Back to Studying

Hellooo world! I am almost done hibernating. I promise. I've even found my camera USB cord so I can download more pictures. But first, I "get to" (how's that for optimistic?) take the Clinical Social Work Licensure Exam on Wednesday, Dec. 22. It's something I could have taken right after I graduated last year, but Avery came a week after I graduated, and we moved, then we moved 4 months later, then I started managing a trailer park, so I wasn't really focused enough to take it! :)

But now that things had settled down a bit, I realized that now is better than when I have another newborn in a few months! I've been studying for the last two months, and have really started to buckle down this past month. On Saturday, Nathan took Avery all day and I studied for six hours! I usually am only able to get 1-2 hours in per day during Avery's nap, so I was really grateful for Nathan's wonderfulness! Here's a pic of us from last Christmas in CA. :) That's as good as it'll get until post-test blogging.




Then, yesterday, Sarah took her all day, and I got another 6 hours of studying in! I'm starting to get a feel for the exam and how the questions work. And, my practice exam scores have been improving, although they're not at where they need to be. After studying for so long, I think my brain turns to mush at the end of the day! I'll be soooo happy when this is over. I thought that when I graduated from grad school that I'd never have to take another test again. I was wrong. But, I can safely say, that if I pass this exam (that has a 75% passing rate), THAT will be the LAST test I ever have to take. I think.

What does it mean if I pass? It means I get to go from being "Jelaire Richardson, MSW" (Masters in Social Work) to being "Jelaire Richardson, CSW." (Clinical Social Worker) Then, after 4,000 hours (two years full-time) of clinical supervised work (preferably doing marriage/individual/family therapy), I'll finally be at "LCSW," which is "Licensed Clinical Social Worker," and that's where I want to end up some day. They call it "getting your 'L'." It probably won't be soon though. At least not until my family is grown. But, I'm ok with that. It just means I get to be their little therapist first. :)

The test is a 170-question, 4-hour long, multiple choice test that covers mental health diagnoses in little vignettes, statistics (my least favorite), theories, modes of treatment for disorders, substance abuse treatment, proper medication for mental disorders, communication, supervision in an agency, ethics, etc. Here are three typical questions from the last practice exam I took. It's time to test your social worker skills:

__________________________________________________________________
1. A 9-year-old boy lives at home with his remarried mother, stepfather, and three-year-old half-sister. The boy is sometimes ignored and mistreated by both his mother and stepfather. The treatment does not rise to the level of severe abuse, but the situation is worsening and the boy is beginning to show signs of emotional disturbance. The stepfather seems to resent the boy's presence in the home and has little insight into his own behavior. Both parents claim they do not wish to place the boy. After failing to improve the situation by working with the boy's mother and stepfather, what strategy should the child welfare worker recommend for the boy's welfare?

A. Temporary foster home placement to prevent further mistreatment, while the parents receive treatment
B. Permanent separation of the boy from his family as the best means of preventing his continued exposure to the unsatisfactory pressures in the household.
C. Placement of the boy and a stem warning to the parents that similar action will be taken on behalf of the younger child should the situation warrant.
D. Temporary placement of the boy with a foster family until the stepfather is no longer in the household.


2. A seventeen-year-old male high school student is referred to a social worker in a mental health agency by the school counselor. He has a history of minor delinquency, suspensions from school, and truancy. Although his parents support him financially, they have withdrawn emotional support, saying he is not welcome to remain at home after graduation. They are not interested in participating in therapy with their son. Rather, they are anxious for him to finish school, join the army, and leave home. To help the boy best, the social worker should:

A. help the boy develop some insight into his feelings and behavior with the goal of
preparing him for independent living.
B. Agree with the boy that his parents are delinquent in their responsibilities toward him and help him accept the situation.
C. insist on family therapy, to help the boy and his parents deal with their feelings and
reality problems.
D. stress the parent's responsibility to remain responsible for their son even after graduation.

AND....


3. Sally is a 44-year-old nurse who has had several brief extramarital affairs during her 20-year marriage. A year ago, she was involved in a long-term affair that ended when she was diagnosed with colon cancer that required a temporary colostomy. Despite successfully reversing the colostomy and returning to normal functioning, making a good recovery from cancer, and having a positive recommitment to her marriage, Sally is confused as she finds herself quite depressed. She makes an initial appointment with the cancer center social worker and asks for a treatment recommendation. The social worker should suggest:

A. that Sally join a cancer support group.
B. that despite re-stabilizing her health and her marriage, she would benefit from
individual therapy for depression.
C. that Sally and her husband should enter marital therapy to work on their longstanding problems.
D. that Sally's strength in coping with cancer and in recommitting to her marriage shows that she can do well without professional intervention.

__________________________________________________________________
Wasn't that so FUN??!! Yeah, 170 questions like that, and I start thinking things like, "I don't care if Martha's schizophrenic husband is torturing their hamster. It's just a pet. I'd tell her just to deal with it and be grateful it's not her." Haha, just kidding, but it does wear on your brain.

Anyway, the answers for the questions above are 1.A, 2.A, and 3.B. How'd you do? The frustrating part is reading some of the rationale for their answers. Sometimes I completely disagree with how they would've handled the situation. Some of the answers are pretty liberal (the three above were good, fair, questions, though), but I guess that's one of the things I'm learning by taking these practice exams: how to answer the questions like they want me to.

Ok, well, I'm off to studying again!

And it's a....

It's a puppy!!! Oh, wait. No, it's not:


20 Week Ultrasound
I had my 20-week ultrasound last week, and we know what we're having. Can you tell from the pic below?

Yeah, well, me either. :) But, it's a BOY!!! Yay! :) We can't wait! I think Nathan and I were both hoping for another girl so Avery could have a little sister to play with, but this pregnancy was so different, I wondered if it was a boy. It felt natural from the beginning to call it "he," and I had several dreams that it was a boy. Granted, those dreams weren't "prophetic" by any means (just more strange pregnancy dreams), but we both kinda felt that it'd be a boy. We're excited to get lots of boy stuff. Hopefully between the girl stuff for Avery, and the boy stuff for baby #2, I won't ever have to go shopping again for future kids! :)

And what the heck is up with the Jelly Beans in the background? Well, I've been craving Laffy Taffy like CRAZY lately! I can't eat enough of it. And, since Blogger didn't have a Laffy Taffy background, this was the closest I could find.

Where is My Camera USB Cord?
I really will post pictures of us, but I can't find the cord that connects the camera to the computer. It's been lost for awhile, but I'm sure one of these days I'll uncover it! Until then, you'll just have to deal with not seeing Avery's cute face for a little while.

I'm feeling much, much, MUCH better than I was feeling a few weeks ago. Compared to my pregnancy with Avery, this one has been almost as close to "normal" as I could probably get!

My Girly-Girl
It's been so fun lately to watch Avery develop this little personality of hers. She really is very girly. And I really have no idea where she got that from. She loves her doll that Grandma and Grandpa Lemmon got her a few months ago. She has to have it when she goes to sleep. She calls it "baba" for "baby." She doesn't like when things get on her hands or fingers. One morning it took us nearly an hour to eat breakfast, because when she picked up some egg to eat it, there were a few bits of egg left on her fingers, and she would start to panic if it was left on there for too long. That meant that I got to wipe her hands off after every bite she took. :) Luckily that doesn't happen every morning! We've been teaching her how to wipe her hands on her bib so that we don't always have to wipe her hands for her. She also needs to have her fork on her highchair tray turned right-side up before she'll pick it up to take another bite. If it's turned over, she'll drop everything to turn it the "right way." She also has always been a thumb sucker, so when she sits in my lap with her blanket, she sucks her thumb and rubs the fingers of her other hand back and forth on the "rough side" of her blanket. It's cute how she likes the feel of it on her finger tips.

Avery + Music = Love
She LOVES music. She can't stand playing with her toys unless she has music she can hum, dance, and sing to. Oh, and man, can she move those hips! For some reason I don't really listen to my old popular music anymore, but I have lots of classical CD's that she loves. I'm hoping that it'll rub off on her when she's older, and she'll want to play a stringed instrument. :) She knows the words for guitar, piano, violin, and xylophone.

The Little Bookworm
It's crazy how quickly she picks up on language now. She still doesn't say the words she originally learned doing sign language (she still signs "book" if she wants a book), but she'll say new words all the time. Her favorite thing to do is read. Her current favorite books are

and


We honestly spend about 2-3 hours a day "reading." She picks a book, sits on my lap, and she'll spend the whole time just pointing to things while I tell her what the word is. On one page, she learned about seven new words (camera, letter, picture, scarf, etc) and when I quizzed her back asking her to point to each one, she got them all right. Children's brains are amazing! If someone would have done that to me when I was still learning Dutch, there's no way I would've remembered what each item was after telling me only once. She's even started to dabble saying two-word phrases like "hot fire," and "bye daddy."

My "Oops" Moment
Speaking of "hot" things, about a month or two ago, I had boiled some water for some herbal tea, and had poured it into my mug. Tension Tamer is sooo good if you haven't tried it:

I left the mug within reaching distance of her fingers on the counter, told her it was hot, and not to touch it. I walked five feet away to grab a spoon, and she grabbed the mug and it poured all down her arm and her belly. I felt sooo bad. She cried for about 30 minutes while we stripped her clothes off and put a frozen package of veggies on her arm. The next day, sure enough, she had boils on her arm. :( Poor girl. We had to put a bandage on her arm for the next two weeks, which she hated wearing! Needless to say, she knows what "hot" means now. She won't get near something when I tell her it's hot.

So that's about all the updates. Hopefully I'll find my cord soon so I can download all of my pics and videos. When I do download everything, it will be a very long post!

Jelaire, Jelaire, Jelaire, and Jelaire

No, this post isn't about how self-absorbed I am! :)

I've had many people ask me where I got my name, Jelaire, from. Some have been people I knew, others have been complete strangers who have contacted me online. There have been several other "Jelaires" who have asked me if I knew the origin of our name. All of the ones that I've talked to could trace their story back to my grandmother, Jelaire Katherine Simpson. But they never knew the story of how the name came to be.

I wanted to dedicate this post to one of the many legacies she left behind: her name.

The First-born Daughter Chain
Here is a quick look at how the tradition got started. The name is always passed down to the firstborn daughter. Below is the list of generations of Jelaires:
Jelaire Katherine Chandler Simpson (my grandmother)
Jelaire Christine Simpson Lemmon (mother)
Jelaire Christine Lemmon Richardson (me)
Jelaire Avery Richardson (my daughter)

No Coincidence
When Avery was born, my Grandma Simpson, who was 88 years old, flew to Utah from Texas to see Avery and attend my baby shower. When she arrived, she insisted on being driven to our house 40 minutes away so that she could see Jelaire Avery, her namesake, as soon as she could.

She did not want to wait for Avery's baby shower that was going to be held over a week later. So, my parents drove her to our house where she got to hold little six-week-old Jelaire Avery. It was touching to see this amazing woman hold a fourth-generation Jelaire.

I wanted so bad for Avery to remember this moment and to know her great-grandmother, but I knew that Grandma's time on earth was short. However, I thought that I'd just see her in a week at Avery's baby shower. Much to our surprise, a few days later, Grandma had a stroke and passed away. I knew Heavenly Father's guiding influence was present in Grandma's last few days. He let her hold her great-granddaughter before having her return to Him.


The Origin of "Jelaire"
My great-great-grandfather, Hermanus Denkers, was from the Netherlands (Random side note: I didn't know this until after I received my mission call to Holland!). I'm not sure where, but he met a woman named Alice Golair Weston, who he was going to marry, but she died before that happened. I've heard from my grandmother that she died from a terrible flu epidemic, but this was after her stroke, so I'm not sure how accurate that fact is.

When he was sailing to America from Holland, he met Prina Marie Kusse, my great-great-grandmother. They married and named their daughter Alice Golair Denkers, after his former fiancee. I always thought that my great-great-grandmother must have been a very understanding person to have named their first daughter after her husband's ex-fiancee. What a gal!

Alice's sister, Kathryn Denkers Chandler, had a baby girl, and got permission from Alice to ask if she could borrow her middle name "Golair," but change the spelling to make it "more feminine." Thank goodness. I think I'd feel like a viking woman if my name today would have been "Golair."

That baby was my grandma, Jelaire Kathryn Chandler Simpson, who was the first of many Jelaires to come. Grandma told me that since she and my grandpa spent so much time in New Zealand (and in other areas of the world) for the LDS Church, they encountered many people who named their daughters after her, too.

"Your Name is Too Hard to Remember"
When I was 14, I was at a summer camp for a week when some of my friends there asked me to go by a nickname for the week -- my name was just too hard to remember. So, for that week, I went by "J." It grew on me and I considered telling everyone else from then on that I went by "J." That's when Grandma helped me see otherwise.

Grandma told me that growing up, too many people had trouble pronouncing and remembering her name, so she began to tell people to call her "Jerry." Her mother found out and wouldn't have it (one of the reasons being that it sounded too masculine), so she started going by "Jelaire" again. From this story I gleaned that her mother intended it to be a name too important and beautiful to be shortened.

Since then, every time I was on a sports team, or in a new class, and I had peers, teachers, and coaches asking me if I went by anything different than Jelaire (I can't blame them!), I easily told them no, and never again wondered if I should have gone by anything different.

Help Me Add More to the Story!
So, that's it in a nutshell. I'm hoping I got the facts right. And if anyone reads this who knows more to the story, please let me know!!

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! :)