Arizona, Here We...Are, We've Been Here for Two Weeks

We are now living in Arizona, and we love it. Amelia loves that we have been on a walk or to the park every day since we left Utah on January 15. We are excited to get to know our new ward, make new friends, start new jobs, and be closer to Lauren! The last couple months have been really exhausting and kind of a whirlwind. I never got around to sending Christmas cards, so I decided I would just post it here.

P.S. I wrote this Christmas letter three days after Christmas. I'm really winning at this procrastination thing.

Dear Friends and Family,

2015 was a big year for us. It started with McKenzie pacing the apartment trying to get labor started and ended with Amelia taking a few steps of her own. A brief rundown on what happened: Brad went canyoneering in March while McKenzie stayed home with the baby,  McKenzie went canyoneering in October while Brad worked on his thesis (and Amelia stayed at the campsite with Grandma Smith). We went on many hikes and trips to the park, tried camping with a baby (not as bad as we imagined), and drove to Oregon where Amelia learned to hate her carseat and love her Aunt Delaney who kept her entertained in the back seat.

Updates on the fam:

Brad: spent many long hours at the Utah Water Research Lab at USU, spent too few short hours on his new hobby of RC airplanes, finished his master's degree, and got a job with Carollo Engineers in Phoenix, AZ.

McKenzie: spent most of her time this year just being Mommy, but also got to perform with the Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre, teach a full violin studio,  and made so many loaves of bread her KitchenAid started smoking.

Amelia: made her earthly debut January 6 (her due date) at 11:43 AM. She was 7 lbs. 3 oz. and perfect. She is extraordinarily happy and friendly. Loves: music, books, being outside, making people laugh, and anything soft and cuddly. Starting to walk,  eats constantly,  and says "Dadda," "Mama," "wow," "woof," and "moo." 

Merry Christmas!

The Clawsons

Motherhood Is...

Being a mom means something different to everyone. Sometimes I read blog posts that talk about what being a mom is and I don't relate to it at all. "Being a mom means never being able to shower" (I may have to plan for that shower more than I used to, but gosh darn it, it's going to happen.) "Being a stay at home mom means wearing yoga pants all day" (I pretty much only wear yoga pants when I do yoga. I like (gasp, double parantheses) dressing up every day.) "Being a mom means never doing anything for yourself" (I'm a very selfish mother who practices my violin, reads books, and washes my hair.) So I wanted to write about some of the things motherhood is to me right now.

Motherhood is waving to the deer that crosses the road, because you are too tired to remember that deer aren't people.

Motherhood is believing you can get dinner in the crockpot, clean your bathroom, read a book, make bread, and shower during 1 1/2 hour nap time. Ha!

Motherhood is having 3 dozen board books memorized so you can read them to your child with your eyes closed, because you are so tired.

Motherhood is going to work with spit up on your shoulder. Oops, didn't notice that.

Motherhood is executing a 35 point turn to get out of the parking lot when your neighbor puts the garbage cans behind your car and realizing 45 minutes later you probably could have just moved the garbage cans.

Motherhood is patting yourself on the back when your child eats eggplant, peas, and zucchini for dinner and ignoring the fact they ate your brownie crumbs off the floor.

Motherhood is feeling successful that you kept a human being alive today! So, I didn't get anything else done today.

Motherhood is saying "that's gross!" every five minutes. Electrical sockets are gross! Books are gross! Mommy's car keys are gross! Garbage cans are gross! Please stop licking it!

I'm pretty sure this job is going to change every day, but it's fun to remember what motherhood is in October 2015.

Motherhood is taking your baby to your favorite national park and going on fun hikes. And saying "sand is nasty!" 100,000 times.

1600 Miles, 3 Babies, and 10 Crabs

Prepare yourself for a lengthy post, because it was a lengthy trip, at least by my standards, because I never go anywhere.

Two weeks later and I'm still catching up from the laundry. Sometimes I feel like you can measure how much fun you have by how awful the laundry is when you get home.

So, it almost looks romantic. But, it's my 12 year old brother, I'm holding his wrist, and we're running because the water. is. so. cold.

The water was so cold that Delaney built a wall for my nephew, M, so he wouldn't get wet. He loved it.

Until it failed anyway.

Chickadee was well behaved on this trip, you know for a baby. But this kid, this adorable kid, was perfect. He complained less than some of the adults.

One of our favorite things to do on the beach (other than stroll and bask in the sheer beauty of this place), was to go crab fishing. Crab hunting? Crabbing? We caught crabs, in a trap. My brother-in-law Bruce was definitely the best at it.

We had to throw most of them back because they were too small, but we did catch enough to feed the whole family. (As an appetizer to going out for fish and chips.)

We really enjoyed seeing the wildlife at the aquarium and taking as many selfies as possible. (Is it wildlife if it's in captivity? Or is it captured life? hmm...)

The tide pools when we went to visit Yaquina Head Lighthouse were incredible. On a side note; the house we stayed in had four stories. I know, crazy! But it was nice because it meant the babies could be separated and not wake everybody up. The not-so-nice part about it was that I had to climb three flights of stairs to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (the one on our floor was broken, the next floor I would have had to wake up Brecklyn, Bruce, and babies M and G to use.) So, by the time I took the tour of Yaquina Head Lighthouse (the tallest in Oregon), the stair climb was no problem.

After we went to the Aquarium we explored Newport a little bit. It had some cute shops, but most of all it had sea lions really close to the dock. They were so loud. And they played king of the hill which was hilarious. It basically looks like a bunch of fat pieces of breakfast sausage pushing each other.

Not much to say here except that I love these two and their smiles. They made the trip 1000 times more fun.

One morning, Brad, Chickadee, and I struck out on our own to go on a hike. The fog was thick so we couldn't see very far, but oh it was beautiful. The forest looked like something out of a fairy tale. I was prepared to protect my family from a wolf disguised as a grandmother.

Most of the hike was wooded but at the very end it opened up into a grassy area. With all the fog it felt very Bronte-esque.

We loved the hike so much, the next day we convinced the rest of the family to come see it. Without the fog it was completely different. Turns out we had been right next to the ocean the entire time!

Delaney was the lucky one who got to ride in the back of our car and entertain Amelia for many, many hours. She was a pro at it. I tried to convince her to become my nanny (in exchange for room and board- sleeping on our secondhand couch and eating rice and beans). For some reason she didn't seem particularly interested in the gig.

We had fun.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

I know this book came out years ago and everyone is pretty much over it,  but I just read it and want to tell everyone about it so be patient with me.

At the risk of people thinking that I am crazy I'll tell you that I loved this book. I think a lot of people missed the sarcasm in this book (or just read the excerpt that floated around the internet a few years ago.) I also think that many of the horrific anecdotes were exaggerated for dramatic and comic effect.

Yes, she is way too extreme but she has some good points about parenting. First,  that "nothing is fun until you're good at it." I often get prospective violin students who want to try violin for a week or a month to see if they like it. This hardly ever works. The first year (or two!) is very difficult and is not intrinsically fun. Once you get the basic technique,  then you can actually know if you like it. No one likes being bad at something. A lot of very valuable things take investments of time and hard work before they become enjoyable. There are some kids who like the challenge itself,  but not many,  and they shouldn't be the only kids who get the chance to play music at a high level.

Second, parents sometimes have to be the bad guys, so stop worrying about if your kids love you. This reminds me of when I was in high school and my mom would make me rewrite essays over and over until they were good enough. These weren't just the big, important term papers but the one page "My Goals for This Semester" essays as well. It drove me crazy. I thought she did it because she hated me or was punishing me or she thought that I was an idiot. (All of this reflects on my own teenage selfishness,  not the way my mother spoke to me.) Now I know that she just had high opinions of what I was capable of and wanted me to learn how to achieve that.

Which brings me to the next idea from the book that I really liked. Assume resilience and strength not weakness. I sometimes think that when we are overly concerned about someone's fragile self esteem they start worrying about it,  too, and start believing they are weak. Children and adults are often stronger than we think,  they can take justified criticism.  I actually think that constructive criticism can build self esteem more than empty praise

There are a few overarching ideas about Chinese parenting (as Amy Chua defines it) that I don't agree with. I think you can absolutely have high standards for your children without being cruel. Name-calling and shaming to get your child to practice are inappropriate. The kinder approach is harder, and takes more creativity, but is absolutely worth it.

There is also no room in this parenting model to deal with failure,  which is a huge problem. Adults fail constantly and if they don't learn to deal with it in childhood in healthy ways it can be devastating. I want my child to participate in activities she isn't naturally good at (for me this was sports) so she learns that a) she doesn't have to be the best at everything, b) how to handle failure emotionally, and c) how to work to improve.

The last thing I want to write about (bonus points if you are still reading), is how interesting I think the reaction to this book is. I read this book as someone who was admitting to a huge flaw (overreaction and anger) in a brave way. Why is it popular on the blogosphere to admit to being real by posting pictures of a dirty house,  pouting children,  and a face free of makeup but anything deeper is met with horror? This idea is enough for a whole post,  but think about it for awhile. Why are superficial flaws so appealing to talk about it and deep weaknesses are so uncomfortable?

Rant over. 

Exhaustion

I keep going back and forth on what I want to call baby girl on the blog. And whether it really even matters since in some ways privacy seems to be becoming a thing of the past. Ah, a conundrum for another day. Today I call her Chickadee.

I know a lot of people that sleep/slept with their baby in their bed, and in many ways it seems like a good idea. Ease of night time feedings, midnight comforting, and two a.m. breathing checks, to name a few. I'm really glad that it has worked well for them, but I knew even before Chickadee was born that it wouldn't work for me. As I contemplated all the times that Brad put his pillow on top of my face to sleep and I have wrapped myself so tightly in my sheets that I've had to ask for help to get out of bed, I realized that the family bed would not work out for us and the health of our child.

That is why on the nights when Chickadee decides to have a party all night long instead of sleeping (seriously girl, you got one job), I often end up sleeping on the floor next to her crib. At some point, I am just too tired to walk back and forth from my room to hers and I grab a bunch of blankets from the basket underneath her crib and crash. Keep in mind that these are baby-sized blankets so one for my right leg, one for my left leg, one for my upper body, and three for my pillow.

Several weeks ago, I had a dream that I could not finish running a marathon because my hip was hurting too much. Very confused, mostly because I prefer the phrase "donut run" to "running a marathon," I woke up to discover that my hip was hurting because I had been sleeping on the floor all night. All night besides the times I fell asleep draped over the side of the crib holding Chickadee's hand or patting her stomach.

Last Sunday night was even worse because at midnight I woke up because Brad was shaking so hard it was making our entire bed quiver. I took his temperature (fever and chills), threw some Ibuprofen at him, and abandoned him to sleep on the couch. Then Chickadee kept waking up so I slept on her floor for a little while, then Brad woke up and needed help to get to the bathroom, so I fell asleep in our bed for a little while again, then he was shaking too much and I moved to the couch, then Chickadee woke up and I moved to her floor, and so on and so forth. I believe the vicious pattern ended with me in bed, but I don't even remember. The rest of the day was a blur.

So, dear husband and baby, I love you so. But I am too exhausted to make my mouth open and move to say those words today. Maybe after a nap. Or two.

And as a thank you for getting through all of that rambling, a picture of Chickadee in her Elvis pj's. Thank you, Thank you very much.

It never ends

I am rather accident and mistake prone. My friends from high school can attest to the fact that I fell on my face just walking down the halls at school than really seemed even possible. But alas it was.

In particular, my cooking mistakes are famous. Hence, the title of this blog and how it began.

I have made huge strides in the cooking department, but that does not mean that sometimes it just does not work out. 

Yesterday, I tried a new cookie recipe. The dough was delicious, but the cooking thereof had issues...

First off, they didn't rise at all. Perhaps because my baking soda has been expired for nine months. Hmm... Because they never got puffy, they were really hard to get off the cookie sheet, which means they looked like we had taken a bite out of each one. You know, for quality control.

While the first batch of cookies was in the oven I went in search of our second silicon baking sheet to put on the cookie sheet so I don't have to scrub dishes. Because I don't like doing that very much. I couldn't find it, so I just decided to use wax paper instead. Five minutes later we started to smell melting plastic coming from the oven and Brad discovered that the wax paper box said "Do not expose to direct heat of oven." What a waste of cookie dough.

I make a lot of bread. Usually it goes well, but the last several times, not so much. There was the time that it just decided not to rise in the oven at all and we had very short bread (hey, it fits in sandwich bags much easier), the time that I fell asleep while rocking baby girl and forgot about the bread in the oven for 20 minutes past the timer going off (we just cut off the burnt crust, preschool style), and the time that I totally forgot that I had started making bread and it rose so much it dribbled onto the counter. 

Speaking of baking distasters. Look what I found! I'm not the only one who has tried to make Blue Velvet cake. The question is, which looks less appetizing (picture at the bottom of the link)?

Baby's First Camping Trip

Pretty much everyone Brad and I have talked to about taking our baby camping either said, "Don't do it!" or snorted and smiled.

Well, guess what. She slept better in that tent than she usually does! I really don't know whether to be really pleased or really frustrated. Do you think anyone would call Child Protective Services if I made her start sleeping in a tent on our deck? (Just kidding. I promise.)

It was more fun than I thought that it could be, even though Brad convinced me to go to a camping spot without a bathroom nearby. Remind me why I listen to that guy?

 We went on a hike that baby girl pretty much slept through. But it was beautiful and fun and made me think we should hike more.

Family picture next to a tree that is more than 2,000 years old.

Since we were so far up Logan Canyon we were almost to Bear Lake, we decided to go to the beach, even though we didn't have swimming suits. Amelia did not so much love the temperature of the water.

 She didn't so much love sunglasses, either.

But being thrown in the air by Daddy? She was a fan.