Remember Me?

Sorry for my Missing In Action status lately. I've been caught up in the world of 13th century Wales and England. All of my discretionary time for the past two weeks has gone to reading Here Be Dragons. I can't remember the last time I was so captivated--I have seriously dreamed this book every night. If you enjoy historical fiction, I highly recommend this book.

What else has been going on? Hmmm. Schoolwork. Laundry. Baby showers (not for me-- there are so many people pregnant around here these days). Feeding my family-can you believe that they want food three or more times a day? Helping my mom plan her upcoming move. Primary. Gardening (although not as much as I'd like. We're supposed to finally get our new concrete poured and stamped on Monday and I can get in our new, second garden after that). Helping with an Emergency Preparedness Fair for the community. Growing a baby. Chasing an exhausting 2-year-old. No wonder I've not been reading or writing blogs lately. When did I ever have the time before this?

Now I need to go get dressed and get over to the library for the next book in the trilogy.

What's keeping you busy this spring?

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from our family to yours.

I am so grateful for the Savior, Jesus Christ. I know that He lives and that through Him, we also will live again after we die. As I have lost many loved ones to death (and know that eventually all those whom I love will die,) the knowledge of the resurrection brings peace and joy to my soul.

Nearly 100 years before the birth of Christ, a prophet named Amulek testified of Christ, of His divine mission, and of the resurrection:

40 And he shall come into the ^aworld to ^bredeem his people; and he shall ^ctake upon him the transgressions of those who believe on his name; and these are they that shall have eternal life, and salvation cometh to none else.

41 Therefore the wicked remain as though there had been ^ano redemption made, except it be the loosing of the bands of death; for behold, the day cometh that ^ball shall rise from the dead and stand before God, and be ^cjudged according to their works.

42 Now, there is a death which is called a temporal death; and the death of Christ shall loose the ^abands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death.

43 The spirit and the body shall be ^areunited again in its ^bperfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; and we shall be brought to stand before God, ^cknowing even as we know now, and have a bright ^drecollection of all our ^eguilt.

44 Now, this restoration shall come to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, both the wicked and the righteous; and even there shall not so much as a hair of their heads be lost; but every thing shall be ^arestored to its perfect frame, as it is now, or in the body, and shall be brought and be arraigned before the bar of Christ the Son, and God the ^bFather, and the Holy Spirit, which is ^cone Eternal God, to be ^djudged according to their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil.-- Alma 11

Today was my first day in a new assignment at church; I'll be working with the children of our congregation each week and learning from them as I strive to teach them about Christ. We read scriptures from the New Testament together about the death and resurrection of Jesus. I was touched by the words to a song that we sang towards the end of the meeting:

"Did Jesus really live again, after He had died? Oh yes, and so shall I!" (Children's Songbook, pg. 64) What a blessing to have that knowledge and have your life influenced by it. He is our Savior and Redeemer.

Testing Her Limits

We are going through that wonderful stage when a toddler learns how to climb out of her bed. All that new-found freedom can really go to your head, I've learned. Children who were excellent sleepers when they were confined to a 3' x 5' space begin waking up early, staying up late, and resisting naps. And that is best-case scenario.

Bronwen has become quite proficient in the past week at escaping her crib. At first, she would just try to get up once, just to see if we'd let her up. Since she is our fourth, I was wise to this stunt and knew better than to let her stay up for even one minute. Generally, if I immediately put her back to bed, she'd settle down and go to sleep.

Last night after being put to bed, she got up at least five times. In the pitch dark of her room she had no problem scaling that crib and prying open the door. She cheerfully ran down the hall, informing us that she'd "waked up!"

While I was at spin class this morning, prior to 6:00 am, Jared heard her struggling, half-asleep, to get her bedroom door opened. He gently put her back to bed and assured her that it wasn't time to be awake quite yet.

Today at naptime, she really, really did not want to go to sleep.

1st time she popped up:
"Mommy, I play with bloon!" (balloon)

2nd time:
"Mommy, where is my bloon?"

3rd time:
"Mommy, I hungwy!" (plaintively, as if she had not just devoured a yogurt, a corn dog, half an apple, a warm peice of bread, and half of the mango that I had peeled for myself.)

4th time:
"Hi, Mommy!" (brightly, hoping to trick me into letting her stay up because she was so pleasant to be around.)

At this point, Jared, who was home for lunch, spent 15 minutes lowering her crib to the very lowest possible rung, hoping that she'd be stuck again.

5th time:
"Mommy, where is Daddy?" (groaning from Jared about the collosal waste of time it had been to lower her crib mattress.)

6th time: (after being put to bed with a firm but not-painful tap on her diapered bum,)
"Mommy, you panked me!"

7th time:
"I hurt my chin. My chin, chinny, chin! Kiss it, Mommy! Hug me, Mommy! Tuck me, Mommy!"

I explained to her that her chin chinny chin would be just fine if she would stop climbing out of her crib like a Chinese acrobat and that no matter how many times she got up, I'd put her back in until she took a nap. Thankfully, that was the last I've heard of her for 15 minutes.

Time to turn the doorknob around so the lock is on the outside. Sigh.

(Pictures are from a tantrum that she threw at Disneyland last month. I haven't taken many pictures lately.)

Naming Nightmares

Our firstborn son and daughter were more or less named before they were conceived. In a way, I thought that was a little boring and took some of the fun out of pregnancies (at the time), but I always forget what a wrestle it is to name a baby if you don't have something solid in your mind. Naming a child feels like such a responsibility and expresses something about you and about them. There are so many associations with names out there, both good and bad, and they vary from person to person.

For example, one of the contenders for Ian's name was Owen. I'd say it was in our top four, which was as close as we could get to naming him until he was a few hours old. But about two weeks before he was born, we watched an episode of Criminal Minds, which is a detective show about serial killers.(In general, this is not a great show for mothers to watch, and I have learned to avoid it, as it gives me more things to worry about in the middle of the night.) This particular story was about an 11-year-old boy who was a pathological serial killer. And his name was Owen. By the end of the night, the name was scratched from our list.

What's hard is that family members also feel the need to remind you of their own associations with a name. Another of my favorites for Ian was Mason, which reminded me of the years that I spent working in the bakery of a wonderful family. It is also a German name, and Jared has German blood; as we like to give our children a name consistent with their heritage, it worked. But it was also the last name of somebody's ex-husband and brought a shudder to Jared's parents every time it was mentioned. (Incidentally, now it is a favorite with a couple of my brothers and will probably be used at some point by one of them, so they are probably glad that we didn't use it.)

Now I have no regrets about letting go of those names. Ian is Ian and I can't imagine him as anything else. But once again we are struggling to find a name that clicks for our coming little girl. We want it to be a classic, but one that is not over-used. We want it to match our heritage, which means English, Scottish,Welsh, Danish, Norwegian, or German. There are a few family names that we really like and her middle name will definitely be a family name, like all of her other siblings.

The front-runner for a long time was Lucy, which also happens to be the name of one of my great-grandmothers. But once we found out we were having a girl, it somehow didn't seem right. And we don't LOVE it with our last name. It may stick around as a middle name, but it is off the first name list.

Other top names include Margaret, (my grandmother's name,) and Violet, (Jared's great-grandmother's name). But we differ a bit on what we would call Margaret. Jared likes Meg, which I don't really mind, but this weekend we discovered that Meg is the name of the vixen-n0t-quite-heroine in Disney's Hercules, and I'm kinda turned off to it at the moment. I'm not saying I couldn't get over it, but let's just say that she's no one whom I want my daughter emulating.

So we started perusing web lists of names this weekend, and I'm going to share some of our favorites with you. I've decided that I like positive feedback on names-- if you think one of them is hideous, please keep that to yourself or gossip about it to your sister, but don't tell me! I'll put up a poll in the sidebar and you can vote for as many of them as you like. This doesn't mean that we'll use the most popular one, but I'm interested at this point in knowing which names you all like.

As Bronwen's name is Welsh, we've looked a lot at Welsh names and a few that we like are: Eleri (Ell-er-eye), Meredith, Aerwen (Air-wen), and Sabrina. Other Gaelic names that pique our interest are Rowan, Maren, and Regan. Old-fashioned names (besides Margaret and Violet, which are still on the list,) are Eleanor, Helen, and Maeve (May-vee).

There's a good chance that she'll come home being named Margaret, but she may have a name that isn't even on this list, as nothing has clicked to the point of calling the baby by a certain name, even though I've tried it out for a day or two with a couple of them.

So, give me some (positive) feedback. Do you like any of these names? And please warn me if you already know three children under 4 with one of these names. We'd like to NOT choose a future top ten name, even though it doesn't need to be previously unheard-of.