So, on the spur of the moment, Haley and I are leaving to Niagara Falls for a few days. We had some buddy passes that expire at the end of the month, Kendell couldn't get the time off work, and no one wanted to watch Kaleb for three days straight (awwww...come on, he's so CUTE! What are they thinking?), so Haley and I are going to use them.

I'm thoroughly excited and can't wait to start snapping photos! Will share when I get back.

How exciting is this:  Stacy Julian is featuring me on her blog this week, and asked me to share a little insight into me and my life!

What is one of your BIG dreams? Writing successful novels

What's the biggest dessert you've ever eaten? 1/2 of a panful of Brownies from Hell...you know the ones, with caramel and chocolate chips on top? I don't make them very often because I CAN'T stop eating them!

What's the biggest scrapbooking project you have tackled to date? My kids' albums.

List three BIG-hearted people in your life:  my husband Kendell, my sister Becky, my best friend Chris

What BIG idea are you glad you acted on? Finishing college, becoming a mom, trying out teaching

What scrapbooking product/product category do you have the biggest stash of? Definitely paper! I can't help it...the urge to buy it is overwhelming!!!

What superstar or celebrity would you pay BIG money to see in person?  I'd pay BIG money to have a nice, quiet dinner with my favorite writer, Margaret Atwood.

What BIG plans are you making for the near future (vacation, accomplishment or other milestone event?) Haley and I are heading off for a little mother-daughter trip to Las Vegas this week---if I can get over my strep throat quickly!

How BIG are your feet? 8.5

A few blog entries ago, I wrote about my ice cream obsession. Be the first to guess how much ice cream I have in my stash (hint: it was on sale last week!) and you'll win a little package from my BIG stash of pattern paper! (Post your guess in your reply.)

June 28, 2006 --- Nathan was outside playing this morning, in the front yard, and he discovered a robin building a nest in our sycamore. She'd already built it about half-way, I thought, and the silly bird had lined it with a paper towel she'd found somewhere; it was that splash of white in the summer-green tree that helped Nathan spot it. We sat outside for over an hour on the front porch, watching her fly around the neighborhood and back to her nest. Later, when Haley came home from soccer, I showed her the nest. She ran inside to my scrapbook room, cut a length of pink ribbon, and left it on top of the mailbox in the hope that the bird would weave it into her nest.

June 29, 2006 --- Today I showed Jake (who was outside playing with neighbor kids all day yesterday) the nest. As Jake has a fondness for anything in the outdoors, he was enraptured by this nest. You can still see just a tip of the pink ribbon Haley left; I guess Momma Bird (as we have named her) thought she needed a splash of color to offset the paper-towel white. Then, this evening, one of the neighbor kids knocked on my door. "Amy!!!" she burbled, "did you know you have a bird in your tree?" Her two sisters were sitting in the shade, watching the bird. Seems she's become something of a celebrity.

July 4, 2006 --- Two hours before our neighborhood barbecue, the wind started blowing. Not gentle little zephyrs, mind you, but big, break-branches-off-of-tress gusts. I immediately started worrying about our momma bird, who's been sitting non-stop in her cute little nest. What would the wind do to her nursery? I went out to check on her---something that's become a sort of habit for me---and watched her ride the tree. The branches were swaying back and forth, up and down, but she just stayed in her nest, unperturbed. Maybe it broke up the boredom for her?

July 6, 2006 --- Rain tonight, with that delicious wet-cement smell. Checked on Momma Bird when it started pelting down, but just like the wind a few days ago, she didn't seem at all bothered. Just stayed right with her eggs---good little momma!

July 17, 2006 --- when I mowed under the front sycamore today, I went as fast as I could, hoping not to scare the babies. Birdlets? Just what are newborn birds called? Chicks, no matter the species? Anyway, I finally saw one last night, just a little head poked over the top of the nest, its eye blinking, the feathers on its head like a mohawk. Momma Bird was NOT happy about my mowing; she flew out of the tree and chattered at me, then hovered until I finished my noisy business.

July 19, 2006 --- How silly is it that I'm so fascinated by these birds? Some of the neighbor kids also check on them once in awhile, but I never miss a day. Sometimes I check on them three or four times! In the middle of the night (last night or early this morning) I woke up to hear the sprinklers going and I wondered about the babies. I've always thought the sound of a sprinkler was a soothing, calm sound; I fell back to sleep thinking that maybe it was like an alien sort of lullaby for them.

July 21, 2006 --- When I checked on the birds tonight, just before it was too dark to see them, Momma Bird wasn't there. I waited for ten minutes, casually picking a few weeds from the flowerbeds while I hoped to see her come flying back. Then I left them alone; maybe my presence is scary?

July 22, 2006 --- I ran for 70 minutes today. Came home, got Kaleb down for his nap, cleaned the house, sorted the laundry, made the beds, balanced the checkbook. Kaleb woke up; I fed everyone lunch, helped Kendell adjust some sprinklers, decided this grumpy baby of mine needed to see the pediatrician. Spent 90 minutes at the doctor's office; yet another ear infection, so it was off to Target for antibiotics and cough syrup. Came home, ordered pizza for dinner, served pizza for dinner; stretched, massaged, and heated up my sore hamstring. So it wasn't until after 8:00 that I checked on the birds. First thing I noticed: no momma. Then my heart sank. There they were, those two little heads with their fuzzy mohawks and yellow-rimmed beaks. Each  head flopped over an opposite side of the nest. No shiny, curious eyes, no silently-opening beaks. No momma, no water, no regurgitated worms; 100+ degrees today, that "dry heat" that Utah's famous for. Poor little baby birds!

I'm not sure why the death of those two little birds is making me so sad. I don't know what happened to the momma; I'm afraid Emily (our cat) got her, even though I've been careful to keep the cat in the garage or the back yard. I always worried that Momma Bird was starting this project too late in the season---don't robins hatch in the spring? Maybe she knew they'd be too little and just left them. The cat theory seems more likely. But I'm sad. They've been my little summer companions, Momma Bird and her birdlets. They were just so cute. And I hate the thought of them sufferring all day. I was so looking forward to watching them learn how to fly, to spotting them around my yard pecking at the sunflowers with the other adolescent birds. I was cheering for them to live. I guess this happens all the time; cats are cats. Birds die. But I've got this little heartache thing going.

Tomorrow I am sending Kendell home while we're at church, so he can climb up a ladder and remove the little corpses. I don't want the kids to see them. But I'm left with this thought. So often it seems like what I do as a mom isn't important. Anyone else could do what I do. But watching those birds, the hard-working Momma Bird guarding the nest and chattering me away from her babies? Seeing their tiny forms drooping over the nest edge, like they were hoping somehow, despite everything, she'd come back? Suddenly I have this realization: we mommas really ARE important. What we do matters. The way I do it matters. I'm left, silly as it is, with more resolve to be a better mom and to never, never let my kidlets down.

It's so rare in my house that every single family member enjoys a meal. I'm not quite sure how I ended up with picky eaters; Kendell will eat anything, and aside from my dislike of seafood, so will I. I followed all the suggestions in the baby magazines for helping your child to not be a picky eater (things like "serve a wide variety of foods" and "give them up to ten or twelve tries of a food"), but still: they ended up picky. For awhile I became a short-order cook, making pasta for Haley, a chicken breast for Jake, a PB&J for Nathan (that kid is about 90% peanut butter). Well...does one week count as "awhile"? I consider myself to be a good cook and I have to tell you, those rejections sting a bit. But I've now perfected this reply: "You have to try it. If you don't like it, get down from the table. But don't complain about being hungry later." And I've developed quite a thick skin against pre-bedtime pleas for food from whichever child happened to not like dinner that night. "Have a glass of milk before you brush your teeth," I suggest, and then send them to bed. (And, unless you think I am starving my kids, remember that I do serve vegetables with every meal, and all of my kids dig their veggies. You know in springtime, when you can get artichokes and asparagus for really cheap? Those are happy, happy days in my kidlets' lives. They'd rather eat veggies than nearly anything.)

It's a happy, happy day in my life as a mom, then, when I discover a meal that everyone likes. There are a few: red bean burritos, tacos, spaghetti, grilled chicken or steak with brown rice. But I can only rotate those meals so many times before culinary boredom sets in. Tonight, friends, was one of those happy, happy times: I made a recipe everyone liked. As well as discovering a new, personal definition of bliss: a meal without "I don't like this" (imagine a whiny voice saying that), "what is in this?" (hint-of-panic tone), "are there onions in here?" (onions-are-synonymous-with-dung-beetles tone), or "I will eat three bites of this if you pay me one dollar" (maybe-mother-has-lost-her-mind-and-will-consider-bribery-now tone, which is the most desperate and at the same time resigned tone of them all). Here it is, to share with your own hungry brood. May it bring you dinnertime nirvana, too!

Swiss-Cheese Chicken

6-8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 tsp oil
2 tsp butter
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup milk
3 T dijon mustard
salt
pepper
3-4 slices swiss cheese
breadcrumbs---a handful or two

Brown chicken in hot oil and butter. Place into a greased, 10x13 casserole dish. In same pan (leave the little bit of butter/oil and the browned pieces of chicken), combine soup, milk, mustard, salt, and pepper. Place 1/2 of a slice of cheese on top of each chicken breast; cover with sauce, then sprinkle with breadcrumbs. 45 minutes at 350 or until chicken is done.

Enjoy!

This weekend, I planted about 120 petunias. It was 100+ degrees, so I waited to plant until the evening cool came (one thing I love about Utah: The evenings cool off with a breeze that comes down the canyon, so the night air is delicious after a hot and sweaty day). A miraculous thing happened: Haley came and helped me plant them. Haley doesn't like working in the garden very much; it's just not her thing. But the boys were away playing with their friends, and Kaleb was sleeping, and she just helped. Without me asking, or without her saying she would. She just picked up a shovel and went to work. This was a. . . Oh, there's not even an adjective for it. We worked together in the gathering dark, talking, laughing, encouraging the flowers to grow, admiring the bird's nest in the sycamore tree. No hint of that pre-pubescent angst that's been hanging around her. Just her, in her Haley-ness. It was an evening I know will be an anchor for me, a memory to keep close, to pull over me like a blanket when things get difficult again.

All night, after we'd planted the last petunia, put away as much of the gardening mess as we could in the dark, and tucked everyone into bed, I thought of this poem. Even when I slept, it crept into my dreams:

Eve in Her Garden in This Vale of Tears
~Biddy Jenkinson

Accursed be the soil because of you.
With suffering shall you get your food from it
every day of your life.  ---Genesis 3:17

I spend a lot of time upon my knees
serving the earth.
I sow seeds in soil.
I arrange the roots of trees in rich peat moss.
I sing "sean-nos" in chorus with
vixens, donkeys, bees, hens,
children, ravens, cows...
I understand the why and wherefore of the worm's knot,
the warbling and the chuckling of birds.

Under my care
apples grow,
ears of oats turn blond,
hens go broody, cows seek the bull,
love puts down roots.

The drops on my brow
are sweated delight.
The child is worth the birth pang.
Life is worth its price.

I cancel out the curse of God,
defeat his greatest effort.
I grow posies of flowers
on the hobstone of hell.
        Translated from the Irish by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

I came across this poem in the translation issue of Poetry magazine. And it has haunted me. Maybe because of religious differences---in the LDS bible, Genesis 3:17 reads "cursed is the ground for thy sake," which presents an entirely different argument. The poem suggests that Eve has conquered over a mistake God made, but I want to say "No, the curse itself is a garden, a place that gives us sweat and dust and birth pangs that seem weed-like but are really flowers." Also, I can't stop thinking about the idea of Eve having a garden after she left the Garden of Eden. The woman who translated the poem called it a "post-genesis" poem, a space where the poet teaches us that "down on our knees in the dust where we belong, we can make the earth flower, the dust itself break into verdant blossom." Gardening is, the poem suggests, a sacred thing.

And maybe that's the adjective I need to describe my night with Haley, planting petunias: sacred. That a curse---a difficult thing or time or experience---can also be a blessing is, I think, something sacred. That during our difficulties we still find joy is, too.  We give experiences spiritual meaning when they connect us to more than ourselves, I think, and my Saturday-night planting did just that. Connected me to dirt, to the little plot of land and home and garden God gave me on this beautiful earth, connected me to God. And, most importantly and exactly what I needed, to my daughter.

Virtually anyone who knows me, or at least who's gone to a Mexican restaurant with me, knows of my avocado aversion. I very vividly remember the first time I realized I didn't like avocados; I must have been about five or six, and I bit into one in a green salad. UGG---mushy. I've never liked mushy foods (yogurt and pudding, for example, or too-soft bananas, and then there's GU---an energy gel you consume when you run long distances---which is my nemesis), and avocado anything has always been on the top of that aversion list.

But then came Kendell's 2005 Superbowl Request: he wanted 7-layer bean dip. And even though avocados gave me the chills, I was a good wife and made the dip with guacamole. Of course, I left one side of the pan mushy-green-stuff free. But it migrated onto one of my chips anyway. Maybe it was because I was pregnant, or because the guacamole was fresh---but it didn't thoroughly repulse me.  Then came the 2006 Superbowl, and he requested the same thing. This time I had none of those weird, pregnancy-induced, hormonal taste buds. Nothing to blame it on.

But I liked the guac even better.

In fact, I liked it enough to actually order it on my Mexican food the next time we ate out. And then enough to buy avocados. I discovered that they're the least expensive at Costco, but they come in a bag of six---so you have to use them quickly. And suddenly, I'm eating avocados all the time. How weird is that? Kendell thinks this is hilarious and makes fun of me whenever I dice one up. And my family---who have nearly all their lives known me as the one with the dislikes-avocados gene mutation---just shake their heads. Kendell keeps hoping that this sea-change will also soon apply to seafood (the other category of food I find repulsive). I don't see that happening.

But I do wish you'd all share your killer contains-avocado recipes. Because I just bought a new bag of green deliciousness. And I wouldn't want to waste them!

He's nearly impossible to photograph. From the moment he wakes up till he's sleeping, he goes, goes, goes. This one doesn't even like to snuggle. He likes to run. Crawl up the stairs. Tease his momma about crawling down the stairs. Play "I'm gonna getcha!" in which Momma chases, chanting "I'm gonna getcha!" and he runs and squeals and then is caught, thrown in the air, and tickled on that round little tummy. He's fallen in love with books, the kitty, big legos, his sandals, the remote control, and his brother's second-best stuffed puppy. He speaks a patois made of copied syllables and his own interpretations. Waves hello and goodbye, says "more" and "all done" with his hands, growls when he sees a picture of a bear, and already has a "say cheese" grin (even though I never say "say cheese"). He is sweet and funny and delicious.

But hardly a baby anymore.

So sometimes at night, even though I risk waking him, I sneak into his room, lift him carefully from his crib, and hold him. Yes, I feel a little bit like the mom in Love You Forever. That's OK. I just rock him. Feel his hair under my chin and his breath on my collarbone. Savor the experience of him holding still. There in the dark, I wonder how that first year went so fast. I'm not done loving the phase he's in before he goes on to the next one. I promise myself that this stage will be the one I will cherish properly.

And every day he insists on waking up just one day older.

On Sunday, I taught a lesson about journal keeping. (My friend Sophia taught the same lesson, two hundred miles away from me!) I teach one Sunday every month and have done so for a year. But this was my all-time favorite lesson. I feel that there are many things about my religion that I could do much, much better with. But journal writing? I am successful there.

I wanted to have something on the podium as I taught, so I gathered up some journal-type things: a big, yearly scrapbook, a small theme album I'd made for Haley, some notebooks, and a binderful of printed journal entries. I keep most of my journal on my computer, but I also write in notebooks. I keep one in my purse always, and one by my bed; when we go on trips I have a travel notebook, too.  I packed all those books into a box to make them easier to carry into the building, and as I lifted it up, I had a little epiphany:

All that writing. It's a lot of weight. Is it too much weight? For myself, I desperately wish that my ancestors had written in journals. I have a literal craving to know more about them, but none of them left a journal. That craving, I think, causes me to write maybe more than needs to be written. I mean, really: will there really be any great granddaughters who want to read about my boring life? I'm assuming that because I feel that craving that someone else will. Which isn't automatically true.

The lesson itself went really well. I love this teaching responsibility in any case, but teaching about keeping a journal? Nothing better for me, really. One older woman, whose husband had passed away recently, told us that sometimes she will pull out his journals and not even read them, just look at the handwriting. Another woman told about a funeral she had recently gone to, for a woman in her thirties who had died unexpectedly. They had read excerpts of her journal at the funeral, and this woman said she had no idea that her friend felt these things. What a comfort and a blessing to have them written down!

When I got home from church, still thinking about that little epiphany I had, I decided to sit down and read some of my entries. I had that binderful of entries already out, so I started there. In my memory, my journal is full of writing as therapy...me working through arguments with Kendell, fears about society, stuff like that. And that is in there. But there was much more, too. Reading through bits and pieces of my life from ten years ago, I can see how I have changed. I read some more entries last night, and I went to bed thinking. I feel that I've learned some things about myself through this process, what I am still longing for, strengths that have improved over time, issues I still need to fix. And I realized: it doesn't really matter if none of my progenitors read my journals. They are helpful to me, so in that sense they are worth all the time I've put into them.

So. For at least a month now, I've been wanting to write about a book I read, Everything is Illuminated. A book I loved. No: adored. I bought it months ago and put it in the special stack I keep on my bedroom bookshelves; all other books are lined up vertically, with spines out just like you'd expect, but the New Books I Am Dying To Read pile is stacked horizontally, just to keep them separate. Anyway, I bought this book because it was on the buy-two-get-one-free table at Borders and its two cover blurbs---one a recommendation by Joyce Carol Oates (with whose myriad books I am thoroughly taken), the other a notice that the movie version of the book, starring Elijah Wood, was coming out soon, and I'm such a Tolkein geek that I'm immediately drawn to any movie (or book made into a movie) starring any of its main characters---spoke the "buy me now" mantra louder than any of the other books on the table.

Anyway. I finally got around to reading this book. I had no idea that it was a Notable Literary Work. I just sort of liked the back-cover description. Plus I have a thing for novels about the Holocaust. But: This. Book. Is. Good. Immediately-in-my-top-ten-favorites good. Would I recommend it to just anyone? No. But I would recommend it to Becky. So I loaned it to her, and we discussed it as soon as she finished it. Eventually she gave it back.

But I still haven't written about it here (well, duh, obviously).

I think I'm afraid to. I want the people who read my book notes (all two or three of them) to be drawn into reading the book by what I say about it. But am I talented enough to do that? Not so much. So, instead of writing about it, I'm re-reading it. And guess what I found? Becky's commentary. See, I'm a write-inside-books kind of reader. I like to comment, argue, disagree, or discuss a book's ideas in the margins. And underline. I underline a lot. In fact, I judge a book's "good" or "not good" essense by whether or not it prompted me to search for a pen. When I finish reading a book I know I'll read more than once, I put the date I finish it on the last page each time I read it. You see, I'm what Anne Fadiman calls a "carnal lover" of books. I read them in the tub. I use them as coasters for sweaty glasses of ice water in the summertime. I fold down the corners or leave bookmarks in good spots, usually for years, quite often large ones; I'm fairly certain there is an ancient 5 1/4" diskette holding a spot in my copy of T. S. Elliot's poems. And I write in them.

And so does Becky! I'm thoroughly delighted that she felt free to write in my copy of the book. Again with the Anne Fadiman: writing in books "transforms monologues into dialogues." I wrote in the book. She wrote in it. So now it's not just a dialogue. It's a conversation. I think the things you underline in books tell something about you; your state of mind when you read the book, for example, or what you value. Add commentary and you've got a little snippet of your thought processes, belief systems, and emotional state. I especially like coming across my commentary in books I'm reading for a second or fourth or sometimes eighth time, because it is like bumping into a younger version of myself; I see, quite suddenly how much I've changed. Or haven't changed.

So here's a dare. The next time you're reading a book, hold a pen. Underline a sentence that you love, be it for the language or for the idea. Add a little note at the end of a paragraph. See what you think about what you read. While you do that, I'll be re-reading Illuminated. Maybe making comments about comments. Definitely using a different color of pen than I did the first time or than Becky used. But reading with pen in hand nevertheless.

is just beginning for Haley. She's eleven. But I think she's going on 15. The attitude. The moodiness. The irritation and snappiness. These, I can nearly deal with, if the "my mom is the dumbest person alive, has no clue about anything, and is downright annoying" thing hadn't started already. I mean, I knew it was coming. I have clear memories of being so annoyed with my mother that I could barely dial the phone correctly (to complain to my friends about said mother, of course). But: I have tried so hard to not do the things my mom did to annoy me. But: she's only eleven. But: I really am not stupid, clueless, or annoying.

I'm not sure I'm going to make it. I have this wild little hope that since she's become so very pre-pubescent at what, to me, seems like an early age, it'll be over quicker? I don't know. But I'm sad. Haley and I have always had a great relationship and I'm not quite sure how to keep it intact during the storms of adolescence. I don't have an example to follow; my own relationship with my mom took several fatal blows during those years. I don't want that to happen to me and Haley.

And I am reminded, yet again: being a mother is full of contradictions. I love this girl so much and yet she can make me so frustrated. There is the happiness of just loving her and the sadness of knowing I have to let go. Wanting to make her happy---trying to---and failing. Watching, with astonishment, her bloom into this lovely creature and yet, and yet, wanting to keep her small, too, to turn her back into the girl with the round cheeks, chubby knees, bouncy hair.

Haley was my first and so she educates me the most in what it means to be a mother. Suddenly, with all this pre-pubescent angst swirling around us, I find myself mourning, again, the ending of her little girl days. Like when she was about 18 months old and, when we were at a drive-through window, she'd lean over in her carseat and say, "ummmmmm....fro fries. And a Coke!" Or the way her hair used to spring up in curls at her neck. How, when we were in the car for any length of time, she'd say "Sing it, Momma, sing it!" to get me to sing songs with her. There was the obsession with orange that turned into a penchant for pink, the love of barbies, the way she never would wear anything but dresses until she'd been in kindergarten for a few months.

I'm left wondering: why didn't I savor those days more? Why didn't I do more to keep those images fresh in my heart, a buffer against this time when, suddenly, I'm the lamest mom ever? How do I balance the memory of being adored by my little blond smarty pants with the reality of this current trend?

Someone tell me I'll survive. Or how to survive. Please?