J’s Birthday Bash

My nephew J turned seven last week and so E and I went to his birthday party.

The birthday boy and his cake.

The gift-opening frenzy.

The birthday boy’s brother, A. (I have no idea where he learned to make that face, but the little ham did it every time I snapped a picture of him.)

The party was held at one of those inflatable toy places. After a little while E got pretty freaked out by all the kids shrieking and running around and by the huge bouncy castles and slides. And surprisingly, me taking him down the down the big 25-foot tall slide did nothing to improve the situation. (Yeah, I know. But I thought E might like it; after all, he loves the slide on our swing set…yep, I think this little escapade just sealed my nomination for Mother of the Year.)

“The horror, the horror (of the bouncy slide)!”

But E quickly cheered up when we went into the party room to have cake and open presents. Mostly because I got him a balloon to carry around. E LOVES balloons.

Relaxing in the birthday boy’s special chair while the other kids ate pizza.

The balloons contined to be a big hit once we were home and also throughout dinner.

Some feel left out

I’ve been thinking about Mother’s Day. We had to wait quite a while for E to join our family and the Mother’s Days that passed while we waited were always a little hard. I think it can be a hard day for a lot of women, but especially for some Mormon women. There’s a tendency in my church to exalt the ideal of motherhood, which works in theory. Because in an ideal world all women who wanted to be mothers would be mothers. And all mothers would feel capable and confident with the job they were doing. But we don’t live in an ideal world and not everyone fits into the same little box.

There are single women who would love to be married and have children but aren’t and don’t. There are married women who want to have children but are struggling or can’t have them at all and feel forgotten or like failures. There are divorced women working hard to make sure their children have everything they need. There are birth mothers and adoptive mothers. There are single mothers wondering how they’ll do it on their own. There are mothers struggling with the children they do have and beating themselves up for it. And there are people who have lost their mothers all too early. There are all sorts of women in all sorts of situations but we try and cram appreciating all of them into this one day.

So, in appreciation of the lovely generous women in your life, celebrate all the women around you on Mother’s Day. Tell your friends how amazing they are. Tell your wife how lucky you are that she married you. Ask her what she’d like to do most of all this weekend and then cheerfully follow through. Give any friends that have lost their mothers a call to let them know you’re thinking of them. Call your divorced sister and let her know you think she’s doing a terrific job and ask if there’s anything you can do to help out. Tell your grandmother you love her. Take a plate of cookies over to the old lady who lives down the street. And men, if you’re helping to hand out the flowers/candy at church, for goodness sake, make sure every women gets one.

And don’t forget to call your mother!

Letter: Month Eighteen

Dear E,

This week you turned 18 months-old. You are starting to turn into quite the little boy. You’re constantly in motion and love running around outside. You also like to dance and will boogie down for any sort of music. You have this magnetic farm toy that sticks to the fridge and you’ll push the button to start its music and then we’ll square dance in the kitchen together. It’s pretty fun.


We recently showed you how to knock on doors and now you love knocking on everything you can find. This morning when I went to get you out of your crib you were knocking on the walls and as soon as I set you down on the floor you ran around the room knocking on your crib, the door, and the laundry basket (that one didn’t work so well). In addition to knocking you also enjoy throwing things. When you throw something you always dramatically yell “Yah!” It’s pretty funny, like you’re the world’s smallest martial artist.

You still love going to the gym. I think it’s really helping you adjust to attending nursery at church. For the last couple of Sundays we’ve taken you to nursery and stayed there with you since you weren’t technically 18 months-old yet. And you’ve done really well. This Sunday we’re going to leave you there by yourself and I hope it goes as well, because honestly? Three hours of church with an active toddler is ENTIRELY TOO LONG. And since I don’t think they’re going to shorten church any time soon, something else has got to give. And that my friend is you. So, um, good luck in nursery!

You got to see a lot of family this month. Your Aunt Gwyn along with your 9 month-old cousin S came for a visit. You did very well with S: you patted him on the head a few times and liked to watch him eat, but other than that it was pretty much business as usual. You were marvelously unflappable.

At times you can be challenging, though. You’ve started emphatically telling us “No!”: “No!” to changing your diaper, “No!” to sitting in your highchair, “No!” to holding my hand in a busy parking lot–it can be frustrating. And yesterday you woke up from your nap crying like your heart was broken. Juice, food, cuddling–nothing made it better on its own. The only thing that worked was a combination of juice AND cuddling AND watching Sesame Street.

But then this morning you woke up cheerful and laughing and happy. And life with you went on in all of its unpredictable, gorgeous glory.

Love,

Mama

Squee!

We’ve arranged for a babysitter and got tickets to go see X-Men tonight. I’ve liked the X-Men characters since I was a little kid: I would rush home after school to watch the cartoons and I read through a few huge trade paperbacks of the comics someone gave us one summer. (I also read a big collection of the Silver Surfer comics that summer but that is neither here nor there.)

I didn’t really like the last X-Men movie but this one has a different director and I’m hoping it will be better. From what I know this movie already has a few things in its favor:

1. Daniel Henney as Agent Zero (Cute AND half-Korean!)

2. And Taylor Kitsch from Friday Night Lights (which you really should watch if you haven’t already. Really. It’s a great show and it’s not all about football.) Kitsch is playing Gambit who is one of the later X-men characters and not really one of my favorites. But I’m really hoping he’ll pull it off well. I just hope he doesn’t do a bad creole accent.


Have a great weekend, everyone!

First Blood

E and I drove to the airport yesterday and picked up Gwyn and her baby. E was pretty tired by the time we got home and was being kind of fussy. As soon as I took him out of his car seat he ran out of the garage and towards the street. I grabbed him by the hand and was walking him back to the house when he tripped and fell and smacked his mouth against the concrete. And then he started to bleed a lot.

It was really sad. I kept trying to look inside his mouth to see where the blood was coming from and he kept trying to swat my hands away. I was worried that one of his teeth had been knocked out. The blood was pooling in his mouth and running out the sides and he was rubbing it all over his face. He looked pretty gory. I held him against my shoulder as he sobbed and he got tears and blood all over my shirt.

He was inconsolable until he spotted the jar of jelly beans on the counter. As soon as I gave him one he started to calm down. Three jelly beans later, things were solidly on the way to being right with the world.

It turned out that he had cut the little flap of skin that attaches the inside of his lip to his gums. It bled a lot but seems to be okay now. Poor little guy.

On the bright side, E really likes having his little cousin S around. E keeps gently patting S on the head. It’s cute. I’ll try and get some pictures of the two of them together this weekend.