Baby Doll

My oldest, who we call giggles, has two objects that she carries around. One is a stuffed teddy bear that I gave to me wife when we were dating that she connected with around her brother's birth. She was eighteen months old and needed/wanted that bear all the time. She could even distinguish him from another bear that we had who had a pink bow instead of red. In all other ways they were the same, but she knew which one was Uh-oh (the name that we gave the bear and one of only four words that she could say at the time: the others were mama, dada, and baby). The other is a doll that she got for her second Christmas. She was named Baby doll to distinguish her from the other babies in her young life (what with cousins and siblings). Baby doll is not a soft doll, she has a solid core with a speaker to coo at you with. Her head and arms all move when she is cooing.

Last week baby doll had the most unfortunate thing happen. She was beheaded. More specifically the piece that kept her mechanically rotating head connected broke. Giggles was very sad but, since mommy was still asleep, I told her that we would try to fix her later. I had mentioned to my wife the possibility of taking Baby doll apart and stuffing her as a Christmas gift this last Christmas but we never did get around to it. As it was now a necessity, I figured something needed to be done. When mom woke up and the day slowed down I got to work.

One of baby dolls arms had already been broken so I started by breaking the other. If I was going to fix her I might as well get rid of the hard core, especially since it no longer was attached to the head. I ripped out, as delicately as I could, the solid pieces of baby doll. It took a lot of cutting and careful force in an attempt to not damage the outward appearance of the doll. Her head and neck especially took a while as I tried to figure out how to reconnect it. Finally with all unneeded parts stripped and in most cases broken, I had to come up with a way to get her back together. How do you reconnect a head to a body that is not made to be connected. Well, I used on old coat hanger. I made a nice loop that would fill much of the head and make it so that it would not be easily detached. Then folded it so that it went down some of the length of the arms. I destroyed an old pillow for stuffing and the sewed the body together. The coat hanger couldn't be pulled out of the body because of the width of the coat hanger in the arm and the head could not be pulled off because of the circular form.

Giggles did not have Baby doll for bed that night because I was still working on attaching the head, stuffing, and sewing. I was done, for the most part, before I went to bed and relatively pleased with myself. The next morning I presented baby doll to my daughter before leaving to work. For one day Baby doll was the best thing ever (again) and now she is just that second object that is always there. I think Giggles knew that there was a possibility that Baby doll was gone forever.

Why women are always colder than men.

I was folding laundry this morning with a pile for me, my wife, and each of our three kids. It was whites and so most of it was stuff for my wife and I but I was taken back by how much higher my pile was then hers. It seemed like I had folded about the same amount of clothes for each of us.

As I started folding a shirt of mine, after having folded one of my wife's, I realized why my pile was larger. He clothes were normally very thin especially in comparison to mine. That is when the thought struck me, "is she trying to freeze?" I know that she is not, but it explain a lot about why she steals my clothes when she is cold or sick.

A new job

I started a new job yesterday. It is going well and very different from what I expected (that's a good thing). I would tell you more but my apartment building loss power and so the long write up that I had was lost. I would retype it but I am tired.

Mty wife and I have decided to get more involved in our ward since being released from Nursery. As such we went to ward temple night this week, and I went shooting with the Elder's quorum two weeks ago. It has been a lot of fun. Tomorrow I will be getting up early to play basketball with one of our wards two basketball teams (Stake Basketball). I am pretty sure that I am going to regret this. I am not good at basketball. Not just because I'm not a very talk man but also because it is something that I have known since sixth grade (and maybe even before that). There is a reason that I player baseball growing up and was a back-row player in Volleyball in High school. Those are places where since is less important. I even got shown up by one of my companions on my mission, and he was from Honduras. Not that Honduras makes people bad at basket ball but he was that classic short latino, except he dribbled circles around me. At least I told them that I would only be there so that everyone had a chance to sit out every once and a while.

The future

As I come to a end of the bachelor's degree I have to look to the future more than I have in a long while. Really the last time I though about the future so much was when I proposed to my wife. I had 5 and a half years of thinking about it before that and so it was not a hard decision. Ironically though we talk of the future while we are in school I don't think we really address it enough. I wonder if that in part comes from the fact that too many teachers go straight from school to school and so don't really ever have to deal with the "true" real world.

I love teaching and enjoy programming. I love languages and would love to know more but what do I do with my life? Teach? Government? Religion? or do I look for something unrelated? Management in so less related or unrelated field? What do I know? Here goes!

Undone Poetry

I would not consider myself a poet at any level but I was really into poetry in high school. I wrote poems (none of them very good) but expressive of myself at the time.

On the ride home today (on the bus) I just felt in the mood to write. I quickly realized that I did not want meter and rhyme to get in the way of writing (it having been so long since I have written) and so it is very free-form poetry but I thought I would share it.


Idea 1:
Everything that I know and everything I wish I knew tells me He is there in everything that I do and everything I see.

His love in times has guided me upon the path I've trod, yet in arrogance at knowing what He taught me I turned another way.

Looking back updon the path that cuts cross time and space, ashamed, I notice all the timesit turns and dips and weaves.

The task has not slackened or increased in any way but stands unaltered and ideal for each man for each man in their day.

It is no easier for one than for any other each much trudge their path in striving to come to Him.

He loves us as we come to Him and hurts when we choose "our way" but still He always waits for us to enter in someday.


Idea 2:
Love: innocent, ashamed, unknown, unrecognizable, inconceivable, unattainable, enjoyed.

Love: blissful, strained, sympathetic, shared, slipped away, understoof and treasured as we walk along our way.


As I said, very rough, but that is what I did on the bus ride home.

The third child

Yesterday night my wife had our third child, a beautiful little girl. Today my wife commented on the fact that we now have three kids and it got me thinking about that a third kid means.

A third kid spells the end of a car, we have a Camry with a large back seat but it will not hold three car seats (bring on the van, sorry I'm staying away from anything with mini in the name for a while). A third child spells insanity backwards (if you write it backwards and don't end up with insanity it is because you have problems and should see a specialist). A third child spells the end of the democratic reign of parents and the start of monarchy, theocracy, tyranny or anarchy. It spells the end of equal shares (no more I'll get this one, you get that one). It spells balance in a family (an oldest, a middle, and a youngest).

Three, symbolically, is recognized as complete or whole. We see it in the trinity, religious marriage vows, and the symbols for male and female. It is therefore not surprising that three is one of my favorite numbers. Ironically among my closest friends growing up I see the recurrence of the number three. Dean, Chris and myself were really close friends in elementry school. In high school my main group of friends consisted of three women and three men which (often, but not always) constituated three couples.

Needless to say, I am exited to have our third child. Welcome little one into our family. Sorry ahead of time for the difficulties and trials that shall be laid upon you in this family but know that I will always be three to strengthen, help and pray for you.

PS. Ironically, three is the number of girls that I have kissed. That's what happens when you mean your wife at 14.

When things go missing

I am learning some of the interesting points of habits and it is an very strange topic. For instance after a weekend with nothing to do but some little work and think about my missing my wife and children I have a better idea of one thing that could drive a spouse to be unfaithful, if they were leaning in that way to begin: physical addiction habits. I did, thankful, also learn one thing that can keep such feelings at bay: thinking about the spouse and not about missing the habits.

I made this realization when I entered into a few recent conversations with friends about my wife being gone with the kids. Ironically one friend's wife is also gone and we had a fun little conversation about it. It brightens the day and drives away all of the physical loneliness that builds up to refocus on the spouse instead of on the habit that you have built together.

To clarify, I was in no way close to cheating on my wife. To equate the two would be like saying that I personally know what it feels like to run into a burning building because my wife decided to toast here cook book last month. The flames of her little fire though still able to be damaging are nothing like a house that is a blaze! Just to clarify.

Another point, down the same path (the one that I am on even if you are not after that clarification) is how much of a habit I have entered into with the kids. I am so used to closing all of the doors in the house, especially the bathrooms, closets, and my bedroom that I have kept closing them even though the kids cannot get into them as they are many hours away.

The really silly thing about this is that I insist on opening them when I realize what I have done. Am I trying to make it harder to remember when the kids get back just to torment myself? All just part of physical programming that takes more control than it should in our lives.

I, personally, love to re-organize rooms (but have resisted much since I got married for my wife's sanity) and I think that part of that desire is embedded in a need to not build too many habits. The other part is probably my need for a sense of freedom and changing the look of my surround makes me feel like I have gone somewhere else. Yes, I can be a little strange like that.