April was a crazy, but good, month for us. We kicked it off with Lego’s sixth birthday, followed by spring break in Colorado, followed by a mostly normal week at home (okay, so maybe not quite as normal as that), followed by my youngest sister’s wedding and then a vacation to Bryce and then down to Arizona to visit Jon Boy’s family.

I hope to post pictures of it all soon, but for now, I just wanted to give a quick update on how the boys are doing.

Lego has started playing piano. He competed in the NFMC solo festival this year and earned a superior score (the highest). He also asked for a guitar for his birthday and has learned to play a couple of little songs on it. He reads very well, but we’re working on improving comprehension and retention of the books at his level (short chapter books). He graduates from kindergarten today. They’ve been working on a couple of dances to perform for the parents, so I’m really excited to go.

Duplo will turn four in about a week and a half. He’s coming into his personality. He is very much a fan of little rituals: waving goodbye to Daddy in the garage every morning and then running to the front door to watch his car drive away after the garage door closes; following the bedtime routine EXACTLY; walking to Lego’s classroom when we drop him off; sitting in the same chair at dinner. He can be pretty irrationally stubborn about things at times, which is just his age. He loves his brothers, watching people fix things or build things, riding his tricycle, playing in the dirt, climbing trees, and drawing.

El Guapo is a wiggly ten-month-old. He is scooting all over the house on his tummy, but he won’t crawl or cruise, even though his big brothers were doing both at his age. He says uh-oh, muh (when he’s thirsty, even for juice), and maybe da da. He also shakes his head “no” over and over to say hello or to be silly or just because he feels like it. Finally he’s sleeping long stretches again most nights (he’d done it until December but then inexplicably decided not to for months). He has a voracious appetite and insists on eating only real food—no purees or flavorless foods for this baby. He pretty much eats whatever we’re eating, within reason. He has five teeth and has become a regular Sunny Baudelaire, with biting being a favorite pastime. We’ve all gotten bitten at least once (me probably once a day). We love having El Guapo in our home and look forward to his first birthday soon.

What amazes me most is how well these three boys get along almost all the time. Sure, we have squabbles from time to time, but they’re usually quickly resolved and not too bad. Both of the older boys adore El Guapo, and he them. Duplo counts down the minutes until Lego comes home from school, and Lego loves to involve Duplo in his play. I only hope it stays like this for a long time. I love our little family.

There are those who claim that my religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, oppresses women. Some fodder for this claim includes the fact that women largely do not hold leadership positions in the church, that women do not hold the priesthood, and that women are strongly encouraged to stay home with the children during their formative years. I want to talk about the last one.

Critics of this counsel from Church leaders say that it counteracts decades of progress in the area of women’s rights and that it limits women’s potential and insults their intelligence. They see having a career as a right, in other words. Or, to be fair, they see the option to have a career as a right. And maybe it is. I should be able to become a dentist if I want to, even if I am a woman.

But a lot of the rhetoric against having women stay home and take care of the children starts from the assumption that being a homemaker, for lack of a better word, is inherently degrading or unappealing. And I disagree wholeheartedly with that idea. From the time I was very young, I’ve wanted to be a homemaker when I grew up. It’s what my mom did, and it was obvious she loved it. I remember her telling us, “I love being your mother,” and I believed her. I remember thinking how glad I was that I was born a girl so that when I grew up I wouldn’t have to go to work; instead I could stay home and “play with” my kids. Now that I’m older, I know that being a mother involves a LOT of work that is largely thankless because it just needs to be done again tomorrow. However, there are certain aspects of this job that make it more appealing than any other in the whole world.

1. My coworkers, boss, and clients are my family. And I get to mold that family to become what I want it to be. Not that I aim to change any one person in the family to fit my ideals, but by holding family dinners, spending quality time together, setting rules and expectations, showing lots of love, and having rituals and traditions, we create bonds that will hopefully keep us together even when the children leave the nest. In other words, the people I work with and who keep me busy all day are some of my absolute favorite people in the world. Who else can say that?

2. I have almost complete autonomy as to how I do my job. This is incredibly important to me for job satisfaction, I found in college. I do NOT like to be micromanaged or to be required to adjust my work to satisfy a long list of requirements. I almost became an English teacher, and I know I would have hated having to “teach to the test” all the time.

3. I love children. Oh, like any adult, I sometimes find them annoying and incomprehensible. But I love the way their minds work. I love their uncomplicated emotions. I love how affectionate they are to those who show them the least bit of attention. I love how they bounce, how they examine the world, how they try and try and try new things until they finally figure them out. I love the sound of their voices, especially when they sing. I love how they get me out of my comfort zone and encourage me to act young again, to remember what’s fun.

4. No commute. Just sayin’.

5. I love how being a homemaker requires me to use lots of different skills, talents, and muscles. I have had to get organized so that I don’t just coast and find myself, years from now, wishing I’d done things differently. I’ve done a lot of research on teaching, disciplining, and playing. I’ve learned how to tend a garden, can tomatoes, make Ethiopian food, get an overtired baby to go to sleep, decorate, teach a child to read, and much more. I’ve learned to control my temper and to get up and do things even when I don’t want to. I’ve learned to multitask, to rely on friends and family, and to take time to think and pray.

6. In my other jobs, once I figured out how to do the job, I basically just did it, day in and day out, without much variation. Every day as a homemaker is a challenge and a surprise. Sometimes the challenge is keeping my emotions in check. Sometimes it’s forcing myself to do what needs to be done even though I’m exhausted. Sometimes it’s finding fun things to keep the kids busy that don’t cost a fortune. Some days surprise me by how effortless and joyful they are. I wonder what tomorrow will be like.

7. I’ve never felt pride in my work that compares to the satisfaction I feel looking at my boys. They’ve got a long way to go before they’re responsible adults, of course, but they’re turning out pretty darn well. They love each other and hardly ever fight. They are outgoing and happy and silly and smart. They have a sense of right and wrong. We’re still working on establishing a work ethic, but they’re young. It will come. I used to dream about publishing a novel someday, and of course I’d love the feeling I’d get seeing it in print for the first time. But to help shape a person to be good and kind and proactive, someone who can make his corner of the world a little better? That’s a whole nother thing entirely.

1. How El Guapo loves to shake his head back and forth, as if he’s saying “no,” and how everyone in the family loves to try to get him to do it. It’s become his “silly head thing.”

2. How Duplo rushes to the door to put on his boots when he hears that someone is leaving. He has fireman-style rain boots that he tromps around in everywhere, and he’ll stand (in the garage if it’s Jonathon leaving or on the curb if it’s anyone else) and wave and wave until the person leaving is out of sight. What a sweetheart.

3. How Lego transposes the songs he learns into different keys and experiments with combining sounds he likes from different songs into “compositions” of his own. It’s pretty elementary still, but I love hearing him play with music.

4. How El Guapo scoots, wiggles, and rolls his way all around the house now. I don’t so much love trying to keep him from eating things he shouldn’t, but that just goes with the territory, I guess.

5. How Duplo went to comfort a crying toddler yesterday at church, a toddler, mind you, whom he did not know at all.

6. How Jonathon just landed a well-paying freelance gig because people online are starting to notice how intelligent and insightful he is about language.

7. How it’s been feeling like May in March.

8. How I mowed down our entire, huge back yard full of dead weeds in one morning while my youngest sister watched the kids (thanks, Em!). A lot of sweat and a little blood went into the project, and the lawn mower, while not too happy with what I was putting it through, managed it okay.

9. How Lego seemed to latch onto the idea that I love it when kids do good things without being asked and has offered to set the table, get dressed, and pick up his things today. He loves the praise I give him for being proactive too, so maybe it’s win-win.

10. How El Guapo smiles huge whenever his daddy comes home. There really seems to be a special connection between those two.

What have you been loving lately?

I realize I haven’t blogged much about El Guapo since he was born. He’s really a delightful baby—he loves his family, he’s a great eater and sleeper (well, most of the time he’s a good sleeper), he is just happy and smiley much of the time, and it takes quite a lot to make him outright cry. We love having him around.

One thing he does has really gotten me thinking about language acquisition. I find the whole process of children learning their first language fascinating, almost magical. There must be a point at which a baby realizes, “Wait, these sounds must mean something.” And another point where the baby thinks, “I keep hearing the same sound over and over when they give me food/when they smile at me.” And then, “I wonder what sounds I can make,” and finally, “I can make sounds like the big people’s and get what I want!”

El Guapo has kind of taken a different route. From about six weeks of age, he’s made a “Mmmuh!” sound when he cries, and since he mostly only cries when he’s hungry, I would feed him. Gradually, he’s begun making that sound more intentionally to signify hunger. I swear I’m not crazy, but for the last month or so, I have not heard him say “muh” except when he was hungry and very glad to eat afterward. In fact, sometimes when he’s hungry, he tries saying “muh” before he begins to cry. Keep in mind that El Guapo is six months old. I would guess that he doesn’t understand the word “milk” and is not trying to mimic it the way an older, actually talking baby would do. He’s just learned by positive reinforcement that when he says “muh,” he gets food. It’s probably a lot like a dog learning a trick, if that’s not too offensive of an analogy.

It makes me wonder whether I’ll notice if and when he stops saying “muh” because he gets food when he does and starts saying it because it sounds like “milk.” Because both Lego and Duplo said “muh” for “milk” as their first word, both at around 12 months of age.

The point of this post is not to point at my child and say, “Look! He’s a genius!” It’s more to say, “Look, my child is developing in a strange way, and it makes me wonder what’s going on in babies’ strange, crazy, brilliant little brains.”

What weird things have your babies done, developmentally speaking?

I started following Kayla’s blog about four months ago. Another friend whose blog I read was participating in her 21 Day Challenge, and it looked interesting, so I started kind of participating too. I would do the challenges, but not always on the day I was supposed to, and I never posted pictures in the linkups. Anyway, I liked the feel of Kayla’s blog, so I kept reading even after the challenge was over. I especially love her Sunday Shares.

Anyway, tomorrow is another challenge/link party, an open-to-the-public version of the weekly Open to Interpretation column she does with a couple of friends. We’ve been asked to use this photo

as inspiration for an outfit of our own. The key is to use it as inspiration and not just copy the outfit, which is good because I own no tan sweaters, red pants, stripey shirts, or huge furry hats. And even if I did, I know that rolling up my pants like that would make my legs look even shorter than they already are.

I thought it would be fun to participate this time around, even if I’m pretty fashion backward. So, without further ado:

I decided immediately to swap the colors of the shirt and pants. The star of the show of this outfit, to me, is the striped shirt. It’s the most surprising element (okay, other than the hat, which is not my favorite), and it makes the rest a whole lot less serious and stuffy. I’m glad I had a week to plan this, though, because it was only this morning, after a week’s worth of wondering what to put under the sweater (I do not have a striped shirt or the money or, really, desire to buy one), that I decided upon this brown rhinestone-studded shirt. I like how it added some sparkle to the outfit.

I also debated whether to use the color of the shoes in the inspiration outfit as inspiration or whether I should go with my gray boots since the model is wearing boots. I tried both and eventually decided upon brown heels.

In the end, I felt so Christmasy that I had to pose in front of our stocking-bedecked mantel. My five-year-old son told me I look pretty today. Win.