A Post about Charlie

I realize that lately a lot of my posts have been a little Ellie heavy. She talks so much and has so many antics (that's what I call them when I'm in a good mood and she's safely tucked away in bed--just antics) to report on. I don't want Charlie to be overlooked in our family's history, though. It's not that we aren't completely enamored and charmed every day by this little guy. He is quite difficult to catch with the camera, though. 

I have finally gotten videos to successfully upload to the computer, but now the editing software isn't working so great. And, really, you do want these videos edited down. I have quite the sequence of patty-cake footage, but I had to take quite a bit to get it all. He's the only baby I've ever known who will actually do the motions when you say "roll it and roll it," and also "throw it in the oven!" Several weeks ago I had him out in the foyer during Relief Society (we're on the 1:30-4:30 block and he was restless) and he did the whole sequence about 12 times in a row with me just whispering it in his ear. Sometimes he will just clap and roll his arms while he walks around like he's leading his own conga line. But, boy, whip out any kind of recording device and the kid could not care less to perform. He doesn't do it on command anymore. The same thing happened with Ellie's Cab Calloway impression. It's sad when kids outgrow these things.

So, anyway. I have really been feeling like I just needed to get some memories of Charlie recorded. I did my best to get some (blurry) pictures of him walking around. Plus, I almost can't stand how cute he looks in his Sunday clothes here (sorry to gush). [Good photographers, pay not attention to how not good I am at capturing these kids in good lighting or while in motion. Someday. For now, I just want to get it done.] 

Charlie is getting good at figuring out just how useful Ellie can be, and even communicating what he wants sometimes, even though he has quite the limited vocabulary (here he's gotten her to get his favorite stuffed animals out of his crib for him). I'm not sure how many words Charlie has down yet. His first words were "hi," "yes," "yay," and "dance," which I think says something about him. He's a pretty good mimic of tone and inflection, so he tries to say what we say sometimes. When I count for Ellie to go "hide" in a game of hide-and-seek, Charlie echoes me in nonsense words, but matches the tone length of syllables to sound like he's counting: ooonnee . . . twwooo . . . threee . . . Surprisingly, he seems to actually understand "no" a lot of the time. We didn't know kids could do that! After I pull his hand away from something I'm trying to do and say "no," several times, he in turn pulls my hand away and tells me, "no!" And sometimes even pats the lid of the garbage can and chants "no-no-no." (Sometimes I still have to steer him away, but come on, for 15 months, not bad.)

 He can charm anyone with his smile. Really, he knows how to melt you.

He loves to walk around carrying two things. These two stuffed animals are his favorites to carry, but he always likes to have something, and he thinks it is so funny to do this. He will shake them, toss them in front of him, pick them up again, crack up, and keep doing it. Walking is so funny to him. The lion was a Christmas present from Ellie. I encouraged her to pick something with shaggy hair in hopes of getting him to start pulling its hair instead of mine. This kid pulls hair worse than any other baby I have ever met. So. Hard. (And before anyone tells me I should cut off all my hair, it wouldn't make a difference because he pulls at the root, not the ends. He pulls Brady's hair just as bad as mine. It's getting better, though. Maybe the lion is working.)

The last time he really yanked my hair, I was on the floor with a heating pad for my back (not a good place with these kids). He walked up carrying one of Ellie's dolls, sat down right next to my head, and said, "Bay-bee," over and over again. I smiled and said, "Yeah, Charlie! Baby." We went back and forth like this a couple times. I turned my head to say something to a friend who was over, and Charlie grabbed and fistful of hair, whipped my head around, and insisted, "Bay-BEE!" Oh. I guess we weren't done talking about that yet. I think he was really happy to actually be communicating about something with me.

He really is a pretty mellow kid most of the time, plays well on his own, will get totally absorbed in something for long stretches. But then cry like his heart is broken when Ellie takes a toy from him, or you have to take something away from him that he's not supposed to be playing with.

He lets us know when he needs attention, though. Recently he took my hand and led me to his room. Didn't beg me to pick him up or anything, just quietly led me through the house to his door. Reached for the knob and jiggled it (he is already dangerously close to opening doors!) to get me to open it, then led me into his room. He was just so sweet about it. Then he found his bear and lion and started doing his little game of walking, shaking them, tossing them, for several laps. He just wanted me in there while he played. He did the same thing with some toy cars and a few books, cracked up laughing when I tried to catch him to read the books to him, but just kept playing.  He picked up the bear and lion and put them in the rocking chair and tried to rock the chair (though mostly he was the one who moved back and forth). When I said, "Oh, rock-a-bye," Charlie repeated, "bop-bye, bop-bye." Then he went and got two toy cars and set them in the rocker, "bop-bye, bop-bye." I'm not sure what age kids start to play pretend, and he probably got this from watching Ellie play with her "guys," but next he picked the cars up to face each other, and bounced them like they were walking along the seat of the chair and kept saying, "Hi! Hi! Hi!"

(Occasionally he will carry this bear around by its nose like this.) The whole world is such an exciting place of discovery right now for Charlie. I love how he looks to us when he sees something new, as if to say, "Do you see this?!" I love reading books with him, just to watch what pages he'll turn back to and study when we're done. During Sacrament meeting he'll turn pages back and forth through the hymnbook like a frantic scholar trying to cross reference with the board books sitting next to him on the bench. He gets so intent, so focused and driven about things like sorting blocks or books to put away on (or take off of) the shelf, and then get deliriously excited over two random toys he finds on the ground that he can carry over his head like a trophy. I look forward to seeing where this passion and drive takes him in life.

P.S. Sorry for the long, oddly nostalgic post. Not sure where that all came from. Sometimes I write with my parents as the audience in mind, who I know go through Ellie and Charlie withdrawals at times and are likely the only ones who will actually read all the way to the end here. Hi guys!

This post was supposed to go up nearly three weeks ago. But nearly three weeks ago I threw my back out. Bad. So I haven't been doing much other than "rest-es" for my back, as Ellie says. Every time I get back from the physical therapist Ellie is convinced that the doctor got me all better. She thinks doctors can fix anything from hangnails to televisions that won't turn on when the power is out (which is what we were dealing with on day one of my back catastrophe). She has a lot of faith in the medical profession.

Needless to say, the kids haven't been loving this. None of us do, really. It's slowly getting better, I think, and I have resumed some basic level of activity, counter height and above. Problem is that the kids are not counter height (well, except when Ellie climbs, which is actually a lot, but is also another problem). The PT also gave me a "back grace" [brace] to wear sometimes when I need to lift Charlie or do some cleaning and I think it helps. Ellie also fashions different back graces and has to rest her back quite a bit these days too. She has it rough.

This all came just a couple weeks after I started things to take better care of my back, like being smarter about how I clean, doing some stretches I learned in physical therapy before, etc. This seems like really bad back karma. Somewhere someone is out there not lifting with their knees, not doing transverse abdominal work, not stretching their hip flexors, and totally getting away with it.

Anyway, onto the real intent of my post. I just wanted to finally get a few last Christmas pictures up before January is over. I set that as my deadline. Ellie still isn't over Christmas; she regularly wears her Christmas jammies (both kids do, actually), still asks if we can get decorations back out, and builds Christmas "trees" out of her blocks and blankets. Occasionally she will ask me to help her write a letter to Santa, but it's just that--literally a letter: sometimes E, sometimes S, she really likes O. But I think it's time I just dump all these pictures and we close this chapter and I get to blogging about other things.

 We watched a lot a Christmas movies during Charlie's naps. Ellie fell asleep during a lot of them. In awkward places. This is a bed she made for herself in her toy box.

 Lots of fun Christmas parties. After driving three hours to attend this family party/reunion for Brady's dad's family, Ellie was elated to meet up with her cousin/partner in crime Phoebe.

 The centerpieces for the tables were handfuls of candy. Once the candy on our table was gone, the girls moved to a vacant table and made themselves at home. And made a mess.

They sat there by themselves for lunch.

And hid and spied.

 And played "mamnets" [magnets] at Aunt Kathy's house after the party.

 Building a snowman. Ellie loved Aunt Kathy's house. She "went snowing" with Uncle Booga and Phoebe, she introduced Aunt Kathy to They Might Be Giants' "Here Come the ABCs" (they're both huge fans), and had so many goodies. She's dying to go back.

Picking out treats to take home. And Charlie, our good little sleeper, slept through the whole visit. He will be as big of and Aunt Kathy fan as we all are by our next visit, I'm sure.

 We went to visit my family and  continued the festivities. I went to the Nutcracker ballet with my parents, nieces, and sisters.

 And did not get great pictures. We also celebrated my parents' 40th wedding anniversary with a temple trip and dinner at a nice restaurant. I didn't get any good pictures of them at the party. They were always holding one grandbaby or another, playing with the grandkids, which is typical of how they celebrate.

 We had a good Christmas carol cousin jam session on Christmas Eve.

Flowers Ellie got from Aunt Renee ('Nee-'nee flowers), which she insisted on sleeping in on Christmas Eve.

 Christmas morning. Finally a picture of Charlie (to be fair, this kid does sleep a lot of the time. Also, I have loads of videos of him that for some reason are not transferring well since we got Windows 8, so I will work on that. He started walking just before Christmas, which he thinks is the most hilarious thing he ever did, so he walks around carrying things over his head and just cracking up. We really love this boy.) This is one of my favorite presents we got Charlie. His own remote.

 We got Ellie some pots and pans, in hopes that she would leave our kitchen stuff alone. Ha! (And you can see how the flowers fared overnight. Not bad.)

 Charlie's door toy. Lots of little doors to open and close. This kid is fascinated with doors. He can't stand to see a door open that could be shut.

And the table and chairs. Again, hoping to prevent Ellie dumping her entire toy box and commandeering all the throw pillows to make her own table and chairs. Doesn't prevent that, but they do love to play with this set too. As you can see, a very busy, very IKEA, very merry Christmas.

No Love for Santa

We don't play up the whole Santa thing too much with the kids. We'll see how that goes as they get older. We have a lot of fun traditions for them at Christmas, and we don't outlaw Santa by any means, but we just like to hit some of the more important elements of the holiday. So we don't go way out of our way for Santa. But on campus they were having a Santa come for families to visit. It seemed like a good, get-in-the-spirit-of-things family activity, convenient, and free pictures and cookies. So why not?

Turns out our kids are not comfortable sitting on and conversing with a strange old man, even if he looks like Santa. And it turns out, I'm kind of okay with that.

Ellie was a little wary, just watching from a distance.

Charlie was none too happy (and may have thought something smelled fishy about some old man just giving stuff away to strangers).

 So hesitant.

 So Brady and I had to be in the shot too. Charlie still can't figure this guy out. And Ellie agreed to daintily fold her hands, but notice how she's trying to squirm off my lap?

 But the candy cane made it all worth it. And apparently it is the most amazing candy cane I had ever seen (trying to keep some enthusiasm up for Ellie). Lesson learned. No more Santa visits.

We went to an extended family party that had a Santa too (no pictures of this one--not that I have anyway). All the kids who sat on his lap got a little glass (yes, glass!) ornament filled with white glitter that Ellie sooo wanted. She thought it was a snow globe. She finally approached Santa with me, and then the Santa made ME sit on his lap and hold Ellie. It was awkward. I see why she doesn't like it. She wouldn't talk to him either. So he kept asking her questions. He asked her, "Do you want a doll for Christmas?" I wanted to give him a swift elbow jab. Are you kidding me? A doll was not in the plans this year. Santa shouldn't plant ideas. Finally, through gritted teeth, Ellie said, "I want a snow globe." How convenient. She got her ornament and ran off. Atta girl.

A little while later Ellie's preschool had a Christmas party and all the mom's had a different activity for the kids. One of the moms did photos with silly hats. She had a Santa hat and a paper Santa beard for the kids to wear. Ellie really liked the beard, but she refused to wear the hat. She really, really liked the reindeer antlers.

This kid really has a thing against Santa.

Finally, we got the perfect activity. We had taken the kids out for ice cream and our favorite spot was closed, so we stopped at a frozen custard shop near a park on the other side of town. A nice lady asked if we knew about the activity at the carousel at the park that very night. Santa would be there and they were offering free rides on the carousel. Ellie had been asking to go on the Merry-go-round since we took her on it once last summer, but it is closed all winter. So we headed across the street, skirted around Santa, hopped on the carousel and couldn't have had a better family outing if we'd planned it.

Both kids absolutely loved it.

 Look at that face. The magic and thrill on her face of not being forced to sit and converse with Santa. You just can't manufacture that.

Belated

Bet your Nativity set didn't come with Pluto, Pongo, or a "Yodelin' Cowgirl."

That's what Ellie calls herself when she wears that hat. Not Jesse. Yodelin' Cowgirl. I managed to keep things out of Charlie's reach this year, but I couldn't keep Ellie away. Casualties so far are one sheep and one angel wing. When I found the broken pieces and asked Ellie about about it, she sounded a bit panicked and said, "But I can say 'sorry!' The doctor can fix it!" She still apologizes every once in a while for it. Nothing a little super glue can't fix.

I have a serious backlog of blogging material. The holidays were great, but we were all sick and are just now  really recovering from our ear aches/sinus infections/coughs. So I didn't get around to chronicling everything in the moment. And lately Brady has wanted to work from home while he still has the chance and has been using the computer a lot.

I just might go back sometime and post a few holiday pictures, since I am terrible at any other form of record keeping and someday my kids might appreciate seeing the pictures. If you few readers will indulge me. Not very zen of me to look back, but aren't we supposed to try to keep the Christmas spirit all year long? In case I don't get around to it, though, this counts as this year's and maybe next year's Christmas card. Hope everyone had a lovely time.

Long pants, long pants!: Or, Why I'm not wearing pants to church on Dec. 16th

To clarify, I will be wearing something. Just not necessarily pants.

Not sure how many of you have come across this little story. For those who don't want to read the article, here's the first sentence that sums up the story: "A group of Mormon feminists has declared Sunday, Dec. 16, as 'Wear Pants to Church Day' and is calling on sister Saints across the globe to join the effort."

Reading about this "event" and the several comments I've seen scattered across Facebook has left me with mixed feelings and I can't stop thinking about it. As I don't want to get tangled in the back-and-forth of commenting on Facebook, and I feel like I have more to express about it than will fit there, I finally decided to just write about it here.

First of all, I actually do consider myself a feminist in many respects. In some circles of the Church, "feminist" is practically a swear word. But really most people I know are feminists--they just don't realize it. They agree that women should have rights to vote or hold office, have equal access to education, be paid equally for jobs they are qualified for and perform well, should not be considered or treated as property, should not be subject to abuse, and so on. But "feminism" has taken on some angry, negative connotations and has been taken to some extremes that I don't always want to follow it to.

So this group, All Enlisted, has called on Mormon women all over the world to wear pants to church this Sunday. Now, I don't exactly see this as quite the extremity of feminism that so many people fear. I don't even think it will be that big of a deal in the end. Not exactly the "historic" event they are hoping for. Women wearing dresses to church is a cultural phenomenon, not a doctrinal one. In 1971 the First Presidency stated that, "The Church has not attempted to indicate just how long women’s or girls’ dresses should be nor whether they should wear pant suits or other types of clothing. We have always counseled our members to be modest in their dress, [. . .] We have advised our people that when going to the temple they should not wear slacks or miniskirts, or otherwise dress immodestly. We have not, however, felt it wise or necessary to give instructions on this subject relative to attendance at our Church meetings, although we do feel that on such occasions they should have in mind that they are in the house of the Lord and should conduct themselves accordingly." (Priesthood Bulletin,June 1971.)

I think what they are hoping will be a big statement will be met with more shrugs than gasps. We're not talking about Susan B. Anthony walking into a voting booth. People have seen pants before, and in a church building. There are already places where women wear pants to church. I've been in wards in the U.S. where there were some members--men and women--who came to church in their blue jeans and no one batted an eye. The reason no one cared was that everyone knew that for these new members, that was really the best they had, and we were just glad to have them there with us. In many ways, this is kind of a non-issue that these women are turning into an issue.

So my reason for declining to "attend" the "event" has less to do with its extremity and more to do with my personal worship.

A few issues arise here. A while back I read an article (don't have the link, sorry) about teaching modesty. It had some interesting points about talking about this with children, Young Women, etc. It had a lot of points I liked. One area I didn't fully agree with, though, was it's discussion about how we shouldn't be dressing for others, just dressing for ourselves. I see what they were getting at, but I don't think they were entirely right. We often dress for others, and need to. Policemen aren't wearing those uniforms just for kicks. It's for our benefit, so we know who they are. Part of why we dress the way we do is to identify who we are. When I taught, I usually didn't wear a t-shirt and jeans because I would look too much like I was just one of the students. I dressed up a bit to set myself apart, give myself a little authority with them. Soldiers in uniform have distinct markings to indicate their ranks to one another. Teenagers have all kinds of ways of doing this in high school. Gangs do this. Everyone does this. We dress for other people.

So, my question is, when we go to church, who are we dressing for? At different times in my life I probably would have answered this in different ways. Hopefully I'm to the point that I can honestly answer that I am dressing for God. That my purpose for church attendance is worship, and so I want to dress in my "Sunday best" out of respect and worship for my Father in Heaven. It's why I don't wear the same shoes to the temple that I wear to do yard work. Respect and worship. For me, Sunday best is a dress or skirt and nice blouse or sweater. I don't think I have any pants that would be as nice as any dresses I own, so it would not be respectful for me to wear them. They might be fine to wear standing up in front of an English 293 class at BYU,  but I wouldn't feel worshipful in them. The same goes for some skirts I own, which I have determined are a bit too casual for church. Maybe someone else has a killer pantsuit that is nicer than any dress they own and wants to wear that. More power to them. If that is really why these women are wearing pants to church, if that is Who they are dressing for, then who am I to judge?

Some of you might think this is all just steeped in tradition for me, and if I just broke out of the tradition I'd be fine wearing pants. Perhaps it is just tradition for me. If we uphold traditions without meaning, we become Pharisees, worshiping the tradition above the Lord. But I think I've explained pretty thoroughly that this tradition does still hold meaning for me. It's a tradition that points me toward worshiping, not toward itself. Clearly, this tradition has lost meaning for some women and they want to reevaluate.

Many might respond and say this movement is about more than just pants. I get that. I get that a lot of women really are struggling to find their place in the Church; they legitimately do feel pain and are feeling displaced, and I don't in any way mean to minimize that. I haven't had these struggles with finding my place in the Church. I haven't felt repressed or lesser in my position in the Church. And I haven't felt the need to make Sacrament meeting my place of protest. Again, I don't reject the idea that some women genuinely struggle with issues of equality and want to feel more at home in the Church and are not just trying to be troublemakers (some might just trying to be troublemakers, but not all). And I don't deny that women's voices need to be heard in the Church. I hope we can find this space and listen to each other in a productive dialogue, rather than divisive stances of "us" vs. "them." As long as we see each other as "those guys" who just don't "get it," I don't think we'll have an easy time being united in one heart or one mind and just keep having contentious comments circulating on Facebook.

On a lighter note, this whole situation totally reminds me of a great joke:

Knock-knock:
Who's there?
Panther.
Panther, who?
Panther on panth, I'm going thwiming!

So Glad When Daddy Comes Home

I had a conversation a while back with my mom how that Primary song about being so glad that Daddy is home is really for moms. On Father's Day they really ought to get a bunch of sleep-deprived moms get up at church and sing, "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home, glad as I can be . . ." although it is cuter having the little kids sing it and blow a kiss to their dads at the end. Not that we don't have a good time around here during the day, but seriously, when five o'clock rolls around, everyone is pretty excited around here.

Brady usually rides his bike the mile or so to work, although recently it's been pretty cold and dark on both ends of the commute, so we are rethinking this plan. He usually calls just before he leaves his office and I tell the kids he's on his way. This is how they spend the few minutes it takes him to get home (these pictures are a couple months old, before our freezing weather set in and our old laptop died):

It lasts until either Charlie starts pulling Ellie's hair or Brady pulls up on his bike and the kids race to the garage to greet him (read: attach themselves to him and not let him put anything down or take off his coat before he swings them each and gives them kisses). Then he has two extra shadows for the next couple of hours until we start winding the kids down for bed. I'm sure Daddy is so glad to come home too.

Baby in Red

This time of year I always like to get Ellie all dressed up in a fun Christmas dress for church. I'm pretty frugal when it comes to clothes for my kids and try not to go overboard, but I admit that I am kind of a sucker for all those pretty holiday dresses. I get how some people can go a little crazy, turning their baby girls into living dolls to dress up. So every year I find some kind of spectacular deal on one, and then Ellie wears it every Sunday from Thanksgiving to New Years.

This year she actually inherited her dress from her best friend Danni, who brought it over one Saturday evening in September before Ellie went to bed. The next day Ellie insisted on wearing the "Danni dress," (both to her and Danni's delight) and has already gotten quite a bit of mileage out of it.

When I snapped this picture of Ellie, I thought of her Christmas dresses over the last few years, all the red, and was reminded of a story my grandma told me a couple years ago.

Loyal readers will remember that Ellie is named after my grandmother, who goes by Betty, but Ellie calls her "Grandma Awesome" because that's how she said her last name when she was learning to talk (who's the favorite now?).

This is her. Not exactly sure what age she is here, but I like the picture. My grandmother, Betty, was named after her grandmother, who went by Lizzy.

This is Lizzy on her wedding day. Lizzy had a sister named Charlotte (Lottie). My childhood was filled with Lizzie and Lottie lore. They were like characters from a book, even raised by a wicked (well, mean) stepmother and stepsister. (Sidenote: Ellie was almost a "Lottie.")

Anyway, this particular story I had not heard until a couple years ago around the holidays. Apparently Lizzie (who was born sometime in second half of the 19th century--I know, I know, I should look up the dates for a better story; sorry, Mom) was also named for her grandmother, who I guess might have actually gone by Elizabeth. I don't know how far the name goes back, but someone ought to have used the whole thing. Apparently this Elizabeth wanted a granddaughter named for her. So when her daughter was pregnant, she told her and her husband that if they named the baby for her, she would make a new dress for the baby.

Well, the baby came and was a girl, so they named her Elizabeth. The proud papa was traveling and stopped in to visit his mother-in-law to give her to news. She knew he would be traveling back through in a matter of maybe a couple of days or so to get home (I don't know, hazy on the details here), so she would have to hurry and make a dress if she was to hold up her end of the deal. The only fabric she really had on hand was the red gingham curtains over the window. But a deal was a deal, so she made a new little dress out of it (and you thought Maria von Trapp was so original). The parents graciously accepted the gift and put their baby girl in the bright red dress. 

 Lizzie, however, was mortified at the details of this story. Remember, this was all happening back in the 1800s. People dressed babies in white. Period. "Imagine! Putting a baby in a red dress," she always scoffed when relating this story.

Yeah. Lousy parents. Sorry, Great-Great-Grandma Lizzie. I'm going to have to side with Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandma Elizabeth on this one. I quite like my baby in red.