Oh Boy! {Shaye's 30th and Our Gender Reveal}

June 12, 2014 was a special day. Not only was it Shaye's 30th birthday, but it was the day I became 16 weeks along and could, thus, have my gender check appointment. It made for a rather exciting milestone birthday, and I knew I would have to carry on my tradition of making a gender reveal cake.

Coming up to this appointment was so interesting for me. I felt like this second pregnancy was a boy, but I had also been SURE Emme was a boy, so I had learned not to trust my instincts. I can honestly say that I didn't care about the gender either way. I knew that if we had another girl, Emme would have a sister close to her age, and that would be wonderful. I knew that if we had a boy that this would also be a great blessing, and it would perhaps take a bit of pressure off of us if we were never able to conceive again.

The appointment went great. The baby didn't want to cooperate at first, but soon the technician said confidently that it was a boy. I felt this overwhelming joy at the realization that we would have a girl and a boy. One of each! Since I was a young child, my mom had sensed my future son watching over me, and so I had always felt connected to having a son. When we knew it was a boy, this connection began to grow exponentially.

I was so excited to let my family know, and I made this white cake with marzipan lattice. I told them that if we were having a girl, there would be raspberries inside, and if we were having a boy there would be blueberries.

We cut open the cake and everyone cheered! I'll never forget the birthday that Shaye learned he would have a SON.

Emme Turns to a Toddler Before Our Eyes {Spring 2014}

It was the moment everyone was telling me was coming. Boom! My baby was now a toddler. It definitely was a gradual process, of course, but there were moments when I would look at her and just realize how old she was getting.

The supermarket, for example, was now a very social place. Emme said "hi!" to just about everyone we would encounter. It was so interesting to watch some people talk and play with her and others look very uncomfortable. As you can see, she was naughty in always standing up (still is!). I think on this one outing I had to tell her to sit down approximately 97 times.

With the toddlerhood, Emme seemed to get more needy too. This is a moment that I captured in her room. With the growing frustration of some new whiny patterns, I had to remind myself that my baby girl needed me and that there was tremendous fulfillment in that. She whined and cried for me at all hours of the night because I am her person. It's such a blessing.

Emme also began to be attached to "Baby Girl," a little rattle doll that I found at TJ Maxx. She took this doll with her everywhere and wouldn't go to sleep without her. Right before I took this picture, Emme woke up from her nap and asked, "Where did my baby go?" I couldn't believe how well she was talking.

Playtime with Daddy started to get really fun! Here they made a couch fort one evening. Em always feels special when she has daddy time.

Here is a photo of us by the fireplace--one of the things we thought was pretty cool about our 70s rental. We felt like illegitimate adults when we lit the fire and the flu was still shut. There was so much smoke so fast. Later we got half a clue of what we were doing--and thus, the smiles.

When Emme turned 18 months, this seemed like a big moment to me. We were part of a playgroup that I had put together. Sometimes Skye Howick would bring her kids, sometimes Stephanie Hulet would bring her son, and Kelsey Walker would bring her little girl, and we would have other friends drop in on certain weeks. This particular playgroup day at the splash pad, however, no one came. It might sound lonely, but it was a special and sweet day for us. Emme played at the splash pad for hours and even wore her darling swim cap the whole time. I marveled at the playfulness of my darling girl and celebrated a year and a half of her making my life beautiful!

Vintage Joy {Easter 2014}

 Easter 2014 marked the first holiday that Emme really seemed to embrace. Christmas was fun alright, but there was just something about running around and finding eggs that was right up her alley. I adore this picture of her at our family Easter egg hunt in Santa Clara. At this age, she shrugged her hands like this whenever she saw something amazing that she didn't quite understand. Seeing my family play catch and play all over the park after the egg hunt was one of those things.

I did the most cornball thing that Easter. I made these matchy matchy vintage dresses for Em and I. Even though we were in that weird little condo, I put up shop in the master with my sewing machine and dress form. There was terrible clutter all over al of the time, but I just couldn't stand the thought of not crafting in those 6 months we lived there. These dresses were the main fruits of my labor.

 
I've always had an incredible bond with Emme, but something about the light of her personality really started to take off this spring. The gleam in her eyes when she saw the fun things that Nana got her for Easter was so special to me.

And, of course, even though she loved her little Easter dress, she was ready to take it off and run around half naked outside too.

Finally, I love this picture that Shaye took of me. He is usually bah-humbug about photos. (I mean, I do kind of want to take them all the time!--Not of myself, per se, but of Emme.) He got kind of excited and told me to strike a vintage-looking pose, and then when he got home he edited the photo with a Dodge-Burn technique to make it look like a painting. It meant a lot to me because I was in the early awkward stages of pregnancy and certainly wasn't feeling very glamorous.

Easter of 2014 was a beautiful time of renewal and hope. Our little family was changing, and we were feeling so thrilled about it.

The Surprise of my Life {Spring 2014}

Last spring, the spring of 2014, brought such beauty in the world around us. Shaye was preparing for a special Piano Guys video, and so we spent a lot of time driving around the area looking for perfect locations for "The Story of my Life," a music video that I consider a total piece of art that makes me super proud of Shaye. (You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yET4p-r2TI8). These photos were taken at the Santa Clara orchards just before sunset. It was stunning. I remember looking at my little family in awe of the beauty of the earth around me but especially the beauty of being with them within this beauty. I didn't know it then, but our family was about to change for the better.

A few days after these pictures were taken, I remember waking up and just feeling crappy. The feeling persisted throughout the day, and sometime in the late afternoon, I had a nagging feeling that this nausea I was feeling was identical to how I felt when I was pregnant with Emme. Excitement definitely sparked through me as I considered the possibility of being pregnant. Even so, I knew it had to be the tiniest chance. I had stopped nursing Emme not two months earlier and had never even had a cycle. On top of this, I had been totally infertile for 5 years and had done everything within my power to conceive naturally to no avail. How could I possibly be knocked up?

I happened to have an old pregnancy test, and so I took it, mostly because I just didn't want to get myself excited. With my long history of waiting to take pregnancy tests and then feeling terribly heartbroken when they were negative, I just wanted to get it out of the way. I peed on the stick and stared at it while sitting on the John in the 90s green, sponge painted bathroom of the condo we were renting.

Two bright pink lines!  Two bright pink lines gradually appeared on the test.

I was shocked and thrilled. I started crying and laughing at the same time. I must have said, "Are you kidding me?" fifty times in the next 5 minutes. It just felt like every Christmas morning of my life rolled into one. I absolutely could not process that I was pregnant. Soon I realized that little Emme was playing in her room unsupervised, and I knew she had to be the first to know. It was a joy sharing the news with her, as I knew that she could share in my excitement without having any clue of what was going on.

Shaye got home from work about an hour later, and I had Emme take him the pregnancy test. He was as thrilled and shocked as I was. How could this be? We needed proof. I called the doctor the next day and they scheduled an ultrasound. I knew this wasn't typical, but I think they wanted to put me at ease after my history of infertility.

I had my mom watch Emme so that we could "go to lunch" and we went to the ultrasound. When we saw the little bean on the ultrasound screen, I just couldn't believe it. Intense joy surged through me as I looked at the little miracle growing inside me.

I'm a terrible secret keeper when it comes to exciting news, but somehow we managed to not tell anyone for a few weeks. I started to feel terrible soon, though--another thing I'm bad at hiding, and so it became important for us to tell family.

This was the cute idea I came up with. Both of our moms cried and were totally shocked. My mom opened the card in her great room and cheerfully read it aloud, not realizing what she was saying until she was well through it. The shock and immense gratitude on her face mirrored my own feelings. Shaye's mom read it at her birthday party. She glanced at it, pretending to read it, and told us thanks. Someone reading it over her shoulder cried out, and then she read it again and started bawling. At that same gathering, my sister-in-law Mandy came and whispered to me that she was pregnant. We realized that we were due the same day, Thanksgiving! What were the odds?? Mandy had recently had several miscarriages, and I was worried for her. I wondered how likely it would be that we both carry to term, much less have the babies close together.

Sharing the news with our loved ones was just too much fun. This is the picture we sent my brother Brad on his mission. He was so excited for us! He felt peace that we'd received this amazing blessing as he was serving the Lord. He had prayed and pleaded with the Lord that we could be parents and to see this happen a second time while he was away was a sweet thing for him and us.

This was the photo we used to announce my pregnancy once I was 12 weeks. I was totally starting to show by then, and so I was anxious for it to be out in the open. I was so touched at the outpouring of love we received. I felt a little bit guilty about having such an easy time getting pregnant because there were still so many I knew having trouble. I knew that I had a tremendous gift, and so the fact that others were so happy for us in this wonderful surprise filled my heart.

The wonderful ease of conceiving the second time was the biggest surprise of my life so far. I felt immediately of the Lord's merciful presence in my life and knew there was nothing I could have done to deserve this incredible gift. I am still in awe now.

On Learning to Fail {Looking back on the Dissertation Disaster of 2014}

There are a few major things I'll remember about the Spring of 2014. All the sweet moments with Emme, of course. But I'll also remember the crazy stress (and excitement) of building a house--more on that later--and finally, the even crazier stress of having Murphy's Law apply to my Ph.D. It felt like everything that could possibly go wrong, did.


Truth be told, I had really struggled with finding my way writing a dissertation. My chair, Dr. Mays had been a very inspiring teacher. She was enthusiastic, her classes were always organic and stimulating, and she always super critical of my ideas in a way that helped me to improve...or so I thought. Because I always wanted to go into Victorian Literature and she is a well-published scholar in this area,  she was the super obvious choice for my dissertation chair.

But as I struggled over a year and produced several mediocre and meandering proposals for my dissertation topic, she began to really give up on me. She wouldn't tell me what she to write on, but she wanted me to find my own way. Finally, she asked to have lunch with me after what seemed to be some encouraging reception of my latest idea. We met at this Mediterranean restaurant right by UNLV's campus. I was so excited to see this professor that I had been trying desperately to impress and please. She was kind to me but candid in a way that crushed me. In the midst of our 2 hour long lunch, she said something to me like this: "I don't think you really want to do this. I mean, you have a beautiful family, you already have a job. Do you really NEED to finish your Ph.D.??"

Need to finish?? I insisted that I always finished what I started.

"It's not that I don't think you can do this. I just don't think you want to. Your work ethic won't get you through this. Finishing your Ph.D. is really more of a calling."

She never said the words, but I couldn't help but think, "She thinks I'm a stupid, uninteresting, and incapable Mormon housewife." I remember moving my food around on my plate and barely eating it because I was afraid it would come back up.

I bawled to my mom and Shaye the whole way home from Vegas. It's funny because I feel like people think that being a student in pursuit of an advanced degree means you're super smart. I've always insisted that I just had time (because I couldn't get pregnant) and liked school. The truth is, the more schooling I've had, the dumber I feel. The more I know, the more I realize that I don't know. I'm pretty positive that this moment when my dissertation chair tried to convince me to throw in the towel and stop pursuing my doctorate was the most stupid that I have felt since Kindergarten.

Over the next few months, I poured over a new research area in my field, Neo-Victorian Studies, and came up with an idea that felt brilliant to me. The picture above is one that I took with all of the novels I was reading. I was hopeful that I had found the perfect topic and carefully crafted a proposal. I sent Dr. Mays my new proposal, and she proceeded to ignore me for a full month. After multiple follow-up emails and screened calls, I realized that I had been dumped. Suddenly I realized that this professor I had idolized really just made me feel small and weak. Her exploiting and harping on every weakness didn't push me to be better--it crippled me with fear. Something about working with her made me want to apologize for who I am. She had even been subversively combative toward my LDS faith in requiring one class of mine to read an anti-Mormon novel, "A Study in Scarlet" by Arthur Conan Doyle, and then having a student present on Joseph Smith being a con-man.

Suddenly...and not with the flair of sour grapes that you might imagine...I realized that even though this professor had given up on me and didn't want to work with me, I didn't want to work with her either. Despite her considerable academic renown as a scholar and her great intellectual mind, she was not a good mentor for me. I began to search for a few chair, but Dr. Mays began to block me. A few professors who initially showed interest in working with me ended up talking with her and then refusing to work with me.

Thus a new sort of crisis ensued for me. I felt like I was in the twilight zone. I had never thought of myself as difficult to work with. I work hard, am punctual, and take criticism in stride. I have always felt likable and relatable in a field of many introverted literature-lovers, but all of the sudden I felt like a total social pariah. I started to despair and seriously wondered if I would be able to continue. Was all of my hard work--all of the years of classes and the difficult comprehensive exams I had taken--for naught?

During this super stressful time, I remember Shaye sweetly reassuring me: "Babe, just do all that you can do. If nothing works out, we will be okay." Despite the great investment we've made in my education, he has remained comforting and non-pressuring through it all, which has been amazing.

By the grace of God, it all has worked out. I am still not totally out of the woods yet, but I have a new dissertation chair, Dr. Erwin. This professor respects me and my point of view. He has guided me as a kind friend would, and in his enabling and encouraging mentorship, my dissertation--on the first topic that I chose some 2.5 years ago--has flourished. I am still chipping away at this huge project and will have many mountains to climb in this challenge, but I am progressing. I believe I will have those 3 little initials behind my name this fall.

It's been amazing to see Heavenly Father's hand in this academic work. I'm not sure why it has been His plan for me to get my Doctorate--I mean, does he really care about classic British literature as I do?--but I have seen His help so much since this day of failure. My failure and the rejection I faced was a pretty serious intellectual crisis for me, but I felt the Lord's loving guidance in reassuring me that He has always had a plan for me and that if I relied on Him that He would guide my path and help me.

Now, as I squeeze in whatever writing time I can, I feel His love and help. I'm so grateful for this. I'm grateful for His grace and help, and the knowledge that it is okay to fail and it is okay to feel stupid. To not feel this way is to not be human. Now, I continue on my path humbled and anxiously engaged in literary analysis that no one but my committee will ever read!

Looking back on Spring 2014

As I am catching up on this blog, I am thinking back on just a year ago with considerable nostalgia. One thing that I think is funny about life is how when things change, it's so easy to look back on little difference, even a short time ago, and remember life as simple. I most definitely was just as stressed out a year ago as I am now, but when I remember that time, I mostly remember the beautiful moments. I'm sure when I look back on this time now a year into the future, I'll remember things differently than they really were too.

Here are some highlights from Spring 2014:

It seems like right around the time that I weaned Emme, her little personality took off majorly. One thing she started doing, to my intense delight, was that she began calling books, "happy" because of a "You are my Sunshine" book my mom had. I could often catch her singing to herself with a book in her hands. Made me so happy.

In December of 2013 we moved from our Tonaquint Home into a rental in Bloomington. We were grateful to Shaye's sister for allowing us to stay in their rental when we weren't entirely sure when we would be moving out, as we didn't know exactly when our home would be completed. This place, however, had a lot that needed repair. Regardless of these frustrations, however, I ADORED the room Emme slept in because it had an entire wall of complete glass. Once I realized that Emme wasn't going to fall out of the room, I found that the room had perfect light for taking pictures. I took these photos in my very favorite outfit of hers. You can see the crazy sweetness that she dished out for me.

 Rock hunting at Nana's. This became a serious obsession for a few months.

Emme's obsession with shoes also began during this time. I ordered these gold jelly shoes online and when I opened the package, Emme gasped with excitement. She danced around the house in them before bedtime and wore these shoes a ton for the next few months until she grew out of them.

Playing dress up with Auntie Steph. I loved seeing Emme start to make believe during this time. She also started to realize her own sense of humor and ability to entertain others.

Too often I felt cooped up in the rental during this time, but this day we took a walk to the golf course near the condo and fed the duckies. Emme was more interested in eating it herself! :)

 16 months old.

Just the apple of her mama's eye. This is when I really started to get camera happy and I haven't slowed down since. I'm not sure how many moms like me are out there (probably a lot!) but I just love how a photo can capture a moment and my baby's expression. In this photo, she had just learned to say "apple." Emme has always loved healthy foods, especially tomatoes, apples, and carrots. I lucked out there.

I'm Baaaaaack!

Hello Blog Readers,

I know that I have been absent from blogging for a very long time. Other social media like Instagram makes it so easy to catalogue important moments quickly but I feel like you lose the back story a lot of times, so I've made a new goal to post at least once a month here. I'm glad to be back! :)