Merry Christmas, Honey!

I don't have much to say today... actually thinking of my husband... all the cute little quirks about him that I didn't know about before we were married (miraculously, considering we dated for 5 years)....

Like his love of freebies! He sent an email to his family members this morning about a morning radio show prize giveaway that he wanted us all to participate in so maybe one of us would win. I think most of us hear those contests as we're driving around listening to the radio, and we think, "hey, lucky person. They just won an ipad (or whatever)." Chad always, always goes into action, ready to be that lucky person... Well, we didn't win the ipad this morning, but thanks to his freebie fire, we won free concert tickets to OK Go last week. We also got a Christmas tree marked down from $40 to $18 this year, because it was stuck in the wrong spot and Chad was willing to find a manager to see if they would honor the mistaken price. Ah... sometimes I find myself trying to hide a little while he's perusing booths and snatching his 6th free pen or water bottle or whatever (not all from the same booth). But it also cracks me up. I love this about Chad--I hope he never stops (mostly because I'm excited to see a 73 year old man grabbing for free toothbrushes. Priceless). And after a fabulous OK Go concert last Thursday night, is it worth it? Yes, I think so!

Like his inability to keep his hands off me, in public or even just in front of our kids! (Is this a TMI?) I'm sure at some point we'll have to stop making out in front of Coren, especially now that he can communicate what he sees... but it's going to take Chad some work to do it... And quite frankly, I LOVE this. And secretly, I hope it doesn't stop for a long time, like ever. Really, how many wives have the problem of too much public affection from their husbands? Awesome!!

Like his refusal to drive his work car an extra five or ten miles to catch up with me at his parents' house for the evening or something... I usually have go pick him up from a Park-and-Ride off the freeway and bring him back later... just because he doesn't want to use a single mile of gas on non-work activities. Because he has that much integrity. In everything, really. And it makes me so thankful that Coren will be growing and learning with a man like that as his father.

Like how he walks into his work party, and everyone has to come up and talk to him, just to be around him. How he has this dignified magnetic quality to him that draws people--all kinds! His coworker covered in tens of thousands of dollars of tattoos, his 40 year-old coworker with her teenaged kids, his previous coworker who reminds me so much of my little brothers, dancing with a tie around his head. Everyone wants to know Chad, to be around him. Everyone respects him. It sounds exaggerated, but ask those who know him--it's true. Honestly, I'm a little in awe sometimes.

Just a few of the quirks I was musing on this morning. A few little qualities (and oddities) that make my husband irresistibly fantastic! It's no wonder I needed to marry him from the first time I ever met him. Lucky me!

Merry Christmas Honey, how I love you!!

And because people wanted to see...

Here he is... My boy with chopped hair. My boy who no longer looks at all baby, who looks all boy, who makes me miss my little dude, but who is still as cute as ever (I can say that now, a month into the haircut, now that I've resigned myself to it).

Because the kids are still asleep...

I thought I would get on here and post some thoughts (miracle of miracles!):

I am surrounded by Christmas decorations--half put up and half laying around on the floor waiting to be assigned a place for the month. And I am starting to get that Christmas-y feeling.....

The hard/beautiful part of that Christmas-y feeling is that it always brings memories of my mom. This was her "basking" time of year, and now innately I want to do the same--put on Mannheim Steamroller's Stille Nacht, turn the lights off, lie down in front of the Christmas tree and just bask.... and cry. I actually can't hear that song without crying anymore; that is the quintessential Mom song for me. But the feeling is a sweet kind of painful, and it's lovely, not bitter or depressing, so it's welcome around this time of year.

And reflecting on Mom, for the life of me, I can't figure out how anyone else was born into the family after Tera... what do people do with more than two children?? Really, I want more than that myself (many more), but I'm still not sure I'll survive the stage I'm in now, with just the two. I am learning that a huge portion of motherhood must take place in the Now--does that sound like a super obvious statement? Let me explain...

I have been realizing the last month or so that I am TERRIBLE at the whole Ecclesiastical idea of seasons. I have goals, and they all need to be achieved now! I keep looking at the future and panicking about the things I'm not getting done now, things that I want to already have accomplished by my forties, like a Masters degree and a bestselling book, and a job working at a university. Thinking, I still want to be young and in touch (yes, I know, ridiculous) when I do those things. So I'm trying to live in multiple seasons of my life as if to prove to myself that I won't be held back... but held back by what? My kids? Um, yep, that's what I discovered this month--I have this awful idea that Motherhood is holding me back. Oh dear....

Now that's not to say that some women can't do it all right now--I actually know some women who have, and can. But I am not that woman. So I'm faced with the dilemma of choosing a season for myself. Well, I already kind-of chose (I have two kids), and I am teaching myself to submit to the natural turn of the season I'm in. It's hard. I am stubborn. I don't bend easily, and I often rage against things like, oh, common sense, that make me step back and reevaluate myself (really, who likes to reevaluate themselves?).

So then I turn to the women I love--how did/do they deal with seasons? My mom is foremost in my mind these days, because she loved her season.... and now that I can't ask her, I find myself wondering, how in the world?? How do you love a 20 year/7 child season? And I realize that she did it by living now, by making the present as important (maybe more) than the future. She lived this moment with this child, and this hour for this child, and that minute for that child, and there wasn't anything beyond that. And I mean that in a more exalted way than it sounds.... not that she didn't have ambitions, but that she learned to see the greatest ones she had--the ones that woke up every morning and needed her constant attention. I need my mother's vision, the ability to recognize that my forseeable future is my children, set that future aside, and live the present with them....

Remind myself that Coren became a toddler before I said he could. That Risa's little baby grins will only last for a couple more months before they lose that brand-new-ish something. That her thunderthighs will disappear (sigh!). That Coren will start talking in complete sentences--in English or Spanish, whatever--and will forget the language he jabbers in right now, a language that delights me! Remind myself that it doesn't get easier, ever, so stop looking forward to the easier.... Just tackle the now, and love the now, and bask in the now, and remember that the now is what I wanted then.... and what I will want later, when my next season starts. Ah, my beautiful, frustrating, peaceful, hysterical, tricky and delightful season of life: Motherhood!

Does every mother feel like this??

Risa's Birth

So this is two months late, but here's my journal entry for the whole experience...

Our baby is here (as everyone already knows at this point)! She is beautiful! I take back everything I said about never wanting girls… although I still have some fears that she’s going to be the high-maintenance death of me. But she’s so cute, I’ll get over it! J

But let’s get down to the nitty-gritty—Risa’s birth story:

Chad and I woke up dark and early at 4 a.m., and we arrived at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. A nurse came in and got me all hooked up, took my vitals, etc. You have to be hooked up to the monitors for at least twenty minutes before they can start the pitocin, so Chad and I spent the time watching the absolutely stellar lightning storm going on outside—so fabulous!! What better weather for a birthday, right?! We were LOVING it—thunder that sounded like cannon fire, and enormous raindrops pummeling the sidewalks outside. Awesome!

So the nurse came in and started the pitocin and went off-shift. Chad and I played a game of Farkel, and we chatted with our new nurse, Kirstin (soon to be my new best friend). My contractions were getting stronger, but they weren’t painful at all yet. So we turned on Brian Regan and were cracking ourselves—and our nurse—up for the next forty minutes. By the end of his routine my contractions were definitely more intense, but still easily bearable. I can’t remember what I was dilated to, but I think it was just about halfway. That’s when Dr. Harward came in and broke my water. What a strange feeling—suddenly there is a kiddie pool’s worth of water between your legs, soaking through layers of towels below you! Weird! And holy smokes! That certainly kicked things up a notch! It was amazing how that immediately affected the strength of my contractions. It was literally the very next contraction, and I was slammed by the intensity of it! And then I knew I was in trouble as far as all my Hypnobabies practice went. My contractions were suddenly coming so fast and hard that I had no time in between to get into the zone at all—serious bummer! So next time, I definitely need to get into the hypnosis before anyone does anything to my water sac. I was pretty sad about that part. I tried it for a while, but it was a no go—I barely had recovery time between the contractions, so there was no way I had the time I needed to talk myself under. So we ditched that, and I just leaned against Chad for a while.

Well, time sure flies when you’re in intensely severe pain, doesn’t it?! It had been about an hour since the doctor broke my water, and each contraction was unbelievably strong! I was at the point where my body literally could not keep still. I was shifting positions between each contraction—from climbing onto Chad to kneeling to laying down to standing to squatting to back on Chad’s shoulders (almost)—just to make it through each one. And I couldn’t really think past the next contraction. This is where Kirstin became my lifesaver!! We found out that she was a Hypnobabies mom herself, and she knew the scripts almost word for word. So although I couldn’t get deeply into the CD scripts, she could talk me through the contractions as they came. She led me through each one, rubbing my back and leaning on pressure points to ease the pain a little. And so the three of us worked through each one as it came and went.

And still they got nearly unbearable! I tried to talk to Chad: “Honey, I think…” “I think….” Every time, that’s as far as I could get… I found out later that Chad knew exactly what I was thinking, but wouldn’t put it into words for me (naughty!!). I wanted drugs! That’s what I wanted! I finally got the sentence out in a whisper. Kirstin told me that I was probably right in transition—that’s usually when women doing it naturally break down and ask for drugs—and if so, then I only had a few more contractions to go before it was time to push. So she checked me, and she was right: I was just about ready to go. So we bore through 10 more minutes of pain, and the doctor came in to deliver the baby.

Wow! It’s amazing all the things you feel when you have no drugs numbing things for you! Like a giant head moving through a tiny canal. (Sorry, that may be a TMI, but honestly!) And suddenly I understood what every woman means about not being able to hold back the urge to push. Once the doctor had me start pushing, there was no way I was stopping until that head was no longer blocking passageways. Oh man, what a crazy feeling! I was exhausted, and now I had to push… and push HARD! It’s ridiculous how you just want to stop and rest and yet that’s exactly what you don’t want to do (has anyone heard that birth is an emotional experience??). Thankfully, I didn’t have to push for very long: about 10 minutes, and the girl was out. Finally, relief!

Risa came out a smurf—no exaggeration! Her face was completely blue! Now, here I am on one side of the room being stitched up, and I see her on the other side of the room, totally blue in the face. My first thoughts were panicky ones—Oh boy, she isn’t breathing! Then I hear from the nurses, “Wow, she is really bruised!” Apparently, she moved so quickly through the canal, and her head was so big, that she bruised all the way out. Incredibly, she was pretty much pink by the end of that day; I couldn’t believe how fast the bruising went away. They cleaned her up a bit, checked her vitals, and brought her over to me.

Little Risa Julie Brooks is here! And she is beautiful! 9 lbs., 6 oz. (gee whiz! She even beat her brother!) She was born with a bunch of dark, dark hair (which I am hoping sticks around). And she nurses like a champion! Hooray!! We love the little beast already!

And By the Way...

Did I tell you I have a weird son?? 18 months old, and his new thing is bugs. Not sure where this comes from--I'm not a big bug person. Not at all.

True, we have a pet tarantula, and I think she's pretty fantastically awesome! And low-maintenance, which, really, with the Sorensen pet death record, is the best kind of pet.

But my son goes to extremes with bugs. He will try to pick up anything--ANYTHING! roly-polys, beetles, grasshoppers, wasps, spiders... No fear. Yikes! I love his fearlessness, but I am learning I have to temper it with a few warnings... you know, like "That spider is a bad spider. Leave that one alone." Or "No, that is a hornet. It will hurt you. Just look."

How do you teach without stamping out curiosity and brave innocence? I'm learning.

Oh, but the best part is that he has to sample all these bugs he is discovering. Delish! Insect appetizers are on the menu for the next few months, I believe. Here we go!

Family Reunions!

Well, I was able to go to one of the three family reunions we had this summer... what a fabulous experience!! I went to the Grant reunion (my mom's side) in Brian Head last week, and the week was just truly wonderful!

I love reunions! Love them!! I love everything about them--the lack of sleep from staying up and chatting; the loudness in the evening that doesn't let up till midnight or something; the corny games and activities; the sightseeing trips; the food; the late mornings when nobody really gets ready before 10 or 11; the lounging and relaxing; and the people!! Oh, the people!! All my dear ones, concentrated in a single cabin (or two), just enjoying each other... Is there anything really more warm and fabulous than that?!

Some of my favorite highlights from the reunion:

--Karaoke night! Especially hearing my dad sing "Carolina In My Mind." My father, who is a wealth of musical talent (after all, we got half of our talent from him), but who really never sings alone. That brought me joy!

--Testimony night! And suddenly I remember why my family is so fabulous--they follow the Savior! Oh, and Tera's children kept things light with some priceless comments ("Almost everyone is crying!" "Mom said Be Quiet! You're too loud!")... Good times!

--Grandma's story time! My mom always told us Little Black Sambo when we were young. But hearing it straight from the source was a really tender treat!

--Bryce Canyon! Wow! Breathtaking!

--Staying up till 4:15 a.m. with my sister, Tera, talking about all the things that sisters talk about... it's been a while since we did that, hasn't it, Girlfriend? Totally worth the dark undereye circles the next morning!

--Brok's fabulous BBQ! Delish! (Actually, all of the food was rather stellar, wasn't it?)

--Basically, just watching everyone talk and smile and laugh and love... that is why we do reunions, with all the prep and hours of travel and cost and everything. And then we get together for a few days, and really, who cares about all of that?!

So it was indeed splendid for me! I wish my husband could have been there to enjoy all of you as I did. I miss everyone already! And thank you, thank you to Heather--it couldn't have been more perfect. Really! Loved it all!!

Ah, Parenting...

...is a humbling experience lately. Coren is right at the age where he now understands what Mom does and does not want him to do; and the age where he's discovering he can either do or not do what Mom wants him to do. A tricky age.

A few examples from this last week:

The minute I tell him not to run out into the street, into the street he runs as fast as he can go (which is surprisingly fast these days... not to mention I've gotten significantly slower). And he usually runs straight into the path of an oncoming car. Of course.

I ask him to come over so I can change his diaper, and he climbs onto the couch, giggling, and crawls to the other end, because he knows I'm too tired to get off my rear end and get him. This one is actually not bad--more of a game for both of us than serious defiance.

Today, my favorite--after I told him about 13 times to leave the paint alone (sending him out of the room nearly half of those 13 times), he drops a nightlight into the paint, then onto the carpet. Now his carpet is pink. Fabulous. That one nearly sent me over the edge.

But this really is not a surprising development. When kids are discovering their agency, it's only natural to experiment with it, right? Test limits (or parents, at least) and see what happens. This I have been expecting. What I wasn't expecting is how directly his little moments of free will show me my parenting flaws. I have had to apologize to my little 18 month-old more often this last week than in the entire 17 previous months of his life. A humbling experience. And at the same time, one I am grateful to be passing through (though it's not easy or fun necessarily)--first, because my son is so forgiving. And second, because I am learning that even parents should never be above admitting our faults (which are many...in my case, anyway). And I can see exactly which areas of my personality need some scrutinizing and improving. Good to know.

And on the flipside of the parenting coin, this week has also given me a treasure trove of tender moments with my same sassy son... Isn't it nice to have the bitter and the sweet? Opposition in all things really is a perfect idea.

Some favorite examples of these tender moments:

Coren running around the house, calling out "Honey!", as he tries to find Daddy.

Any time he hits his head or smashes a finger, he immediately comes to me to kiss it better--and he makes me kiss it over and over until I get the exact spot that was hurt. Where do they learn things like that, that Mommy's kisses make crashes better? I don't think we teach them that, do we? I don't remember teaching it.

His newfound love of running--he has to do at least a dozen laps across the upstairs every night before bedtime. As a perk, it also helps wear him out right before bed. Yeah! And it's always a joy to watch his loud, lumbering run--absolutely no grace whatsoever. Maybe he'll find some later on.

His super excitement whenever we start to sing Popcorn Popping or Itsy Bitsy Spider. He can't wait to go through all the hand motions, and every single one is seriously intense! So great.

Isn't parenting a ride? One minute they're cracking us up, and the next we are restraining ourselves from putting them up for adoption on Craigslist. What a ride! And I must be enjoying it, because I'm near the front of the line for ride #2... just a few more weeks!