12 years of education
Will end in graduation
All the parents and the teachers think you’re swell

If you’re feeling like you’re still a fool
Off to college, then to graduate school.
In 6 years you’ll be free of those as well.

But if you choose to be a mother
A profession like no other
You’re stuck forever, as far as I can tell.

You thought it’d be a pleasant life.
That of mother and of wife
But now your life is crazy, all pell-mell.

The laundry’s oveflowing
Your grocery list keeps growing
Your toddler’s crying, pointing where he fell.

DH is always working
His duty he’s not shirking
But you wonder if you’ve maybe gone to hell.

Dinner’s burning in the oven
Would it hurt to join a coven?
How nice to clean the kitchen with a spell!

The child’s nose is snotty,
Your leftovers are rotty,
Well, just tell DH to swing by Taco Bell.

Rewind the movie yet again
Teach your kid to count to ten
And sing, 12 times, “The Farmer in the Dell”.

“I love you child, dearly,”
You need to say, sincerely.
Otherwise, you’ll need a padded cell.

(Warning: This is a long, venting post. You’ll need a minute to get through it. Sorry.)

So, I got a job yesterday. Yes, a job outside the home that will actually reward me with monetary benefits. It’s a job working as a per diem Speech Pathologist when Jacob is in preschool. With him in school 2 days a week, I have a little more time and a little less money, so I thought I’d give working a shot.

And, it was easy to get this job. Really easy. I got on the internet, googled job openings for speech language pathologist in Virginia, and bam, up came a long list of opportunities. I applied online, sent my resume in, and a week later, I’m employed. Wa-hoo!

The other thing is, I know I’m qualified for this job. Not only does my resume make me look qualified, I actually can do this job. I’ve done it before, and know I can do it again. In a word, I am marketable.

Good thing I didn’t listen to Bishop Bubblehead.

Names have been changed, for obvious reasons.

Bishop Bubblehead was my bishop when DH and I got engaged. At that time, DH and I were both far from being done with our education. I was just starting graduate school, and DH had about 2 more semesters in his undergraduate at BYU. We decided to wait until he had graduated to get married. We looked at our future goals, worked out the details, and felt we had a good plan. We booked the Salt Lake Temple for a date 7 and a half months into the future, and settled into the craziness of trying to go to school and plan a wedding at the same time.

Bishop Bubblehead told us we were making a mistake.

He called me into his office, and told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to quit graduate school and follow DH back to BYU, to be with him while he finished. I could always continue my education later.

“But my graduate program doesn’t allow you to just stop and then start up again. It’s a pretty regimented program, with clinical hours and things that need to be completed by a certain date,” I explained.

“You haven’t even looked into it,though, have you,” he said, accusingly. “You haven’t explored any alternative educational options at all.” I admitted, guiltily, that I hadn’t. I didn’t want to. I wanted to finish as soon as I possibly could.

He then said, “And I’ll bet you are planning to put off having children until after he finishes law school, too. I’m telling you right now, putting off marriage and family for education is a mistake. You need to really pray about this, and see if you can’t get married in December. Otherwise, really, you might not make it to the temple.” (DH and I had gotten engaged at the end of October.)

I called DH in tears after this, and told him about the conversation. Luckily, DH said he would have told the bishop to stick it, and that we were honestly doing the best thing for both of us, and for our future family. The bishop continued to bug us, (well, me, mainly. DH was in Utah most of the time) but we held firm and got married in May, 7 months after our engagement. DH had graduated and deferred law school for a year so I could finish at GW, and I was in the home stretch of my program. Things looked good. I did what I needed to do to get licensed, and Jacob was born 2 months before our 3rd wedding anniversary.

So now, 6 years later, I can get a job almost at the drop of a hat that is flexible and fits into my schedule as a Mommy. That would have never happened if I hadn’t finished my degree and gotten my license. And it makes me a little bit mad that Bishop Bubblehead was not concerned with this particular aspect of my life, that he was not considering the long term consequences of me giving up a graduate program, just because it separated me and my intended for a few months. I understand that his main concern was getting us to the temple, and that 7 months is a long time for unmarried people to stay chaste, but I wish that he would have had enough faith in us to realize that getting to the temple was just as important, if not more so, to us (which it was), and therefore, we would somehow manage it (which we did). I wish his counsel could have included ideas about DH juggling HIS education, (which actually ended up being the case), instead of accusingly putting the burden of giving things up squarely on my shoulders.

And what is even more disturbing to me is that I was ready to listen to his counsel. I was, really. It was DH who scoffed at it, who didn’t give it a second thought because he knew that we had prayfully and faithfully set up a plan that was best for us, and that this bishop had no business telling us what to do. I’m glad that I have a husband who knows who is responsible for receiving the revelations for his life, and when counsel from a bishop is counsel from God, and when it is counsel from a guy who has had to deal with too many hormonal driven singles.

I’ll keep you posted on the job. Who knows? Maybe I’ll hate it, and want to quit. But at least I have that option.

I dreamed last night I was on a boat to heaven….(another musical reference, this one far less obscure. Another pretend thousand dollars to the first person who accurately names it.)

Actually, I dreamed last night that my DH left me. Not for any reason, really, just that he was tired of being married, and decided not to be married anymore. It was devastating. My kids would run over to his condo after school (becuase in my dream, there were condos on my street, and all my kids were school age). And they didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know what to do, and my in-laws were in the dream and didn’t know what to do, and basically, it was just a horrible dream.

When I woke up, and realized it WAS a dream, I was so relieved I almost cried. I made my husband promise like five times before he went to work that he had no plans to leave me. I couldn’t even be mad at him for causing me all this pain, because it’s not like he did it on purpose. Or did he? Hmmmm………No.

Let me just say that I’m not one of those people who dream things and then have them come true. No, my psychicness (It’s a word! It is!) is only when I’m awake. And usually I don’t remember my dreams, or if I do, I can trace them back to stuff I had seen or heard recently. (You know, like reading about Nazi Germany is a sure way to get yourself into a concentration camp in your sleep. That kind of stuff.) And even though I’m fairly sure this dream is related to a TV show I saw the other day, it still upset me. I think I have a very happy marriage! I even said so in the dream! But it didn’t work, he still went to live in the Magically Appearing Condominiums.

Ever dream that your husband was having an affair and then stay mad at him for days? (Been there.) Ever dream that you gave birth to a baby only to wake up and wonder where it went? (Done that.) Come on, people, bring on the weird dream stories! Because everybody knows that sleep deprivation brings out the weirdest stuff when it comes to dreams. And since we’re all mothers, the sleep deprivation is a very real thing for us. Or at least used to be. And possibly will be again, because somehow most of us are stupid/noble (do those two words have the same root?) enough to try for a newborn again. We forget the nightmares, somehow.

I’ve nothing to say. Well, nothing that’s not been said. (If you can name that musical reference, I’ll give you a thousand dollars. Not really.) I found myself watching “The Price is Right” this morning, and trying to guess how much the showcases were, and ignoring the fact that my 2 yo was crunching Pringles into the couch, and I just thought “How did I get here?”

I woke up, got reay, made my daughter’s lunch, made sure homework was in order, got breakfast for everybody, let the dog out, took my oldest to school, and then came back and just FLOOPPEED. This was not a stressful morning. It was a very standard morning, except that we actually got up a few minutes earlier than usual and I knew where my keys were, so, in actuality, it was a roaring success.

This is usually my time to do laundry, clean up breakfast, maybe run a vacuum over any cereal that may have found its way onto the floor. (Why doesn’t my dog like cereal? She’ll eat lettuce, but not cereal. What’s up with that?) And usually, I like the fact that I am forced to get up around 8:00, and get everybody ready and out the door by 8:50. It gives my day more structure than the summer ever had. But today, as I stared at Bob Barker’s shiny white hair, I just thought “Why am I awake?”

Maybe it’s the alignment of the stars. The moon is in the wrong phase or something. Maybe it’s just that reading about Hurricanes Katrina, Ophelia, and Rita, along with the possibilities of several more hitting other vulnerable areas before hurricane season is over, has made me very discouraged. Or maybe it’s because nobody is giving me a free sports car if I guess how much a box of cereal cost. It could be anything, really.

I read that the Atlantic is in a cycle of “increased hurricane activity” and it’s basically something that happens every 25 to 40 years. It has nothing to do with global warming or anything, it’s just a cycle that the ocean has. HELLO! Oceans have cycles, too? And we’re all just on the wrong side of that cycle? Really, is there anything that’s not cyclical? (I mean, even Care Bears disappeared and then years later suddenly showed up, along with Strawberry Shortcake and Scooby-Doo, if I may totally mix metaphors, and I can, because this is partly my blog. Niiiiice run-on sentence, Wiz.)

I like the phrase. I going to start using it. “Leave me alone, I’m in a cycle of ‘increased hurricane activity’.

We had a little swap table at Enrichment the other day, you know, the kind of thing where you clean out your house and get rid of the crap that has been cluttering your own life, just so you can pick up somebody else’s crap and bring it home and fill the space you just cleaned out. (Sadly, this time I didn’t even clean out my own crap, I just gleefully brought home somebody else’s crap without pausing long enough to consider that if somebody else is throwing it away, I probably don’t need it either. Oh well.)

Anyway….

One woman brought mounds and mounds of baby clothes of every size you can imagine. She’s just had her 6th child, and she is done, so out with the baby crap for good! Another woman remarked, as this liberated mother deposited literally 5 loads from her car of undifferentiated baby paraphanalia onto the tables, “My, it must feel good to know you are done.”

The mother looked at her and said, “Oh yeah. I’m done.”

The first woman (who is 40 and has 4 kids, by the way), said, wistfully, “Oh, it’s just still such a debate between me and my husband about whether or not we’ll have another one, and I feel like the Lord is just saying, ‘Hey, make up your mind!’ You know what I mean, Heather?”

Well, actually, no, I don’t, but this is Relief Society, after all, charity never faileth and all that, and since she was clearly in a mood to wax lyrical about motherhood rather than actually seeking my opinion about such things, which she certainly really, REALLY would not appreciate anyway, I just smiled and shrugged.

She continued, “Oh, and you know, I’m almost 41, and my doctor tells me there are such risks involved with having a baby over the age of 40. But, you and I both know that when we know the Plan of Salvation, it makes it so there are no risks, not really.”

I stared at her. What?

“What will come, will come, whatever is meant to be. And actually, statistically, it’s the women who are having babies at 23 that are having the problems.”

I actually have little idea what statistics are involved with problematic pregnancies at age 41, or how in any way they relate to women at age 23, but it was really the previous statement that blew my mind. Knowing the Plan of Salvation eliminates risk? Is that true? Or did she mean that being able to put figures on a flannel board about where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going makes it so we don’t have to be scared of what might be coming?

Don’t get me wrong. I love knowing the Plan of Salvation, and I’ll admit that it probably adds a persective to a difficult life that others may not have, and having the gift of the Comforter certainly is a part of that, too. But deliberately taking a risk, just because you know about the plan seems foolish to me, if not in direct contradiction of God’s commandments about being good stewards to our bodies and our families. If this woman had said, “I feel like there is another spirit that belongs in our family, even though I’m forty”, or even, “I know I’m getting older, but I still really want another child,” I would be fine with it. But ignoring risks just because, “what will come will come”, well, I’m not so okay with that.

We didn’t continue our conversation, because the Relief Society president announced that it was time for refreshments, so we broke off rifling through the stuff and headed for the kitchen. If there’s anything we Mormons like better than other people’s crap, it’s fattening food somebody else has had to prepare. (Enter Homer Simpsonesque voice here:)Mmmmm…doouuughnuts….arrrgglrrg…{tongue lolling out, drool, drool, drool…}

I don’t know why we Mormons do it. Why are we so compelled to embarrass ourselves in front of other people in the name of “talent”?

Yes, it was our ward talent night tonight. And it was a hoot.

You had the usual suspects: little kids telling not-so funny jokes (”what kind of key never opens any locks? A Donkey! WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!),the little kids playing instruments badly, like the two brothers who played a duet with one brother a measure behind the entire song (Yes, the whole song. They didn’t even end together), and the primary girls singing off key, blushing and giggling when they forgot the words, and saying stuff like “Um, hi (giggle), hi, we’re up here, hi”, until some merciful parent gave them the words to the primary song they are singing.

But I feel like our ward went above and beyond the usual spectrum of bad tonight. First, there was our MC. He was dressed (I’m not making this up) in camoflauge fatigue pants and a pink and blue tie-dyed shirt. It hurt to look at him.

And then two adults, yes TWO adults read their original poetry. People, if you are over the age of 10, nobody wants to hear an original poem recited at a talent night. And we sure as hell don’t want to hear 4 of them. And I don’t care how lovely you sing, if you didn’t practice with your duet partner, you will invariably mess up and look silly.

There were some highlights, of course. The missionaries would periodically run across the stage, interupting the psychedelic MC with their juggling antics, which sometimes invovled their own shoes. Some 12 year olds sang “Book of Mormon stories” ala early 90’s grunge band, complete with drums and keyboards. And one kid who looked to be about 8 told us everything he knew about spiders. Did you know that black widows only attack you if you pull on their webs and act like you are going to squish them? Because if you don’t do that, they don’t bite you. But tarantulas can bite, and even though they’re not poisonous to people, a bite on the leg can still cause you a lot of pain. Tarantulas are strong.

Jacob slept through most of this, leaving me with a huge drool mark across my breast on my white shirt, which looked lovely from the stage, I’m sure. Yes, I participated in this talent debacle tonight, although I’d like to think our number (I shoowapped with some other ladies) was the hit of the night. If nothing else, we knocked ‘em dead with our encore, which was our 30 second tribute to RiverDance. Yes, we had a young mother flying through the stage like a gazelle, doing her best imitation of Lord of the Dance. I’m telling you, it doesn’t get any better than that.

This weekend I am venturing off to one of those most unique of cultural experiences: The Baby Shower. I have my gift all ready, complete with slippers that the baby will never wear, simply because they were too stinkin’ cute to pass up. I also have Infant’s Tylenol (grape flavor - very important. All babies spit out the nasty cherry kind), a thermometer, and lanolin, all of which I hope will get used. I hate to think I’m giving a gift that will just sit on a shelf and rot. With the exception, of course, of the pink fuzzy slippers. I know those are totally useless, being a mom, that they’ll fall off the baby, and then they’ll be too big, or the baby will simply pull them off, but the first-time mother doesn’t know that yet, and Tylenol doesn’t look as cute in a gift bag.

But it got me thinking back to my first baby, and my first baby shower. I opened gift after gift of outfits I was sure my baby would never fit into (compare a newborn to a 12 month outfit, and you’ll swear your baby will never be that big). I got bottles, burp rags, and bibs. I got sippy cups and spoons. And I got scared. It was the first time I really switched modes from ‘pregnant person’ to ‘baby-take-care-of-person.’ I was so wrapped up in all my pregnancy books, I forgot to read infant books. And it all became very real in a very scary way. Suddenly I found myself listening to all the advice instead of looking at the various binkies, wondering why all of them were different, and what possible difference it could make.

Shortly after her birth, I sent DH to the store to buy burp cloths that weren’t hand-sewn and beautifully lined. Those I had received at the shower were surely too nice to wipe up puke with. Also, nobody had warned me that I would need major nursing pads (apparently some women DON’T need them, of those women, I am totally jealous) I was using little nursing pads when I was pregnant, due to major colostrum leakage, (but that’s probably a little TMI) and was not prepared for the onslaught of liquid and pain that accompanied mommyhood. I needed some serious reinforcement if I was ever to appear in public again. But then, I wasn’t sure that I ever WOULD appear in public again.

So as I head to this shower tomorrow, and look at the excitement and anticipation my cousin is feeling for her venture into a new phase of life, I will just laugh, play the games, and ooohhh and aaahhh over all the beautiful baby things. Because she has no idea what’s coming…..and who am I to ruin it? Let her dream. Because, as all of you know, she wouldn’t believe me if I told her.

I might just as well be called whatserbucket the slacker rookie. Why?
Oh, I dunno… the Wiz first sent me an invite to blog here months and months ago when I had time on my hands. In between trips to the toilet and the emergency room, holed up in bed with my powerbook and a tall glass of lemonade just musing about this and that. Those invitations sat one after the other in my inbox digitally rotting until they were no longer valid.
I don’t know why I didn’t just hop right in. I normally have plenty to say about plenty of things. It’s not like the company around here is sketchy. The Wiz and her cohorts seem like decent well-bred people.
Maybe it’s because of the slacker part of me. I guess I figured I’d have to read through all the archives and familiarize myself with the neighborhood (sorry, didn’t happen) and the style and vibe so I didn’t offend or repeat (sorry, likely will happen). The slacker in me also doesn’t feel like fretting over tenses, editing or punctuation (like I have time for that right now) I don’t like feeling that I have to be a scholar on something before I spout off. So consider yourself warned. I’ll try to not talk purely out of my backside if possible.
I am also quite possibly one of the most rookiest of rookies in mommy land. I never babysat in my youth (my first babysitting gig was when I was 26 years old). I never really aspired to motherhood, never had younger siblings or cousins to run after. (My husband is an excellent mother, by the way. Perhaps we’ll talk gender roles one day.) I am the definition of clueless. Picture a deer in the headlights. Keep in mind this deer has engorged breasts and postpartum issues and is in a new city where she knows no one (cue Doppler effect of a car zooming by).
Anywhoooo…..that’s my into in a nutshell. Mormon Mommy? Yes. In a war of sorts? Yes. I think I’ll put my blanket over there, if that’s alright. Schooch over Goochie there’s a new kid on the block. Now if I can just figure out how to post this…

I just finished the book “Freakonomics”, and it’s a good book. It’s very interesting, and says some really fascinating things. Among the more controversial stands in the book are the ideas that abortion has caused the crime rate to drop, and that what parents actually DO matters less than who they ARE when the baby is born.

If you want to know more about the abortion thing, read the book. I’m not going to get into it here (yeah, like I really want a flame war on a Mommy blog about abortion. That’s T&S’s department!). But I would like to discuss this idea that what you do as a parent matters less than who you are before your baby was born.

Now, this assumptions are all based on test scores, of course, which we all know don’t amount to everything George Bush had hoped they would. But still, standardized tests do give us some irrefutable numbers and patterns which then can be matched to coorelating factors. And they have found that kids who perform well have some unifying aspects of their background, which include race, socioeconomic status, family background (2 parent family vs. single parent), etc. That’s not all that surprising, right–rich kids tend to succeed in school more often than poor ones. But the numbers do say that there is no correlation between success and having a stay at home mom until the child went to kindergarten. What IS shown is that kids with mothers who had them at age 30 or older, who have mothers with a known high IQ, or who have a mother with an education, are the ones who are succeeding, at least at the standardized tests.

Frankly, reading that DID surprise me, and I’m wondering what to do with this information. Take it for what it’s worth, get a full time job and pack my kid up to day care because what I’m doing all day doesn’t really matter? I’m highly educated, I have a fairly high IQ, I’m 30, and I’m white, so apparantly, my kid has it made. He has all the tools since birth to succeed, and I don’t need to give him any more.

Somehow I can’t really believe this. I’ve read too many other things that say the exact opposite, that a mother has the most profound impact on her offspring, and staying at home is the best thing a mother can do. But I guess we’ve all known some SAHM whose children probably would be better off in day care.

Anyhow, I am a little bit disturbed about the findings of these guys, and I don’t think they are doing it to be politically correct. I mean, c’mon, saying that the kind of people who are having abortions are the kind of people who would raise criminals is seriously politically INcorrect, so I’m not sure what kind of political agenda this book has.

But since this is already the longest post ever, I’m going to end it soon and throw out my confusion and dismay to the bloggernacle at large to find out what everybdoy else thinks. How important is a mother, I mean besides providing good genetic make-up? Am I overestimating my effect on my son? Would he succeed or fail, regardless of what I do, just because of who I am and what kind of genes I passed on to him? To be honest, sometimes it might be nice to think nothing that I do matters–it would erase a whole multitude of Mommy sins I commit every day!

Today my oldest is taking her first sick day of first grade. Yes, first grade has been in session less than a month, but still. I woke her up in plenty of time to get dressed, eat breakfast, collect her homework, etc. etc., and she immediately started crying. This is rare for her, she usually just yawns, says she’s really tired, and then wonders if she can wear her yellow butterfly shirt again, even though she’s worn it twice in the last week.

Well, today, her back hurts. She’s having difficulty stretching it out, and the thought of getting dressed was just too much for her to handle. This is a new one for me. When I was sick, deliberately or otherwise, I had a headache, my throat hurt, or my personal favorite “tummyache”. When I got older, the tummyache excuse turned to cramps - after all, what kind of mother would make her daughter go to school when clearly she should be wrapped around a hot water bottle for the day? (apparently my kind of mother, the excuse worked once, then she started sending me to school with Advil) Then I learned how to make myself throw up, a nasty experience, but 10 minutes of grossness translated into going back to sleep and avoiding tests. But a sore back? I never had that. I do remember once having a really sore neck, which developed into a fever that sent me to bed for three days.

So I am letting her rest, then I will put her in the shower for a while, maybe give her a little Children’s Motrin, and see if she’s feeling well enough to go in the afternoon. But I can’t help but wonder if the sore back is going to show up more often now that she knows it means climbing in Mommy’s bed and watching PBS in the morning instead of going to school. She missed one day of kindergarten last year because she was sick, and she was really mad that I didn’t let her go that day. So I am letting the sore back thing fly today, because it’s not a pattern, at least not yet. Plus, I really think her back hurts. She’s not making it up……today.

So what have your kids come up with to avoid school? And what did you do about it? What did you as a child that worked or didn’t work? I had the throw up thing, but that was so nasty I only used it in extreme situations, and would often spend the “sick day” doing the overdue homework that necessitated staying home. My husband would just occasionally tell his mother he was taking a “mental health day” and she would let him, since he didn’t do it a lot, and let’s face it, everybody needs a mental health day now and again. I just didn’t know first graders needed them.

We are thinking about getting a puppy. I know, there’s not enough chaos or poop in our house, so we’re looking for some more. We went to a puppy training class the other day, to pick up some tips from the pros. We chatted with one woman for quite a while who gave us the following basic facts about training a puppy. While you read this, substitute the word “child” for “dog” in your mind, and see if this doesn’t sound more like something you would find in a parenting book:

1) Always give the dog clear expectations, and never deviate from those expectations. Your response about those expectations needs to be consistent.

2) Never repeat a command to a dog. You need to expect that they carry out your command immediately.

3)Using treats to bribe your dog to do what you want is ok in the beginning, but the dog needs to learn to obey you out of respect and love, not because they expect a reward for doing so every time.

4)Talk to your dog while you are training him. The dog will begin to understand that not everything that comes out of your mouth involves discipline or commands, and that will build a better relationship with your dog. The dogs also love approval and praise.

5)The dog needs to understand that there is somebody in charge. If there is no apparant authority figure, the dog will become agitated, and he will try to assume that role, the role of Alpha Male. It will be very difficult once the dog assumes that role to convince him otherwise that you are charge. You have a short window to establish the chain of authority, and you have to constantly reinforce it.

During this whole spiel, Jacob was happily playing with this woman’s puppy, who nestled comfortably in my son’s lap and exuberantly licked his face. The woman smiled and said, “It’s not that different from raising kids, really.”

Yeah, DH and I had definitely picked up on that already. I started thinking, “Oh, great. My puppy handling skills are going to be judged according to the behavior of my 3 year old!”

Dh pointed out a woman who was particularly vocal about technique to the other puppy handlers.

“Oh,” our new friend said. “That’s Roberta.”

DH kind of snorted and said, “It looks like she thinks she’s the Alpha Male!”

The woman looked at us and said, “She doesn’t think she is. She KNOWS she is. All the dogs know it, too. She can get any dog to behave.”

She paused for a minute, and then said, “Come to think of it, her children are remarkably well behaved, too.”

So there you have it, folks. If you want to judge a person’s mothering skills, don’t judge her by the behavior of her children. Judge her by the behavior of her dog. And if you feel your mothering skills are lacking, you don’t need a family counselor, or a self-help book. Just show up to your neighborhood puppy training class, seek out the Alpha Male, and ask her to teach you everything she knows.

Let me just start by saying that I am overwhelmed with what has happened down in New Orleans. I have spent the last week or so very distraught, trying to figure out what to do, how to help. Come to find out that two men in the ward took off for Housten and the Astrodome. They just, took off. I said to one man’s wife, “Hey, I want to do that! How did they find out about doing that?” She told me how they had managed that, and then she looked at me and said, “You can’t do that, Heather. You have a kid. What are you going to do, take him with you? Or leave him for 2 weeks with somebody else? Just stay where you are, you’re fine. Donate some money.”

We have donated some money, of course, but her words struck me. You can’t do that. You have a kid. In so many ways, she’s right. Am I supposed to take my child into a potential dangerous situation, and deliberately put him at risk while helping others? Should I burden somebody else with his care while I act the hero to assuage my conscience about not doing more? And the people who went were men, one who has no children, and one who is a student and could leave his children with his stay at home wife.

“You can’t do that. You have a kid.” In Martha Beck’s book “Expecting Adam” (and please, let’s not open up this thread to comments about Martha Beck. I just want to say what part I liked in her book and move on), she talks about one experience she had when there was a fire in her apartment building. She was pregnant and had a toddler at the time, and she said she finally understood why there were so many references to the woes of women and children during war in the scriptures. A single woman can run, hid, fight. A pregnant woman, or a woman with a toddler in dire circumstances is, quite frankly, screwed.

I’m trying to find circumstances in which the answer is “Sure you can do that, even if you have a kid.” In a situation like this, though, those are harder to come by. I just hope that I can find something, and I say godspeed to those who are able to leave their children, (i.e, the MEN) to help those people who need it so desperately, because I know there are women down there who are also saying “I can’t do it. I have a kid.”

So one day, I was riding along on the secret bus, and I ran into whatserbucket, and we decided that she would be good on our blog. I know what you’re all thinking - “You ride a secret bus?” and the answer is “Yes, I do.” Hey, when you’re The Wiz, secret buses come around all the time.

Whatserbucket may or may not decide to post often, she doesn’t quite believe me about blogging and it’s addicting properties. But hey, you never know. And if I meet anyone else on the secret bus, I might just invite them to blog, too.

The following is a non-comprehensive list (you know, I’ve decided that I like lists) that I have created of various LIES I have been told over the years concerning motherhood. Feel free to add your own.

1. Keeping your baby awake during the day will make him sleep better at night. LIE! This only results in a grumpy, overtired baby, and a slightly schizophrenic mommy. Under NO circumstances should you do this. Let the kid sleep during the day. You’ll like him better.

2. Breastfeeding is pain-free. I believe this lie is perpetuated by men who like to look at nursing mother’s chests. The first time my daughter latched on correctly, I couldn’t breathe, I was in so much pain. It did get better, but there was always some pain with every initial latch. Ouch-a-rama. Please don’t lecture me on the benfits of breastfeeding. The benefits are still there, but there is a price attached.

3. Your body will bounce back completely after you give birth. Hmm…..maybe if you’re a movie star with plastic surgeons, personal trainers, and 3 nannies. But for the rest of us, the stretch marks will always be there as a badge of honor. And beware….the Incredible Shrinking Boobs is quite the magic trick that nature plays.

4. If you introduce your child to vegetables early and often, they will like them and not complain. Whoever said this never had children. That’s all I have to say about that. And it does NOT matter in what order you introduce each new food. They will always like fruits better, and chocolate even better than that.

5. Giving your child a pacifier is the worst thing you can ever do. Hey, if it gives you some quiet time when nothing else will, break out the binkies and buy them in bulk. Nobody goes to college with a binkie.

6. How old is your child? Well, then, that’s the size of clothing she wears. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

7. Your children aren’t listening to you. NOPE! The truth is, they’re listening more than you know, and understand more than you think. Talk about having to ‘watch your thoughts, words, and deeds.’ Most everything you do affects your child. Scary, but true.

8. Running errands with a toddler isn’t that hard.

J. Stapley, of Splendid Sun fame, has graciously offered his services to take this blog out of the Blogger galazy and into the greater universe beyond. He designed FMH’s website, and IMO, FMH looks absolutely fabulous. So he and I sat down (or maybe we were standing–it’s hard to remember) and talked about what I wanted this blog to look like, and, really, I was at a loss. I talked the The Wiz about it, and she, too, had few definite ideas about what we want a real website to look like. We don’t have the pink that FMH does–I picked a boring template because asthetically, well, I’m more of a boring kinda gal (although I did just make a daring home decor purchase in the form of BLACK dining room chairs! They look fabulous, but it’s totally out of my decorating comfort zone to do this, so I’m excited that a bold decorative leap actually turned out well! Oh, wait, but I digress…).

Anyway, creative modeling is just not where my talents lie, so I thought I would appeal to you, our readers, as to what you think this blog should look like when we abandon the Blogger template and become an actual grown-up website. Is there some image (other than a potty, of course) that cries out “Mormon Mommy Wars!” to you when you read this blog? A color you would prefer to look at when you are straining your motherly eyes, blogging in the wee hours of the morning? A loving, maternal sculpture we could put at the top of our page? Let us know. because I think we are on the brink of something exciting–our very own, blogger free URL! The font possibilities are just endless.

My Relief Society President is going through a lot right now. Here is what I know about:

1-She just moved. It’s from one apartment to the other in the same complex, but it’s still a move, and it’s almost worse, because nobody gave her much sympathy, because it was only a short distance. A move is a move in my book, and moving bites.

2-She has a very active 2year old and a 4 month old, both boys. And she lives in a 2 bedroom apartment.

3-Her husband just started grad school, and is still working full time. He is gone from approximately 7 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. some nights. Other nights it’s earlier, and the only night that he’s home, she has Relief Society meeting, so he can watch the kids. Needless to say, they see each other very little, and she has four years of this to look forward to, since it’s a part-time master’s so he can still work.

4-She is newly diagnosed (yesterday) with Celiac’s disease, an antoimmune disease where she cannot eat gluten, and so she thus has to change her entire eating lifestyle. (And get something different to eat for the sacrament, thus calling attention to herself, which she hates.)

5-She’s Relief Society President! We have a high need ward. There are many funerals to arrange, lots of welfare needs, and basically just a lot of women to visit and care for. This calling is a time consuming and stressful one, and she is EXCELLENT at it.

So, here’s my question: when you know of a woman in need, you call the Relief Society President. Who do you call when it IS the Relief Society President? I am her good friend and her visiting teacher to boot, so I think I would be one person to call. I used to be her secretary, but the bishop just released me this week so I can teach gospel doctrine. I told him maybe he should let RS Pres. get adjusted to her apartment and her new diet before making her try to find a new secretary, but he felt strongly about the call, so there you go. (Also, I think she has downplayed her need in front of the bishop.)

I have babysat for her on numerous occasions, our boys are the same age and it is not difficult for me to have her boy over. I have fed her dinner. I have listened to her talk. I have loaned her videos that her toddler likes, so she can at least have some sort of break during the day. I have loved doing every one of these things. I don’t know what else to do. I want to help her because she needs help and because I love her.

So what else can I do for her? She is getting depressed as she thinks of a gluten-free life and four years of seeing her husband sporadically. She has much to do, and she handles it all so beautifully, that sometimes it’s easy for people to forget that she has needs.