How did a frog find my pond?

I had an interesting experience this afternoon. Clara and Jonathan were napping, and I was out pulling weeds (oh, weeds!) and straightening the garage. I don't know if we're alone in this, but somehow we have seven wheeled vehicles (child bikes and strollers) to wheel around our two very small children. Yes, that's right: we have two strollers to every child, and each of our kids can lay claim to one-point-five bicycles (although two of them are loaners and one of them we bought for a quarter at a garage sale, but still. And Jonathan doesn't do much bike riding. Neither does Clara for that matter: "You have to push the pedals, Clara! PUUUSH!").

At any rate, I decided to collapse our double tandem stroller and one of our single strollers to clear up some space in the garage. As I folded up the single stroller, a little frog toy fell out of it. I thought to myself, "Huh. I didn't know Clara had a little frog toy." I reached out to pick it up... And then it hopped into the air.

Now, to give you the most accurate account of what happened next, I have chosen to include the following Q & A:

Question: When the frog hopped into the air, did you scream like a little girl?

Answer: Absolutely. Well, I should qualify that: I don't know if the utterly inhuman noise that came out of my mouth can count as the scream of a little girl, but I certainly expelled some noise.

Question: Did any of that noise take the form of an expletive?

Answer: No. I didn't even think an expletive in my addled mind, although later I kind of wished I had, since I thought it would make for a more interesting post.

Question: Did you bravely scoop the little frog from its hiding place behind the lawn mower and take it to a safe location 100 yards from your home?

Answer: I did not. Instead, I bravely went into the house and said to Jeremy, "I know you're working, but..." He loves it when I begin sentences that way. Nevertheless, he gently scooped the frog into the lid of a garbage can and carried it to the yard of a vacant house in the 'hood. He said he thought the junipers there would give our amphibious visitor the best chance for survival. Then he ruminated for several minutes about how frogs always pee when you pick them up. He showed me the little damp spot on the lid to prove it. It must be true.

Question: Did you have the presence of mind to photograph your intrepid green visitor?

Answer: Unfortunately, I had almost no presence of mind whatsoever. But just so you know, it was about the size of my head. Either that, or it was about the size of a fifty-cent piece and as green as a verdant forest. You pick.

Happy Father's Day!

Just wanted to give a quick shout-out of love and appreciation to this guy...


...who is an excellent and devoted father to these two:



And here's a brief portrait of Jeremy, according to Clara:

How old is Daddy? Two. Babies are two. How old are you? Twenty.

What does Daddy do for work? He writes words.

Does Dad like to make you breakfast? No!! Not in a pot! Just cold, cold, cold, cold cereal.

What do you like to do with Daddy? Run and play!

What's Daddy's favorite color? Brown. I like his brown shirt!

What does Dad like to eat? Foxes. It makes his throat very bad. There's a fox in his mouth. These are my molars. These are called my canines. Shark has two canines like me.


Happy Father's Day, Jeremy!

Flour Power

In times like these, I think it's best to stick it to The Man as much as possible. One of the ways we do this in our family is to make our own bread. Once every week or week and a half I bake three loaves of my mom's bread, which is seriously the most delicious whole wheat bread I have ever had. And periodically I even do something really brave, like make my own bagels. (That particular whim blossomed after I felt like eating bagels then noticed that a package of five bagels costs like $2.00. As if. I could totally make like 12 bagels for literally just pennies! Note: it's time consuming but yummy. And if you have a two-year-old she will be pretty torqued that you have to broil them then boil them then bake them before eating. Just give her a dang bagel already!)

At any rate, the whole bread making process starts out by running several pounds of wheat through my wheat grinder while Clara and Jonathan hide in Clara's room ("It's too loud for ME, Mommy!"). Then I (with the able help of my petite sous-chef) put everything in my Bosch mixer and let the machine do all the work. When the dough is kneaded, Clara nips little tastes while I push the dough into three pans to rise. (More than once our finished bread has had two little finger marks in it from a secret pinch during the rising time. Why does she like to eat dough??) When all is said and done, we are sitting down to thick slices of delicious bread in an hour and a half, start to finish.

Sometimes, though, I have more to contend with than a loaf pincher. If you have ever seen a Bosch during its kneading cycle, you'll know that it tends to rock and roll a bit while it does the good work of saving my biceps from 20 minutes of forced labor. And I learned that while said rocking and rolling is going on you should not leave an open container of freshly ground flour on the edge of the counter while your baby is playing on the floor. If you do, you might end up with a little bit of this:


And a little bit of that:


Oh well. My only consolation--aside from that happy (if goopy) face--was that at least I'd already made the dough! I guess this is what I get for looking at my bread making as sticking it to The Man rather than just feeding my family. Can't it be both?

My spurs are of silver, my pony is gray

Some cowgirls are made; others are born. Much to our surprise, Clara is something of a born cowgirl. We already knew how much she loved horses, since we have some friendly neighborhood equines we like to visit when we go on walks. But Jeremy and I were both pretty sure she would not get close enough to even touch a horse, let alone to ride one. This is partly based on the fact that we ourselves have an extremely healthy respect (read: fear) of getting close to a horse, and it's also based on the fact that Clara is terrified of other scary animals, like poodles and worms.



But Clara has always been full of surprises, and when the horseback riding segment of her little friend's birthday party arrived yesterday, she was the most eager and fearless horsewoman we've ever seen. She took several turns around the corral on Shadow, talking to everyone she passed saying, "Look at me! I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" When her turn on Shadow was done, she immediately demanded, "I need to ride that Princess horse!" So when all the other kids had finished their turns, Clara got a second ride on Princess. Only one thing could've made the event perfect for her: if she could do it all by herself. She kept telling Jeremy that she wanted everyone to let go of the horse and let her ride: "I can ride with no rope to go faster and faster and faster!" Several of the adults suggested that we buy her a horse and give her riding lessons. We'll wait for her to conquer her fear of poodles first.

We did it!

For those of you who marked your calendars and have been waiting with anxious anticipation for our report, last Saturday was indeed our long awaited March of Dimes March for Babies. We walked the entire route, which took us along a six-mile (round trip) stretch of the North Idaho Centennial Trail. Unfortunately this particular stretch was parallel to the interstate, so we had the steady drone of traffic as our constant companion. But we also had lots of honks from truckers, so I guess there are pros and cons.

The biggest lesson we learned from this experience is that tiny children do not really enjoy six mile walks. Clara and Jonathan, as a pair, have a threshold of about four miles, after which anything is possible, including Clara biting Jonathan on the arm (twice) hard enough to leave teeth marks. Jeremy ended up carrying Jonathan between miles two and three ("I feel like a pioneer woman," he said. "I need a bonnet and a long, flowing skirt." Why not a pioneer man?). He also ended up carrying Jonathan between miles five and six, at which point Clara also decided to get out, so I was left pushing an empty stroller.


Nevertheless, we walked triumphantly past the finish line, just minutes after Jonathan finally fell asleep. He didn't sleep very long, what with all the people yelling, "Oh, look at that baby! He's asleep! Loooook! He fell asleep!" Evidently, nothing wakes up babies faster than pointing out that they're asleep.


I'm really glad we decided to do this, and I admittedly got a bit choked up looking at the poster of the sweet premies and babies and listening to the walk director talk about her two older brothers who were born early and did not live. I am truly grateful, also, for everyone who donated to our walk. We were able to donate 385 dollars, so THANK YOU! The more I learn about March of Dimes (they're responsible for the polio vaccine, as well as more recent developments in prenatal and neonatal care) the more I respect the organization and its mission. Thanks for supporting a worthy cause. Walk on!

On the brain

When Jeremy and I are having a discussion about something--like an idea, or a book, or a current event, or yardwork, or parenting, or the best way to stack dishes in a cupboard, or whatever--I usually have lots to say and work hard to get all of my words out right up front. I may change my mind later based on a new argument or additional information, but I have very little trouble offering a full and reasoned opinion.

Jeremy, on the other hand, is much more reflective than I am up front, and it's important to him to understand everything that's happening before offering an opinion. This makes him a great active listener, since he is willing to absorb everything I have to say before offering an opinion. This also makes our conversations occasionally frustrating, since sometimes I just want him to spit something out already, regardless of whether he has all the right sources and information lined up in his mind.

A few years ago, we had a funny discussion about the way each of us thinks and communicates, and we came up with extremely vivid mental images of the way each of our minds works. See if you can see what we see:

Jeremy's mind is a sparse, gray room (he says it's shaped like an octagon). He says there's a single, unadorned window on one wall, and all of the walls are lined with dozens of steel filing cabinets with multiple drawers. In the center of the room, not far from the window, a single Jeremy sits in a rolling office chair behind a tall, spartan desk (think the security desk at the BYU library, if that helps you). Several neat stacks of paper sit on the desk, and the little Jeremy is always productively organizing and arranging these stacks, preparing them for their appropriate place in the filing cabinets. If the "real" Jeremy needs information for a discussion, an idea, or a piece of writing, the little mind Jeremy taps the stacks on his desk and walks over to the right filing cabinet. Carefully and deliberately, the little Jeremy flicks through the file folders until he finds what he's looking for, at which point he transmits the knowledge to the "real" Jeremy, who is then able to convey the information to the appropriate venue. The little Jeremy then walks back to his desk, where he resumes organizing his neat stacks of paper.

My mind, on the other hand, is a busy, colorful room lined with bookcases and several tables. There is always music playing, the many windows are always open to a beautiful breeze. Fresh flowers and plants liven up the atmosphere, and there's always a feeling of happy yet driven purpose. My mind requires several little Rachels--probably three--to get all of the necessary information to me. Instead of filing cabinets, my information is stored in the books on the shelves and in many cluttered stacks of paper that seem disorderly, but the little Rachels know just where everything is. If I'm in a situation where I need to get information, each of the little Rachels has a specific job. One of them is in charge of relaying "funny filler," in case I need to keep people laughing while the other little Rachels are scurrying around trying to find everything else I need. The other two Rachels typically find the same information, but one of them feeds it to me softly and one of them shoves it into my brain, just in case I need to slam the hammer down in a more competitive conversation. Either way, they are all very busy but happy in their flower-and-book-filled chaos.

To put your own minds at ease, neither Jeremy nor I actually hears voices, but we did get a kick out of trying to describe visually what goes on in our minds, especially since the respective pictures we drew ended up conveying so much about ourselves--or at least what we want to believe about ourselves.

So now the question is, How does your mind work?

This baby, we love!

Aaaaand we're back.

Our family's week with no TV and minimal computer (sometimes you've just got to pay the bills) is over. These are some of the things I learned:

1. Getting through the day with no TV was a ton easier than I thought it would be. Clara never even brought it up! Granted, we usually watch just Sid, the Science Kid in the mornings and It's a Big, Big World in the afternoons (I just love that hippie sloth), with the occasional tune-in to Word World. But still--I can't tell you how many days (on any given day of the week before and including this one) I find myself just yearning for it to finally be time to watch one of our shows.

2. Sometimes T.V. is very nearly a godsend. For example, this week we have had sickness in our house AGAIN. Clara has another ear infection, and Jonathan is wheezing again. Jeremy has been congested all week, and I came down with a cough and fever yesterday. You may not be surprised that we ended Turnoff Week a little early so Clara could enjoy Smooch and Winslow while I took a much-needed huddle on the couch, covered with a blanket.

3. Going TV-less is way easier when the weather is good. We had great weather earlier this week, and I took Clara and Jonathan to the park twice--even though they were both under the weather--and then on a 3-mile-walk (by the way, after that walk I realized that I desperately wish the jogging stroller fairy would drop a double jogger on our doorstep; three miles with a heavy tandem stroller just about did me in, and I am pretty tough). Going without TV is also easier when your kids like to color and do art. Every time I would run out of things to do, I'd say, "Let's paint!" and out the watercolors would come. Since every finished product is followed up with a demand to "hang it on the 'frigerator," we are awash with masterpieces this week--including a couple of my own little gems.

That's pretty much it. Jeremy and I have decided to watch our three weekly shows (Chuck, Lost and The Office, if you must know) online on the weekends rather than during the week. We enjoyed having all of our evenings clear to read and play chess (OK--we didn't actually play any chess, but if we had a chess set we totally would have, on account of I would've smoked him).

Off the grid

We're going off the grid for Turnoff Week. In the meantime, here's a little something to remember us by:

Happy Easter!

Who has time for blogging...

...when it's 65 degrees and sunny? See you when the rain returns...

We are marching!

If you read this blog or know us, you know that we have encountered several challenges as we've had each of our children. Sam's birth was obviously a heartbreaking experience, but we also had quite a scare with Clara's unexpected premature birth. Despite the three weeks in the hospital and the stress of her early arrival, we were overwhelmed with gratitude that she was as healthy as she was. The advances in the care of premature infants have been exponential in my lifetime, and I often reflect on how different our family could be had Clara been born in a different time.

Clara's birth is not the only time that I have been touched by the dangers of prematurity. My aunt and uncle bravely brought four premature children into the world, including their oldest daughter, Erin, who died not long after she was born--not too many months after I was born. I have thought often of Erin over the course of my life, and I visit her grave, which is very near Sam's, every time I'm in Provo.

Jeremy and I have decided to honor Clara's health as well as to continue championing the healthy births of all babies by walking in this year's March of Dimes March for Babies. We'll do a six-mile walk with our kids six weeks from now, and we're excited! We hope to raise a total of $200 for March of Dimes, but even if we only raise what we're able to contribute, it'll be worth it. Because, really, we just love to walk, and we feel like our commitment might be just the karma we need to get good weather to finally arrive! If you're interested, please email us at theplenary@gmail.com for easy-peasy donation instructions. And if you're in the area, we'd love to have you walk with us. We're always happy to add more teammates!