Cave people

One of the most vivid memories I have of summertime as a child is how dark everything always was. I grew up in northern California--hardly a sunless place, which is precisely the point. My mom, always keen to conserve energy (and money) wherever possible, worked hard to beat the typically scorching California sun through a careful combination of air circulation, darkness, and occasional mania. The air conditioner, as a result, ran comparatively little, considering that midsummer temperatures often soared past 100.

The process went something like this: open windows and fans in the relative cool of the night brought interior temperatures down to a manageable comfort level. As soon as the sun dared show its ugly mug and start to heat up the house, we'd all be ordered to run around and close the windows and the curtains, and most of the day we would spend in the comfortable darkness of our downstairs family room. After reluctantly running the air conditioner for a few of the hottest afternoon hours, my mom would begin her vigil of periodically opening the front door to determine when the outside air was more pleasant than the inside air. Evidently, once this occurred there was literally no time to waste, which we gathered when my mom's frantic, "Open the house! OPEN THE HOUSE!!" would ring through the air. We kids knew better than to delay our response to the call, so we'd scurry through the house again, this time opening the windows to allow the evening breezes (and a blessed taste of late-day sunshine) inside.

We still tease my mom for her comfort-keeping, cost-cutting obsession with temperature, but I must confess that my apple hasn't fallen far at all from her tree. At present, we live in a city with very mild summers, meaning that relatively few people have air conditioning. Night air is typically quite cool, so this works out fairly well.

Except for when it doesn't.

We are currently in one of those "doesn't" times. The average high temperature in July here is a mere 83 degrees, which sounds so spectacular right now I can scarcely bring myself to think about it. We are currently ending our second week of highs in the mid-nineties, and the forecast shows much of the same for the week ahead, including two days where the forecast high is 98. Ninety-eight degrees and no air conditioning. Perish the thought.

But it's probably not the thought that will perish, but rather just me and my poor sweaty family. We are shoulder season kind of people, and strongly prefer to neither sweat nor shiver too much. There must be a lesson to be learned here (I'll let you know when I discover it). In the meantime, I'll just keep doing my best to make Jonathan and Clara's memories of their childhood summers as dark as my own (though I do try to let them out of the house occasionally, as did my own dear mother). And as soon as the temperature cools down, I'll definitely open the house.

Ten months

Jonathan marked the end of his tenth month on July 6th. For some reason I have not been able to reconcile how fast Jonathan's first year is passing with how slowly Clara's first year passed. Then it hit me: since Clara was a preemie, she and I basically did not leave the house for the first five months of her life. That can make anything drag on a bit.

Jonathan, on the other hand, has been dragged to every corner of hither and yon in the last ten months, which probably explains why he has had so many colds. The two weeks leading up to his ten-month birthday were marked by a general pallor and a whole lot of this:


Other than lots of juicy snot rockets, his tenth month was full of firsts. He learned to sit himself up, crawl, and pull to standing within the space of about three weeks. This has required adjustments for everyone, since before than he was basically just a stationary cupcake of love. Homeboy barely even rolled, even though I liked to pretend to think that he knew how.

Aside from his physical achievements, he also witnessed his first thunderstorm, crawled through is first play tunnel, got tied with yarn to a toy for the first time, and enjoyed his first Independence Day. It's been a big month.

Thirty

Happy Birthday to Jeremy! He's been waiting 30 years to turn 30, so this is a big day for all of us. That's a long time to wait.


Here's a list of thirty things I love about Jeremy, in no particular order:

1. He is a super hard worker.
2. He is pretty good looking.
3. He is curious and genuine--two of the qualities I most admire in people.
4. He loves his children and is an excellent father.
5. He loves me.
6. He wakes up early in the morning, and he's always awake when the kids wake up. He gets them ready for the morning and often doesn't wake me until 6:30! There are times in my life when that would not have felt like sleeping in. This is not one of those times.
7. He loves to set goals and have something to work toward.
8. His every move is guided by an underlying philosophy. Sometimes that's exhausting, but he is a deliberate fellow.
9. He is reflective.


10. He loves to see new places. Few things thrill him like the call of the open road--even with our kids in tow.
11. He has a keen sense of humor and keeps me laughing.
12. He tends to see the most positive options available.
13. He is a very appreciative eater. There are few pleasures in life equal to putting food in front of someone who will truly love it and be grateful for it.
14. He likes to run.
15. He is a diligent student of life and the gospel.
16. He has pure faith.
17. He is extremely good at ironing. Once we went to a little gathering in exquisitely pressed button-down shirts. One of the guys there said to his wife, "You should really learn to iron like Rachel does." Imagine how shocked he was to learn that all those sharp creases were a result of Jeremy's meticulous nature!
18. He thinks hard about everything.
19. He is really good at geography.
20. He mows the lawn, even though he doesn't like to.

21. He is tender-hearted.
22. He is sentimental, in the best sense: He keeps a small collection of rocks on his desk, and it wasn't until we'd been married for quite some time when I finally asked why all those rocks were on his desk. He picked them up one by one and said, "This is the rock I picked up when I prayed to know whether I should ask you to marry me. This is a rock I found on the beach on our honeymoon..." Each rock had a story, and for someone who doesn't feel the need to keep many things, those rocks say a lot about his character and what matters to him.
23. He is affectionate.
24. He loves music.
25. He gets excited about new opportunities.
26. He writes in his journal.
27. He does the laundry--at least our laundry. Apparently, tiny children's clothes aren't really his "thing."
28. He is a great partner.
29. He had the good sense to ask me to marry him.
30. He is my very best friend.


I love you, Jeremy. Happy Birthday!

Art Education

Earlier this week I realized that I have a significant gap in my cultural education: art. I appreciate art, I like art, but I don't feel like I really know much about it. Other than a surface knowledge of major styles and a slightly more in-depth knowledge of modernism, I am a hopeless case.

Once I realized my deficiency, I of course headed straight to the library, where I got this book for myself:


and this book for Clara:


I have yet to read my book, but Jeremy has read Clara's to her several times. Of course, the best part was before the second reading, when Clara said, "Dad, I need to go outside and paint on the ground. Like Jackson Pollock."

Yes, Clara has a deep and abiding ardor for the art of Jackson Pollock. If pressed, she can also point out the Mona Lisa, Picasso, and Van Gogh, and she likes Monet's water lilies. But it's Pollock she likes the most. Perhaps it's his methods:


Any other art or art history aficionados out there? I'd love a good book recommendation--for me. I don't want Clara getting any more ideas just yet.

Heavy

Yesterday I did a little bit of spot carpet cleaning. To expedite the drying process, I stood a box fan near the damp spot and turned it on. A few minutes later I was nursing Jonathan and the fan fell over. Clara was nearby, so I said, "Oh, Clara! Could you please pick up the fan?" Always happy to oblige, she walked over, gave it a tug, and proclaimed it too heavy. I didn't really want to interrupt Jonathan's eating, so I said, "Quick--go ask Daddy if he can come out and pick it up."

Clara loves any excuse to bother Jeremy while he's working, so she opened his door and said:

"Hey, Dad. I need a simple machine! I need a pulley. The fan fell down, and it is too heavy for me!"

Good grief. I have to give credit to this fellow for teaching her everything she knows about science:

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!