Really, It's Just a Change in Date

I know it's probably irresponsible to post a New Year's post when I still have all sorts of Christmas stuff to post about, but it seems like you defeat the purpose of New Year's Resolutions if you make them the third week of January. They are also personal, but something about sharing them on the Internet seems to be a good way of making sure you do them. At least I'm going to try.

The small octopus growing in my tummy (Tyler's tried to get Talmage to say uterus, but so far I'm sticking with tummy) will be here soon, and if I remember the bleary haze of the first weeks of motherhood accurately, I'm pretty sure I will accomplish very little besides milking my son. So here are my goals for this upcoming phase of my life:

1. Milk my son.
2. Not to descend into the bottomless depths of daytime TV. My first year of nursing Talmage I knew what TV show was the best to watch at each half hour interval of the day (the ENTIRE 24 hours of the day) and by the best, I mean that I watched more Judge Judy than anyone should watch in a lifetime. There is no more depressing picture of motherhood than listening to a husband berate his sixth wife who is currently having an affair with a man 20 years her junior, all while nursing a baby. That first year cured me of television in general, and the only show I currently watch is "The Office." My goal is to keep it that way.
3. To continue getting out everyday. Pretty much every mother I've ever talked to has told me that's near impossible with two kids, but this has been the secret to my sanity as a mother. I plan to continue enjoying being a mother and I'm going to do everything I can to take Talmage and the new one to as many places as just Talmage and I go. Which means you can expect new fun-filled information about the zoo.

If I remember my post-partum body from last time, I think raw hamburger would really be the most apt description. It was just as malleable as well. Now a lot of the mommy body I've decided to just love and accept, but I think for my own health I need at least one physically oriented goal:

4. Run the Provo Half-Marathon in August. My mom has also committed to do this. See Deirdre? Now the Internet knows you've committed. You're stuck.

No New Years Resolution list would be complete without the goal I've been making nearly weekly for the past eight years. Truthfully, I'm really tired of making it, so this will be the final time:

5. Read my scriptures daily.

Five goals, huh? Not so bad. I'm going to do it.

This next part might seem self-serving, but I've really enjoyed blogging this past (almost a) year and I thought it might be kind of a fun tradition to include some highlights of the writing I'm most proud of this year. So here you go.

Second-seventh Night
In honor of this year's Second-seventh night, I'm posting the above picture which features Rob and Ty eating a dessert composed of scoops of ice cream garnished with precisely three jelly beans. Now if that isn't a mysterious food product, I don't know what is.

2 Years, 7 Months, and 13 Days Past September 24, 2005
Before I had you, I was a little nervous about being a mother. I wanted to be a mother, but I enjoyed researching and working so much that I was nervous to begin what I saw as the monotony of motherhood. I was worried I had twenty stir-crazy years ahead of me. I needn't have worried. I didn't count on the overwhelming love that filled me when you graced your Daddy and me with your arrival. You were 22 inches of slimy, screaming loveliness.

Men I Have Loved Not Platonically, From Crushing From Afar to Loving Passionately (In Roughly Chronologically Order)
3. Scott Kesten and Dustin Goodrich I list them together because when Mrs. Bush's first grade class found out I had a crush on Scott, I immediately traded my affections for Dustin. Apparently they were interchangeable.

Loving Long Locks (She's Been Blaming It On My Dad For Years. But I Know Who Never Let Me Cut My Hair.)
While on duty, my dad wrote The Most Romantic Letter Ever Written to his fiance, Mom. Perhaps I should caps the letter, so as to emphasize how truly, it was THE MOST ROMANTIC LETTER EVER WRITTEN. It included phrases like "I don't have much to say, except I love and need you. That need is very real, as is the love. I honestly think that I would do most anything for you; I would do anything that you asked me to do." Considering it was coming from an intelligent (albeit snarky), attractive man whose dimples showed even in his serious army photo and who was honorably serving his country, an engineer who used semicolons correctly FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, my mom might have considered herself a pretty lucky gal.

She's Very Licky, Too
Lu would also like your attention. She Would Like You to Throw Her Ball. Lu frequently will leave her ball at your feet and then pounce on it for the next twenty minutes, saying "Did you notice there is a ball right here? There is. I would like for you to throw it. Right now. Maybe you missed it. Because it's right here. And now would be a good time for you to throw it. You can think about if for another two seconds if you like, but after that I'm going be really insistent about the throwing of the ball, which, incidentally I would like you to do. Right now. RIIIIIIIGHT now. Right now."

Epiphany
I went through a period of life as a vegetarian, a moral decision fueled mainly by Disney movies that led me to believe that all species of the animal kingdom including earthworms and paramecia experience a full range of emotion and comprehension. I am no longer a vegetarian, but I still fall subject to this delusion, like when I admitted to my brother Sean that while I know that insects lack a central nervous system and can't feel pain, I still wanted his medical opinion on whether I should let the wasp who I had just removed from a puddle of syrup dry off or if I should just put him out of his misery. Tyler screams for me when he sees a spider, not because he's afraid of them as some friends have mistakenly believed, but because I need to gently and humanely remove it from the house. Sometimes I make it a little bed out of a matchbox and cottonballs and tuck it in for the night.

Pajama Pants Roll Call
5. 2004 Light blue with a small polka-dot print. I wore these pants when I was staining the fence, including when I sat on the bench with spilled stain on it, yielding pants that look like their stained by _____. Marissa commented yesterday, "Laura, you need to throw those _____-stained pants away." And I said, "It only looks like _____ stain. It's actually wood stain." And she said, "But it looks like _____ stain. Isn't that really the problem?" To which I NOW respond "Get off my back. You clearly are the most vocal critic of my pajama pants. And I keeping the _____-stained pants."

Tyler Howe: The Ultimate Kissing He-Man
So, behind my back, mind you, Tyler went to the library and convinced Talmage to check out He-man (and I'm told it took some serious convincing). Because really, what's more masculine than the words "he" and "man" put together? And what's more tough than a ripply muscled advertisement for the Aryan race whose lips move about as if independent from the rest of his body? And can you even imagine the intuition it took for his fabulous secret powers to be revealed to him the day he held aloft his magic sword and said, "By the power of Grayskull, I. Have. The. POWER?" I mean, how many word combinations do you think he had to try before he stumbled on that exact phrasing and the fabulous powers were revealed? Two? Ten? Ten thousand?

The Insomnia. It's Back
I told [my dad] that it's very difficult to go back to sleep when you're outside in the cold running around the neighborhood. The front yards on Twinbrook St aren't very conducive to early morning napping, particularly when you're the bishop of Twinbrook St. The Petersons probably won't look at it too favorably when they wonder, "Who's that homeless guy in the red sweatsuit with socks on his hands sleeping in the driveway? Oh wait, that's just Bishop Paulsen."

Nine Things I Am Irrationally Vain About
I make a killer salad. I'm so obnoxiously proud of this that when someone complimented me about the last salad I made (with yellow peppers instead of red peppers so that combined with the tomatoes the color palette would be aesthetically pleasing and with an array of artfully spread avocados) I said, "Oh this? This isn't even a fancy salad."

The Play By Play of Events Leading Up To and Surrounding September 24, 2005
September 24, 3:00 am. The hospital calls with a bed for me. I tell them I'll be there in 15 minutes. I have a momentary crisis, because I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to wear my LDS underwear to the hospital, so I instead shimmy a lacy black lingerie-style thong up over my pregnant thighs and hitch it up under my swollen and stretch-marked belly.

Who Would Believe Such Abuse and Neglect? And From Such An Attractive Family
At that point Tyler recommended pinning him in his crib, and I tell you what, nothing so mildly abusive has ever sounded better. Tyler placed movable fence pieces on top of the crib, tied them to the posts using a variety of Boy Scout knots, and we locked him in. He was asleep moments later. Talmage referred to it as his cage for several months.

And then we locked him in a closet filled with shards of glass and Draino.

Last Christmas You Gave Me Your Heart; The Very Next Day, You Gave It Away
Our conversation sounded a bit like a father and a daughter when the daughter desperately wants a puppy:

"But we kill [the tree] every year."
"I won't this year, I promise. I'll water it and love it and take it on a walk everyday."
"It will be a fire hazard."
"It won't. I promise, promise, promise."