Things I learned in 2011

God cares about the little things in my life.
It is important to remember birthdays.
I have many hats, but I can only wear one at a time.
My children really are adorably hilarious.
Generous doses of sunlight are necessary for good health.
I don't have to eat the treats just because they are there.
Always make back-ups.
Simple tastes best.
Consistency is more important than perfection.
I can do hard things.

I Heart NYC!

Brandon had a business trip to New York City, and I tagged along. One of the fun things about being in a big city is the food! Last night we had "snooty" French food at a well known place called Balthazar's.For lunch today, Brandon's Jewish coworker took us to the 2nd Ave Deli. I had a hot pastrami on rye. Brandon had matzoh ball soup. Delish!

A New Hue

Mommy: What color are Joel's eyes?

Joel: Joel's eyes is blue.

Mommy: What color is the monkey's tail?

Joel: Monkey's tail is brown.

Mommy: What color is Joel's tail?

Joel: Joel's tail is not.

Blokern=Broken

I think grandparents select gifts for their grandchildren to get back at their own children for all the trouble caused while growing up. Grandparents all over the country must collaborate to let each other know about the most obnoxious, battery operated, lights flashing, incessant music playing toys in existance, and these are the kinds of things they choose to give to their grandchildren. My mom has all but admitted that such a conspiracy exists! Of course, I could always take out the batteries, or disconnect the sound box...or smash the thing with a hammer. Unfortunately, I am just as besotted with my children as are their gift giving grandparents. When Joel looks at me with his big blue eyes, holds up his firetruck, which has mysteriously ceased to flash and wail, and says "It's blokern. Mommy fix it, pleeeaaase!" I go to the store for another pack of AA's.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

On Tuesday night Brandon and I went to see this play at the Hale Center Theater. It was wonderful. Lyrics, clever. Singing, masterful. Casting, spot on. Result? Hilarious! Because of all the deadlines and traveling going on around here recently, it had been a while since we went out on a date, so the experience was a special treat.

Dallin's Blessing

Dallin Matthew was given a name and a blessing by his father on Sunday, April 11th. We had almost our entire family there to watch/participate. I'd warned everyone beforehand that we wouldn't be leaving after sacrament meeting as is common at such events, because I had to teach Sunday School, and Brandon was in charge of teaching Elder's Quorum. I thought it was pretty cool that everyone decided to attend all three meetings with us. Afterward we had a lovely meal and enjoyed visiting

two grandmas

our little family


Dallin and cousin Aya


two grandpas

More Baby Pictures

Dallin with his Grandma S.
Dallin and Joel watching Baby Einstein together.

Pictures of Dallin

Pictures of my baby - These were taken on Feb 2nd, so he was two weeks old. My friend Faith took them. She is a talented photographer, and just shot these on the fly with no prep.

Baby News

Dallin Matthew was born on January 19th at 5:40 AM. He weighed 9 pounds, 2 ounces and was 20 inches long. He has lots of black hair, and is a beautiful baby. I'll post more, including pics, when I am not so sleep deprived!

Calling All Cars

Last week one of our smoke /Carbon monoxide detectors went off. It was around 10:00 on Saturday morning. The thing was LOUD and set all the other detector units in our entire alarm system to blaring, "CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTED!" over and over. Joel kept saying "Scarey!" and clinging to my legs, which made it very difficult to climb on a chair and turn off the alarm. I was almost 99% certain that it was a false alarm caused by a faulty detector unit, as we'd had an issue with this particular one before. I was still concerned, though. What if the detector was not faulty, and there was carbon monoxide lurking in our basement? Brandon said, "You know you'll panic about it unless you find out for sure," which is true. He knows me too well. I decided to call the fire department and find out what to do-which is what the instructions on the back of the thrice blasted detector unit demanded. I very apologetically explained the situation to the nice man on the other end of the line, and asked if they had a simple way to test for carbon monoxide, just in case. He said they have test kits in their trucks, and would be happy to send someone out to check our house. Imagine my surprise when this turned out to be a full sized fire truck, an ambulance, a police car, and the Fire and Rescue SUV! Four fully-equiped firefighters tromped through the house in their bulky gear to test for dangerous gases, and came out to cheerfully inform us that, as expected, there were no readings. Joel and I sat in the car parked out front, as we'd been advised to evacuate the premises. Brandon stood outside chatting with the officer. ALL our neighbors drove by and asked what was wrong. I felt completely mortified. Brandon was his usual collected self, and Joel-well, Joel was THRILLED! He loves his toy emergency vehicles, and kept saying "Look, Mommy, BEEEEG (big) fire truck!" I guess my embarrassment was worth Joel's delight...maybe.

I'm Baack!

I haven't posted anything for so long, that the idea of trying to catch up is daunting. We've had a lot of significant things happen in our life. We bought a new house. We are expecting a baby boy at the end of the month. Joel turned two. Brandon spent over a month away from home traveling for business. I'll try to post more details/pictures of these events, but a quick summary will have to do for now.

I Have a Drinking Problem...

I usually buy two gallons of milk at a time - skim for me, and whole for Joel. (Brandon despises milk in any form.) Two gallons seems like a lot of milk for only two people, but we always seem to guzzle it down long before it sours. When I finished my gallon before Joel did, I started drinking his. Now I am addicted to whole milk. Skim just doesn't cut it any more. Even 1% seems too weak. I'm going to have to start drinking less, though, because whole milk has a lot more calories than I am used to ingesting with my breakfast cereal or lunchtime pbj.

If I ask Joel "What does the cow say?" He responds with the cutest soprano "moo" you've ever heard. I can't help but giggle at him.

Man, he is QUICK!

I turned away for only a few seconds. In that time Joel managed to fish two black Sharpies out of Brandon's backpack and go wild with them. He scribbled a dark patch all over the facial features of one of his toy ducks. I guess he decided that the hapless animal needed a mask to hide its secret identity. I was able to clean the marker mask off the long suffering plastic ducky using hairspray. There are only a few faint stains left on Joel's chubby fingers, and his face is mostly clean. I still haven't figured out how to remove the hyroglyphics from the microfiber couch, however.

Facets

People are like cut gems in that they have facets.

I've found that spending time with many different people who are not similar to yourself allows you to develop distinct facets of your own character. Some of my friends bring out my silly side. Others cause me to reflect and philosophize. I do many more athletic activities when hanging out with certain people. With others I focus on music, or cooking or books. In any case, I am more likely to be a multifaceted person because of the interactions I have.

I've also learned that I should be careful about the judgments I make. I may think someone is shallow, or dull, or weird, but inevitably once I get to know that person better, I find that I was only seeing one side of them. They have other facets which make their personality rich and varied and interesting, and different than I first thought.

Kids Make Me Laugh

A couple of days ago Joel was "helping" me clean up after dinner. I was doing the dishes and turned around just in time to watch him do this:He'd climbed onto a chair to be able to reach the table and fished two leftover croutons out of the remains of our Caesar salad. Then he trotted across the kitchen and carefully placed one each in the pre-wash and main-wash compartments of the dishwasher. I don't know why this struck me as so funny, but I couldn't stop giggling.

I changed my name.

Well, not really. I changed the name I use to sign my posts on blogger. The reason I did this is that there are a lot of people named Emily. Did you know that Emily has topped the Social Security Administration's list of most popular baby girl names for twelve years? It was "dethroned" this year by Emma, which I don't think is a true victory, as I believe Emma and Emily are derivations of the same origin name.

I have no problem being called Emily. In fact, I quite like my name. I also don't mind that there are lots of others who share my name. However, when I post on friends' blogs, I often notice comments by several other Emilys. This can get rather confusing, which is why I have decided to change my name to Pemblemily.

Why this strange name, you ask? Well, Pem has been one of my nicknames for many years. It all started with my roommate Alison. I called her Al, then Pal, then Palison. So, she called me Pemily. Eventually we began adding the letter P to the beginning of all our friends names. Rachel became Pachel and Wendy was Pendy and so on. We would all disolve into fits of giggles whenever a name turned out particularly funny sounding. Some of the letter P names soon disappeared, but Pali and Pem endure to this day.

Now, I didn't want to use just Pem as my blog signature, because people who are unaware of the Pem/Pali thing would have no way to connect this handle with me. I lengthened it to Pemblemily because that contains my real name, while still being unique. Also, it makes me laugh.

Another nice feature is that Pemblemily is similar to the name of my blog, Invisiblelephant. Why did I title my blog in this odd way, you ask? Well, it all started ...

Virtuous Vices? Vicious Virtues?

I've noticed that there are certain character traits that most people would put on the "bad" list, and yet we don't seem to mind owning up to them. (At least, when these traits are part of our own characters. If anybody else displays them, we find it quite annoying.) I'm talking about things like being stubborn. Few would consider "You're so meek!" to be a compliment, but we admit to being stubborn with shamefaced pride. Other traits I would put in this category are independence, and perfectionism. These are things that, I think, society encourages us to develop, but when we become so good at being stubborn, or independent, or perfectionistical (Is that a word? Oh well. If it wasn't before, it is now.) we create major problems for ourselves and those who interact with us. Now that I think about it, the difficulty isn't necessarily that we have these traits, but in the degree to which we act on them. In most cases tenacious=good, but stubborn=bad. Codependent=not so good. Completely independent=not so good either, but interdependence seems like a pretty healthy middle ground. For me perfectionism is one of these vicious virtues. You wouldn't think that my desire to do certain things as perfectly as possible would be a bad thing, but sometimes it becomes a source of guilt and stress. It can even become a paralyzing factor, because if I don't think I will be able to do something perfectly, then I won't even try. I think the first step to take in conquering perfectionism is to recognize it for what it is-a vice rather than a virtue. Striving for excellence is a good thing. When this is taken to extremes and becomes perfectionism, it is not a good thing. But, how do you know when you cross the line between positive striving for excellence, and negative perfectionism? Other things to consider in taming perfectionism are how do you define perfect, and why do it that way? Am I perfect at something if I can do it as well or better than someone else? Am I perfect at something if I receive lots of praise and/or money? Hmm-this topic will require further thought.

Wheely Bug

Joel got a Wheely Bug for Christmas. It took him a little while to get the hang of it, but he now spends quite a bit of time zipping around the house on this ingenious contraption. It is a simple, sturdy toy made by a company named Prince Lionheart. One of the best things about it is that the wheels are castors, like you find on office chairs, so the bug can go in any direction. Joel loves his bug, but he is often a little rough on the things he loves. One day, after Joel had picked up the Wheely Bug and dropped it to the floor several times, one of the plastic castors shattered. Tragedy! Joel couldn't understand why I wouldn't let him ride it, but with three wheels and one screw sticking down like a peg leg, I thought it was too dangerous-both for Joel and for my kitchen floor. Imagine my delight when I was able to go online to the manyfacturer's website, and order a replacement wheel for a couple of bucks. Once it came in the mail, I attached it myself, and now we're back in Wheely Bug business.

Yummy

A few days ago Joel was playing upstairs. Things became too quiet, if you know what I mean, so I went to investigate. Joel was in the spare bedroom with the door closed. Somewhere he'd found a tube of lipstick, and was happily eating it. (It was my favorite one, too!) There was lipstick on Joel's face and down his shirt. He'd smeared some on the walls, and the bedspread. There were lipstick handprints all over the couch cover. I had to laugh even though I wanted to paddle his bum. Anyone know how to remove lipstick stains?

Valuables

We have a quilt on our bed which was crafted for us by members of Brandon's family. The idea for making it originally came from Grandma Sanderson. She bought some fabric for this quilt as a wedding gift when Brandon and I were married in 2006, and Jane and Lauren agreed to make the patches. However, life got busy, and after a bit was completed, the project was put aside. A few months ago Aunt Bonnie decided it was time to finish it.

When Bonnie takes on a project, it gets done! Brandon's mom added more fabric to complement that chosen by Grandma Sanderson three years ago. The girls completed the embroidery and applique on the patches. Bonnie pieced the top together, and Grandma Call did most of the stitching, though everyone helped a little. The result is absolutely beautiful.

When the quilt was finished, they took it to show to Grandma Sanderson, who hadn't been able to help because of her failing health. She passed away on March 9th at the age of 91. We were all glad that she was able to see the wonderful outcome of her idea.

I treasure this quilt. Not only is it beautifully made and suited to our quirky tastes, (my photos don't do it justice) but it represents the gift of time and talent from six incredible women. I love that this is a remembrance of Grandma Sanderson, who is no longer with us. I love the tiny, even stitches of Grandma Call, who is herself in her 90's, and may not be with us much longer either.

I almost want to put the quilt away where it will not be used in order to keep it from being dirtied or damaged in any way. I decided I'm not going to do this, though, because I feel a twinge of happiness every time I walk past my bed and see this quilt spread there. I feel comfort beyond mere physical warmth any time I snuggle underneath it. I count this quilt among the most valuable things we have. Why is it that some things decrease in value if they are used, but others just get more and more valuable?





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