Farewell, dear SC

Leaving a place you live and starting afresh is almost always bittersweet. You get both the eagerness of a new adventure and segment of life beginning, but then mourning at the life you used to have and the inevitability of time passing.

When we left Provo, I couldn't wait to get home to South Carolina and live with my family. Now that we have left South Carolina, I am more than ready to move on to new things in Wisconsin. I like to think bigger and better things, but then again, I may be working up Madison in my head to be some sort of Mecca and I do not want to be disappointed so I'm trying to pretend like it won't be as cool as everyone says.

As eager as I was to leave my parents' house and embark again with our small little family, there are many things I will miss, much to my family's surprise, I'm sure. I will miss gong swimming all the time, taking Atticus to the "big boy" and having someone to hold Lu anytime I needed to do something. Living at home was everything and nothing I imagined it would be. I had some notion in my head of freedom with constant babysitters and no bills to pay. I think we actually only ended up going on two dates the entire summer, one to dinner with KK and Byrd, my high school friends turned post-high-school sweethearts, and then once to play games at a local coffee shop (we took Lu, though) with the same couple. We didn't really have many friends there (we made friends with a couple in the ward who had two kids about the same age as ours, but we only hung out a few times) and the location of my parents' house is terrible for going anywhere not by car, which was awful because two babies plus suffocatingly hot car equals most of the time we stayed home. The weather was HOT, so, so miserably hot that you couldn't even walk outside. I forgot how scarred I am from high school and being in all the same places again was just plain weird. I did not like going to Church again at my home ward.

What I will miss is being so familiar with everything. There is something very comforting in that. I will miss my mom cooking Sunday dinner. I'll miss seeing Gigi and having her dote on Tallulah like she is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'll miss having a big, nice, well-equipped kitchen, though I didn't use it nearly as much as I could have, and I didn't really cook the food I enjoy because my family has very different tastes and I didn't want to cook dinner if not for the whole family. I am excited about being able to have my own food and not have to worry about Atticus finding the Oreos/Pop-tarts/etc. but I will miss grocery shopping with my mom at the commissery and going out to eat on occasion.

I'll miss the chance to reconnect with old friends, to play in a warm lake, and of course, the ocean. I love the ocean. I'll miss Benny running up to me and hugging Baby "Tallua" and telling her how gross she smells. I'll miss watching Megan making modern art in her notebook and crazy Gav-O playing old-school Nintendo like it was the greatest invention ever. I'll miss good conversations with Lauren and stealing Allison's clothes. I'll miss Ethan's slightly-obnoxious-still-a-teenager-but-in-college laziness, but also his making of delicious BLTs every morning when he woke up at noon. I'll miss how proud I feel of my mom whenever she comes home from work, even if she claims her job isn't that hard. I still think it's pretty cool she decided to go back to school and get a degree, and she seems to be really good at what she does. I'll miss my dad's crazy dreams about writing a famous movie script, all the while secretly believing that one day he will.

Most of all, I'll miss the fact that the last few months will probably never replicate themselves ever again in our lives. My family is growing up and moving out and moving on. Watching home videos reminded me of the fact that we actually used to live together every day, that we ate dinner together and went to baseball games and laughed and traveled and shared rooms and fought. No matter how different we are now, no matter what paths we might follow and what contrasting lives we may pursue, my family knows me and I hope loves me like nobody else in the world, and for that reason, I will miss living with them.



Thanks for the memories.

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Stay-at-home dads are lame

Right? I mean, come on. They're mainly just to lazy to get a real job and or to have direction in their own lives. Not true. But still I think it.

A few Sundays back a nice woman from Eastern Europe (I think) spoke in church and later on (in the nursery room before sacrament meeting was over=reverence fail) I was talking to her husband. He was going to be staying at home with their little girl while his wife got her doctorate in piano performance. First I had to resist the instinct to say "Oh and what will you be doing?" (he mentioned later that he would be staying at home). I also found myself saddened to realize that he had lost standing in my mind, although subconsciously, for letting his wife decide the direction of his life.

He was really a great guy and obviously had a great deal of love for his family and I was really disappointed by my instinctive response. If I, who am in the exact same situation as he is and am happy with the place that I am going, what if I were on a much more traditional path? Maybe it is some expression of inner self-doubt about my path, and there is some of that, for sure.

However, I feel that a lot bigger part of it is how I've been socialized. Both in my church and my culture I've been taught that the main value of a man is in his ability to provide for his family through employment. Sure, men are expected to help out around the house, but anything more than doing the chores that are hard for a woman due to differences in physical strength, such as home repairs and major landscaping. Everything else they do, i.e. cleaning, cooking or child-rearing, etc. are just bonuses, charitable entries into the woman's realm.

Of course, I would like to say that I don't need any outside confirmation of my path in life, but that simply isn't true. I'm comfortable that God approves of our path (as comfortable as I am about saying anything definitive about God), that it is best for our family and that I have no real desire to pursue a life of nine-to-five monotony. But still, I know people, even people I care about and am close to, will judge me for making the decision to stay home, and that is, of course, inevitable for anyone outside of the established cultural norm. This is sad, but not sad enough to make me want to change my mind.

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Lots of lakes

For those who know Columbia, Lake Murray is kind of a big deal. It's huge and gorgeous and everyone rich has a lake house on it. There is also a public swimming area that you can get into for something like $2 a car, for the simple folk like us. It's right around the corner from my grandma's house in Lexington, so we ventured out one afternoon before heading over to her house for dinner. It was nice, but there were lots of people smoking and it was a little trashy (literally, lots of trash all around including boiled peanut shells from a man eating them on the beach.... gross).

There is a great lake and swimming area out on Ft. Jackson about 15 minutes from my parents' house in Columbia. We've been twice this summer, and both times was so, so fun. It's only open to military families, and it along with other benefits my dad gets has me convinced we need to join the military (it's tempting with Tim's language skills). The first time we went out to the lake, my dad came and got us in and then went grocery shopping with my mom and Tallulah, which was really great because we rarely get just the three of us time with the guy and he loved it. We rented a canoe and stayed out on the lake for an hour then came back in to swim for a few more hours. The water is really clean, and the beach area has tons of imported sand so it's not yucky lake bottom.

The second time, the whole family minus Grammy and the babies went out for a visit. Unfortunately, my mom was watching Lu and Yogi at home and was called in to work so half of the family had to head home. Benny was tired for a nap anyways, and Tim was fine going home too, so Lauren, me, Atticus and her big kids stuck around and played. We also rented a paddleboat for an hour. We got out and after about ten minutes, Gavin was tired and I had to pee, so we called it a day.

Grad school in my future

A few weeks ago I had a dream about grad school. I was in class, and there were lots of really interesting people around and I was talking about my research and everyone asked lots of questions and thought I was really cool.

Kind of a boring dream. You probably wish I was in grad school and then raptors attacked and I was running through the stairwells and hallways of Wisconsin planning an escape route and then aliens landed and ate the raptors for dinner and we all sat down and smoked some hookah.

Sorry to disappoint, but the dream was actually really relevant to this post because of how it has changed my perspective of the future. You see, ever since I applied, was accepted, visited, and decided on Madison, I've been really, really nervous. Nervous I wouldn't fit in (what with my two kids and all), nervous I wouldn't be smart enough, nervous I wasn't suave or confident or well-traveled enough to be a grad student. I was surprised I even got in because it's a really good program, and so many little voices in my head tell me I'm not THAT smart. And after two kids, 99% of the time I simply do not feel all that intelligent. I almost picked Rutgers based on the fact it would be a heck of a lot easier. I dreaded starting because I could just see myself floundering and looking like an idiot in front of my cohort.

But I think this dream was my subconscious telling the other part of my subconscious: "get over it obviously you are smart enough and you will shine!" Ever since I dreamed myself there, the image has imprinted in my mind as the more likely situation, and I have felt a lot more eager to begin. And next week begins class registration and I'm taking: 1) French 2) Feminist Political Theory and 3) Statistics. I love all three of those things so, so dearly. Living at home with six kids, and solely caring for my two kids all day has me all giggly at the thought of being able to go to campus (without a diaper bag!), sit down in a classroom (sans kids!) and have a conversation with intellectual people (without being interrupted!) who also love feminism and politics (no one will think I'm overreacting to sexist memes on Facebook!). What a life.

 

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Blessing Tallulah

In the LDS church, when babies are born, they are given an official name to be placed on the records of the Church and a blessing for their life by a male priesthood holder, usually their father but sometimes grandfathers, uncles, close friends of the family. It is a beautiful tradition, and I found this article online when I was researching baby blessings [also, some funny stories where the dad named the daughter's future husband or told her she would marry a millionaire, etc]. Cait and I love how Margaret Blair Young describes it:

"As an infant, my parents' firstborn, I was taken in my father's arms and given a name and a blessing. There, I was at the center of a priesthood circle. Other men (probably my uncles, though of course I don't remember), joined Dad as he blessed me. They each put one hand under my little body and one hand on the shoulder of the person standing next to them. They literally and symbolically supported me, and joined their faith with my dad's. This circle—a prayer circle, if you will—is a common one in our community...

I suspect my father was tearful at the miracle of my tiny body, and at the responsibility I introduced."

On Sunday, July 15th, Tallulah had her baby blessing at Cait's parents' church. We were going to do in Sacrament Meeting, but Les (Cait's dad) had drill (military stuff) and needed to be there in the morning, so he came on his lunch break and we did it in the bishop's office post-church meetings. It was a little rushed and crowded and Atticus talked the whole time, but it was still a special occasion, and the Spirit was most definitely in attendance. It was a beautiful blessing, and we took some lovely pictures afterwards.

I get chills looking at the happiness on Lu's face, she knew it was her special day

Uncles Ethan and Devin, Bishop Bronson Titus and Poppy also stood in the circle 

Some people might think this is a little weird, but I really want to put the blessing up here for those who weren't able to attend (grandparents, aunts/uncles, close friends), or even for the simply curious of what is said at a Mormon baby blessing:

Heavenly Father. By the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood, and in the name of Jesus Christ, we give this baby a name. The name by which she will be known will be Tallulah Fern Carroll-Browning.

Tallulah, we wish to give you a blessing by this same power, the power of the Melchizedek Priesthood. We bless you that your spirit might be strong, that you might have an understanding of the wonderful power that it is to be a child of our Heavenly Father and Mother. We bless you with an understanding that along with mental, physical and emotional health, that tending to your spiritual health is an important and necessary step in becoming a whole and healthy child of our Heavenly Parents.

We bless you with the understanding that as a daughter of both Heavenly and Earthly parents, you always have someone to turn to that will love you and care for you. Tallulah, we bless you with strength to understand that, through the Spirit, you may make wise and informed choices that will lead you to a full and meaningful life and that you can trust that voice, the Spirit, to lead you on a path that will lead you to your heavenly home.

Tallulah, we bless you with a love for those around you, that through that love you might be a beacon of hope and understanding to those around you that might be experiencing difficulties and trials. Tallulah, we bless you with the love that you will need to reach out to your family and to your friends that they might benefit from the knowledge and the wisdom that you will gain throughout your life.

Tallulah, we bless you with an understanding of the love of your mother. Know that you can trust in her for an example of what is to be a true daughter of our Heavenly Mother and Father.

Tallulah, we leave these blessings with in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Four months

The day we returned from the beach, we celebrated Tallulah's four month birthday. I can't believe she is only four months old. I feel like a year has gone by since she was born. She has an old, wise soul.

She's started sitting up and you can tell she is getting ready for being a real baby. Allison swears she rolled over once, but I'm not convinced. She hates tummy time and isn't too great at lifting her head up that way, but has great control when she is sitting up. She seems very interested in food, but we are holding off a few more months. She is growing like a weed, and though we have no idea what she weighs, she is outgrowing clothes and has gained a few pounds in the past month or so. She loves sitting in her swing and staring at the animals as they turn around on the mobile. We've started putting her in the BOB for running trips with Daddy, and she seems to enjoy it. She loves the beach and playing in the waves. She is starting to grasp things and is slowly figuring out how to get something from her hands to her mouth. Watching her brain working is one of the most amazing feats of humanity. She has incredible concentration and sleeps like a log.

She hates taking a bottle and thinks pacifiers are horrible. She has found her thumb and sucks it occasionally, but not consistently (I keep encouraging it, but Tim tells me not to for fear of future expensive orthodontic care). She has these long, gorgeous fingers and toes, the most luscious lips ever seen on a baby, and one adorable dimple that melts my heart. She smiles easily and cries rarely. She is a little cuddler and will nestle up to anything with a heartbeat.

She loves this the most

Big bow

She loves her car seat

Soulful eyes

Beach vacation

Yesterday we returned from an epic week at the beach with all my family (minus Christopher and Hillary, who had school/work). It was the first time in a long time all the siblings have been together, plus the six cousins and my mom and dad. It was a full house, to say the least. We stayed at a lovely home about 1/2 mile from Litchfield Beach on Pawleys Island. We rented a golf cart and bikes with baby seats, and we spent hours relaxing in the surf every day. Atticus was crazy about it. He loved building sand castles and jumping in the waves and riding in Aunt Allison's big inner tube (meant for river tubing, but worked in the ocean too... except when it flipped on us a few times). He loved it so much that one afternoon, Tim had gone with the big kids and Atticus didn't want to go just then so he stayed home. Well, my mom and Lauren came back from shopping (they did a lot of that) and about twenty minutes later, I realized Atticus was nowhere to be seen. Allison had seen him walk out on the porch but didn't really process that he would walk OFF the porch. I ran downstairs and hopped on a bike and everyone else home followed and did the same.  About 1/4 mile later through the wooded path (the wooded path with alligators in the stream, mostly dead ones, sadly, but alligators nonetheless), I found him in the middle of the street talking with a couple in a car who had stopped to help him find his mommy and daddy again. I could not believe I got so distracted that he got that far by himself. He had put his beach hat on and was going to find dad, he told me when I biked him home (in a basket because in my haste I didn't think to grab the bike with the kid seat). Suffice it to say, we had a long talk about leaving to the beach without an adult...

Tallulah was as pleasant as usual, and she loved feeling the sand between her toes as the waves rushed in and out. I loved having a fellow nursing mother there who I could send Tallulah home with when her boys napped because she could feed her and I could stay for a few more hours at the beach. We even took the kids to Medieval Times one night (I had free tickets) and left her at home with Lauren, and I didn't have to pump a bottle (not like baby sister will take a bottle, so yeah, we are working on that)! It was great. Our little family managed to avoid sunburn almost entirely (Atticus got a little red in the face for a day, and I got burned on one tiny patch on my upper thigh that I missed, Tim got a little toasted one day but his doesn't hurt and fades quickly). I hate it when vacations end so soon, it really was a perfect week and I had forgotten how much I love, love, love the beaches of South Carolina. 

Nothing beats beach all morning, sandwiches for lunch, naps all afternoon, and card games at night. I even managed to squeeze in an hour by myself to read my Kindle while the waves brushed against my legs. It was absolutely glorious. I already miss the sticky, sandy, salty sensations.

"What?"

She did a lot of this

Postpartum Progression Mom would be proud: I dressed very, very modestly (also, my skin is scared of the sun...) 

Yogi wearing Lulu's hat

The cousins are loud... very, very loud 

Bennis the Serious

Nothing like cuddling up with some good books

He actually laid in bed by himself and read for a whole TEN MINUTES. Now if only we could get him to read himself to sleep, we'd be getting somewhere.

Mormons and modesty

Feminist Mormon Housewives is currently having an open debate/forum on discussing modesty with children (oh, FMH, how I love thee!). Mormons have this thing about modesty: they are kind of obsessed. We are taught from a young age that we cover our shoulders, wear shorts to the knee, and GOD FORBID you put on that bikini on your honeymoon.

A fairly popular Mormon Mommy blogger posted a Primary lesson on modesty that she taught in her ward. Besides being culturally-insensitive (those immodest Indians!!), it also presented ideals of modesty that go above and beyond what Church leaders encourage (like swimsuits needing to cover what garments cover rather than simply one-pieces and tankinis). I'm not trying to criticize her approach... no wait, I am. Not because she is teaching her children that. Whatever, you can parent how you wish and dress your daughters like nuns and make them ashamed of their feminine figures. But I'm scared as to what Tallulah will be lectured on when I send her to an LDS Primary when she comes of age and she happens to have someone like this teaching the Sharing Time lesson. Yikes. Tim and I have discussed before where we will draw the line on what we want our children to be taught at Church. In our home, we discuss Heavenly Mother right alongside Heavenly Father (I even change the words to Primary songs when I sing at bedtime), and I am dreading the day they are reprimanded for mentioning Her in a prayer in a public setting. Or what if Tallulah is wearing a sleeveless dress to church when she is 9 during a modesty lesson like this? I'm hoping Mormons who believe things like this are few and far between, but these days, I just don't know.

Instead of enforcing strict rules on shorts-length and swimsuit detail, why don't we encourage self-esteem, the beauty of the human body, the power of our bodies, how strong and healthy they are, dressing practically for the situation (like you wouldn't wear a swimsuit to Church). It seems to me that settling on arbitrary cultural ideals on how we should dress is not that important to Jesus, nor is it that important to teach our children, especially when many of the children probably do not pick out their own clothing.





I mean come on, woman-- Peter Pan's tights?! Really?!??

And I also love these photos someone linked to in the comments on FMH (Abinadi: immodest, King Noah: modest, Stripling Warriors: immodest).

Mormon-Unitarians

After listening to a Daughters of Mormonism podcast a few weeks ago on Unitarian Universalism and their beliefs, Tim and I decided to attend a local congregation of UUs to enhance our Sabbath Day worship. Though I had never attended a Unitarian church before, I vaguely knew about Unitarians as one of my best friends in high school grew up in that church, and her parents were these awesome hippie-granolie parents that you just don't find in the south. After doing a little research in addition to podcasts and blogs about enhancing your Mormonism with Unitarianism, we thought the two would be compatible together. Mormonism has strict doctrines and rituals and hierarchy, whereas Unitarianism is essentially devoid of strict doctrines but preaches values of acceptance, compassion, and tolerance, which is taught in the Mormon church but is oftentimes overlooked in the culture. They essentially think "God is love" and that's all there is to it. Each person in their religion is on a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning."

We headed over post-Sacrament meeting and after Atticus had an hour of nursery (he was ready to leave anyways), and we arrived about ten minutes after their service started. After we got Atticus settled into the nursery (they had a Buzz Lightyear toy, so he had no problem), we settled down with Tallulah in the small chapel during a musical number of "Beautiful"and the sermon soon began (we unfortunately missed the reading of "Ain't I a Woman?") It was given by a guest speaker, a woman from a nearby town that was actively involved in politics, and had a passion for reproductive freedom. At first it was a little unsettling to be talking about contraception, teen sex, and abortion in a church setting, but her words really resonated with me, and she brought up a few issues and perspectives that I had never considered, and her peaceful and rational tone enhanced the message. After the meeting, there was coffee and cookies and fellowship. We spoke with a few people, but didn't stay long because we were hungry and Atticus started making a mess.

Overall, we really liked the service and would probably attend in the future. The UU church in Madison looks amazing, there is a congregation of 2000 (largest in the US) and they meet in a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It's close to where we live, and we will most likely continue to combine our Mormonism with a side of Unitarianism. I'll let Tim offer his perspective at a future time, he has more thoughts about our venture into uncorrelated Mormonism.

Summertime...

and the living is easy...

but not really when you have two little ones.

Though it's not easy, it's certainly been these things: loud, hot, tiring, super fun. I thought it was loud before Lauren and her kids arrived, and compared to now, the house was a downright ashram. Heaven help us, but they are some of the loudest kids I have ever seen [heard]. Atticus* has become a total chatterbox recently too and his vocab is expanding so rapidly we can hardly keep up (by that, I mean 90% of his talking we don't understand). Tallulah has even found her voice lately, and is cooing up a storm.

Tiring: though both my kids sleep 10 hours at night (can I get a: HALLELUJAH!) these days are exhausting! Add in miserably hot weather, lots of walking/swimming/chasing/wrestling, and by the end of the day I can barely stand. I think it is also a function of the icky food I'm eating (burgers, fries, chips, ice cream, potato salad, etc). I need to get better at keeping my body healthy so I can keep up.

Tallulah often can't keep herself up either

Like I mentioned previously, part of the reason we are tired is because it is SO. HOT. And by hot, I mean REALLY hot. Let's take a look at the weekend forecast:

To beat the heat, we plan on swimming in various pools around Columbia. So far, we have hit up Ft. Jackson, Trenholm Park public pool, our cousins' neighborhood pool, the Carroll pool in Gaston, and our bishop's backyard pool (our neighbors also have a pool that looks SO tempting all day long, but we are pretty sure they don't want us hanging around). Atticus did swimming lessons the last two weeks, and he is getting awesome at kicking his legs and will now even go under without freaking out (much).

All swammed out

^{Prior to this heat front, we had a few cool days (you know, low-90s!), and took the opportunity to hit up Riverbanks Zoo for the third time since we've been here.} 

Feeding the lorikeets, Atticus prefers to watch

This bird was way creepy and mean, hence my face

My mom with all her cute grandkids (isn't she gorgeous?)

 Not much else going on around these parts, so this is mostly a boring update for the Utah grandparents and any other friends who happen to care how cute Tallulah is. Coming soon: our conversion to Unitarian Universalists, thoughts on healthcare reform, and my new-found love of pottery.

Dimple!

Hipster oneside

^{* names have been changed for privacy purposes (aka, I'm too lazy to maintain a baby blog anymore... so yeah...)}