Books in 2015

This past year I read a lot of frivolous, fun, guilty pleasure books. I didn't learn a whole lot but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was a fun year for reading. I kept things light because I didn't want to spook myself and give up on reading. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with life and it becomes difficult to do things like get dressed every day or leave the apartment or read books. Because I was in a master's program this year, I thought I'd take it easy with the reading goal and planned on 25 books. I ended up really delving into audiobooks, which I can listen to while doing literally anything else. So I did. And it really helped me surpass my reading goal.

 

Halloween 2015

I was raised on ward trunk-or-treats and my mom was afraid of having her kids wander the ghetto neighborhoods of Las Vegas, so we were never allowed to go trick-or-treating. I never went. After I got married, Josh and I participated in passing out candy for trunk-or-treaters and trick-or-treaters, but of course by then we were too old to beg for candy ourselves. Scarlet has been too young until now to go herself, leading up to the point of this blog: today for the first time, Josh and I were able to go trick-or-treating with our daughter.

My sister and her kids are in town for their annual Halloween visit--Cornbelly's, Boo at the Zoo, Wheeler Farm--and this year the Boo at the Zoo was held the weekend before Halloween so they weren't able to attend. Instead, we decided to go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. I didn't know how receptive our neighbors would be to trick-or-treaters. In our apartment complex, only one porch light was on (ours) and only one family was prepared with candy to pass out (ours). This year we had no trick-or-treaters but I like to be prepared just in case, so we have a lot of leftover candy. My point about our complex is that I wasn't certain people would be very willing to pass out candy in the houses surrounding our complex. Compounding that issue was the fact that we got a late start on trick-or-treating after dinner. By the time everyone was dressed and ready, it was eight o'clock, which happens to be Scarlet's bedtime. Josh said his parents used to lock up and turn out the lights by eight o'clock on Halloween, and that he used to trick-or-treat at six. That made me really worried that we were too late.

But I had no reason to fear. We only went down a few local neighborhoods and in less than an hour, my nephews and nieces had full buckets of candy, with three full-size candy bars apiece. I was amazed at the generosity of these people and felt a lot of gratitude for them because they made my family so happy on their visit. In Las Vegas, my mom's neighborhood gets a lot of traffic because people drive their kids into the neighborhoods and stay in their cars on the street the entire time, so there's a ridiculous traffic jam along all the streets in the entire block. My mom resents so many people being bussed in from all over the valley because she goes broke trying to get enough candy to last the night, and I completely understand. That seems to take away from the spirit of the holiday when you seek out the best neighborhoods to try to score the most candy. It's also hard in Las Vegas because the city never sleeps, so teenagers will ring doorbells at close to ten at night to fill up their bags one more time. A family friend who lives in the same neighborhood as my mom posted on Facebook tonight that in two and a half hours, she passed out more than five hundred pieces of candy. It's just insanity there.

In my neighborhood here, however, I was only met with gracious and generous people who shared their candy with smiles and compliments on costumes. It was such a wonderfully positive experience that I vowed to also be one of those fun homeowners who shares candy all night long and enjoys every minute of it. I want to pay forward the happiness my family felt tonight.

Scarlet was dressed up as Anna from Frozen and James was Olaf (I had to make his costume because the stores didn't carry his size). We all stopped by a house that puts on a Halloween-themed light show after trick-or-treating, to end our night before walking home. It was a wonderful night of fun and a perfect example of why this is one of my all-time favorite holidays!

Dinner With the Fishes

Josh and I have gotten out of the habit of going on weekly dates. It was so easy when we were first married to consider any activity a "date", that we didn't really go out of our apartment much. And now that we have children we've sort of allowed our own habit of laziness and abhorrence of planning to overwhelm our urge for date night. In other words, we don't go on many dates. Not deliberately, in any case.

This is extra pathetic since my sister is living with us for the rest of the year, and she just happens to have Friday nights off from work so she can absolutely babysit for us. She's even urged us to go on dates and insisted that we let her babysit. We have totally wasted this unique opportunity to date over the summer and I'm just now starting to feel the pings of regret from it.

So, to sate my conscience, I insisted we go to dinner together on Friday. Josh had been wanting to try Red Lobster for several months now (a perfect example of how apathetic we are--Josh cares just enough to want to eat somewhere but not enough to do anything about it for several months. We need help.), so we decided to try it out. I know it's a chain restaurant and there's one every ten feet throughout the southwest, but neither of us had ever tried it before. We ventured to the nearest one and found its substantial parking lot completely crammed with cars. Not a single parking spot in sight, including the side of the road where several cars had parked against the sidewalk outlining the parking lot. I don't know if there was some fancy shindig going down at this particular restaurant or we had chosen the busiest time to eat or if Red Lobster was the greatest dining experience known to man, but we were not willing to wade through the crowd of people standing outside the doors to find out how long our wait time would be. Instead we drove the extra fifteen minutes to the next nearest one.

This one was deceptively larger on the inside than the outside. We walked into a dim gray-colored foyer with a tank of depressed lobsters next to the host desk. The air smelled like high-powered air conditioning with a faint undertone of fish. That felt about right, so we ventured to put our names down and discovered our wait would be about ten minutes. Not too shabby. I went over to the tank and stared at the soulless eyes of the giant ocean bugs before saying quietly, "You're all going to be dead soon." It wasn't a taunt so much as a statement of surprised awareness. There's something kind of chilling about seeing your food alive and (I think) happy(?) before you plan on eating it.

In any case, we were seated quickly and surrounded by a lot of old people. I mean, a LOT of old people. It was still somewhat early for dinner, I guess. We'd left for dinner around 5 or 5:30 and with the extra driving and the waiting, it couldn't have been quite six o'clock yet. Happy hour for the elderly, I guess. It did sort of feel like we had encroached upon their turf and that we should leave the restaurant and let them claim it for their generation. But we stayed and ordered lobster-artichoke dip as an appetizer (I hope the lobster meat came from one of the already-dead specimens in the kitchen and not from the tank in the front). We had a couple of boring side salads and then I ate a parmesan-crusted tilapia and Josh enjoyed a seafood platter with crab legs, lobster tail, and shrimp.

I'm not much of a seafood eater so I played it safe and I'm glad I did. I enjoyed my meal. Josh had a little trouble figuring out how to crack open crab legs (he asked the waitress, who was really helpful) and then he had a whole lot of fun eating all the food. We both agreed the crab meat was the tastiest, although it was a lot of work for a little bit of food. And I had to maintain my distance from all the exoskeleton cracking and avoid touching the creepy pointy claws while Josh yanked and ripped open the body of some poor crab. I normally struggle pulling apart chicken bones so I usually buy boneless meats from the grocery store; seafood "bones" make me even more squeamish because they're even creepier-looking, so I was pretty uncomfortable during the meat-gathering portion of our meal.

As the evening progressed, the restaurant seemed to fill with even more geriatrics. They came out of the woodwork. It was peculiarly unsettling to see so many old people congregate to the same location. I don't have any problem with old people but I'm not used to seeing so many in one place and this was definitely more than a few. It was bizarre.

Our conversation was really fun and we both managed to avoid talking about our kids, which we sometimes struggle to do on dates. We don't date often but when we do, we try to make the conversation about us and our personal interests rather than our little brood, to ensure that we're working on our roles as spouses rather than our roles as parents. It was a delightful evening. I was reminded once again how much I love my husband. He's so easy to talk to and he has wonderfully interesting things to say. As a decided and committed introvert, it's sometimes difficult for me to coax conversation out of him at home. He can happily spend an evening silently engrossed in technology. I have to force more than one-syllable responses from him when he's particular enthralled in his chosen entertainment. But removed from technology and focused solely on decent food in a semi-private environment, Josh is resplendent. We discussed stock options and their effects on companies (Josh had to clarify a few minor points of confusion for me), growing up in the west, Tinder, eastern European culture, cost-of-living raises, the hierarchy of management, and a myriad of other random-but-somehow-fluidly-connected topics. I had so much fun and hated to leave but nursing mothers have an internal ticking clock for separating from their young, so we had to head back home.

Upon arrival, we discovered my poor sister holding a screaming James and standing beside a screaming Scarlet. Scarlet didn't want to get ready for bed so she was vocally protesting, and James did not appreciate having been put in his swing earlier in the evening and was also vocally protesting. Josh and I each chose a child and went right back to our roles as parents. We love our life and we love our children, but it was immeasurably pleasant to spend a couple of hours taking care of our other roles. It made returning to our parental responsibilities even more enjoyable.

Mommy Time For Each Of Them

I've now been a mother of two for two whole weeks now and it's been an amazing transformation. James was born with some unidentified inflammation in his body so to be safe, his pediatrician recommended we keep him at the hospital for a three-day course of baby-appropriate antibiotics. That pushed our release date back from the next morning to five whole days later thanks to some complications. It was a difficult week for me because I wanted to nurse my baby, so I needed to stay in the hospital for that same week as well. Perhaps the biggest thing I regretted, aside from having my family split in half for a week, was not being able to take care of my daughter. Poor Scarlet was exclusively in Daddy's care for the week and it really showed in her daily visits to the hospital.

She was dressed in clothes but not necessarily matching ones, and her hair was always left down and unruly. She chose her own shoes each day, so they never matched her clothes and almost always had red glitter on them. She was also happy and cheerful and well fed. She let me hug and kiss her when she played in the hospital room, but Daddy was her obvious preference. It was hard for me to sit by and watch her develop a stronger relationship with her father at the expense of losing her relationship with her mother. Now maybe I'm being a little bit dramatic about the whole thing and maybe my week away didn't permanently affect anyone except for myself, but I reserve the right to be a bit dramatic because I still have a lot of hormones raging around inside me as I recover from this most recent childbirth.

In any  case, I was determined to spend some one-on-one time with Scarlet once I got home. The thing I didn't consider was my own recovery. I took Scarlet to the library one day, and had to sit the entire time while she raced around and played with toys. It was difficult for me to even sit on those silly wooden chairs thanks to this labor being more difficult than the last one, so I was grateful to be going home after Scarlet had had her fill of the library. A couple of days later I felt stronger, so I took her to the zoo with Josh and James. Turns out I'm not quite recovered enough to go walking around for an hour. It was exhausting agony and I looked for every opportunity to sit down. A few days later I ventured forth again with Scarlet to the park, where I helped her down the slide and played with her on all the jungle gym toys and pushed her on the swing. Enough time had finally passed that I was able to play with her without it being a physical accomplishment by then. Thank goodness.

Josh already spends each morning with her, which used to be my personal Scarlet time before James kept me up all night and I needed the morning to catch a few hours of sleep. So even that time is lost to me. And I nurse James so often that it commonly falls to Josh to feed Scarlet lunch and put her down for her nap and make her brush her teeth before bed. I'm still struggling to get in my one-on-ones with her.

Tonight I gave Scarlet a bath while Josh fed James from a bottle. Scarlet stomped around in the water without ever sitting down, per her usual. I poured water from a cup all over her to get her clean, and she endured the shampoo and rinsing I gave her afterward. Then she played with her bath toys and showed them to me one at a time. I watched her play and I responded to her when she showed things to me, and we generally enjoyed our one-on-one time together. I dried her off and combed her hair, then lotioned up her arms and legs and dressed her in clean pajamas. She smiled and chattered the entire time. She was happy and sweet and wonderful as I prepared her for bed. We said a prayer together, with her folding her arms and I holding her in my arms. Then we sang a silly song and she kissed her dad and her baby brother good night. I gave her her polar bear toy and tucked her in bed and kissed her cheek while she she looked at me with her sparkling eyes. I just love that little girl.

Now maybe there won't be a lot of one-on-one opportunities with Scarlet as James continues to need a lot of my time, but I'm not so concerned as I was a week ago. What time I have, I can share with the two of them. Bath time and bed time aren't as much fun as a trip to the library or a walk around the zoo, but those chores present an opportunity to give my undivided attention to my child and I have learned that by taking advantage of those activities, I have time enough for both my babies.

I finished...(finally)!

I signed up for the instructional design degree this past January and it was amazing. I really enjoyed my classes and loved the challenge of completing them as quickly as possible. I finished all twelve classes by March 17th and then I got scared. The capstone intimidated me. I thought I could complete it fairly quickly if I just got going on it, but I couldn't seem to bring myself to get going. I basically shut down.

March ended, all of April rolled by, and then (shocking even myself) May completely passed. I began to imagine the possibility of not completing the program and just accepting the knowledge I learned from the program and counting it as worth the price. I avoided my school emails because I didn't want to face the concern of my capstone facilitator. I avoided phone calls from my mentor. I kept saying I'd spend the weekend working on my capstone and then I did anything I could to not find the time on the weekends for schoolwork.

Josh used to ask me if I was planning on working on my schoolwork each night. I'd shrug and watch a lot of tv instead. He normally leaves me to my own insane goals, but it really made me feel guilty that he would bring up my school so often. I could tell he was anxious for me to not lose this opportunity. I spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about not graduating. It would give me the worst insomnia and then I'd be depressed and exhausted all the next day when I'd have to  start over with the denials and the time-wasting. I kept analyzing my chances for graduation as each day slipped by but I could not bring myself to resume work on my capstone. I didn't want to pay for another semester and I didn't want to end the semester without the degree and most importantly I didn't want to finish my capstone to earn the degree during my current semester. So I kept going around and around inside my own head. I lost my motivation to clean or cook or even regularly change out of my pajamas. And since I was pregnant, I grew more and more lethargic with each increasingly hot month. I can barely move now without some sort of discomfort and my stress has gotten so out of hand that I was hospitalized for high blood pressure and chronic headaches. That was ridiculous. Something had to give.

Now, granted, a lot of this crazy thinking is just typical pregnancy brain for me. I struggled with the exact same thing as an MBA student when I was pregnant with Scarlet. (Why do I keep thinking that pregnancy is a smart time to earn a master's degree?) I couldn't motivate myself to complete my classes then either. I had insomnia then too, and all my fears and doubts and concerns would pile themselves on top of me until I couldn't breathe and I certainly couldn't sleep. For me to slowly, grudgingly stir myself from my stupor this time around, I had to have my poor mentor beg me to contact her or she'd be forced to kick me out of the program.

So I emailed my mentor to indicate I'd still like to work on my program requirements even though it was June 4 and I had less than a month to complete my entire capstone and oral defense. But she was forgiving and kind and didn't offer a single word of rebuke, which--as a people pleaser--would have made me shrivel up and want to hide some more. Instead, I was motivated to please my mentor since I felt like I owed her for all those weeks of neglect.

I jumped right into my capstone. I worked on it every night. I worked on it through the three-day weekend. I worked on it in the car on the drive down to Las Vegas and on the drive back to Salt Lake. I worked on it while my youngest sister was in town to visit after returning from her mission. I didn't give myself a night off until I had completed the entire capstone and submitted everything.

Then my facilitator took over and helped me get my tasks approved and even helped me come up with my research questions. She scheduled my oral defense before all of my tasks had been passed because she was so confident that they would pass. That left me having to create my presentation as quickly as possible. I had to discuss my research study for at least 30 minutes and use my created slides to present the information. I practiced my presentation exhaustively in preparation for my oral defense while developing a nice summery cold, and then I presented my defense with a raspy voice and a runny nose. Totally, totally worth it because my facilitator was all praise and admiration for the amount of work I did and the speed with which I completed it. In 21 days I had completed my entire capstone class. My facilitator was so nice that she graded the presentation within the hour so that I'd get to see this little jewel in my student portal before the day was over:

Oh yeah! Finished all my classes with a whopping five days left in the term! So now I am nursing my cold in victory and Josh and I have dinner plans to celebrate tomorrow night (so I can recover a bit from this silly cold) and I'm just so so relieved. My stress headache is already smaller and I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. There's just one more pending event in roughly nine days that I need to wait on before I'll be able to take a maternity leave and possibly get a good night's sleep (yeah, yeah, even I don't see it happening but I like to dream). I am so happy to have taken that program, I'm so happy I finished it, and I'm so, so happy I was able to take away a diploma before my first term ended. All of my school goals have now been met and although I may never pursue another degree, if I do I'll reread this post so that I remember how difficult it was...and possibly how worth it that it can be so long as I finish what I started.

Scarlet Takes on the Birds

This past Saturday I had intended to hole up and focus entirely and exclusively on my schoolwork. But it didn't rain as it has the previous three Saturdays and I didn't want to waste this golden opportunity, so Josh and I took Scarlet to the Tracy Aviary instead. I've been meaning to go for a while but since an aviary is like an extremely limited zoo, I just didn't see the point. Holy cow, this aviary is incredible, though! Not only do they have absolutely fascinating birds and beautiful exhibits, but the grounds are fun to play on and there are play places for the children and the foliage and landscaping it beautiful to walk through. They offer a really interesting wetlands tour and you can feed the parrots or the pelicans and the South American exhibit is indoors and really steamy and possibly too hot for overly pregnant women. It's all just a ton of fun and I regretted getting there later than we had planned because we had to rush out of there to put Scarlet down for her nap. Overall it was well worth the trouble and I'm glad schoolwork got postponed until Monday.

The hornbill was almost as big as Scarlet.

The trick is to lob the fish gently into their mouths.

You can see him widening his lower bill to catch the fish.

The pretty parrots all in a row.

Scarlet was justifiably frightened of the peacock after he spread out his tail feathers.

5K 2015

I ran a 5K for the first time in 2012 and it was so liberating and enjoyable that I vowed to run at least one 5K every year for the rest of my life (or until I don't like doing it anymore). This year I actually got to run the same 5K that I ran in 2012. Also, my sister Rebecca signed up for the insane half marathon.

This is her at mile ten, totally crushing it.

 I had a lot of fun because I got to run with my mom and we went at a fairly moderate pace. I've run just before getting pregnant and I've certainly run after being pregnant, but I've never run a 5K during pregnancy.

Finish line!

At 31 weeks, the oddest things happen to your body. Apparently without my knowing it, my center of balance shifted, my hips widened, and I had more trouble running than I should have had. I also, for the first time in my life, had muscle cramps in my thighs. Becca helped show me some leg stretches to do after the run but I couldn't understand why I needed them considering I've never needed to stretch or had muscle cramps after such a short run. Whatever I did while running, I was off from my regular stride because after we all stretched I tried to stand up. And I couldn't move my legs. While the brave Becca wearily rose from her stretching after her daunting and impressive 13 miles, I cried out and slowly rolled onto my hands and knees. I needed Josh's arm to walk to the car, and I have been hobbling and whimpering ever since.

I also got a lot of comments from people passing me at the finish line and at the restaurant we ate at afterwards. People, I got the okay from my obstetrician before doing this. He said it was totally fine for me to run a 5K. He's had pregnant women run marathons. He clearly hates me very much. Also, I clearly hate myself very much because this was way harder than any of the other races I've run. I think I'll wait to give birth before doing another one of these bad boys.

So the moral of the story? If you're going to be a baby about running, don't run the same race with a mighty half marathoner. You're going to come out looking like a huge wuss. :)