Category Archives: Diapers

The dirty side of motherhood.

An open note to my children (to be read every January)

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Dearest children,

I probably owe you an apology. I do not like January. This stems in part from my deep-seeded disdain for cold weather.

I love Christmas time. But when it’s over, it’s all downhill for a little while.

I’m sorry this means there must be a significant decline in presents, vacation days, and festivities in general.
I’m sorry this means we have to return to routines like chores and homework and early bedtimes.
I’m sorry this means the period of un-rationed goodies is over (unless you’re me).

Another reason I don’t like January is we always get sick in January. Right now I can only breathe out of one nostril. During this past week alone, our house has been graced with coughing, fever, vomit, diarrhea, croup, congestion, and oh, another urinary tract infection.

Dirty dishes and dirty laundry piles sit a little longer in January. You may want to get used to me saying things like, “Who wants to make macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight?”

While some moms see January as an opportunity to rekindle their love affair with the gym, your mom sees January as an opportunity to eat Toaster Strudels and Reese’s peanut butter cups for lunch.

I just want to reassure you that I still love you. I wish I had any desire to play Princess Chutes and Ladders with you, but I don’t. I’m afraid that January is the one month out of the year that if you want to spend quality time with your mother, you probably need to start reading Pride & Prejudice, or take a sudden interest in Latin music, or save up your allowance for a trip to Europe or a warm location of your choice (or even better, my choice.).

I have no idea why you were so lucky to be born into my care, but I promise I’ll try harder to wade my way through January and be the kind of mom you deserve.  Remember that I’m a pretty rockin’ mom in the summertime.

Feel free to print out this picture and tape it on a Popsicle stick and wave it in my face as needed.

When you do, I will try really hard to count to ten in my brain and get over it.

Much love,

Your mother

P.S. Your dad is a rock star in January because he steps it up a lot, and he’s not nearly as irritable as I am.  I love him all year, but especially in January.

P.P.S.  I’m really not as pathetic as this letter makes me sound.  I do plenty of good stuff in January too.  Let’s just say that the ratio of good stuff is a little more sparse than usual, and I’m keenly aware of it.

P.P.P.S.  Would it be presumptuous of me to alter President Monson’s quote to say “Courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, ‘I’ll try again tomorrow [next month]'”?

Just keep swimming…

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I pretty much overbooked myself the last couple days, and I survived, and it’s all good.  I’ve discovered I can handle high-stress days in small increments (like maybe 2-3 days max), but not over a sustained period of time.  It’s nice when it passes and you can sit back and breathe again.

It feels a little indulgent, but several of you have asked about the notes from the fireside I taught last night, so I’ll work on a blog post in the next few days (after I breathe).  I saw one young woman recording the whole thing on her iPhone, so I wish I would have just asked her for a copy of it, but oh well.  Despite the nerves and the self-induced pressure to just get it right, I felt like it went well.  I’m satisfied when I can walk away from a teaching opportunity and say, “Well, that’s the very best I could do.”  You just hope it’s enough.  For those of you who expressed curiosity, this is what I wore.  (I know it was silly of me to post about that, and I really knew the right answer — which you were all so kind to share–, but you have to admit you’d feel the same way if you were going to stand up in front of a group of people as some kind of “beauty” expert.  Ha!  Even typing that made me laugh.)  Anyway, voila:

I know, I know.  “[Insert name of real beauty expert* here.], eat your heart out.”

*I couldn’t think of one since I’m so in touch with the fashion world and all.

In the meantime, if any of you are dying to study some great reference material about beauty, modesty, self-image and virtue, here’s a link to a list of things I studied in preparation for the talk.  There’s a lot of great direction available to us.  It made me realize that our leaders have given us a lot of clear direction, so it’s surprising that there’s still so much confusion.  I guess Satan does a good job of scrambling signals.

In other news, after several failed attempts to communicate to Clark my complete dissatisfaction with finding his recently-washed clothing back in his dirty clothes basket instead of put away, I finally decided to take a more practical approach.  I informed him on Sunday that he is now in charge of the laundry for a while.  I’ve spent the last couple of days teaching him the system.  They’ve always sorted their dirty clothes and put away their clean clothes (in theory), but I decided to let him actually wash them all, switch loads, dry them all, fold them all, etc.  This photo I took tonight shows you how happy he is about the new arrangement:

Well, that’s about it.  I’ll finish up with one of my favorite quotes I found while preparing for the fireside (thank you to my friend Velda for making it look pretty for me):

 

Dumb dilemma

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I’m teaching a fireside tonight about modesty.  Well, actually a little more than modesty. It’s called “The Beauty Paradox.”

So, while I keep scrambling around today trying to get last-minute preparations done (get off the computer already, Stephanie!), I keep having this nagging question in the back of mind mind . . .

What exactly does someone WEAR to teach a class about beauty??!  I mean, you want to have some credibility, but you don’t want to overdo it and negate your whole message.  I’ve never met any of the people I’ll be teaching and they’ve never met me.  I’ve kidded myself in my mind about how they’ll probably expect me to pull up in a Mary Kay pink Cadillac or something and will be sorely disappointed when I roll in in a 10-year-old van with 158K miles on it and last week’s lunch leftovers in the back seat.

Maybe I should just wear sweats and a pony tail so they’ll all feel better about themselves.

Update: Please don’t look at any ads beyond this point.  I have no say in the ads that wordpress generates for my post, and I’ve been told some are inappropriate.

My favorite New Year’s thought so far.

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[image credit]

It’s possible that I’m the only one who has recurring “Bad Mom Days.”

But I doubt it.

Goals are wonderful things, but they don’t always pan out like we intend them to.  (That’s code for: Sometimes we downright fail.)  I don’t know if you’ve seen President Monson’s New Year’s message or not, but one paragraph at the end of it has been rolling around in my mind a lot this week.  It’s a great reminder that new years are great, but new days are even better, and trying again and again and again is what keeps us on the right track.

Courage is required to make an initial thrust toward one’s coveted goal, but even greater courage is called for when one stumbles and must make a second effort to achieve.

Have the determination to make the effort, the single-mindedness to work toward a worthy goal, and the courage not only to face the challenges that inevitably come but also to make a second effort, should such be required. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, “I’ll try again tomorrow.”

That little voice is a true friend because it points us toward the Atonement, repentance, forgiveness, and starting over.

So imagine me riding on my horse on the battlefield of motherhood waving my banner and shouting to all the mother masses, “Courage!”  (That just means get up again tomorrow and try again.  You’re doing better all the time.)  Or I guess all that imagination really isn’t necessary if you just listen to the prophet instead.  Yep, probably better to do that. Because me on a horse is kind of a stupid idea.

I might get a banner anyway.

If anyone has a link to President Monson’s talk (It’s called “Living the Abundant Life”), feel free to paste it in the comments so others can read it.  It’s a good one.  My dad sent me a copy by email, but I haven’t found it online yet.

Unloading.

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I hardly blogged at all over the last couple of weeks because I was just enjoying the down time of the holidays.  It really was down time– lots of laziness and mellow family “recreation.”  So nice.  But there are a handful of things that I would have blogged about if I felt like blogging, and I need to just unload them all… you know, get it out of my system.  So without further ado, a pile of miniature blog-posts:

  1. I gave my blog a makeover.  I felt like I needed to just simplify it and downplay all the diaper and baby imagery.  I have a complex because my blog title is Diapers and Divinity, and with the exception of one child in nighttime pull-ups, I’m actually now beyond the diaper stage.  I still like the title because the blog is still about the balance between the dirty side of motherhood and the divine side, but anyway, I’m letting the diapers go.  I feel old.  And free.  Ha!
  2. I also gave my hair a makeover.  I had like 6-inch roots, so thanks to a gift-certificate from my mother-in-law, I went and got it cut and highlighted.  I’m growing it out longer again, at least until summertime.  We’ll see.
  3. I took the kids and we went and got our portraits done as a Christmas gift for Matt.  I was overdue getting them done anyway, so it seemed like a good idea.  I don’t want to make you jealous or anything, but I’m afraid my children are just handsomer than all the rest in the world.  So sorry.
  4. Despite their handsomeness, they leave on lights EVERYwhere.  Matt is thinking about changing out all their light switches for those timer knobs that they sometimes use in hotel bathrooms for heat lamps.  Would that be weird?
  5. Natalie calls her pinky finger her “girl finger.”  She says all the rest are boys.  ??
  6. I gave a talk in church yesterday.  I think it went okay, but I forgot half the papers I was going to use and I still took too much time.  I get a little mad at myself for having zero grasp on the gift of brevity.  I did, however, really enjoy preparing and studying for the talk.  I wish I did a better job of studying the gospel that thoroughly even when I don’t have an assignment.
  7. I made a simple new years resolution.  I’ll just cut and paste from Facebook since I’m lazy:  “My New Year’s resolution this year: *Be Nicer*. Seriously. The stuff that bugs me is probably not going to go away, so I just need to get over it and be nicer. (Bite tongue, curb sarcasm, manage anger.) Funny, my mom used to always tell me “Stephanie, be nice,” and I would roll my eyes at her. Now, I’m pushing 40, and I think I’m finally starting to get it.”
  8. Along those same lines, for Family Home Evening last night, we came up with a family goal/motto for this year.  After discussing being nice to each other, showing respect, no yelling/arguing, etc., we adopted this line from the primary song “I’m trying to be like Jesus”:  “Try To Show Kindness in All That You Do.”  Anybody want to make me some cool graphic-designy thing that I can hang up on my wall?  Anyway, we’re going to work on that.
  9. I’ve been invited to speak at a fireside in a couple weeks in a random ward where I don’t know anyone.  The bishop would like me to speak to the young women and the women about modesty.  I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I feel like I know the general direction I’d like to go, but if anyone has any great thoughts or talks/articles to pass along, please do.
  10. This year I got down of my high horse a little bit and actually consented to let Santa bring my children a Wii for Christmas.  It was the only gift he brought for all three.  I have always been sort of an anti-video-game poster-mom, but lots of points won me over for some reason.  It was a bit of a gaming free-for-all over Christmas break, but today it was back to school, back to rules, back to chores, etc.  We’ve always had a system in place where they have to finish their chores before school if they want 30 min. of media time after school.  I have to say that having the Wii sitting in our family room made them pretty anxious to get their chores done this morning.  I honestly don’t mind all the active games like sports and singing/dancing, etc., so hopefully it will all be okay as long as I stick to my guns about time limits and what’s appropriate and what’s not.
  11. We also played some fun new games over the break.  The kids got Apples to Apples Jr., and they really like that.  We got a card game called Clue Suspect, and I’m pretty much unbeatable.  🙂  We played a fun game called Telestrations with extended family, and we still need to try out a game Clark got in his stocking called Sorry Revenge.  I did splurge right before Christmas and bought a game table I’ve had my eye on for the last year at a local consignment store.  Despite temporarily suffering buyer’s remorse (even though it was cheap), it’s been fun to have.
  12. Here’s the one problem with a Kindle.  You start a book and you don’t have a good sense of how long it really is.  I started The Count of Monte Cristo a week or so ago, and I have been reading and reading and reading, and my little progress tab only showed me at about 33% done.  I really liked that first third of the book, but after reading and reading some more (like almost all the way to 50%) and starting to like it a little less, I began to wonder.  Well, I looked it up on amazon to see how long the real book is, and it turns out that the unabridged version I’m reading is (depending on the publication) between 1200-1600 pages long!  Sweet mercy.  So according to my calculations, I’ve probably read about 700 pages so far.  Someone please tell me it’s worth it to finish it, because right now I’m feeling like I’m in quicksand– in too deep to get out.  And since I’ve spent all that time invested in reading it, it’s like I have to finish it just on principle alone.
  13. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year, I really do.  Post-vacation transition is hard and a little depressing, so let’s make the best of it, shall we?

Dump complete.  Carry on.