Mommy-ness

I saw a video online a few weeks ago that made me lose 4 hours of sleep the night I saw it. That's a pretty impressive feat considering I'm tired preggo woman. But let me first make a confession. Bear with me because it'll all tie in in a second.

I'm obsessed with the USWNT (U.S. Women's National Soccer Team). I've been a fan since I was 14. My yahoo e-mail address is named after the former captain of the USWNT who was a mom, and, at least to my understanding, stopped playing so she could focus on raising her children more.

I look forward to the Olympics and the FIFA Women's World Cup to see all these amazing women play their hearts out. My current fav is forward Abby Wambach--one of the best players in the world. Imagine seeing that running full speed at you. All 5'10 of her:




You get the picture though. I love the game and the team!

So anyway, back to the reason why I lost so much sleep! The video I watched was an interview with U.S. Women's National Soccer Team players Kate Markgraf and Christe Rampone, who both had children while they were on the USWNT, and both came back to play.

Here they are -- Kate and Christine in a post-Olympics shot with their kids:


Here's the sound byte that caused my insomnia:

"I think when you still love to do what you want to do, you don't want to let kids get in the way of that or stop you, because you know you'll always look back with regret."
-Kate Markgraf, U.S. Women's National Soccer Team


Basically the message of the video was "don't let children stop you from your career or your "life." [click here to see the video. At 1:19 is where the discussion begins]

So What?
So, what is it about that quote that made me lose sleep?

First off, that quote by Kate is not anything that she and Christine can, as the only moms on the team, uniquely say. All of the other players on the team (married or not) who don't have kids can say the exact same thing: "I'm not letting kids stop me from my career as a soccer player." Every woman on the USWNT could honestly say that.

So what do I think might be a sound-byte more fitting of their unique position as moms? How about Kate's statement reversed? "Don't let your dreams/career/life stop you from having kids." Now that is a position that can be theirs alone to offer. And it's a much better one! How many women today can really claim that having and raising kids was their #1 priority and that's what they devoted their time to? What an honor to be able to say that.

Can't Blame Them
I honestly can't blame any woman for taking the view that kids should come only when you're done doing what you want to do. I was totally on the same page not too long ago. It sounds appealing. Anyone who knew me growing up, or heck, even when I was grown up, knew that I did NOT like kids. I tried to avoid babysitting at all costs. When I was engaged to Nathan I apparently told him that I thought kids were, "puking balls of flesh." He loves telling people that. :) (Now I think that pregnant women fit that description better...)

But, one of the reasons I wanted to start a family was because this world needs good, stalwart, "warriors" to fight off all the immorality and sneaky-but-believable false ideas out there, and help others see them too. Our happiness and our society's stability depends on it.

I used my artistic abilities to show what I want mine and Nathan's little "child-warriors" to be like:

How do you get kids who can discern between the good and the bad? I think parents have more to do with it than we think! I knew that by having Nathan as a dad, my kids would be in good hands. And even though I didn't really like the idea of being a mom, I knew I'd have a good man beside me. At this point, my feelings went something like this:

wife = fun!; mom = slave + ick.

(On a random side note, if I were to solve for "mom" in that last equation, I think it'd be mom - slave - ick = nothing. Hmmm....what does it mean????!)

Well, along came Avery, and that's when it all changed. I still love being a wife, but being a Momma has made being a wife even more enriching than I ever thought possible. So now, it's:

wife = gnarly; mom = super duper cool.

And what could be better than that?

Don't tell Avery that we're raising her to be a "warrior" though because that might give her nightmares. Maybe you can tell her when she's older, like maybe 6.

I am now stepping off my soapbox.

Gypsy Horses!

I read my last post. Wow. Boring. So, I'm writing a new one so you don't have to go read the previous post. Unless you really, really, really want to. But if you do, you'll probably end up thinking that I'm a boring person.

Well, I guess that video of Avery wasn't boring.

So this is a real post that explains what I do now with my days, sick and in bed.

1. Blogs. I check my blog list every twenty minutes to see if any of my friends have posted a new blog post. Ya'll don't post nearly enough. I enjoy at least four posts per week, people! Jeesh.

2. FB stalking. I stalk people I don't really even care that much about on Facebook through status updates, notes, posts, pictures. It usually starts out with a benign thought like, "Hmmm...I haven't seen this person in a decade. I wonder what they're doing..." Then I waste unprecedented amounts of time finding out. If there's not enough info on their profile page to tell where they are and what they're doing with their life now, I read past comments on their wall and check out their pics to help me piece together whatever info I can.

3. KSL. I check KSL.com's "Free" section in the classifieds every hour.

4. ESPN.com. I check out ESPN's site to see who won NFL and MLB games. Why? I don't know. I don't really care that much. For some reason, I all of the sudden have a substantial amount of pride for my Minnesota teams.

5. Email. I check ALL my email accounts at least ten times per day. I've never gotten so excited over a massive group chain email before. And what's worse, I actually read it. (Luckily I haven't gotten to the point where I actually pass it on...yet) :/

6. Food. I eat a lot. Today I've eaten raisin bran, a bagel, an orange, prunes, pineapple, pizza, OJ, milk, ice water (it HAS to be ice water, otherwise it makes me want to throw up), a Cafe Rio burrito, cheerios, a yogurt, vanilla wafers, lemon drops, and ginger snaps. And, I can't eat the same thing twice...so I spend 90% of my day thinking about what I could possibly eat next (the other 10% is spent Facebook- and blog- stalking people).

7. Pointless news articles. I read lots of useless news articles. This usually leads me to some long internet search strand where I go from site to site trying to find out more of that certain topic I read about. This normally isn't a bad thing, but considering how much time I spend doing it, it is for me. For example, I read a news article about gypsies this morning. Then I had to look up pictures of gypsies on Google Images because I wanted to see what real gypsies look like nowadays. This is what I found:


And this one, too. What is this? A gypsy horse??


And of course:


Hmmm...I don't think I learned anything about gypsies today.

Anyway, that's how I spend my days. I'm sure there's more to add to this list, but it weirds me out just reading it. I'm now one of those strange adults who spends most of their day on the internet doing nothing.

So, I've decided I'm going to stop being addicted. I don't know if I can just only get on once a day, but I'll be on less. This is a nice way of letting lots of random people know so I have some sort of accountability.

What will I do instead? I'm going to read more books (I've only read two since I've been sick). I'm going to study for my social work clinical licensure exam that all my classmates from grad school have already taken and passed.

Oh, and I designed my friend's business card who is starting a floral design business in Logan. She picked the image, and I used my very limited knowledge of Adobe Illustrator to put the card together. I had fun doing that. Here's how it turned out:


Anyway, I'm going to do productive things now. Maybe I'll even write a report on gypsies.

Knights of Mayhem

This actually happened at the end of the school year last year, and I never posted it. This traveling troupe called "Knights of Mayhem" came to the school Nathan teaches at and did some really cool stuff. What is "cool stuff" you ask? Well, jousting, sword fighting, and all that other medieval jazz you see in movies!


The lead guy won the world championships in lancing and was a former Navy SEAL. He's the real deal. I think he said his horse's name was "Buddy the Weiser." See why?


I came with Avery to see some of the action. I love when Nathan has cool assemblies at his school! It's so fun!


The Weather was cold and rainy. Most of the poor kids didn't bring any coats to school because it had been warm earlier in the morning. Avery didn't seem to mind the rain; it was the cheering she didn't really like.

Avery Doesn't Want to be a Princess


























Jousting


This lady had a great view of the action!


FREEDOM!!!















The Assembly Inside

Sword Fighting


Heavy Lance


Holly the Guinea Pig


A Very Heavy Lance



















PSST! Kids! Look interested!

A Bun in the Oven

Today I made these really good dinner rolls, and I thought it'd be fun to share the recipe with everyone.

Hahah, just kidding!! Yes, I'm pregnant! :) And I won't give you that recipe until you're older. But, we think the baby should be coming in April. :) That means Avery and Baby will be 23 months apart. Oh, and this post has zero pictures. Sorry!

We're so excited, and I was a little nervous about getting uber-sick with this pregnancy like I did with Avery. As it turns out, I don't think I'm as sick as I was last time. But, I'm pretty darn sick and have been in bed for the last 2 weeks, but my Mom has been here taking care of me and Avery every day! She did this for my last pregnancy, too! She's such an angel. I think Avery wears her out because she's so active now and gets in to EVERYTHING. But, my mom is a trooper and has been such a blessing. Thanks mom!!!


Nathan's parents got here this evening and will be here for the next two weeks, too. We'll be having the Richardson family reunion in a week and a half, and we get to host it at our house (because now we actually have a place big enough to host it!). We'll have 25 people here for 4 days! We can't wait!

Food, Glorious, Food!
I also had a wonderful experience tonight. It's funny that being pregnant makes food taste either 10 times worse or 10 times better. Well, we went to one of Nathan's book design clients' house in Salt Lake and he had garden tomatoes and honey comb fresh from the hive (which I had never had before). I felt like puking the whole drive up to Salt Lake, but when I got there and ate that food, it was sooo heavenly. I haven't been able to eat tomatoes since I've been pregnant, but these garden tomatoes tasted better than any garden tomatoes I'd ever had before. And, amazingly, I didn't feel like throwing up for the next 30 minutes after I ate them! I also decided that I want to have bees on our future property so we can eat fresh honeycomb. It just dissolves in your mouth. Yum.

Anyway, I spend 90% of my day thinking about food, and didn't have much to write about for this post, but heck, food's always an easy topic when you're preggo!

Piano Tuning
In other non-food related news, one of the men in our congregation at church is a piano tuner (he teaches at BYU and tunes all their pianos, too). He was teaching a 6-week course on piano tuning, and asked me if I was interested in taking it because one of his students dropped out after the first class. The only downside is that it is each Saturday from 8:00 am to 10:00 am; two hours!!! Ugh. Nathan was kind enough to come with me and make a Jamba Juice run in the middle of class for me. Despite the early hours, it's been really fun, and much more challenging than I thought.

I was surprised to find that you don't need to have a "good ear" for pitch if you want to tune pianos. All you really need to listen to the beating between strings and intervals. Let me give you an example of some of the stuff we have to memorize before next week. This should be fun more my music major friends to read.

Equal Temperament intervals
Wide intervals: 3rd, 6th, 4th
Narrow: 5th, m3rd
Pure and/or slow beating intervals: Unison, octave, 4th, 5th
Fast: 3rd, 6th

Checking a Note with a 5th
This is the 6th - 10th, so M6th > M10th (M6th beats faster than the M10th). A major 6th below the bottom note of a 5th makes a M10th with the upper note of the 5th. If the M6th is faster than the M10th, then the 5th will be narrow as required in equal temperament. All 5ths in the Temperament area should be on the narrow side of pure but almost with out beats.


There's basically a bijillion of these rules. He says we need to practice these on our own pianos at least an hour a day. Our swamp cooler has made our piano so out of tune because of the humidity in a matter of two months. So, I get to practice and make it really out of tune before learning how to tune it back to normal.

Nathan's First Expo Class
Also next week is another family history expo in Sandy. Because I won't be able to help him out with the booth as much, we're getting a hotel next to the expo center so I have a home base to go lay down/throw up. :) That's exciting because I don't think we've stayed in a hotel room since our honeymoon! Too bad it's during a time when I feel icky. :( Oh, well. It'll be interesting doing this while I'm sick, but Nathan is presenting at this one on Automatic Stylesheets in Word, and he's pretty excited. (See the most recent post on www.richardsondesign.org for the juicy details)

Well, that's about it. I can't wait to update with pics from the reunion! Mmmm...I'm already thinking about the food! :)

Avery is Walking!..and More Vacation

As a continuation of our vacation travels update, we also went to Las Vegas and Arizona.

Vegas
We went to the venetian, which was pretty darn cool. I wonder how much the Gondola singers get paid. What a cool job that'd be.


This floor does some funky things with my eyes:


We went to this fun store with a bunch of costumes and masks. The costume on display was a man's suit and woman's dress for $5,000 each. Pocket change, right? It was this beautiful, ornate, fancy-looking, white material with gold trim for both costumes. The man's costume even came with a cool top hat. But, we weren't allowed to take a picture of it, so we didn't.

Here's a really cool dress in the shop. You get the idea, eh? They had a bunch of them.




The Venetian


We went over the Hoover Dam, too. They're in the middle of constructing a new bridge for traffic, and here you can see the big concrete bridge in the background. It's much larger up-close. From what I heard, the longest legs on the bridge are the length of a football field.


Arizona
In Arizona, we went to visit our friend Dana, who used to be a nun during her teenage years in a Buddhist temple! She showed us her wooden fish (a hollow block) that she rhythmically taps on with a mallet during meditation as she recites sutras. The bell is to signal the end of meditation. Avery loved it!


Dana's mom, who only speaks Chinese, enjoyed babbling with Avery on the phone while Avery played with the Wooden Fish.


Dana also took us to a meditation center that she goes to and we got to meet some really nice people. We even got to participate in a session.


Our Survival-of-the-Fittest Baby
Before we headed back to Utah, we stopped at a grocery store to get some produce. I put the bag of produce in the back seat, next to Avery. After we had been on the road for about an hour, she got a little fussy, so I was about to go back and feed her, but then she stopped, so I just stayed in the front seat. However, when I got out to fill up with gas, and checked on her, she had some red stuff all over her face and clothes. As I looked closer, I saw the little core of a tomato. She had pulled the bag up to her lap, got the tomato out, and eaten it like an apple! It was so funny!

I decided to move the rest of the edible produce away from her, except for the bananas, because she didn't know how to peel them. Again, about another hour later, she got a little fussy, but then stopped. She only had drunk a few cups of milk thus far. Well, when we pulled up to our driveway, imagine our surprise when we saw this:



I have no doubt now that if we lost her in the jungle, she'd have a pretty good chance of surviving. :)

She also started walking last week! She has been able to stand on her own for a month or two now, but refused to walk without holding on to something. One afternoon last week, I set her down to get something, and she was just standing there. I offered my hand to her about a foot in front of her, and she took some steps to grab it. I moved back further and further until I ran into the wall! She took like 20 steps all at once!

This video is about 1 minute after she first walked up in our bedroom. I had to bring her downstairs to show Nathan.

Blanding Isn't Boring

Well, we've traveled about 3,500 miles in the last 3-4 weeks. The next few posts will outline our vacation! We went to southern UT, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada. We had a blast!

Blanding
We went to Blanding last month to visit family. In Blanding, we went to a dinosaur museum, an indian museum, and Avery even got to go swimming for the first time in the city pool! She loved it, although she probably swallowed a bit too much water (hence our new Blogger background). :) She liked swimming so much, that we ended up getting her a swimsuit afterward. This is the pre-swimsuit picture. :)





One morning, Nathan looked out the window and asked, "Are there supposed to be horses running through the backyard?" Aunt Dianne does not own horses. So she went out to round them up:



We went out to try to catch them, but to no avail. They ended up ruining the grass in my Aunt's and Grandma's yard. Eventually the owner was able to get them and bring them back to his house. He said that his 10-year old daughter had opened the fence and let them loose. :) Oops. See Nathan's arms outstretched below? He was trying to play Red Rover with them. (Is that only a Minnesota game, or do other children outside of MN play it?)



Here's us not catching them.


We also went hiking up a beautiful canyon with my dad, aunt, and uncle! It was about 2 miles up to the waterfall. Boy, am I out of shape. The trail had this really fun tunnel we had to go through.


Avery didn't like it much. She had to go through on her back most of the way. :)


We discovered that if we took her through on Nathan's back in the baby backpack, she would probably hit her head on the low ceiling:


Here's Nathan posing. I think he thought I was talking a picture instead of a video. :)


We also went to this fun park in Blanding with my parents. Here's Grandma with Avery. Avery is happy because she is holding a cell phone. May this phase of life pass quickly.


Here's grandpa.


Avery didn't think the slide was all that great. It was reallllly hot. Poor Nathan probably has third degree burns in places where it hurts. :)


The teeter totter kept her attention for a few minutes before she tried to wriggle out of my arms to get to the ground!


We love to bathe Avery outside during the summer. It makes less of a mess, and she loves the pool! My parents got it for her for her 1st birthday. Thanks Mom and Dad!