Celebrate

I have decided to begin using this space as a way to document my family's life. I'll start by sharing what I am choosing to make different about this new year. Someone I admire always chooses a word or phrase to focus on during the entire year to help her make the most of what she will do that year. I love this idea! After chewing on and spitting out most of the words, I have settled on the word 'Celebrate'. As I look around the world and all of the struggles that it's people are experiencing, I find that I need to celebrate each day that I have so many blessings:

- A hard-working husband
- An adorable daughter who finds delight in all of the little things
- A super flexible job that allows me to have some non-mommy time, but only when I want to
- A comfortable house
- The gospel
- Amazing friends and family

I often get bogged down in the mud of everyday life and begin focusing on what isn't going right. I will choose to celebrate each day this year and find gratitude in all that I have.

Delight

You know, I've never used the work "delight" in my everyday vocabulary, but I found a use for it today.  The sun finally showed it's face for more than 2 hours this week and I decided to go on an evening walk with Miss Kate.  The sun was low enough that I was able to lower the sun shade on the stroller and car seat to allow her to look around more.  As we were walking I looked down at her and noticed a HUGE smile on her face.  She was looking up at the trees that we were walking and every time we walked under another tree her entire face would break into a huge grin. Simple delight is the only way to describe what it looked like she was experiencing.

As any of you who are reading know, I am not what we would call an "optimist".  I tend to find the difficult, the injustice and the downright annoying in many situations and this little stroll helped me realize that I need to find more delight in my everyday life.  

So here are my "delights" for today:  

My 5-year-old nephew, Josh, absolutely adores Kate.  And likewise, Kate adores Josh.   Anytime they interact Kate is tickled pink.  What a blessing to have such a fun cousin so close by.  

We went to Wheeler farm this afternoon.  I haven't been there since I think about age 10.   It was so nice to see that some undeveloped land still exists in Salt Lake.   The pigs are still my favorite.

Fruit tree blossoms smell SOOOO good!

Creativity

I've been thinking about creativity lately.  I loved President Uchtdorf's talk to the women about creativity and found a great little snippet  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhLlnq5yY7k  It seems to be a theme this week with my friends talking about feeling they aren't really adding a whole lot to the world since they are running around feeling a bit worse for the wear with their young children.

Emily Watts gave me some things to consider when I feel like my creativity is lacking:

Are you good at having a clean house? If so, you are creating order. Joseph Smith even defined the Creation of the world as organizing.  (Ooh, need to work on that one!)

You have children, you say. Creating them in the first place was an ultimate act of creativity, but the fact is that creativity is the order of the day when you have children. Problem-solving is just another name for creating solutions. And if you're teaching those children to love and serve one another and to be friends, you are creating connections that will last through eternity.

Do you hold a calling in your ward or branch? Whatever it is, chances are you're helping to create testimonies.

I have a friend who is always bringing others little treats or looking for ways to serve them. Another calls me from time to time just to say she was thinking of me. These friends create love in my heart.

If you're reading your scriptures and saying your prayers, you're creating a place where the Spirit can dwell. That may be the most important creation of all, and no proficiency with a glue gun is required!

Perhaps we just need a reframe sometimes.

The 90 percent rule

My sister-in-law, Alli, said to me before Kate was born that once I spent my days at home I'd go stir crazy finding ways to fill the time and ultimately come up with some random organizational ideas.  Well, it's happened.  I'm calling it the 90 percent rule.

If I have an idea worth living by lately, it’s the 90 percent rule. It started coming to light when I started cleaning out my closet last week.  As I pulled all the stuff out of my old closet and started organizing everything, I realized how many items were things I really rarely wore — out-of-season pieces, weird sparkly holiday crap, stuff that really should go in some kind of costume box. I asked myself what I accessed the most, and it was stuff like workout clothes, pajamas, well-fitting khakis, a couple great cotton long-sleeved shirts that feel great everytime I put them on.   Decent jeans.  And the staples, like socks.  Chones.  It was fascinating to me how buried all my everyday gear was, while there were tons of things on top that had so little to do with my usual life patterns.

I vowed to make a change. I wanted to face the facts. What does the majority of my life require for me to feel good about it? What tools do I need? How do I dress for it? What do I do with my hours? What are the bulk of my food choices? With whom do I spend my time? And toward what end? I looked at the hard truth: I’m living with and holding on to WAY too much stuff for contingencies. I’m storing, managing, maintaining, and moving around all these things that I use incredibly rarely, 10 percent of the time in a very generous assessment. It’s time to break it down to percentages…maximum effectiveness per shelf inch, per hour spent. I am going to pare my life down to the stuff I’m USING, ENJOYING, or ASPIRING TO 90 percent of the time.

Can I really let go of the things I only need once in awhile? After all, most of this stuff didn’t just fall into my life — I bought it, or someone gave it to me, maybe I even made it. If you’re like me, you really think you need everything you have. And then you become more annoyed than comforted by your things, and so you start to think about streamlining. The urge to simplify has probably reached most of us in some way these days, but that nagging sense that “I might need it someday” still causes hesitation for me as I try to clear things out. But the 90 percent rule helps with this. Is this an item I use in my most-of-the-time life? If not, can I borrow it? Rent it? Make it? Trust that I can figure something out when the time comes?

This is trickier than it looks, to start glancing about with a critical eye at all your excess supplies, clothing, tools. It asks you to be realistic about the way you’re really living, and to be honest about how close that is to your ideal life. It made me realize that there are two versions of myself: the one I imagine that I am, and the one I ACTUALLY am. There’s the me that loves the idea of yoga, but not the actual doing of it.  I love the idea of a beautifully tailored, perfectly made bed everyday, but the reality is that giving our comfy down duvet a good fluff in the morning is about all I’m willing to do. I love giving dinner parties, but with a new baby in the house and time more crunched than ever, I think it’s probably wise to put the fancy china in the back cupboards for awhile.

I sleep a good nine hours a night (which is awesome for a new parent — I appreciate little Kate's habits more every day!), so my bed, sheets, pajamas, and sleeping companion better all be great. (They are!). I exercise a few times a week and tend to do errands in my workout clothes for a few hours afterwards. This makes up the majority of my time in public lately. Are my workout clothes comfortable? Pleasant to wear? Flattering?  If I’m going to be living in these clothes for most of my days, I’m not going to wear ratty faded crappy fraying leggings with an ill-fitting top and a fleece with a hole in it. Not anymore I’m not.

Once on Oprah, she had on two guys helping viewers clean out their closets. The guys suggested you ask yourself three questions:

1. Do I love this?

2. Does it fit?

3 Does this support the image I want to present to the world?

That last one really gets me. And fits with my 90 percent approach. It’s not just clothes either. It might be the bike you haven’t ridden in five years, the chip carving set, the rice cooker/juicer/pasta roller machine, the ‘learn to crochet’ dvd, the Anthony Robbins cassettes, the five hammocks in your store room. Even if these things once represented who you were or wanted to be, if they're not current, it’s time to let them go so that new, better, more appropriate items can be beckoned in. I find myself asking over and over: is this supportive of the life I am living and want to live? If not, it’s out of here.

Let me know where the 90 percent rule might make sense in your life (if anywhere). It’s helping me in little ways and I’d love to hear about what you think.

Well... Here We Go

I have come to the dark side. ;)  I never thought that I'd be the one creating a blog, but I am finding that since the birth of my little one (and subsequently leaving work), I am craving some creative outlets. 

I always thought that "motherhood" would come quite naturally to me.  I have always adored my nieces and nephews and loved holding babies.  My husband, on the other hand, looked terribly awkward whenever a baby was even in the same room.  And then a funny thing happened - we had our own little bundle of joy!  Miss Kate.  I held grand visions of being the superior parent because I had always been more drawn to children.  My, doesn't life continue to surprise?  From day one, Steve has been more effective in relating to Kate, calming her and simply going with the flow when it come to parenting.  He claims that the minute he held her, everything came naturally to him.

Then what happened to me?!  I readily admit that this parenting thing has been much more intense than I ever realized and I've had to work hard at not allowing myself to get discouraged when I don't feel that I connect as well with Kate.  In times when I have tears running down my cheeks, my husband sweetly reminds me that he thinks it's great to see my lifetime membership in the "Control Freaks Club" slowly disintegrating.  But this control thing is not something so easily discarded.  It's kept me safe, professional and organized (OK, somewhat) for how many years?  And now I have a 4-month-old whose daily structure is anything but structured and I admit that it's thrown me for a loop.

So my challenge then is to learn to go with the flow better.  To rip up my membership card and perhaps join "Control Freaks Anonymous".  To enjoy my daughter's idiosyncrasies and remember that a really difficult day usually only lasts a short while.  To follow my husband's lead and not overanalyze everything.  To remind myself that "motherhood" is not a prescription to be followed, but rather a journey of discovery - of both my daughter and myself.