended for us, but that we would actually get to hold this baby or babies in our arms. I began making adjustments in my life to accommodate for this life inside of me. I began to embrace the idea of pregnancy.

And then, the bleeding started.

Once again, I was miscarrying one of my children.

Parts of me were relieved. Relieved that I didn’t have to make all those adjustments. Relieved that my children’s lives could go on normally. Relieved that Blythe’s Shakespeare play wouldn’t be effected.

Part of me was devastated. Devastated that I would not be seeing this child, would not be holding him in my arms. Would not be nursing him. Would not be watching him grow.

But most of me? Most of me felt guilt. Horrible, gut-wrenching, knife-stabbing, take my breath away guilt. Guilt that I had rejected a child of God. Guilt that I had put temporal worries in front of being a mother. A MOTHER. What I know I was born to be. Guilt that this child felt unwanted and so he left.

So I stuffed all of these feelings deep down inside and went on with life like nothing had happened. I told very few of my friends. I didn’t want anyone to know what I had done. I didn’t even tell my mom, who I tell everything too. I kept bleeding and I went on with life as if nothing had happened.

It was too overwhelming to face.

And then I decided to get my hair lowlighted to add in a little bit of light brown and make my hair look more natural instead of the super blond it has been all summer.

The light brown turned black, navy blue, grey, and red.

We tried to lighten the darkest parts and they turned orange. Bright orange.

We tried to darken the orange parts and they turned dark brown and so not a lovely color of dark brown. At this stage, I also had a two inch white streak in the front of my hair with crayola marker red mixed in. Bimbo-city is what my hair was screaming to the world.

I was completely befuddled. What on earth was going on with my hair? Why was it not turning the right colors or even the right tones? What did I need to do to fix it?

I called my good friend Melissa, who is a cosmetologist and does foot zoning, and explained the whole hair situation to her. She immediately asked what was going on in my life. I told her “nothing, nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual amount of busyness, getting ready for gym, iFamily, etc.” She probed deeper and asked “what is going on hormonally.” Again, I said “nothing.” Then, I finally admitted that I had just miscarried. She jumped on that idea and said “Tracy, those hormones are making your hair do this. I am sensing you are not dealing well with the miscarriage, that you don’t want to admit it, that you don’t want to face it and now your body is calling to you to notice what is going on, to acknowledge the pregnancy and the loss of the pregnancy.”

Immediately, I knew she was right. I thought of the day before when Amy had kindly said “We need to get you another bead for your miscarriage necklace and I reacted so strongly and said “NO, no, I don’t want another bead. I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t want to have a tenth bead hanging on my neck.” I thought of how I hadn’t told even my mother. I thought of how I was just moving on with life as if nothing had happened.

So, now we knew why my hair was behaving so erraticlly, but we still didn’t know what to do about it. Every person we consulted with said we needed to stop processing it. Stop adding chemicals to it or it would all fall out. I thought “We can’t stop now! Not at this bimbo stage. No hair must be better than bimbo hair. I cannot go out in public and portray myself as a Latter-Day Saint woman and mother of four with hair like this. I simply cannot. Shaving it all off would be a better option.”

So we decided to consult with lots more people, getting different opinions from each one. We finally decided to fill the white parts with a copper color and then to dye the whole thing brown.

It worked…kind of…it went much darker red than we thought and it went much darker brown than it should have. But it is all the same color…mostly…and I don’t look like a bimbo. So it worked, right?

This has been a big lesson for me to learn. My body and my emotions cannot be separated. I cannot ignore what is going on with me at the deepest levels and expect my body to be okay with that. I cannot hide from it, for it will come out in some way.

It is pretty interesting that I was not willing to face the miscarriage and now I have to look in the mirror and face it everyday.

Our bodies are amazing creations. They speak to us even when we are not listening. They present lessons to us even when we don’t want to learn.

I will now admit it.

I have lost ten babies. Ten. TEN. It is overwhelming to me to think of it.

But now, I also feel surrounded by love. The love of all those children. The love of a Heavenly Father that has allowed me to be a co-creator with Him for fourteen babies and that somehow, somehow, I have four that have come to earth and are spending their days learning with me.

I no longer believe I drove this baby away. I believe he loved me enough to come again when it will work better for our family. For his family.

blythe’s gift to me

My oldest child recently turned 14 years old. I am still bewildered that I have a child this age. How can that be even remotely possible?

I thought I had written about her gift to me before, but I can’t find what I thought I said, so I am going to write about it some more.

Pre-BMW (Blythe Moriah Ward), I had far different priorities than I did post-BMW. In fact, I was a different person. I did not want to be a mother. I wanted to spend my life doing important things – like traveling the world, studying the Torah, and teaching people God’s ancient words. I wanted to be known for doing important things. I wanted to fill my time with scholarly research and the subsequent presentations of my findings. I wanted to stretch my mind and challenge myself with doing really hard things.

I had absolutely no desire to have a child need me. I had no desire to ever change a diaper again. And if by some chance, I was given a child, he or she was not going to interfere with my life, my plans, my needs.

Throughout the first three years of our marriage, all of this started changing. I decided I wanted to have children. I started researching the role and value of motherhood. I started arguing with my feminist professors who advocated a position of “daycare is best for children.” I began to feel disgust for the mothers I saw dropping off their six-week old babies at a daycare at seven in the morning and picking them up at seven at night. I began to desire to be a mother who would be with her children…someday.

But, I was still ambivalent about actually being a mother. I had been told by two different doctors that I would die if I tried to have a baby and we believed them. We decided we would not have biological children and would look into adopting when I was done with my college education.

And then, in spite of doing everything we could to prevent pregnancy, I became pregnant. I was not happy. I was, in fact, pretty much terrified that I was going to die. Not only that, it felt like a huge interruption to my life. I was in the middle of my Speech Pathology program and I wanted to complete it. I couldn’t see how it would all work out. I worried about my education and my job and my life and a million other things that seem so trivial now.

We decided to let the pregnancy continue…to just see what would happen. Our OB sent for the reports from the previous two doctors and he disagreed with their findings. He felt like I was not in danger of death and could safely be a pregnant and birthing woman. We were comforted, but not convinced. As the months of pregnancy continued, all seemed to be well, and I began to believe that the first two doctors were completely wrong.

At 36 weeks pregnant, when my uterus had stretched as far as it was going to stretch, our OB pronounced that my abdominal wall was sound, that it was not going to rupture as had been declared by the prior physicians. He said, “See, I was right, everything is going to be just fine.” At that moment, I knew he was correct and I also knew I could not give birth with him. I informed him I would be birthing at home. He flipped out and quickly informed me how dangerous and insane that would be (he later called me at home and apologized for his outlandish behavior). I stood my ground because I knew in my heart that birthing at home was what I needed to do.

We found a midwife and started preparing for a home birth. It was so wonderful to finally be excited about our baby and not to be full of fear about dying. We gathered supplies and Tami came around 38 weeks for the birth that was sure to be right around the corner and we walked and walked and walked. And no baby came.

And then, in her 43rd week of gestation, Blythe was born. After ten months of throwing up every single day and hours of throwing up every 15 minutes throughout her labor, she was born! As I held her that first day, I fell completely in love with her, with motherhood, with homeschooling her, with devoting my life to her. All of a sudden, I knew what motherhood meant and it was not drudgery, it was not a waste of time. It was the most important work I could ever do. It was exactly the work God wanted me to do. It was exactly the work my soul needed to do to grow and learn and develop into the woman I was created to be.

It saddens me to think how backward my thinking used to be and I am filled with gratitude for my brave Blythe who came into my life before I even knew I wanted her, before I valued motherhood, before I knew how absolutely essential motherhood is to the foundation of each family, community, nation, and world.

She taught me that I am doing the most important work. I am spending my days teaching the next generation what it means to be good. I am teaching them about freedom, government, history, God, math, cooking, serving, patience, and family.

I am so grateful for this 14-year-old girl. Thankful for her courage to follow her own path. Thankful she chose me as her mother. Thankful she forgives me and gives me another chance. Thankful she was born at what I thought was an inconvenient time. Thankful for her deep, inner knowing and her absolute devotion to what is right. I am humbled to think of the love God has for me to have sent me a child I didn’t know I needed, but He knew I needed. He knew what motherhood would come to mean to me and how it would change my life forever.

Here are some pics of this beautiful girl:

Blessing Day

Blythe and Grandpa Ward

Blythe and Grandma Smith

Blythe taking a bath

Blythe and her papa

Blythe and her mama

Blythe with Andie and Grandma Dorothy

Blythe and Marcus at Bear Lake

Blythe and Stephen at Bear Lake

Two years old at GRL

Third Birthday at GRL

Crazy dress-up with her first cat, Spike

Four-years-old

5th Birthday

Another Birthday party…with Becca and Mikelle

Blythe and Andie’s birthday at Bear Lake

Somewhere around the age of six

Sevenish?

Baptism…and me at 38 weeks pregnant with Fisher

Eight-years-old with Keziah and Great-Grandma

With Grandpa’s horses

Pioneer Days rodeo…almost nine-years-old

Christmas at nine-and-a-half

Eleven-years-old

Twelve-years-old…beautiful, isn’t she!

Thirteen-years-old

Fourteen!

Isn’t she adorable!

I am so blessed to have her in my life and to have the privilege of being her mother. She has taught me much about love, patience, sacrifice, acceptance, putting people first, doing hard things, and so much more.

Most importantly, she was willing to come as my first child. Willing to let me learn how to mother on her. Willing to teach me the power of motherhood before I knew I was ready to learn that lesson.

Happy Birthday, my girl.

I love you.

grow the tree you have

I am reading a great book and it has a chapter in it called “Grow the Tree You Got” that gave me some big food for thought today. It talked about a man who had a gorgeous Kentucky black oak tree growing in his yard, but he yearned for an Australian acacia.

Every time he looked at the oak he saw that it didn’t have purple blooms and it didn’t let the sun stream through his yard the way an acacia would. He didn’t appreciate the strong branches of the oak, the beautiful colors of the leaves, the cooling shade it offered to every passerby. He didn’t notice how the oak’s root system nourished younger trees nearby.

The oak cannot do enough to please the man and soon the man doesn’t even see the magnificent tree when he comes home. There is a gift waiting for him in his front yard every single day, but he does not notice it.

From Parking Lot Rules & 75 Other Ideas for Raising Amazing Children by Tom Sturges

He only saw what his tree didn’t have and was not able to appreciate or be grateful for what it did have.

The author applied this to parenting and opened my eyes. He talks about how sometimes we do the same thing to our children. We have expectations, hopes, and desires for a certain child and when we don’t have that child we fail to see the wonderfulness of the child we do have.

I think in some small measure I have done this with my oldest. I have always adored her. She completely changed my life by making me a mother. I nursed her for over three years. I spent years being her mom with no one else around. She was with me every day and we had a delightful time going on walks, discovering bugs, reading for hours and hours, talking to all sorts of strangers on our journeys, going on bike rides, cooking up concoctions she could eat in spite of her allergies. We were completely in love with each other.

But then she grew up and I had more kids and she didn’t have all my attention and she wasn’t like what I thought she would be. I thought she would be like me and well, she wasn’t. She was a tad introverted. She thought artistically, not logically. She felt things deeply, but then she wouldn’t talk about them. She kept her ideas to herself. She wanted to be alone for hours at a time. She didn’t like being the center of attention and I embarrassed her constantly because I simply could not understand that facet of her personality. She was a slow reader. She held grudges. She created worlds in her mind and often went there to live unbeknownst to me who was treating her as if she was still in my home and thought she should interact with us. She had thin, breakable hair that seemed beyond my abilities to do anything with. She had oily skin that needed to be showered, washed, and pampered to stay on an even keel. She didn’t laugh at the same things I laughed at. She didn’t love math the way I love math.

Sometimes I saw these things as huge deficits. Things she didn’t have, couldn’t do, wouldn’t be. But really they were just things I couldn’t understand. They were things that weren’t like me. Things that seemed frustrating because they were out of my realm of experience.

Sometimes I saw them so much I couldn’t see the beauty and the wonder of who she was.

Who she is.

She is passionate about freedom for all of God’s children. She believes in standing up for truth. She has the soul of an artist. She moves with grace to the music of her mind. She has beautiful laughter and a lovely smile. She has the ability to be friends with all sorts of different types of people. She taught herself how to crochet and then makes things…like slippers, headbands, and gloves…just by looking at some and then figuring out how to do them. She is not afraid of doing things imperfectly. She stubbornly does what she sets her mind to. She is an amazing swimmer. She has a lovely body. She taught herself how to sew. She is clear about who she is and what she stands for. She is not afraid to do hard things. She is modest. She is funny. She has a beautiful singing voice. She has a flare for fashion. She has amazing curly hair. She is a great babysitter. She loves the Book of Mormon. She is strong. She is determined. She is resilient. She can draw for hours. She sees beauty that I miss. She is a deep thinker.

She is not me. She is not who I thought she would be.

She is her very own self and I love her.

I need to figure out how to send that message to her on a consistent basis and not focus on what the oak tree lacks.

Grow the tree or the child you have. The one you were given and not the one of your dreams. It will make all the difference.

make enough of me

I just learned of this song and I can already say listening to it the last few days has brought peace to my soul, hope to my heart, and a smile to my face.

I have been gone to swim camp for a week (it rained every day and was crazy-windy, like so windy three tents were blown over and broken, chilly, and lots of children were throwing up by the end of the week – but still way fun), got home on Saturday afternoon to a filthy house, loads of laundry, and my sister, Mikelle, and her husband, Logan, waiting for me and mowing my much overgrown lawn. Mikelle got right to work cutting hair and beautifying all of us, then we went to Logan’s Semi-Pro football game and got home around midnight. Annesley started throwing up shortly thereafter and continued through the night. Sunday brought church for a few of us healthy ones and lots of rest for everyone else. Sunday night I got called to a birth and got home last night around 11 p.m. This morning Blythe has Youth Conference (which amazingly enough, she was all packed for when I got home last night!), Keziah has America’s Hope Choir practice, and I still have a sick baby, LOADS of laundry, more dishes than I can throw a stick at, and lots of work on the Children’s Parade. I am spread far too thin and today I certainly feel there is not enough of me to go around…and yet, I love my life. I am grateful to be a wife, grateful to be a mother, grateful to be a doula, grateful to have a washer and dryer, grateful to have food to feed my children and dishes to wash, grateful to have a home to clean, and grateful to be in this phase of my life. It is busy, and yes, it can be overwhelming, but it is also a wonderful training ground for my soul to learn patience, diligence, nurturing, prioritizing, pausing, letting go, and letting God. Every day I am clearly reminded that I cannot do this without Him. I cannot mother the way He would have me mother without spending time communing with Him, learning from Him, and letting Him work miracles in my life and the lives of my children. He has given me this time to refine me. I know this. I know He loves me and wants to help me. I just need to let Him and depend on Him more and more each day. This song is helping me remember just that.

Enjoy!

Make Enough of Me

happy mother’s day

I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole mothering thing. It is hard work. It takes heart and mind and body. It takes humility and foresight and willingness to change and patience and courage. It takes all that we have and then some more that must come from God above. It takes love, real love that we give and give and give until it is so tangible that it is a lifeline to our children to lead them back home.

I have a song I love to belt out at the top of my lungs (especially on those days when the laundry is piled sky high, the children are cantankerous and I have no idea what to make for dinner) and today I would like to dedicate it to all the mothers, everywhere. Take these words into your heart and believe them. Let them give you hope on those days when everything seems to go wrong and joy on those days when things are going right.

Who You Are
by Hilary Weeks

I know you wonder if you’ll ever have a day
Where the kids stay calm,
The laundry is done
And the dishes are put away.
And sometimes you feel like
Your days are spent and gone
And the question running through your mind is
What have I gotten done?
And when you finally have a moment to slow down
At the end of your day
I know Father would say
Believe in what you’re doing.
Believe in who you are.
Hold tight to the truth that you’re a daughter of God.
Believe in who you’re becoming,
Believe in who you are.

It may seem simple,
All the little things you do
But the lives you touch matter so much
And there’s no one else like you
And Father needs you to stand tall and faithful,
To be all you can be
If you could see what He sees
You’d believe in what you’re doing and
You’d believe in who you are
So, hold tight to the truth that you’re a daughter of God.
Believe in who you’re becoming,
Believe in who you are.

When it’s hard to believe in yourself and
You feel like you’re beginning to doubt,
Remember,
He believes in what you’re doing and
He believes in who you are
So, don’t lose sight of the truth that you’re a daughter of God.
He believes in who you’re becoming,
He believes in who you are.

Happy Mother’s Day to each and every mother out there. Thank you for your service, your love, and your fortification of the family. Thank you for teaching and washing and driving and feeding and holding and birthing the human race.

Thank you especially to my mother and grandmother who have loved me when I was seemed unlovable, taught me when I looked unteachable, and held me tight when I resisted being held and in doing so, passed on their faith, joy, and determination to do good in this world.

the agony of underwear

This is a rant, a full-on rant. I don’t expect anyone else to agree with me – you can all think I am loony if you want, but I am still going to have my rant!

I like my girls to wear white, modest (not bikini or hipster…or heaven forbid, thong!) underwear. We don’t do characters in this house for anything (meaning I don’t want my children to be attached to the latest craze of TV show, movie star, or action figure – I want them to be attached to God, family, and freedom. All that Spider Man, Dora, Sponge Bob, and Barbie stuff can go hang out at another house because we don’t want it here.) and I certainly don’t want their underwear to have characters on it. I don’t want to bribe my children to go potty so they can keep their Princess panties clean. “We wouldn’t want Belle to get wet, would we?”

I understand that some people use this method. Its just not my method. If its yours, fine, do what you want.

So, my little Annesley decided she was done with diapers thirteen days ago. She goes into the bathroom all by herself or comes and finds one of us to take her. She goes in our bathroom, in public bathrooms, at our friends’ bathrooms. She is a diaper-wearing-haven’t-a-clue-when-I’m-going-potty turned master-of-my-pee-and-poop-and-total-pro-at-this-whole-bathroom-thing. It happened overnight, literally. One day she was fairly clueless, the next she used the bathroom like twelve times.

The problem is, she doesn’t have any underwear. There are none left that I can find from Blythe and Keziah. They could perhaps be buried in a clothing tote somewhere, but I went through the 2T box and couldn’t find any. So, yesterday I took her shopping to find some. She was so excited and kept telling everyone “Me, wear, new wear me, mom me new wear” Which means, “I am getting underwear, new underwear, mom is taking me to get new underwear.”

I went to Sears, which with my older girls was my favorite place to get underwear. I loved their TKS stuff. Great prices, soft cotton, nice, stretchy elastic, and came in packs of all-white or a mix of white and pastels. Yesterday, all that was changed into thin, scratchy cotton, thin elastic, and worst of all, the yucky feeling fabric was covered in characters. Uuuuggghhh! is what escaped me lips and I told Annes we couldn’t buy this underwear, we would go to another store. Disappointed, but still excited we moved on to JCP with a brief stop at Old Navy just in case they had something fabulous to cover my girls bum. Nothing at Old Navy at all, characters available at JCP. On our way to Macy’s we passed the Gymboree store. So we tried there. They had fabulously soft cotton undies, not quite the brief style that I prefer, but possibly do-able. No white. Only bright, garish, grown-up looking prints. Leopard print on two-year-old underwear? It was also $4 a pair (why is underwear called a pair? It is one single thing with two holes. It was really $4 each.) which is out of this mama’s budget. So, we continued on to Macy’s (with a quick stop at a public restroom for Annes to empty her bladder). Surely they would have something lovely at such an outrageously expensive store as Macy’s. Nope. Back out to the car. We then tried TJMaxx, Kohl’s, Ross, and Walmart. I looked at Shopko awhile ago and there was nothing but characters then, so I didn’t try them again. I could still try Target and Fred Meyer, but I ran out of time. Nothing. Nothing! Annes was pretty heartbroken by this point and I was frustrated beyond belief (I know, I shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up, I should have looked myself without her so she wouldn’t have to endure the excitement-disappointment-rekindled hope-disappointment cycle).

Some stores didn’t even have underwear in anything smaller than a size 4. My little girl can barely wear the size 2T/3T size underwear, the size 4 looked humongous. Everywhere we looked there were characters, characters, and more characters. Bikini cuts, hipsters, Hannah Montana, Princess and the Frog, and myriads of other Hollywood produced idols that my little Annes doesn’t even know exist. I opened all sorts of packages and felt the cotton, most of it was unbearable scratchy. I wouldn’t want it touching my skin and I wasn’t about to have it touch hers.

I know this probably sounds silly to many of you…I mean, spending hours looking for underwear for a two-year-old? I know, I know, it seems like it doesn’t really matter what covers their bums. The problem is that it matters a lot to me and I can’t just turn that part of me off. I feel this huge responsibility to guard what I bring into their lives. I know they will encounter stuff in the world that I don’t approve of, but that doesn’t mean I have to give it to them. I can’t let myself feel good about impressing upon their little minds that all of this stuff is good. I don’t want them to attach importance to the things Hollywood puts out. I don’t want them to become dependent on it. I don’t want them to feel they want or need to have a shirt or pants or shoes or book or toy because it has a character they like on it. I certainly am not up to dealing with a tantrum over said item when they absolutely-must-have-it-right-this-minute. I have no patience for stuff like that. None. I want tantrums to be over something important, not the Sponge Bob coloring book that is overpriced and under quality (you know that is a joke, right? I don’t want tantrums over anything, but if I’m going to get them it better be over something more important). I want them to be able to judge something for its innate value, how well it is made, how well it will serve them, how reasonably or unreasonably it is priced instead of being swayed because it has a certain character on it.

We never found anything up to my specifications, but I did finally buy her some at Walmart that are colorful and soft and don’t have characters. She picked them out and is very proud of them. There were only four pairs (there is that “pairs” again) in the package, so she really needs some more because there is no way my laundry habits can keep up with that. So, if you know of some fabulous underwear somewhere, please let me know (and yes, I do know about Hanna Andersson underwear, it is heavenly, it is $6 a pair and I am not willing to pay those prices no matter how soft and organic the cotton is).

Meanwhile, I am contemplating starting an internet underwear business specializing in white, modest underwear in sizes to fit everyone from the smallest of human beings to the largest of us, so I can save other mothers this same hassle. Are there any other mothers out there that need saved from the bikini cut and mass marketing of characters to our children’s private parts?

i’m in print

Years and years ago…like when I only had two children and they were very small…I wrote an article for a friend’s book. She published it and then it was submitted to the Latter-Day Saint Home Education Association. They published it in their newsletter, The Sentinel.

Now they have reissued it to their new subscribers. You can read it here.

It is somewhat funny to read it now because I am so not the same mother I was then. I thought I knew so much about motherhood. I was striving fiercely to create a wonderful family unit.

Now? Some of those things are not getting done. Maybe I need to get back in the habit of a Saturday Night Devotional. Maybe I need to assess where we are and what we need to improve upon. Maybe some of the things in the article can be let go – I don’t know. I just know reading it this morning was like a trip down memory lane – back to a time of much less chaos, commitments, and laundry. Back to a time of two little girls who loved nothing more than to snuggle up and listen to me read to them for hours and hours every day. Who loved to go on walks looking for rocks and bugs and injured animals to save. Who loved to act out scripture stories and thought it was the greatest fun possible. Back to a time of good employment and plenty of time with dad. Back to a time of knowing what my children needed and not needing to feel like an amateur psychologist just to get through breakfast.

Go check it out, maybe there will be some priceless thoughts for you…and maybe not…

some motherhood thoughts

Mothering my thirteen year old has been fairly difficult lately. That is probably an understatement. I do not understand this girl. I don’t understand her needs, wants, dreams, or frustrations. I am often impatient with her and lately have been completely exasperated with her. Like ready to lose my mind, my temper, and my ever-lovin’ heart.

Truly.

So, last night after beating myself up for not being the mother I wanted to be this week – you know, the wise, patient, continually calm, nurturing mother – I decided to try to think about what I am good at in this whole mothering thing.

I’m pretty good at:

1. Reading out loud to my children.

2. Creating fabulous experiences for them.

3. Being united with their father.

4. Having a vision of what I want for our family.

5. Listening to and implementing what God wants for our family.

6. Teaching them about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

7. Inspiring them with stories of heroes who are brave, true, steadfast, and humble.

8. Providing lots of books about every topic under the sun.

9. Being pretty darn relaxed about most things.

10. Knowing how to laugh and have fun.

11. Being willing to make huge changes in my life plans to obey promptings I have been given.

12. Modeling self-education.

13. Nurturing them as babies through lots of holding, snuggling, nursing, etc.

14. Singing to them pretty much all the time.

15. Teaching them my family history.

16. Pretty patient, most days.

17. I make sure they start out their lives on earth in peace, safety, and love without any drugs in their bodies.

18. I drink really gross herbal concoctions to help their little bodies develop well.

19. I am willing to talk to them about any subject under the sun and they know it.

20. I provided (okay, I really had nothing to do with it, God did it) a fabulous father for them.

21. I feed them healthy food most of the time.

22. I don’t freak out if they are covered in mud, have blood running down their face, or have broken something in our home.

Now, that list should help me feel a bit better. I’ll try to let those words sink in down to my little toes and swirl around my heart and fill me with some TLC.

I, of course, came up with a much longer list of things I am not so great at, but I am going to try to focus on the good things so I can feel a bit better about myself.

In this pondering process, I realized some things: Blythe is a whole lot like me. I like to think she is a whole lot different (and she is), but she is also somewhat similar. You see, she feels things deeply. Very deeply. Her depth of emotion has always been a whole lot more than I could understand. But I have learned something these last few days. The reason I don’t understand her depth of emotion is because it is about things that I don’t feel passionate about. Things I may believe are irrelevant or illogical or nonsensical. So I treat them that way in my heart. I try to treat her as a person having rational emotions (are emotions ever rational?) but in my heart, I feel like she is being irrelevant, illogical, or nonsensical…and she feels that. She knows my heart is not really with her. And so, her walls come up and my patience weakens and she cries and I forget all about how much I love her and who she is and how her coming into my life completely changed everything and I become heartless.

Have you ever had that experience? Where the person you treasure most of all is suddenly a problem to you. Suddenly an inconvenience? A burden?

You know, when she was a little girl her passions were endearing. Around the age of three she started a litter passion. If she saw litter anywhere she had to pick it up. Soooo, if we were in a store or a restaurant and she looked outside and saw some litter she had to go pick it up. RIGHT NOW.

When she learned that whales were being killed, she was furious. She couldn’t eat or think or live. All she could do was rage about the evil whalers and how she was going to STOP.THEM.ALL.

By the age of three she was telling pretty much everyone she met all the stories in the Book of Mormon whether they wanted to hear them or not. She was on a mission to teach people about Jesus and Nephi and Moroni and Teancum.

Now? They are not so endearing. Now, her passions are deeper than ever and they are never-ending and they do not make sense to me and they get in the way of my plans. And she informs me of them way to late for me to help her achieve them or forgets to tell me at all. Or loses the paper she wrote them down on. Or mumbles something about it and expects me to know exactly what is going on in her brain.

How crazy is that? Being frustrated with my precious daughter because she has passions and needs and dreams that I don’t understand.

I need to remember just who she is and how much I do adore her…even when she has lost something AGAIN, is crying over unfulfilled expectations, is determined to save the world, or is angry at perceived injustice.

She is mine. She is wonderful. She is beautiful. She is determined. She is messy. She is forgetful. She is virtuous. She is mine and she is God’s.

I hope I’ll be better to her this week.

missing children

Today at church someone said “Aren’t you missing one of your children?” I tried to hide the shock I felt and stuff down the tears that were emerging and responded “Nope, they are all here.” He said, “Really? Just four – I thought you had more.” “Nope, just four.” said with as big of a smile as I could muster.

Then he said “Are you done?”

Whoooaaaahh. I tried to act relaxed and like it wasn’t cutting me to the core. I said “I don’t know, we are waiting to see what God says about that.” It’s the best I could do – I certainly wasn’t going to explain anything to this man standing in the foyer with me, but I wanted to be truthful without being emotional, flippant, or bitter. I tried to answer the questions simply without any fanfare. I think I succeeded, but I don’t know for sure.

Because yeah, there are some missing. And these questions were just too close to home.

I think of the twins we miscarried back in 2001. Little girls with curly blond hair and blue eyes. After we lost the first twin, I believed I was okay emotionally because I thought, “At least I am still pregnant with this one. Something must have been wrong with that baby, but at least I will get to keep this one.” Then we miscarried the second twin on Keziah’s first birthday at the exact same time as her birth. It was the same length as her labor and was just as intense. These were our first two miscarriages and I was in shock. Total shock. I remember crying my eyes out with my friend Delinda and wondering how I would ever make it through this. I remember her wise counsel to take time to grieve and to let my grieving be as intense or as mild, as long or as short as it needed to be. I remember being grateful when it was all over because now I could move on and have another baby…because of course it would never happen again. How little I knew.

I think of the baby the next July, then November, then another the next July, then again in December. I think of the two babies we lost after Fisher. Those were quite the surprise because all the luteal phase issues were fixed. Didn’t matter – babies were still not making it into our arms.

I think of the baby this last October and the sobering reality that hit me that this is who I am. A mother who miscarries babies over and over and over. A mother that can’t stay pregnant even when there is nothing obviously wrong with her. A mother to nine babies that didn’t join her family on earth.

I know this man wasn’t trying to hurt me, he was just commenting that we seemed to be missing someone and the truth is we are.

Will there ever be more to fill our little family or are we done?

I don’t know, I really don’t know.