12/5/08 - 12/14/08

Friday 12/5/08 – Tonight we had a potluck at our house with friends. At the church Christmas party on the 13th, Jason and the friends we invited over are signing What Child is This and we thought we'd have a practice session and dinner at the same time. Here's who was there and what they brought to the potluck: Hans and Monica Rawhouser with Conrad, Riley, and Amelia – artichoke cup appetizers, Mike and Rachel Gaulke with Will and Eddie – Ravioli and spiral pasta hotdish, Nate and Becca Robison – White chili with toppings. I ended up making a hodge-podge of things I had in the cupboards and didn't think I was going to eat: mashed sweet potatoes, mac n cheese, vegetables, and fried rice. It was a crazy night with all of the kids playing hard, but it was a good night. Clark didn't seem to mind sleeping in his swing while there were kids screaming (not bad screaming, having fun screaming) and adults trying to talk over the screaming kids.

Monday 12/8/08 - Today was my first day back at work. I was a bit nervous on the way to work, like on the first day of school. In the car on the way there Jason jokingly asked if I had remembered to bring my trapper keeper. It started snowing pretty bad in the afternoon so I chose to take a bus home. On the way out the door I wondered what I was thinking as I was not at all prepared for winter weather, but it wasn't so bad. The bus was so packed I didn't even need to hang onto the railings. A few people joked about this on the bus because I was just standing there, packed in like a sardine, happily reading my book (The Glass Castle, which is really good by the way). When it was almost my stop, some guy named Steven (I have not yet decided if he was creepy or not) kept talking to me and asking all sorts of questions. I thought for sure he would get off on my stop and try to murder me, but was thankful that he didn't. When I got off the bus I realized that I left work 30 minutes earlier than I had intended. I'm not sure what I had been thinking but I was going to take off 20 minutes early but ended up leaving almost an hour early. My brain must not be working yet after having 12 weeks off. When I got home Jason had cleaned the house (I was impressed) and the kids were happy, although Clark was cranky with me and would not look at me. He has started doing this lately where he does not want to look at me anymore when I am holding him. I did manage to get on the elliptical while Clark was sleeping. Lijah hung out on my bed and listened to CD's while I was working out. Before bed Clark was putting his hands in his mouth like he does when he is really hungry, but I had no milk to give to him so Jason went and made a bottle for him. As soon as he started eating he threw up all over me. Usually he won't eeat again after throwing up, he'll just go to sleep so I had Jason put the bottle in the fridge. But then he woke up about 10 minutes later screaming for milk again so I had to go down and get the bottle again. So then I fed him and he fell asleep, but only for another ten minutes. I wasn't sure what to do since he never really cries at all. Somehow I managed to get him to sleep, but not until about 11pm - way past what I wanted to be my bedtime.

Tuesday 12/9/08 - This morning at work my old boss came over to my desk to tell me some bad news. An old co-worker of ours, who still works at Capella but remotely, died on Sunday. She had just sent an email out with pictures of her new baby that was born 2 weeks ago and when I got in the office yesterday I replied to her email, but apparently it was too late. We had kept in loose contact over the years, emailing pictures of our kids back and forth every now and then. She had a blood clot that travelled from her leg to her lungs causing a massive and fatal heart attack. It just makes you think again about how anyone can just be snatched up like that and to not put things off for tomorrow because that day may not come. It's my second day back at work and it isn't so bad, definately not as bad as I had anticipated. My new boss is great and I can sense a big difference in the culture on my team already. Everyone seems more positive, more friendly, and just more supportive of each other. I had a meeting with my boss and she is nothing like my previous boss, which is good! She already has thrown me on some projects and will keep me busy. She also promised that I would get the training I need asap. I was talking with another co-worker whose wife had a baby a few weeks before me and his baby will not look at him either when he is holding him. He also let me know, in case it ever happened to Clark, that it is perfectly normal for babies not to poop for up to 12 days. If it's more than 12 days you should have them checked out. Who knew.....? Scot at work helped me figure out my bike route for when I start biking to work in the spring. I am pretty excited about that.

Wednesday 12/10/08 – Last night Clark did the same thing as the previous night, and Jason had asked me earlier that day to do bedtime with Lijah so he could go to sleep early. I didn't know what I was going to do because Clark was screaming and it was Lijah's bedtime. So I got out the knitted sling and put him in it and almost immediately he went to sleep. He slept just long enough for me to put Lijah to bed and then got up and cried some more. But it didn't take too long to get him settled this time around.

Thursday 12/11/08 – Clark slept through the night last night. I fed him right when I got up before my shower and then he slept all the way up until it was time to leave for work. It sure made for an easy morning getting ready to leave. I decided to give him some milk from a bottle about an hour before bedtime so I would still have some milk to feed him in bed as he fell asleep and I think that's what made everything go more smoothly. He still cried a little bit before bed, but I think mostly that was because he was really tired and was having a hard time falling asleep. So at least with having a little milk in his tummy he was not starving and overly tired together. I'll have to try this again tonight and see if it works again. Every morning when Lijah gets up he runs out of his room looking for the baby. It is so nice that he is not jealous or acting up like every person and every magazine told me he would when the baby came. It seems like all of the bad things you are warned about with kids have just not happened to us. I guess we lucked out. Now I've probably jinxed it by talking about it. I got a call this morning from Jason and he was asking about how to give Clark saline drops in his nose. All of the sudden I heard crying and Jason saying 'oh no, I've gotta call you back' and he hung up. I figured Lijah was getting into something and hurt himself, which he actually did. He was playing by the guinea pig cage and pulled it down on his head. Jason was worried he would need stitches because it was a big gash. But I looked online and we ended up deciding that it was not bad enough for stitches. Something I should probably note that I don't think I have written about is Lijah's love of frozen foods. Not cooked frozen foods, but frozen foods that are meant to be cooked but are eaten in their frozen state. The big winners are frozen fake meatballs, frozen pizza rolls, and frozen waffles. He usually won't eat these foods cooked, but give them to him frozen and he will scarf them down. He also loves eating shredded cheese these days. I should freeze the shredded cheese and see what he thinks. Also he likes mandarin oranges, but sometimes he will turn them down. However, if they are frozen he cannot resist them. The other day I offered him some of them and he at first said no, but then when taking a second glance, seeing that they were frozen, he got very excited and ate them. Is that the sign of a true Minnesotan?

Friday 12/12/08 – Clark slept through the night again! And even without giving him a bottle before bedtime. Lijah has become quite attached to a Wiggles CD that a coworker (Sarah Peterson) bought for him before he was born. She told me that Lijah would someday love it but when I listened to it I didn't think t hat would happen. It's too cheesy. But it happened. Every night now he blasts the first song on the CD over and over and over – he loves it! And now I have the song stuck in my head repeating over and over and over. This morning the car thermometer said it was only 5 degrees outside – brrrrr. At work I had a few minutes free and finished my new 100 things I love list. I had made a list of 100 not long after I returned from maternity leave with Lijah and had been compiling a second list and was at about 70 before my leave. This week I finished it out. After work Jason brought Susan Gilman up to Target to do some shopping. I am her visiting teacher and she lives in a nursing home up the street. I was unable to bring her because it was after work and I had to feed Clark and didn't want to drag the boys out again, so Jason offered to bring her.

Saturday 12/13/08 – Tonight was the Christmas party at church. We got there early to practice our song in the Relief Society room. While we practiced, Lijah and Will ran around and played with cars. Mike Gaulke and Jason played guitar, Monica Rawhouser sang the main part, and in the chorus were my, Becca and Nate Robison, and Hans Rawhouser. Usually Mike, Jason, and Monica do a song together but this year we were able to add more in. Back when I joined the church I could not and would not sing. Slowly, I started to at least mouth the words and sing very quietly. Then one day I read something somewhere that said that it doesn't matter what you sound like when you sing, and that when you sing you should sing as if you are standing before Jesus singing the song to him. That day I learned that it does not matter what others hear, it matters what is in my heart and my intent in singing. So now I sing just fine at church, but I was still scared of singing on my own where others could pick me out of the crowd. So this musical number at the party was quite a stretch for me since I was not singing with the crowd, but my own part in the crowd. Lately I have come to like my voice a bit better – I sing an octave lower than the melody so it's quite low. I think when I first started singing I was trying to sing the melody, so I was actually quite horrible because my voice does not go that high, but now I've learned where my voice belongs and it has helped my confidence a lot. Lijah had a great time at the party and ran around with all the other kids all night, except for when we were eating dinner. Jason and I decided to loosen up a bit and let Lijah come and go and run around the building instead of keeping an eye on him at all times. Once I did decide to go looking for Lijah and he ran away from me into the chapel. I found him behind the Sacrament stand hiding. He thought he was quite funny. At that point he kept running off to dark places so I brought him to hang out with Jason on the stage. Give Lijah some cords and electronics and he'll stay put. Just like his daddy.

Sunday 12/14/08 – Tonight our home teachers came over, Mike Gaulke and Eric. I really enjoy when they come over and we had a great conversation (about Santa, inviting the spirit of Christ into our home, about work, reading scriptures). This was the first time meeting Eric and he is a really nice guy – hopefully he will be Mike's companion for awhile. It rained all day today and was about 30 degrees during the day. Then a cold front came in and froze up all the rain, and dropped a layer of snow on top of it. Should make for a lovely commute to work tomorrow….. Today during church we had a meeting with Bishop Cooper. While we were talking Jason asked the Bishop if there were any situations where it would be ok to actively deceive someone. The Bishop could not think of any situation where that would be ok. Then Jason asked, "Well, what about Santa Claus. Parents actively deceive their children about Santa Claus". A lively conversation on the topic followed….and the Bishop ended up agreeing with us. There are actually many people who make us out to be 'the bad guy' when we bring this up and defend their position on Santa Claus to the end. We have decided that it is never ok to lie to our children and that Christmas should be centered on Jesus Christ instead of presents and Santa Claus. Santa Claus is not banned from our house, but Lijah knows that he is not real and he knows that he should be good because it's the right thing to do, not because Santa will find out and then he won't get any presents. In a few years things will get interesting when Lijah is the boy who tells everyone that Santa is not real!