Tuesday, September 30, 2008

And he's off...

Logan has finally taken his first "crawls"! Last night as Brent & I were running around getting stuff ready for the next day Logan decided that he just had to have Brent's laptop computer cord that was dangling from the chair a couple feet in front of him. As I turned around, our little acrobat was on all fours and finally crawled toward the cord (of all things...he was surrounded by a bizillion very entertaining baby toys AND the dog with his toys; but, he wanted a computer cord). So our life is now about to change I'm afraid...baby gates up and things put away!!

You would have thought that he had made it to the moon and back by our reaction (he is 10 months after all; Brent was getting a little concerned, but I have been very content). Logan kept looking at us very confused when he would crawl because of our reaction & then he would just giggle after he realized that he was the entertainment. I unfortunately didn't get pics b/c my battery was dead, but we did get video. However, I'm not that high-tech yet (we barely know how to use the video camera), so I'll have to post that another day (if ever).

Brutus on Display



Logan is napping for a minute so I thought I'd blog a little instead of vacuum (much more fun; this has been very theraputic for me lately). So we finally picked up our OSU season tickets on Friday and ended up having to stand in line for ONE HOUR to get them...the buckeyes are crazy! But we spent the time wisely (at least Logan & I, Brent was in line) doing a little shopping and then afterwards going to look at the "Brutus on Display". For all of you non-Buckeyes, Brutus is our mascot (a nut) and they've had this display up for a couple months now. It's Brutus dressed up as all sorts of different people. Out favorite was Archy & Coach Tressel.



Then next day, Brent and I actually got to go to the game. My dear friend Lynne took Logan for the day (ALL DAY) and Brent & I had a blast back to pre-baby days. This year our tickets are actually pretty good despite being in the south stands...we are only 14 rows up from the field. It was really fun to be that close and see all the action. I think we're going to end up going to a few more games than we normally would...(ie MICHIGAN!!). As always, pictures to recap our weekend.




In the second picture Laurenitis is looking at me (#33)!!





TOUCHDOWN!!



Go Bucks!




Carmen Ohio with Coach Tressel.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Bad wife or just a busy one? By Orson Scott Card

I thought this was so cute I'd actually go ahead and post it. The link is below if you'd like to check out his column.


Bad wife or just a busy one?

By Orson Scott Card
Thursday, Sep. 25, 2008

I wondered if my wife had a kind of Joan Crawford thing going on when she told me, about six years into our marriage, that she could not live with the idea of my taking my shirts to a professional laundry.

"What is it?" I asked. "The plastic bags? We can tie them in knots so the kids can never play with them."

"It's not the plastic bags!" Kristine looked so miserable. I decided to cheer her up with humor.

"The wire hangers?" I asked, pointedly.

Since this was only a few years after "Mommy Dearest," she got the joke. It didn't cheer her up at all. "You think I'm some kind of monster."

"No," I said. "I don't. I think you're a very busy woman, doing things that the whole family needs you to do."

The list of what she was doing really was quite remarkable. Our then-youngest child was born with cerebral palsy, and Kristine was taking care of him along with our other two children -- and handling the family finances, and dealing with scheduling and transportation, and anything that required making a list and remembering 10 minutes later that there was such a list and where it had been put.

The traditional division of labor was not for us. I had vowed to myself before I even proposed to her that there would never be a job so loathsome, tedious or difficult that my wife could do it and I couldn't. I could clean a toilet, wash and dry dishes, cook a meal, and vacuum a floor (not in that order, of course).

When she handled the check writing, the checks went where they were supposed to go and did what they were supposed to do. When I wrote checks, they often found their way to the Great Banking Trampoline. Our lives became so much better when I no longer carried the checkbook. Ever.

And while our firstborn loved the lullabies his mommy sang to him, when it came to seriously trying to go to sleep, that was daddy's job. From infancy on, he needed a deep baritone voice to fall asleep to. (In my years of teaching, I've found that many children and adults share this trait. I'm always happy to oblige.)

In my son's case, getting him to sleep was a long, long labor. I spent years lying on the floor of his room every night, with a little slant of light from the hall letting me see and grade student papers or stories that I was going to review, and all the while, hour after hour, I'm singing the only song that he'd accept, "Away in a Manger," over and over, in every season of the year. All versions, all verses.

It was my job because he would accept no substitutes. He has no memory of this, though it persisted till he was 5. But I still dream it.

We divided the labor according to my mom's and dad's old slogan: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." (None of us knew that it was an old Communist precept.)

When it came to my shirts, though, I ran into a wall of irrationality.

Because, you see, my wife had internalized the idea that a good Mormon wife irons her husband's shirts.

"So let me see if I understand this," I said. "You can't let me take my shirts to the cleaners, even though we can easily afford it, because if I do, it will mean you're a bad wife."

"Yes," she said unhappily.

"So the shirts pile up in the laundry room until there are 30 shirts there and I have to buy a new one. Or iron them myself. My mother taught me how. I have the skill. Only I don't want to iron them, I want to take them to the cleaners. Why won't you let me?"

"But if you take your shirts to the cleaners, it will mean that I've failed as a wife!"

"To whom will it mean this?" I asked. "Not to me. Not to the kids. Who else will know?"

"It'll mean that to me!" she wailed. "I know I'm being irrational, but that's how it feels."

"It also feels like a colossal waste of your time to iron them, and that's why you don't do it," I said, "because at any given moment on any day of any week of any year, you have something better to do than iron any shirts of mine."

"But if the other women in the ward found out that I ... "

And in that moment, she knew and I knew that I had won. I gloated immediately. "I thought we prided ourselves on making our own division of labor based on what worked in our marriage."

Glumly she nodded.

"Right now I own 30 shirts, all of which are in the laundry room, most of them clean and waiting to be ironed. Other men don't have to own 30 shirts in order to have a hope of a clean, ironed shirt to wear."

"Go," she said. "Take the shirts. Have them washed and pressed by the pros."

You'd have thought it was 1870 and she was giving me permission to take a plural wife.

Skip a few years. Now we shall talk about bread.

I grew up on homemade bread. There was no better food in all the world -- no, not even a spice cake with penuche icing for my birthday, not even pistachio ice cream in Brazil or France or Italy -- than my mother's bread, white or wheat, when it was still so fresh out of the oven you could barely slice it, eaten in thick slabs full of melting butter.

If they don't serve that in the celestial kingdom, I'm not going. Not that I expect my mother to bake bread every day in heaven. Once a week will do.

My wife knew this. But she is not a bread baker.

Don't misunderstand. Kristine is a great cook. She makes perfect pie crust every time. Her gravy always tastes perfect and never has lumps. And she never serves me Jell-O or anything involving Cool Whip. But for one reason or another, she never learned to make bread.

So when, in the late 1980s, I turned up with a breadmaker, she didn't view it as a cool piece of cutting edge technology. She saw it as an insult to her Mormon wifehood.

Because, just as Mormon wives had to iron their husband's shirts, they apparently also had to bake bread for their families.

"But you don't bake bread," I pointed out helpfully.

"Because I'm a terrible wife!"

"You're a wonderful wife who doesn't bake bread. Every now and then I'd like a loaf of hot fresh bread. Making bread is a lot of work and neither of us has time to do it or even time to learn. But this machine already knows how. Let's let the machine bake bread for us."

I think the machine has made two loaves of bread since 1989. Why? Because we both know that when the breadmaker comes out of the corner of the kitchen counter, my wife feels like a failure.

So we buy all our bread at Great Harvest Bread Co. It's almost as good as my mother's. If you toast it or nuke it, you can get butter to melt on it.

Somehow buying good healthy bread from a bakery is something a good Mormon wife can tolerate. But at least one good Mormon wife can't let a machine bake bread for her.

O my fellow Saints, ye males and ye females! Hearken to my voice!

There are so many ways to be a good Mormon wife. They involve taking all the talents and all the time and all the means that God has given you and using them to serve others, especially your family.

The key phrase is that you use the talents God has given you. And you use the time that you actually have.

Not everybody is good at everything. I can't manage money. Kristine can't write novels. So I write the books and she pays the bills.
Not every possible use of your time is as important as every other use. Kristine didn't have time to take care of our kids' needs (including the handicapped one), do her church callings, run our business, and learn to make bread and iron my stupid shirts.


Here's what a good Mormon wife does: Whatever must be done for the good of her family.

Here's what a good Mormon wife does not do: Beat herself up because she can't do every good thing that she's seen other Mormon wives do. There is no article of faith or temple recommend interview question dealing with shirt-ironing or bread-baking or even money-managing.

We all have our own marriages, our own talents, our own lives. Keep the commandments, be kind to each other and provident and wise with your children.

After that, whatever you do is what Good Mormon Wives and Husbands do; and whatever you don't do is obviously something that you don't have to do to be a Good Mormon Spouse.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Another Trip to California

Logan is becoming our frequent flyer. We made another trip out to California last week because Brent had a few interviews scheduled(yep, for a big boy job). One at USC which went awsome and could potentially be a good opportunity for him to start making some connections in the area. The other one was in San Diego just down the block from the Chargers stadium. That one was a little disappointing becuase the practice was not very nice to say the least. Anyways, it's still VERY early on, so the search continues. But Logan and I managed to tag along so we could visit with the fam. The plain ride was a little more challenging this time because we have a VERY wiggly little man on our hands and he does not like to sleep when there is so much going on:( But we made it there in one piece and I don't think we made any of the passengers want to jump off the plane (thank heavens Logan is such a flirt, he's able to get away with a lot)!! Just some pics to recap our trip.

@ The airport preparing for the loooong flight.


Logan's first time on the trampoline...he loved it.


Logan wasn't so sure about the tramp once his wild & crazy uncle JT climbed on.


Loving the swing!


Logan loves going out to dinner with Papa!


Logan want's to be just like his Uncle Erik...a track star. He's already practicing!


Nonni, Uncle Erik, and Logan


Logan loved to look out the window on the airplane; especially as we passed through clouds.


Almost home!


Are we there yet??????????? I think we're done flying for a while!

Our bathroom is finished

Ok, most of our summer udates on our condo are complete...hurray! Now we can sit back and enjoy Buckeye season (and maybe just a little house work here and there). Our upstairs shower was pretty much our last BIG project (there's a never ending list of small ones). I kinda took this upon myself to do because Brent did not seem too motivated...I can't really blame him since he did just finish our kitchen and he's kinda in school full time. Anyways, I went to Home Depot/Lowes and got all of the supplies (I even inquired about a tile cutter in the rental dept- the guy thought I was out of my mind). I successfully got all of the materials home and moved forward with the demo of the old shower. It felt awsome to pound all the old nasty tile off the wall (well, not so much the next day, but at the time). Unfortunately after I got all the old tile off I discovered a little mold in one of the corners (GROSS). So I called Brent to tell him I was going to cut the old dry wall out and put new backer board in...and he promptly told me not to touch ANYTHING and that he would be home any minute!! Brent became closely involved in the project after that! My handy hubby replace the nast backer board, built in great little cubbies for storage and installed new hardware. I was pretty much in charge of placing tile while he cut. All in all, the project went fairly smoothly & I'm fully confident that I can retile our next bathroom (not in this house) all by myself. Here are pics from the project.