A Woman's Prerogative

A story from my past flashed through my head today. Let's go back 10 years to my freshman year of college. My roommate and I decided to go trick-or-treating - why wouldn't we? We loved Halloween! I didn't think much of it, besides being really excited for lots of free candy, until I was forced to come face to face with how old I was (even though 18 now sounds mighty young). I had picked a piece of candy out of the bowl a woman was holding, but when I realized that she had Mounds bars, one of my favorite candy bars, I asked if it would be okay to switch. She answered, "It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind." Being called a woman while trick-or-treating without children of my own embarrassed me enough that I didn't go trick-or-treating again until Kaia was old enough to legitimately hold her own bag, but hopefully the woman was right that it is a woman's prerogative to change her mind!

That brings me to the main topic of this post...I'm changing the colors I'm doing for my blanket. I did love the greens, but for some reason the monochromatic scheme just wasn't grabbing me as I searched for patterns. Instead, I found myself gravitating to pictures like these (from this blog post) with so many beautiful colors:

I always love color, but there must be something about pregnancy that really brings it out in me. Asher's blanket was also a rainbow of color. (Was he really so little and new?)

Without further ado, here are the colors I have chosen for a ripple blanket like the one in the first picture. I think the colors work for either a boy or a girl, but if you think otherwise, you can let me know now before I start making it! Also, I'm not planning on putting the colors in rainbow order - does anyone have any suggestions on how to order them?

I want to thank all of you who commented on my last post. I appreciate your input on everything. I agree with many people who talked about combining chocolate with another color - I LOVE chocolate with green, pink, blue, turquoise, orange...almost any other color, really. And I really am quite convinced that I'm going to wait until the baby is born to learn its gender. Lulu knows me well, though - I think I would find it very difficult to be at another ultrasound appointment with the possibility of finding out and decline the opportunity. So, Becca, thank you so much for sharing your friend's experience of having the technician write the gender down and put it in an envelope. Then I'll have time to decide whether to find out early instead of making a rash choice and regretting it. That's the update for now!

We're having a...

Stinker!! This is my third baby that has been shy (or stubborn) about revealing his/her gender (I finally found out what Kaia was at 7 months pregnant; the technician for Asher's 20 week ultrasound poked and prodded him enough that he finally gave a little glimpse of the vital region). To make a long story short...I went for an ultrasound last Thursday and was extremely disappointed not to learn the gender. I came to terms with it, though, and I'm actually considering waiting until the baby is born to find out. Is that crazy? Has anybody had experience with waiting? Was it worth it? The thought crossed my mind that maybe that experience would be similar to when I had Asher without an epidural - it's not something I would have chosen to do on my own, but it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. Any opinions?

One of the biggest reasons I wanted to find out was for planning purposes. I want to start narrowing down names, which seems a little more difficult if I don't even know which gender to focus on. I want to pick out yarn colors to begin making this baby's blanket. But I'm beginning to think I can plan around the gender better than I would have thought. We do already have baby clothes for a boy or a girl. I can make a short list of my favorite names for each. And perhaps I can make a baby blanket that would go either way. I've been salivating over the yarns in the picture below for months now and I had thought it would be best for a boy, but I'd like to put it up to a vote. Can these greens go either way? Or do they strike you as very much representing one gender or the other? To me, green obviously matches up very well with blue and other "boy colors." But I think green also goes quite well with pink and purple and other "girl colors."

Joy in the Journey

We had an interesting week. Starting on Monday, one plan after another fell through all week long due to causes that were out of our hands. It could easily have turned into an exercise in frustration, and I wouldn't have blamed my kids if they had thrown a tantrum or two when these plans they were excited about had to be changed. But my kids taught me an excellent lesson this week; they taught me about having joy in the journey. For instance, on Tuesday we were planning to go strawberry picking with a friend and her daughter, but the daughter woke up sick that morning. Instead of moping, my kids became fully engaged in a project of their making - using my scrapbooking chalk to color several dinosaur cutouts made with my handy-dandy Cricut machine. They probably spent two hours coloring these little cutouts and then more time gluing them on to butcher paper. Here they are busy at work (pictured with our friend's son, who we now watch two days a week).


This week's experiences brought to mind President Thomas S. Monson's October 2009 General Conference talk, Finding Joy in the Journey. Below I'll share a couple of my favorite quotes.

"This is our one and only chance at mortal life—here and now. The longer we live, the greater is our realization that it is brief. Opportunities come, and then they are gone. I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. I plead with you not to let those most important things pass you by as you plan for that illusive and non-existent future when you will have time to do all that you want to do. Instead, find joy in the journey—now."

I was reminded this week that letting kids have time to jump in puddles and make mudpies for birds is important; getting everywhere I think we need to go on time is not so important.

"If you are still in the process of raising children, be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled will disappear all too soon and that you will—to your surprise—miss them profoundly."

This quote captures the essence of why I want to have joy in the journey now. I want to look back when my kids are grown and know that we spent much of our time making memories and ignoring fingerprints.

We finally did make it strawberry picking on Saturday and made some fun memories then. Kaia was very serious about her strawberry picking:

Asher was very serious about his strawberry sampling (despite my many attempts to get him to wait!):


We put our strawberries to good use. I highly recommend this strawberry shortcake recipe; the shortcake itself had such a wonderful flavor, and with the strawberries and Cool Whip it was out of this world!

Proof

For as often as people tell me (about Kaia), "She looks just like you!" this video is proof that she also has a healthy dose of Peter's genes:

She is so confident and sure of herself (even wearing her sparkly church shoes)! But you can see that Asher got a healthy dose of my genes. :) The thing about him (and me) is that he gets nervous about doing things at first, before he's sure he can. (I'm hoping this trait will save Asher from a few broken bones in the coming years.) But once he feels confident, he can climb, jump, and bike as well as his sister.