Some Notes on Post-Partum Life, Part 2

This week M-Dubb turns 7 months. It's not one of those "time flies" things. We've just gotten here. Sometimes in the midst of the craziness that is this semester I wish time flew faster, but that's fodder for another post. Today I want to talk about nursing, but before I start, let me acknowledge that I know everyone is different--not everyone produces enough milk, for instance. With that in mind, here's my side of the story:

I love nursing,  I didn't always love nursing, but M-Dubb and I have trodden a rough road and gotten to a place that works for us. This week, I realized just how much I have grown to enjoy the moments I share with my baby because I didn't have quite enough milk. I was already late to go meet Jeff on campus and M-Dubb would not be satisfied. I decided to whip up some formula or else risk being late and unprepared for my 1 pm class. My tears welled as he gulped. He ended up only drinking an ounce, and I haven't had to supplement since, but during the feeding, I was reeling. I'm not ready to wean him! I had suspected as much when I'd considered it a few times over the past few weeks, but it wasn't until this moment that I realized exactly how much I'd grown to love it.

What a far cry from where we started. He had come out of the womb sucking like a champ. He wanted to nurse, and he knew what he needed to do. The problem was he did it so well. I never bled or cracked, but there was blistering and, oh, so much bruising. I cried, yelped, and stomped my foot in pain every time he latched. I only kept going because I was convinced by others' conviction that the breast was best. At two weeks, I called my mom sobbing that I just couldn't do it anymore. She convinced me that it was ok to quit, and my lactation peer-counselor said the same thing. Everyone has to do what it right for them. But, I didn't want to feel like a quitter. I had enough milk and I wanted him to have it. Ok, and in all honesty, I didn't want to pay for formula, and I wanted the help in weight loss. So, my decision to try one more time wasn't perfectly selfless.

I have to say that I've felt God's love and help in my role as a mother, especially those first few weeks. What happened after my tearful decision was next to a miracle. I hadn't ever taken off my Fred Meyer nursing bra since the hospital (I was trying to avoid the sagginess, but now I know that was inevitable...). After prayer, meditation, and talking it out, I had the thought come to me, "Take off your nursing bra." I'm not saying this will help everyone who's having trouble nursing, but it sure helped me. I felt an immediate difference. It still stung, but the excruciating pain subsided. I called my mom elated. I'd done it! It wasn't all perfection from then on, but it gave me enough hope to keep trying. It was still a long road until 2 months, when it didn't hurt anymore, but it ended up being worth it for me.

I have a certain brother who doesn't understand women who don't get pain medication during labor. I'll probably get this wrong, but I believe his response is along the lines of, "What do you want, a gold star?" When I gave birth without pain medication, I did give myself a mighty pat on the back, but that was all I really expected. But, in the midst of the darkest part of learning how to nurse, I sure felt like what I was doing was harder than my "natural" childbirth. Day in and day out I chose pain, and when I crossed the finish line of the ordeal with a great Hallelujah!, I sure felt like a deserved a gold star and a trophy.

So for all of you out there who kept nursing (especially those of you who had to pump), here's your gold star. Here's your public shout-out, praise, and awards ceremony. You did it. You are amazing. And I admire you.

Some Notes on Post-Partum Life, Part 1

As my contribution this week, I'm going to write a series of posts about being a new mother, some thoughts I've been meaning to write down for quite a while. I read other people's birth stories and baby experiences and sometimes think, "Not exciting. Same thing happened/is happening to me." But I keep reading because those similarities are what bind us together as women, and the differences keep things interesting. Much of what I'm going to say is probably run of the mill, but the following experiences are unique because they are mine.

The first one comes from a post I drafted March 13th of this year but never posted. At this point M-Dubb was almost a month old.

First of all, I'm not special anymore. I mean, I am, but no one else can tell just from looking at me. Walking down the street during the 3rd trimester I stood out. There goes Amy waddling to class. Look at that super pregnant woman. Men used to look at me and smile all with the same kind of knowing/eerily pleased smile. I don't know what they were thinking, but I liked to think it was some kind of combination of checking me out and being awed by my pregnant aura.
But, this past week I started teaching my face to face folklore class on campus again. This means I go out alone, without my baby, who's safe at home with his daddy. I get a break from being mommy, but, as such, my clear identifying marker as tired, nursing mother to a newborn is absent. Today, a girl coming down the sidewalk in my direction did not move for me. She made me move for her. At first I was put out because didn't she know I am pregnant!? No, she didn't because I'm not anymore. Doesn't she know I'm exhausted and doing great things!? No, I'm just a normal looking woman going to campus. No one realizes what a big deal it is that I'm back at school, working in the computer lab, teaching classes already. No real maternity leave for me, people! But that makes me think: who else of the people I pass every day are making huge leaps of faith or overcoming their own Olympian obstacles or are just plain special? Probably everyone in their own way. Some more than others, but it's better to assume more.

Phone Calls to Grandma

June 2015

Grandma died three weeks ago. I attended both of her funerals, one in Utah, one in Oregon. Neither one was particularly sad, as Grandma had lived with Parkinson’s for some time, and most of her relatives and friends had looked on as she lost the ability to walk, and only made it from her bed to the front room by means of a few strong arms, a hoist, and a wheelchair. Everyone at the funeral agreed, though, that her smile and enthusiasm remained.

Amy and I visited her a few times in the last year and a half. We even had dinner with her and my aunt’s family at the end of January 2014. Grandma requested that Aunt Becky make her certain things for her birthday meal, including orange Jell-O salad with green bell pepper and ground black pepper. I managed to eat a small serving of the Jell-O, but Grandma ate everything with relish (though not literally). Grandma liked Amy, but I think we both frustrated her a little because neither one of us had learned that the only way to make her hear us was by shouting our conversation. Her strength waned, and she seemed exhausted every time we visited.

We visited Grandma over Spring Break in March of this year. She was tired and so were we, having just flown back from San Francisco where we’d spent the break with Amy’s aunt and uncle in Danville. We stayed an hour or so, and Grandma held Max for much of that time. That was the last time we saw her before her viewing in Provo on June 3, when I stood with my mom in front of her oak casket, which weighed, as I and seven other relatives later found out as we hefted it into the hearse, about as much as Volkswagen Beetle.

I wasn’t as close to my grandma as many of my cousins were, but I’ve had my share of memories too, like the time I was on Grandma’s team in a game of Scattergories. When we lost I blamed it on her and said, “Don’t play with Grandma. She’s not smart enough!” Maybe tact is a gene that skips generations. Recently some of the more poignant moments I’ve shared with Grandma came over the phone instead of in person. I never have liked phones. I’m actually kind of afraid of them to the point that any unknown caller—and some known—will always go to voice mail. But not everything can happen face to face, and for some things email is too impersonal. So, I called her.

July 2013

Amy and I stepped off the deck into the house after climbing three flights of stairs from the soft sand of the Topsail Island beach. We held hands as we stepped through the sliding doors into the low light of the dining area; the synthetic sparkle of the $15 cubic zirconium I had given her less than a week before, in lieu of the actual engagement ring which had not yet arrived at the jeweler’s store, was reduced to a dull glow. The room was full of family members moving and chatting excitedly in anticipation of homemade pizza and soda. I shed my flip-flops by the mat and excused myself from the buzz.

I went down one flight to the privacy of Amy’s bedroom and shut the door. The day Amy and I flew out to North Carolina for a family vacation in which I would meet all of her family in person for the first time, I had run the two miles to Kohl’s first thing, arriving at the store just a few minutes before it opened. I searched the pile of white boxes containing passable costume jewelry and by a miracle found the lone size 6 ring that Amy might actually wear without blushing. As a result, I had only told some of my immediate family that I was getting married. Grandma was one of those who had not heard the news, and Mom insisted that I call and tell her personally.

I dialed Aunt Becky’s phone number and asked for Grandma.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Grandma! This is Jeff, your grandson.”

We chatted for just a minute before I told her that I was calling from North Carolina.

“What are you doing there?”

“I’m meeting Amy’s family because Amy and I are getting married.”

Without hesitation, she responded, “Are you joking?”

Not exactly what I would call the ideal response, but maybe she had assumed that I, an aged man of 28, might never get married. I reassured her that this was not a joke and that Amy and I were actually engaged. After some effort, I mostly convinced her that I spoke true, although the last thing she said before “I love you, goodbye” was “Are you sure you’re not joking?” After we said hung up, I put my blue flip phone back into the pocket of my cargo shorts and rejoined the others upstairs.

September 2014

Amy was four months pregnant with our son and teaching three classes at Idaho State University. My siblings and parents knew, but the time had come to let Grandma know. Amy sat in her office planning a lesson and grading online discussion posts, while I went out and sat on the steps of the Charles Kegel (yes, Kegel) building and called her. I prepared for a debate, but what I got was much different.

Her voice drifted from the receiver, monotone and tired, a kind of tired that pervades each bone, tissue, nerve ending, and cell. A kind of tired that no amount of sleep can remedy.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Grandma. This is Jeff, your grandson.”

It was our usual song, but the key had changed.

“Grandma, I was just calling to tell you that Amy and I are having a baby.”

Pause.

“Well, that’s fine, dear.”

Her tone troubled me. I had hoped that she would be excited for us, excited to be having another grandbaby, though in my heart I knew why her tone conveyed no perceptible intonations of joy, but instead a kind of passive acceptance, the way a terminal patient might accept a diagnosis. I repeated the news to see if I could provoke more enthusiasm, but the answer was the same: “That’s fine, dear.”

May 2015

Amy and I were about to go over to our friends’ house for a late-afternoon Sunday dinner on May 24 when my sister Celeste called to tell me the news. Grandma had suffered a transient ischemic attack or mini-stroke about two weeks prior, and although, according to Aunt Becky, she was eating more than she had been, Grandma had slipped into unconsciousness earlier that day (May 24) and was still unresponsive. Celeste had talked to Mom, and they seemed to think that Grandma didn’t have long. Celeste told me that if I wanted to say goodbye, now was the time to do that. I didn’t want to talk to Grandma because I knew she couldn’t respond anymore, and the thought of speaking to silence unnerved me. I did want to see how Mom was doing, so I called her.

Almost as soon as she had me on the line, she said, “Here, I will put you on speaker phone and you can talk to Grandma.”

I could hear her footsteps as she walked over to the bedside of the unconscious woman. Amy stood right by me beside the kitchen sink as I thought about what I might say.

“Go ahead,” my mom said.

I drew a breath.

“Hi Grandma. This is your grandson Jeff.”

I paused, then continued.

“I don’t really know what to say, except we love you and I’m really happy you’ll be with Grandpa soon and Max is lying on the couch and he’s looking around and I love you…”

At first, I felt kind of embarrassed as I rambled out my feelings. But as those jumbled words poured out of my mouth and into the phone, I had a moment of clarity. I might be talking gibberish to my sleeping grandma, but I knew the truth of my words. Despite never feeling the proximity to her that many others had to her, somewhere in that silence tinged with cell phone static, I knew that I did, in fact, love her.

What Amy and Jeff Learned about Collaboration (from Jeff’s POV, but Amy Helped Write It)

Amy growled at me. Last evening. I think she had a right to, and this was not the first time we have sat down to practice for a musical number, and I have left feeling picked on and offended. I’ve been learning to play the banjo, and I still don’t play very well, but we were going to play a duet in church, me on banjo, Amy on flute and mandolin, and both of us on vocals. I was forgetting the words to “For the Beauty of the Earth” and the chords, coming in late, starting early, starting on the wrong beat, and I wasn’t communicating very well, and it was messing her up. And so she growled. And glared. So I got frustrated and clamped my mouth shut. Just got really quiet. Just like that one time. And the time before that. And that other time.

I’m sure you can see that that’s a pattern.

My outward reaction to my inward frustrations over my lack of skill mirrors my reaction to the perceived slight from my wife. She was reacting to my initial frustrated silence, and then I reacted to her irritation in a way that not only compounded the situation but my silence was actually both the cause and the effect of this conflict. An effect to which she reacted. And so the spiral descended.  

One thing I learned early on about writing curriculum vitae and resumes is the value of the words collaborative and collaboration. It’s one thing to say you accomplished something grand on your own; employers look at individual achievements and begin to make notes about the potential value of a worker’s motivation, ambition, and drive to succeed. However, if you can say that same grand thing was collaborative, that you managed to work with someone to accomplish it, then a potential employer will have the same kind of thoughts about your motivation, ambition, and drive, but with the knowledge that you can put aside differences, egoism, narcissism, and problem solve within a group dynamic for the good of the task and the good of the group (“What if none of us goes for the blonde?”). If you know how to collaborate right, you can probably lead by example, delegate effectively, and receive correction and instruction gracefully.

Oh, and let’s not forget that accomplishing goals as a node in a larger social network is hard; some people always want to lead, and others always want to follow, but a truly collaborative mind thinks adaptively and accepts a more fluid role in a group environment, thoroughly willing to lead, but eager to follow.

What I have just described, the ideal collaborator, is facilitated by negotiated roles, proper attitudes, and work ethic, but these social relationships with their tricky dynamics and shared objectives are rarely ideal. Some people can collaborate really well with certain people because their shared strengths complement each other so well, but that doesn’t mean they can collaborate with just anyone. If you have two people who are really good at the same set of tasks, but can’t negotiate their individual roles in completing the tasks, then you have conflict. If you have people who don’t do their job right, and others who don’t forgive easily, you have conflict. If you are tired and the baby won’t go to sleep, you’ll get conflict. If you want to discuss a problem and your husband won’t talk about it, you get conflict. If your wife is hungry and you need to talk about something that’s bugging you, trust me, you’ll get conflict.

Contrary to popular belief, not all conflict is avoidable. Also contrary to popular belief, conflict is an inherent by-product of group dynamics. Interaction between individuals with divergent personalities, cultural backgrounds, and training will almost always bring about some kind of conflict, to a greater or lesser degree. It’s really natural to have conflict. What’s more, conflict can be educational. My ability to play my D7s with Amy’s accompaniment encountered my expectations for myself and revealed an underlying conflict.

How we dealt with it revealed some of the mechanisms that Amy and I employ to cope with conflict in this very particular situation in which we prepare to play music for an audience. When I was a kid and then a teenager, I had a terrible temper. For example, I would frequently fly off the handle when my brother presented me with a range of inflammatory stimuli from teasing me in front of his friends to a humiliating loss on the basketball court. Those situations created conflict, and to cope with it I got angry and reacted. I later learned to control my anger, but I really only traded coping mechanisms; instead of becoming vocal with my fury, I would become silent, and this is a learned pattern of behavior I have followed ever since. These kinds of patterns are difficult to break out of; there’s a reason they’re called patterns, after all. And we all have them, we are often aware that we have them, and we generally know that we need to—and can—do better. Yet, conflict arises, and we resort to those negative coping mechanisms, those ingrained behaviors, for no other reason than that’s how we’ve taught ourselves to act in the presence of certain conditions and stimuli.

And one of the most frustrating parts of the things I’ve written is that they are mostly intuitive. Most people know they deal with conflict in potentially negative ways, and they also realize that it’s difficult to curb their behavioral patterns. I know I do these things, and I expect myself to be better than I am. How can I cultivate healthy coping mechanisms for the conflicts I encounter on an almost daily basis?

I can start by looking at the person next to me.

When it came our turn during church, Amy went and gave Max to Sister Rasmussen, and I set up the chairs and the music stand. We got our instruments out, Amy with her mandolin and flute, I with my banjo. Amy counted off, and sure enough problems arose. I had trouble with my D7s, for starters, and Amy was having problems sound quality and resonance on the mandolin. Then, when we were supposed to start singing the first verse, I started in on the second verse instead. I corrected myself halfway through the first verse, but I was embarrassed. But something happened. Something different than the last time. And the time before. And that other time. Instead of our mistakes pitting us against each other, throwing off our flow, our failings were synched together, moving us in the same direction. I glanced over at Amy, sitting there playing. This time, the Amy-bear didn’t growl and glare. She just smiled, and we kept playing. 

And you know what? We sounded pretty good together.   

Serving Mothers Glorifies God

Jeff and I spoke in our Sacrament Meeting (ie our worship service) today for Mother's Day. I went first and selfishly took up most of the time (ok, all of it), so he only gave a portion of his talk. Although what he said was powerful and sweet, I wanted him to have a venue to share what he worked so hard on. So, in honor of our mother's here are his thoughts: 

First of all, Happy Mother’s Day. It’s really a pleasure to speak on this particular holiday because, first, this year my wife, Amy, is a mother for the first time. Max came along and changed our lives, and we both feel like completely different kinds of people than we were even a few months ago, as most people do, I imagine, when faced with caring for a little lump with an often piercing wail and a limited but specific range of needs and wants that require attention regardless of the time of day (or night). It’s been life-altering in a way that may sound cliché, but only because we lack the proper terminology for describing all of the distinct aspects, mental, physical, spiritual, of this process, which is simultaneously common or communal and subjective, individualized, unique, and extremely personal. Because of these experiences, mothers embody, figuratively and literally, all that cannot be explained about these kinds of experiences, and so we celebrate.

Second, this day is special because, let’s face it, even if you aren’t a mom, I imagine you have had one at some time or another who was primarily responsible for getting you here, and that’s also a reason to celebrate. It’s not like a birthday where we, for the most part, celebrate the wrong person, using cake and candles and presents to say, “Way to be born!” to people who physically did absolutely nothing to get themselves here. My wife has an uncle who takes flowers to his mother on his birthday to celebrate the person to whom the day signifies more than just “I made it here! Aren’t you proud of me!” but also a lot of love, pain, and fulfillment in providing a physical body for one of Heavenly Father’s children, and I don’t mean fulfillment simply in an obligatory “I have a role that I have fulfilled because I am a woman” kind of way, but in the sense that one receives a kind of beautiful satisfaction and sense of one’s own strength and individual ability as a woman in God’s kingdom. At least on Mother’s Day, we are all in agreement, in thought and in deed, and mothers are brought to the forefront as objects of our praise, admiration, and gratitude.

In his novel Ninety-Three, Victor Hugo depicts a scene in which French soldiers encounter a woman, a widow, whose husband had been killed three days prior and who has two children, but little or nothing to feed them. Hugo writes, “The eldest of the children…said, ‘I am hungry.’ The sergeant took a bit of regulation bread from his pocket, and handed it to the mother. She broke the bread into two fragments, and gave them both to her children, who ate them with avidity.

“‘She has kept none for herself,’ grumbled the sergeant.”

“Because she is not hungry,’ said a soldier.”

“‘Because she is a mother,’ said the sergeant.” (16)

In this scene, which Jeffrey R. Holland has quoted in General Conference, we witness an exchange that in some ways feels like an allusion to the words of James 1:27: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.” But it is what comes after that initial bit of charity, given in the form of “regulation bread” that is, to me, most noteworthy. First, the woman, who is starving herself, eats none of the bread, but divides it among her two hungry children, it appears, as a near reflex. The sergeant, seeing her self-denial, grumbles. The soldier and he offer their interpretations of the act, the soldier suggesting that she does because she isn’t actually hungry, while the sergeant remarks that she does it because “she is a mother.” In the context of this scene, neither remark is intended positively and instead serve to diminish the magnitude of this act. The soldier’s remark dissolves any hint of sacrifice on the mother’s part, implying that if she were hungry, she would have eaten some first. The sergeant’s comment, that “she is a mother,” is not a kind of admiration for this mother, but is instead a kind of grumbling judgment or second-guessing of her act of devotion to her children. He sees the mother’s act as a weakness or lack of control; she cannot do otherwise because of what she is. Why he grumbles and how he means “Because she is a mother” is not clear, but it does give us something to contemplate.

That the essence of motherhood stems in part from natural tendencies is absolutely accurate, and this woman’s act at least on the surface features characteristics we associate with reflexive action, an action that occurs naturally in her because of a particular stimulus, the way a knee will jerk if you tap it with a hammer. But we also know that human beings are born with fallen natures; we have mortal bodies coupled with eternal spirits, and the fallen part of ourselves is something we must wrestle with, through the positive enactment of agency, throughout this life. This is not a negative; on the contrary, if we do something good, it means we have to overcome the selfish “natural man” part of ourselves in order to do it. Mothers are not exempt from that. Through a repeated pattern of selfless acts, like so many mothers I know, this mother has built a lifestyle of giving, of sacrifice, to the point that her act becomes instantaneous, an act that at one time was a conscious process that has become automatic, she is not at the mercy of her own nature but because she has denied or conquered the animal part of her human nature that would have seen to her own needs first.

In 1 Nephi 5, Sariah “complains” to Lehi, when her sons do not return: “Behold thou hast led us forth from the land of our inheritance, and my sons are no more, and we perish in the wilderness.” Now, I would first like to say that I think it is significant that these lines and those in verse 8 when she bears her testimony that the Lord is in charge and that he did protect their sons from Laban are the only times in The Book of Mormon that Sariah has any quoted dialogue, so I’m pretty sure Nephi felt there was something substantial to learn from this experience. Yes, Sariah does complain, and we admit that. It says so right here. But please can we not consider all the murmuring in the wilderness to be of the same kind? Nephi’s brothers have a pattern of rebellion and throughout these writings, but Nephi gives no indication of a similar pattern for Sariah. He does not depict his mother as an incessant nag. If Hugo’s sergeant had been involved in this story as well, he probably would have said that it was “Because she is a mother” in a way that implies irrationality, uncontrollable emotion, insubordination, and weakness. But this has nothing to do with that. What we can extrapolate from the context of this outburst and apply what we know about mothers, and mothers worrying, and why they worry, and how much they worry, is that this is not the absence of faith so much as the presence of sheer terror and worry and anxiety on behalf of her children, and this is probably not, and this is my opinion of course, the first time she has been subjected to that kind of distress. This is just the latest, I imagine, in a series of sleepless nights. Laman and Lemuel’s complaints are self-serving and self-interested, while Sariah’s come from a place of love, which is why, on the one hand, Lehi corrects them, and on the other hand as Nephi explains, his father “did…comfort my mother Sariah concerning us, while we journeyed in the wilderness up to the land of Jerusalem” (1 Nephi 5:8). He understands that Sariah is not angry at him so much as she is angry at the situation and attempting to process the reasons behind it.

In light of these two examples, I would ask how can we know how to serve mothers, ours or anyone else’s? Hugo demonstrates physical support alone being given, while Lehi looks past what outwardly seems like rebellion and supplies the proper response to Sariah’s pain. Physical and emotional support are both highly important forms of service, and providing one and not the other essentially equates to what Jesus said of the Pharisees, that “ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law” (Matthew 23:23). I think the key thing involves cultivating a perspective, a discerning eye, that ability to see needs that are less obvious and fill them. Ever since our little boy was born, my life is filled with opportunities to serve my wife, to sustain her physically and emotionally, to meet her needs and our son’s whether they are glaring or subtle, to understand the pain, tiredness, and discomfort that lies just beyond what the natural eye can perceive. If we really want to build the kingdom of God quickly, we should turn our hearts to our mothers, as well as our fathers, and sustain them in the ways they really need. As I work toward building my own consistent lifestyle of self-sacrifice by overcoming the “natural man,” I hope that I can become that person who loves the mothers in my life in ways they require and not necessarily in the ways I think they need and by really understanding that there is no such thing as an insignificant need. 

Summer Rememberies Pt. I

I think the only negative thing about working at a university and getting long summer breaks is the level of difficulty it takes to get used to having to work again. I am finishing my first week of hard core adjuncting absolutely exhausted. I don't have to deal with the pains of balancing teaching and my own school work anymore (or the guilt about neglecting one or the other), but I'm now teaching three different courses, a task that has proven to be challenging. But it's starting to get fun again. 

In honor of the new semester, I'd like to take a few moments to remember our summer adventures. We traveled all over the place, it feels like, mostly to see family and friends or to take care of thesis matters for me, but we had fun along the way. 

First of all, in May, we went down to Logan so I could graduate (though I wasn't really done with my thesis yet). Huzzah! My parents came out from NC and Brian, Mani and Grandma Win came up from Provo and Salt Lake respectively. Kristin Ladd also came down from Jackson just for me! (I'm sure she was also there to see other people, but we're going to say it was just for me)

Here's Grandma charming Kristin with her stories about Jackson at brunch at Cafe Ibis

The one non-fuzzy shot! Good job, Jeff! (That was not sarcastic... seriously)

Sorry about this one Brian. It was a loooong ceremony, so the tired-half yawning face is appropriate

Jeff bought me tulips. He's the sweetest! 

Then he made me my birthday cake. The cake and pan were supplied most generously by his mom, but the chocolate pudding-filled center and cherries were totally his idea. Isn't he marvelous!? I don't think I gush about him enough. So here's my internet debut of my gushy feelings. I gush about him constantly at home. He hates it. Just kidding. He loves it. Actually, I don't know....

In all honesty, I started blogging today to put up pictures of our first official camping trip, but I got sidetracked by me. I'm supposed to be doing something else, so I'll have to get to that next time. Maybe that can even be Jeff's blogging debut! 

Turning Over a New Leaf

Today I won a pedometer from a drawing I entered a few months ago at the Health and Wellness Fair at Idaho State. I never win anything I enter, so this must be a sign. Time to start blogging again. Someone recently pointed out the irony that the last post I have up is one about finally having something to say and wanting my voice to be heard. That was almost three years ago, and I haven't posted since. Ha!
The lovely thing about that post, though, is that Jeff edited it for me. I love finding little reminders that he's been a part of my life for longer than just the past year, and he's always been important to me, even if just for free editing. So here goes: a little log of our life together, as we see it and create it. More to come!