I can do five things

My title may be misleading; I can actually do more than five things. But in considering how much I want to blog (fairly often) and how often I actually do (hardly ever anymore) due to various circumstances (FOUR children, ack!) (which is only a medium size family where I come from, but it's lots to me!) I've decided that I will give up (for now) trying to write long, detailed, eloquent posts about my deep inner feelings. Instead, I will try to post about five things each day through the month of August.

I already missed the first two days, oops. This project, like most I lay my hands on, will have to make do with imperfection.

So! We begin:


1. My sister, BIL and their adorable family spent the last week with us (or from Tuesday evening until Sunday morning, anyway). I miss them already! I did as soon as they drove away, in fact. I mostly know they won't, because other options make much more sense, but I secretly wish they would move into the house directly across the street for me, or the one ~three houses up the block (both of which are for sale and very attractively priced) when BIL is done with pharmacy school.

:: Let us pause for a moment of wistful dreaming ::

Or does anybody else I love want to move into my neighborhood? It's beautiful here, I promise.

2. Uno and Dos have discovered the game of Slug Bug. The only problem? They can't seem to tell the difference between a VW Bug and a PT Cruiser. I think it's hilarious; the two types of cars look nothing alike to me. But maybe their problem is hereditary, and my fault: I'm convinced I have a mild form of face blindness. Maybe my children have car blindness...? LOL.

3. I bought a MomAgenda last year to organize my crazy life. It worked very nicely until Cuatro came, and then (predictably) everything fell apart, organization-wise. I was happy just to make it through the day; never mind penciling in appointments and activities several days or weeks in advance! But now that school is about to start again and my life will return to some semblance of routine and order, I want to try again. Only I don't want to buy somebody else's planner. I'm currently teaching myself Adobe's InDesign program by trying to make my own August to August planner, with spaces for mine and each child's appointments, plus DH's work schedule. I'm a little confused about the data merge (I don't want to have to enter a year's worth of dates manually, UGH) but if I have some quiet time tonight (without children interrupting me every few minutes) I'm sure I'll figure it out.

4. The girls were adorable in their play, A Kidsummer Night's Dream. They were in the chorus line of fairies -- nobody 4th grade or younger was eligible for a bigger part -- but I swear they stole the show. ;-) Here are some pics:










5. Randomly glancing my hand across my bookshelf a few days ago, I found an old book I haven't looked at in years: A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ahhh, the memories it brought back! Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg and Frank O'Hara, favorite poets of my youth -- they all make me smile. What I'd give to have been a black turtleneck or a pair of cigarette pants ca. 1961, LOL. I'd have been at all the cool poetry readings.

For your reading pleasure, here's one among many of his fabulous pieces:

I Am Waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier

and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

"I Am Waiting" from A Coney Island of the Mind. Copyright © 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.


~RCH~

The way things worked out

I need to stop wishing for things; they never turn out the way I expect. Remember when I wanted a brief, preemptive respite from the craziness of life with a newborn? My wish came true! I rested up while qualified nurses took over the bulk of the baby care because Cuatro was stuck in the NICU for four days struggling to regulate her blood sugar. Nice. And remember a few days ago, when I felt so stressed out? I just wanted it all to go away! Well, it did -- all but one stressor, which grew and grew and gobbled up the rest.

*SIGH.*

Let's begin our story a little earlier:

We have had crazy weather in the past week or so. [Note: I began writing this blog post the day after Easter. I am a slow writer. Forgive me.] Last Tuesday, a storm knocked a large tree limb onto the roof of our front porch; the thump of it cracked the support column at the top and bottom:


April 19, 2011 at 11:30pm (about two hours after the limb fell), just before DH and his uncle dragged it off the porch roof.


The limb on the ground the next morning. It came from that tree on the left, so you can see how the wind must have torqued it.


The cracked column (it's cracked at the top, too, but I couldn't get a decent shot of that). It doesn't look like much, but it's enough to destabilize the column so we're going to have it removed, repaired, and put back. $$$! Thank goodness for insurance.

We had a close call around the side of the house (with a tree that we meant to have removed last summer, but never got around to it). A few inches to the East and this thing would have come crashing through the beautiful dining room windows instead of landing softly on the bushes.


Eeek!

DH heard the tree hit the house, but I didn't; I was already in the basement with the girls and our flashlights. (I always miss the dramatic stuff. In 2003, DH stood in the parking lot of our Kansas City apartment watching the F4 tornado approach until debris started to hit; I had been clutching my baby in the basement hallway well before the funnel crested over the hill, so I didn't see it.) Uno and Dos, who'd had to be roused from sleep to head down to our safe place, were very nervous about the storm -- and about being in a basement notorious for its jumping spiders (though, to be honest, the threat of jumping spiders may have been exaggerated to keep them out of my one good place to hide presents). Tres, on the other hand, had the situation under control:

"Listen guys," my 3yo said to her 6- and 8yo sisters, gesturing firmly with both hands. "This is not the time to panic! We're going to be okay. NOBODY PANIC!"

And she was right. Mostly. Except that we did see a spider (regular, not jumping, but BIG). DH had joined us by then, though, so he stomped it to death and we all survived to tell the tale.

We went without power for a full day, which made me realize how unprepared we are for any real kind of disaster. But then life got back to normal ... for a day. Are we keeping track?

Tuesday: Violent (though non-tornadic, sis!) thunder & wind storm
Wednesday: Calm and dry, but no power until late in the evening
Thursday: Beautiful!
Friday: More thunderstorms roll in
Saturday: Crazy-heavy, pouring-down rain all day long; beginning to feel the pressure of my responsibilities; blog an overwhelmed blog post

So when we last left off, I had a lot on my mind -- hosting a holiday dinner at my house; keeping the children safe (from each other mostly) while DH worked until 8pm; writing a 10- to 15-minute talk about Christ's Atonement (you know, a nice light subject!); figuring out how to be musical.... Oh, and one more! Keeping the basement from flooding!

Our 108yo house has what is called a "wet basement." That just sounds like a bad idea, frankly, but it's not a finished (or even finishable) space meant for living in, so I guess it's okay. Apparently the builders anticipated that water would seep up from the ground into the foundation occasionally, so they sloped the floor ever-so slightly -- not enough that you'd notice, but enough to direct the stream toward a concrete trench called a French drain that then empties through a pipe out of the house toward the street.

Normally it works just fine. When it rains enough that the groundwater rises up through the foundation, a small but continuous trickle of water will run through the well-worn trench and out. But we don't usually get this much rain; our town's average precipitation during the wettest month of the year is 4.98 inches. During the week of April 19th through the 26th -- from the Tuesday of that wind storm to the Tuesday just after Easter -- we had 12.5 inches of rain, and most of that came over the weekend.

It rained all day Saturday -- sometimes a misty drizzle, sometimes fat, fast raindrops. I went downstairs every couple of hours to check the basement, and every time I did I'd find the trench overflowing and the water creeping up toward the cardboard boxes and Christmas decorations we have stored there. I'd turn on the WetVac again, quickly fill it with 16 gallons of rain water, empty that into three 5-gallon buckets (eh, who cares about that last gallon!), haul a bucket on each arm up the stairs of the old coal chute (more spidery, but shorter than the stairs to the back door on the main level), dump the buckets in the back yard where it slopes toward the street, come back for the third bucket, haul it to the yard, dump it, then come back to fill the WetVac -- rinse and repeat -- until I had caught up with the water and it was back to a small stream in the trench again.

Was that a run-on sentence? Because that's what my life began to feel like Saturday night: DH came home shortly after I put the kids to bed; we did the basement routine together, then I sat down to brainstorm for the Easter talk I would give in church the next day. I figured I had about an hour or so before the water in the basement reached critical levels -- enough time to gather sources or figure out a rough outline of what I wanted to say, then back to the grindstone, then back to writing. But DH went down earlier and found that the water had already risen dangerously high. We slurped and dumped, slurped and dumped until it looked like we were ahead of things, then resolved to check back in 30 minutes rather than an hour. 30 minutes later, though, the situation looked even more bleak.

I thought we'd be up very late: 2 or 3am, maybe, and then the rain would let up and we'd catch up with all the water. Or, I thought, maybe we can take it in shifts: I'll stay up half the night while DH sleeps, then I can sleep (or write my talk) while he works to keep the basement dry(ish) until morning. Except that we never caught up; the rain never stopped; it never even slowed down enough to become a one-person job.

The two of us worked literally all night, hard physical labor. Not all night in the sense of, "wow, that felt like a long time and kept us up late!" There was not a moment when we were not awake, vacuuming up water with the WetVac, filling buckets, dumping buckets, water lapping our ankles at every step. I did take a short break some time during the night to pop 4 Advils with a Dr. Pepper chaser. DH left me to fend for myself briefly while he tried to hunt down a plumber's snake (not an easy item to come by at 2am on Easter Sunday, for some reason, though he finally rustled one up from his parents' house). He snaked the drain to no avail: the rain kept coming; the water kept backing up; we had to keep working.

Trivia item of the day: Five gallons of water weighs (depending on the weight of the bucket) between 45-50 lbs. For hours, I carried one five-gallon bucket of water on each arm, then dumped them and returned for another five gallons. Over and over and over. I felt sore for days afterward.

It seems insane now, looking back, that we kept at it for so long. We did have several conversations throughout the night about how much it might cost to call a professional out to the house in the middle of the night. On a weekend. Over a holiday. If the problem had escalated earlier, we might have called someone -- but it had been manageable (annoying, but manageable) all during daylight; I'd only had to do the Slurp & Dump every couple of hours. The flooding only became critical around 10:30 or 11pm, and at that point we didn't know that it would stay that bad until morning. We thought it would stop raining. We didn't know what we'd gotten ourselves into until it was much too late.

Eventually, the rain did stop. By 7am, blue skies began to peek through the clouds. I kept at it (feeling like a zombie by then, tired beyond any sensation or ability to think) while DH went to get help from our across-the-street neighbor. When they and FIL came back over, I quit and let the men folk (or rather, the more well rested folk) take over.

Back to my list of stresses: The talk. Teaching music to the kids. Hosting a holiday dinner.... The stress of a flooded basement eclipsed everything else; I knew I couldn't possibly speak in church -- I had nothing prepared, no brain left to throw something together, and I'm not the sort who can speak off the cuff. DH, on the other hand, can and he (who is also more accustomed, thanks to his job, to staying up all night) graciously volunteered to speak in my place. I passed the music duties on to one of my counselors (though I found out later that she didn't get my message before church, so I probably stressed her out plenty -- oops!). I dramatically lowered my expectations of elegance for the Easter dinner.

I didn't even make it to church, which made me sad. But although DH, FIL and the neighbor had by that time jerry-rigged a sump pump to sit in the French drain, its float sat too high to trigger the pumping mechanism without a lot of water (and a lot of water is what we'd been trying to avoid all night!) so I stayed home to (a) babysit the pump -- forcing the float up as necessary -- and (b) try to figure out if I could get it to trigger earlier (never did figure that out). Besides, I thought it would be weird to show up to church, with my name on the program as a speaker, and then not speak. And if I sat down for any length of time (in the car or in a pew) I wasn't sure if I'd wake up for days. So I stayed home with the baby and puttered around.

Our adventure ended happily: The neighbor who helped rig up the sump pump came back in the afternoon, after his family's Easter festivities, with an industrial-sized snake. That didn't work, so he (who is not a plumber -- I have no idea where he got all this stuff) came back a little while later with a huge roto-rooter. He, FIL, DH, and DH's cousin (who had come for Easter dinner and gotten more than he bargained for, oops) worked at that for an hour or so at the street end of the drain until they pulled out a massive tangle of tree roots and debris that had kept the pipe clogged. Finally, the water stopped backing up in our basement and flowed freely again. We have had plenty of rain since then (PLENTY!) but no more problems with the French drain.

*PHEW.*

Though I still think we need to have a professional drill a hole in our basement floor to install the sump pump correctly. Just in case there's a next time.

Which there had better not be.

Anyway, yeah: That's what I get for wishing that all my problems could go away. Most of them did, just not in the way I expected. :-P

Fun fact: According to Weather.com, our town averages 4.64" of precipitation in the month of April. According to the local TV weather man (whom I emailed for the purposes of this blog), our town received 17.16" during April 2011.

Crazy.


~RCH~

STRESSY! Stressy Stress Stress.

Tomorrow is Easter. Yay! We have the family coming over: DH's parents; his sister, her son and fiancé (and maybe his two kids?); and DH's great aunt and cousin. Plus our six, of course. MIL is bringing the bulk of the meal, and SIL and I will round it out with some sides, so I don't have to worry about a lot of cooking.

I do have to worry about making the place presentable, though. My kids have been out of school since mid morning on Thursday. They've gotten into EVERYTHING.

And it's raining. Not the Dancing Around Lampposts kind of rain, but the Holy Crap Where's the Ark! variety. The kind that makes the basement flood. DH's very kind uncle just came over and helped me slurp up and dump ~192 gallons of water (about 12 fill-ups of our 16-gallon WetVac). The rain has slowed for now to a steady mist, but when it starts pouring again -- which it is forecast to do many, many times between now and next Wednesday -- I'll have to keep up on it.

DH is at work; did I mention that? Luckily he does have tomorrow off, but for now it's just me and the kids.

Speaking of the kids, Cuatro has a cold. All the lovely phlegm that isn't in her nose gets stuck in her throat, so she coughs it up -- along with heaping helpings of spit up (which she's good at doing anyway, but she's in overdrive now!). Tres slammed her hand with the lid of a trunk we keep Little People toys in (I'm surprised it's not broken, but she can wiggle everything so she did not get a trip to see Daddy in the ER). Dos just now screamed from the other room, "Thanks a lot, Uno! Now I'm bleeding!" I wonder what that's about.

I have been asked to speak in church tomorrow about the Atonement. I have no idea what I'll say. I am incapable of speaking off the cuff, so I will have to find some quiet time before 10am tomorrow to sit and reflect and write out something profound. Because I have just oodles of quiet time, you know.

Also, Primary: My counselors in the Presidency and I rotate through several duties each month; April is not my month to be in charge of the singing practice, but the person whose turn it is will be out of town so I will fill in. This month she chose to teach the children a fancy song! Beautiful Savior, divided into parts. It will be gorgeous if we can do it, but it's not easy teaching harmonies to the 11-and-under set who have little to no musical background. And what kind of song leader can I be, when I seem to be physically unable to hear or process anything but the melody? Even when you play nothing but the alto line, I don't get it; my brain doesn't understand it somehow. If it's not melodic, it doesn't stick. I suspect some of the boys, who will be singing that part, have the same problem.

So.... Yeah. I think that's all. That isn't much, is it? 15 people coming over; house to clean; manage flooding basement; keep children from killing themselves or each other; write a decent talk; figure out how to teach music I, myself, don't understand.

Oh, and I have to drag all four kids with me to Walmart in a bit. And I need to finish up a graphic design project a friend of mine has commissioned for her preschool (she'll pay me and everything, so I can't let her down). And Uno needs me to type something up for a school project of hers.

Plus I need to feed us every now and then. I want to get fast food or take-out, just to simplify things, but I reviewed our recent expenditures this morning and am appalled at how much we spend on Meals Not At Home. My waistline is also appalled. I weighed myself yesterday: I am ~50 lbs heavier than I was in high school. Ugh. Granted, I was underweight in high school, but seriously -- fifty pounds?? Sometimes I wish I had the self control for an eating disorder (anorexics are crazy strong-willed!). That's not nice to joke about, I know, but I'm only about 20% joking.

Sigh. Anyway. I guess I better get down to business. Lots to do.


~RCH~

How the girls spent their St. Patrick's Day

DH put a basketball hoop in the driveway for them, so after school Uno and Dos practiced their moves.







Dos had worn something green to school (where nobody was allowed to pinch anybody), but she changed when she got home.

Hmmmm. No green there. I should have pinched her.

Oh well.

Meanwhile, Tres rode her tricycle.



Cuatro spent the afternoon in her stroller, enjoying the sunshine and watching her sisters, but earlier in the day she kindly posed for a portrait in her Bumbo. (Her green is on the little tiny flowers.)



And that is how we spent St. Patrick's Day. The end.


~RCH~

10 Things

1. I like to spot hawks while we're driving around. The trees haven't greened up yet, so you can see them looming in their perches, on branches that look like they shouldn't support that much weight. I also see them sitting on fence posts, or chillin' by the side of the road, having presumably just consumed a family of field mice. I think they're amazing -- so huge and imposing, but so graceful when they swoop and glide through the air.

We saw some flying a couple weeks ago, silhouetted against the sky. They looked bigger than most of the hawks I've seen, so I asked DH if he thought they might be eagles (which we also have around here). "No," he said, "those are hawks." Are you sure? I asked him. How can you tell from their silhouettes? He looked at me, his eyebrow raised, and said, "I know things about birds."

It was probably a had-to-be-there moment, but it made me laugh right out loud. Oooookay! (Though honestly, I'm sure he does know things about birds. He knows so many random things; I don't know how he holds all that trivia in his brain.)

2. I learned something new today! My friend Jill responded to a recent musing on Facebook to tell me that verbs with no past tense (such as beware, the word I wondered about) are called defective verbs. Isn't that fun? Why didn't I know that before now?

3. I love the Weepies. Go look them up on iTunes, or wherever you get your music these days. I first heard their song "The World Spins Madly On," which just about perfectly captures the emotion of loss, but I also like "Little Bird" and "Somebody Loved" which (while still mellow singer-songwritery stuff) are cheerier.

4. I still love Joanna Newsom. I've blogged about her before, I think, and I know she's an acquired taste -- she has a very distinctive voice, and first came to my attention as an avant-garde folk harpist. How's that for a niche? LOL. But really, I think she's amazing and you should give her a try.

5. I would like to write a Bucket List, but I can never think of very much to put on it. Does that mean I've already lived a full enough life? Or simply that I lack imagination?

One thing I'd like to do is attend a live taping of Garrison Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. I check occasionally to see if it's coming to any of the biggish cities around me (and by around, I mean within a ~3 hour drive).

I share a birthday with Garrison Keillor, you know. So we have a bond. Also, he once responded to a question of mine in his Mr. Blue column that he penned for Salon.com (does he still? I haven't been to that site in ages). I asked how one moves from small talk to Big Talk, as I'd been on plenty of first dates and blind dates and never seemed to connect with anyone well enough to get past the acquaintance stage. He told me to fire my social secretary, lol, and wondered if I weren't holding back -- perhaps my natural reserve was more like resistance. Very astute.

6. That's my brush with fame, I guess; I received dating advice from Garrison Keillor. Also I have talked with Steve Young on the phone, met Utah's Miss America, Sharlene Wells, and hung out with a few of the less famous Osmond Brothers (aka, not Donny) for an afternoon. Wit-woo. Those last ones were job-related; I used to work at the LDS Church headquarters in their Audio/Visual department. Occasionally I got to schedule famous Mormons to appear in church-produced films, etc. But none of them helped me out with my love life. :-)

7. Sometimes I am an angry eater. I regret my actions when I feel calm again, but it's not such an easy thing to undo. If regret were as passionate an emotion as anger, I'd have enough motivation to work off the acquired pounds. Sadly, it is not.

8. DH used to have a colleague whose first name was Tommie. I believe that was the name on the birth certificate, "ie" and everything. Still. If I were a grown man named Tommie, I think I'd go by Tom.

9. I love my baby. Cuatro is so good; I've never had a colicky or unhappy baby, but I don't remember any of them being as chill and sweet as she is. She impressed the doctor at her 2 month appointment by smiling first. The doctor said that young babies often smile in response to someone else's smile, but it's unusual for a kid her age to do it first in hopes of getting a smile in return. What an emotionally intelligent little smooch I have!

She's four and a half months old these days. She tries to sit up all the time (it looks like she's doing crunches; she ought to have abs of steel by now); she loves baths; she sticks her tongue out constantly; she sleeps through the night (ish). I want to kiss her all day long.

10. We had warm weather today after a week of cold, dreary rain. The big girls took the training wheels off their bikes for the first time, confident that they'd find their balance easily and zoom off into the sunset. It didn't work out that way. Tres rode circles around them on her tricycle while they kept falling over and calling for me: "Mom! Why are you helping Dos? You said you'd help me next!" Or the other way around. I'm only one person! I'd tell them, and remind them that I couldn't be their human training wheels; I'd hold them steady for a little while, but they would need to figure out how to do it on their own. Dos took it in stride, and, when it was time to go inside, vowed to practice another day. Uno got mad, and then got determined; when we came inside, she went straight to Wii Fit to practice her balance skills.

:-)


~RCH~

Milestones

As I mentioned earlier, my oldest and youngest shared an important day recently: Uno was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Cuatro had her baby blessing. The whole thing went beautifully. I couldn't have been more proud.

In case you're wondering, I ended up with an invitation like this (I ran out of time to include pictures of the girls):



The week before had been cold and dreary -- most of the country had been shut down by a huge blizzard, in fact, though it missed us by ~40 miles; we got rain instead. I had heard that the weekend would be warmer and clear, but we woke up Saturday morning to a light and steady snow fall. It wasn't much by the standards I'm used to, having grown up in the Rocky Mountains, but I never know what is enough shut things down here. Luckily, it stuck to the trees and ground but not to the roads and we made it to the church with no problems. In the end, the snow -- fresh and pure and quiet as it was -- set the perfect tone for the morning.

The ceremony was intimate: My parents flew in for the occasion. One of my sisters and her family drove ~7 hours to be with us despite having a newborn of their own, just 4 weeks old, and despite my BIL having a huge pharmacy school final he had to study for all weekend. I was so touched that they made the effort to come. I wish my entire family had been able to make it, but that's what I get for living 1,500 miles away! On the other side, we had DH's parents, his great aunt and cousin. We missed his sister and nephew, who had a previous commitment, and his uncle, who I suspect was trying to make a political statement by his absence. I know that DH's family has a wide emotional distance to cross when it comes to the subject of our religion, so it meant the world to me to see the ones who did come. I'm also grateful for the friends from our congregation who braved the weather on a Saturday morning to be there for the girls.

We began with Uno. DH spoke first: He talked about how far we've come since the cold, icy day we brought tiny Uno home from a Kansas City hospital -- and suddenly here she was, 8 years old, crazy tall, and ready to step onto the path that will lead her back to our Father in Heaven. He spoke of following Christ's example of baptism by immersion, how it symbolized burying the old self and rising up from the grave / water new and clean and perfect.

I took Uno back to the font, where we waited for DH to change his clothes (Uno already had her "dunking" dress on) and I told her about my own baptism: When I came out of the water as pure as a freshly born baby, as if I had never done anything wrong, ever, I challenged myself to go as long as I possibly could without committing any new sins. All these years later, I don't remember how long my "perfection" lasted (probably not long!), or what my first slip up was, but I remember trying to stretch that moment on forever.

When DH was ready, he led Uno down into the font and I slipped back out to join the congregation. It took just a moment for him to intone the prayer, baptizing her in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to lay her down in the water and then bring her back up. Then I went back to help her into some dry clothes.

When we returned, it was my turn to speak about the Holy Ghost: DH spoke off the cuff (he's so good at that), but I had written my talk out the night before, using 1 Kings 19:11-12 as my anchor:

...And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

That's one of my favorite bits of scripture; it's poetic and powerful. I told Uno that this world is a noisy place, but that her Heavenly Father -- like her parents here on earth -- wants only the very best for her (and then I got a little choked up, dangit) and that if she could listen to that still, small voice she would be all right.

When I finished, DH laid his hands on Uno's head and gave her a blessing to confer upon her the gift of the Holy Ghost and confirm her an official member of the church, and her part was complete.

Cuatro came next. Whereas baptism is a sacred and essential ordinance, baby blessings are more just a lovely tradition, a chance for the family to publicly welcome their child into the fold. Generally, the father holds the baby surrounded by a circle of other men from the church -- family members and close friends who have been ordained to the priesthood -- and says a prayer over the baby. First, he announces her full name, and then he blesses the baby with all the good things he hopes for her: Health, love, faith, etc. None of DH's family were eligible to participate in the circle (not being members of the church, and therefore not having the priesthood); to be sensitive to that exclusion, my father and BIL (who could have joined in) abstained as well. That left just DH and his baby daughter together, sweet simplicity. He held her and blessed her to grow up strong, to work hard, to have faith and to listen to the still small voice. And then Cuatro's part, too, was complete.

We had light refreshments afterward (Girl Scout cookies and banana slush, at Uno's request) while we all visited. One of our church friends who has lived down the street from DH's parents for years held Cuatro while I flitted around. I paused to ask her if she wanted me to take the baby -- I never want to be an imposition! -- but she said no, and continued talking to my MIL.

"You know," the neighbor said, "it sounds odd to say, but sometimes I wish I had a bit of dementia. I would love to be able to travel back in time and relive those days when my babies were small. They're both in their 40s now. What I wouldn't give to hold my little boy again...."

Oh!! I had to flit off again before the waterworks started.

After cleaning up and leaving the church -- not having ruined our appetites completely with Girl Scout cookies, apparently -- the family met at Ponderosa for lunch, where MIL gave Uno a baptism gift: Her Holy Communion book from (I think) 1956. "I know it's not exactly the same thing," she told Uno, "but when I was about your same age, this was my milestone. The book has prayers in it for you, and pictures and stories of Jesus. I want you to take very good care of it for me." I don't think Uno has any idea what a special and thoughtful gift that is -- particularly given how divisive a subject religion has been between us -- but I hope she will appreciate it some day. I, for one, was extremely touched.

The day after my girls' big day was a milestone for my momma -- her 60th birthday! She came to Primary with me, where the children sang to her and where she got to hear Tres give her first official talk. ("Helly Father has a plan for me: To come to earth; to be in a family; to get bathtized like Uno did, and that's my dad [pointing to a stock photo of somebody -- not her dad -- baptizing a child -- not Uno]; to choose the right like coming to church, reading scriptures, helping with the dishes, and sharing blocks....") We had a little ice cream cake party after church before saying goodbye to my sister, BIL and their kids as they began the ~7 hour drive back home. We got to enjoy the company of my parents for one more day before they, too, had to make a 2 hour drive back to the airport and then a long flight home.

The whole weekend was wonderful, filled with sacred moments and the love of family. I didn't take pictures of any of it at the time -- I still haven't figured out how to be present in the moment and behind the lens at the same time, sadly -- but Uno agreed to put her baptism dress back on (and Cuatro had no choice, woo-ooh-ooh-wah-ah-ah!) for portraits. Uno's dress is new for this go around, but I intend for it to be an heirloom to pass down to each of her sisters as their turn arrives. Cuatro's blessing dress is the one each of the girls before her has worn, and was made by my best friend from scraps of my wedding dress (which itself was made by the mom of my other best friend), so both are very special.

And now for the pictures:








~RCH~

Soliciting Ideas

Uno recently turned 8 -- a milestone year in a Mormon family because she is now old enough to decide to be baptized and officially join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Which she has decided to do. (It was touch-and-go for a while; she really liked the Presbyterians. And who can blame her? I think they're nice, too.)

Although Mormons don't baptize their babies (see above), we do like to welcome them to the world and into the congregation with a name and blessing ceremony. We had intended to have Cuatro's in November when my parents were in town, but DH had an emergency at work and we had to scrap that plan. Now, in the interests of simplicity, we intend to consolidate the events, make it a two-for-one deal!

I made lovely announcements / invitations for Cuatro's blessing-that-didn't-happen. I photographed her long white dress in golden afternoon sunlight and added the caption, "Every baby is a blessing." I would like to make another nice announcement for this go-round ... but because it's the celebration of two events and two people, I'm not sure how to do it.

Google isn't helping me brainstorm. Could you?

Stylistically, how would you design a combination child's baptism / baby blessing card? From a more practical standpoint, what information would you include? These are primarily for DH's family who have no experience with LDS traditions; this will be both their first Mormon blessing (we lived too far away when the others were born) and their first Mormon baptism. So in addition to the basics (date, time, place), do I need to explain anything else? (I'd let DH do the explaining verbally, but religion is a very sore subject and one he tries to avoid. *Sigh.*)

Oh, and also -- I'm trying to figure out the program. Would you have the baby blessing before the baptism? Or after? I have no idea. Maybe do Cuatro first in case she gets antsy...? Hmmmm.

Seriously, any advice / ideas will be hungrily devoured. :-)


~RCH~