Girl Things

We had some fun back in March that I never wrote about. We tried curlers for the first time. Calla is always bothered a bit when I try to do her hair, but Isabel just insisted on being included even though I didn't intend to curl her hair at all. It was great fun and I must say these girls are beautiful. Dave let Calla doll him up a bit too. Calla also started a ballet class through community ed. Not too "ballet", but just somewhat of an introduction. Love to you. E

"My heart is So full of love."

We're at 38 weeks and 5 days today. 9 days and counting. Little "Flower" is still moving, but slowing down just a bit. She is getting bigger, I'm sure, and I am getting anxious to meet her. I've been going through a roller coaster of emotions and anxieties as we anticipate having three girls. Sometimes it's easier to focus on just being pregnant and then on labor preparations without making the final jump to nursing and mothering a new baby, for me anyway. I think this is in part due to the fact that the nursing and mothering was not at all what I expected when Isabel was born. We had a bit more of a struggle to find our connection and consciously accept the parenting responsibilities as Isabel wasn't insisting on any of them. It wasn't as effortless and natural as the first time. We hope that this new baby will be as demanding and fussing as Calla was so that we don't have to think too much about what we're doing. I am expecting her to be a voracious nurser as that seems to provide the most solid foundation and most fulfilling bonding.

Birth and labor have been very present in my thoughts over the last two weeks. I've felt a little anxiety there as well as I've tried to visualize things and had to deal for a few weeks with the possibility of a breech baby. I discovered that I don't want to visualize too much as the real essence of giving birth is surrendering to the moment and letting your thoughts, feelings, choices, and actions reflect your true self rather than somebody else's model of an ideal birth. The only real thoughts I've decided to take with me are these: This is the most essential and exhilarating experience of a woman's life and it is quite a rush to experience the intensity of the ebb and flow contractions. I anticipate it to be overwhelming and thrilling, an immensely positive and formative experience in my life. I'm going into this experience with my eyes open (3rd time) and I intend to keep them open and be more aware of the baby in my belly and how near she will come to me with each rush. Even though this will be my third time, it will actually by my first, unknown, never before experienced, a new life, a unique, unforeseeable progression. I won't be hypnobirthing. I won't be Bradley birthing. I'll be Emily birthing. If I ever offered birth education, I would title my classes "Authentic Birth."

Calla and Isabel are eager to meet this baby in mom's tummy. Calla more than Isabel. I think at some point it will come as a great shock to Isa, but we are working on some independence and coping skills to help her adjust more easily (sleeping in the bunk bed near Calla, trying to communicate needs and wants with more words, settling down from tantrums with a little space, sitting, reading, and laughing on the training toilet, etc.) It's been nice the last few days to pull a little bit away from the birth preparations and just focus on the family as is and mothering the two girls I have. With Calla we've been swinging and reading. With Isabel, we've been blowing bubbles and sorting shapes. That's helped me more than anything to have a calm heart and mind and confidence in my ability to appreciate and nurture a third unique personality. She'll come soon enough and when we're all ready.

Calla came home from preschool today with her "heart full of love." She had a sad look on her face and a very quiet demeanor. I asked if she was tired, hungry or sad and her teacher told us that her old preschool teacher, Jeanine, came to visit today and they also dressed up for graduation pictures. I think Calla was filled with a sense of loss and longing as she realized that Jeanine wasn't her teacher anymore and that after May, she wouldn't be going to preschool anymore. She is getting older and is fielding some more complex emotions. This one was hard for her to nail down and deal with. As we drove home she burst into tears and was just weeping over this feeling of loss. I tried to give her some context for her emotions and explained that this meant she was getting bigger and her heart was getting fuller because she loves more people. I also tried to explain that we sometimes have to say goodbye for a time to people we love, but we can always be friends. I also suggested that we would get Jeanine's address so we could still write her letters. These consolations might describe the reality of the situation, but Calla just needed to cry a bit longer: all the way home and well into lunch (I thought food would settle her a bit). She needed a little help so I told her that she needed to settle her heart and think about things that would make her happy, things she could do for Jeanine that would show her love. She struggled and really tried to settle her heart. As we finished lunch, we went downstairs together to tuck Isabel in for a nap and read a story. Calla joined us with a "sippy" cup and a "snuggly," but needed to leave to find one of her teddy bears. She cautioned me to not let Isabel drink from her cup because her "heart was full of love." I promised to keep Isabel safe until she got back. Oh, my heart is full of love for Calla and Isabel and David. I know it will feel even fuller within the coming days. Love to you. E

Pics: Isabel: Easter Morning, Calla: still a little bit oral, Dad: ward easter breakfast, Mom: Easter morning

Simple Pleasures

My blogs are all pretty philosophical so I thought it might be nice to lighten things up a bit. As I review my friends blogs, I notice how fun they are to read, short and sweet, lots of pics and happy thoughts. So here goes. Today was a great day. I'm tired because I'm 7 months pregnant, but I have to say it was a successful day and that I earned an "A" as wife and mother.

We started early with family prayer, got everybody breakfast and helped Dad clean the car until he got a little frustrated with Calla and Isabel climbing all over the seats he was trying to vacuum. We came inside and got warm and let him finish in peace.


On to the life-size doll house extravaganza. We had to replace a vanity in our house to get it ready for renters. (Oh I forgot to post we've moved and we're renting our house out while we house sit for my parents while they're away for 18 months. This is what happens over two months. Sorry for not keeping up to date. Read about it in your Valentine which I sent you this week.) Anyway, the vanity box had a great window shaped rectangle in it and it inspired Calla to recycle. We've done this before with our jumbo diaper boxes, but we've only made doll-size houses before. Today we took the counter top box and went through a roll of moving tape, used some of our moving boxes and wala! (sp?) We officially have completed Calla's vision. It was a labor of love but she seems to be pleased with it, flower box out the window and all. She was a good helper, holding the walls in place while I taped.



Isabel napped through most of the project, but was somehow at some point able to find her way to our dresser drawer which she loves. There she finds deoderant, perfume, jewelry, and her very favorite chapstick. I know it's her favorite because she walks around with it, with the lid off, sucking it and saying, "Mm. Nummy." Yesterday she finished off a fruity Blistex ministick. Today she was starting into my favorite, peppermint Chapstick. Luckily I heard the "Nummy" in time and was able to give her something else to chew on. This was the simple pleasure I deliberately found today. It made me smile. I love to hear Isabel expressing herself.


Happy news. We think we've leased our house out. Our future tenants signed a lease today and put down the necessary deposits. They will move in on Saturday. Hope they enjoy the fun backyard and not so fun kitchen. We might have to modify that a bit later to keep them happy. Love to you. E

Primary Chorister

I wish I could take pictures of the primary for you. I had my chance at the primary Christmas activity, but I forgot my camera. In October I was released from serving in the Young Women's presidency at the bishopric's request. We needed a new chorister. After only having been in Young Women's for about 6 months or so I wasn't sure how to take the news initially. Of course I was happy to go where they needed me, but I was so excited to help light a fire under the girls, to give them a sense of their eternal opportunities and help them establish a strong foundation for good moral choices leading to the temple. We had just extended a really spiritual Book of Mormon challenge and I was excited to see that through to the end of the year.

However, I was pleasantly surprised by the change. I watched the Church's Video on how to teach a song to young children and I have just become so passionate about the music. I remember most vividly the songs from primary. I think that is where my young testimony really took flight. Most specifically singing "Families Can Be Together Forever." I am convinced a person can be a great chorister, despite my initial fear, just by being willing to practice the songs ahead of time and then open your mouth and sing them when it's time to teach.

This year the primary program outline is entitled "My Eternal Family." We will be singing some of my very favorite songs, including "Families Can Be Together Forever." I know as I knew at an early age that this is the purpose of my life: to develop eternal relationships. Heavenly Father knew me as a child and knew I would come to understand this truth more profoundly with each new phase of life and the accompanying challenges. What a gift for him to help me understand it sooner than later so that I might withstand my trials more faithfully. I am so grateful to David for transforming my life and to Calla and Isabel for transforming it again. E

Isabel's Christmas

It's been a long while and Grandma Anderegg motivated me to post on our blog. Not sure how many people are viewing it, but we'll assume somebody is. Especially now that Grandma and Grandpa Spencer are in Mexico. They are serving their third mission as Area Medical Advisors in the Monterey area. Hopefully they'll get online and check us out.

We put up our tree for Family Home Evening last week, but Isabel had a hard time not picking the berries and pine cones off the tree. I was getting stressed out about the money we spent on the tree and wondering what was going to happen once we put our nice decorations on it and Christmas was not starting out on a good note. Isabel's association with Christmas trees is "No. No." I would say it very frustratedly and then Calla was my little enforcer. When Isabel would walk past the tree and point and raise her voice and say "No. No." Calla would worriedly usher her away. I knew something wasn't quite right. I went to bed a little disappointed in myself and frustrated with Isabel. After sleeping on it, I discovered that it wouldn't matter if the tree was missing half of the tips on the bottom. We won't even have this tree in five years I'm guessing. I felt what was more important is that Isabel have a happy, joyful feeling as she learns about Christmas and that she feel a secure place in our family as she explores and tries things out and establishes her relationship with her sister Calla. Sometimes I feel a bit out of patience because I've been there done that with Calla and I forget that Isabel is doing this all for the first time and I need to try and give her the space to learn and find joy in her discoveries as I did with Calla rather than thinking about the aftermath, the cleanup, teaching responsibility, appearances, etc.

So in honor of Isabel and my newfound respect for her newness and a deeper understanding of Christmas, I post the picture of our tree: a 3 foot tree wonder we bought for Calla to decorate last year. So that everybody can have a hands on tactile Christmas tree experience this year and mom doesn't get too caught up in the performance of a beautiful, no-kids tree. So that we can focus on the meaning of Christmas and not the trappings (even though Christmas trees are not really trappings and if you could only have one decoration for Christmas, a tree would be it!) Please enjoy the two matching D.I. chairs that frame the tree. I still haven't been able to invest in great furniture, nor do I want to considering we're going to rent out our place next year. More on that later.

I'm also posting our nativity. Our one and only truly heirloom decoration thanks to Grandma Anderegg. I can put it up high enough so I can enjoy it and it's still safe from little fingers. Please note the green wall behind the fireplace. Yes, I painted the room yet again, but this is the last time. I didn't want renters to come into to a rainbow house and think the house was a fun house that they didn't have to take care of. We have an officially all green house now, walls, carpet. I will hire a designer to think through these agonizing, costly decisions for me with our next house or just paint it all white.

News: We're expecting our third baby girl. We didn't know that the last time I posted on the blog. We had an ultrasound on Tuesday, 19 weeks. We're due April 30, just one month before Isabel's second birthday.

My brother Jon got married in October to a beautiful girl named Heather. We're so happy for them to begin the journey. And it is undeniably a journey. We are grateful to be on it although we literally feel stretched at times. This stretching and growing is essential. What a blessing to feel your progress. I think that is a tender mercy of the Lord amidst large challenges. I think about the pioneer stories and the description of coming to "know the Lord in our extremities." We've been at extremes for so long that it almost doesn't feel right when things lighten and get easier. However, I am grateful for the blessings we see coming our way.

I wrote down a thought I had several months ago as I was processing my life (as I often do) and struggling to feel more grateful and recognize the Lord's hand in my development individually and our development as a family. I thought clearly that when we feel stressed and challenged it is important to endure it for a while, to put some time in and we'll figure it out, rather than force a change. We can learn through a process of discovery rather than a process of resistance. Sometimes we don't see things as clearly at the beginning as we do at the end. I also learned that instead of looking with despair at the road ahead, I needed to look back to see how far we've come: missions, college, marriage, children, home owners. It's a pretty good list as far as I'm concerned and for some reason lists make sense to me. We really are learning and growing and doing. I need to have confidence that the Lord will always watch over us and provide for us as long as we are striving to obey the commandments. 

Understanding and choosing submission is the great lesson of adulthood.  Although we were born to it, we naturally outgrow this divine attribute. Maybe we come as helpless infants so that we can get some practice early on to allow us to one day return to it.  I feel we will be tried further to learn humility to bear the the Lord's will, to heed the counsel of a prophet, to align our lives with "The Family: A Proclamation to the World", to live within our means. I hope that when the time comes I will be practiced enough to naturally and joyfully kneel at the Savior's feet. 

In the meantime I am grateful for the lessons and joys of motherhood. I wish I was more keenly aware of my daughters' feelings and patterns of learning. I hate to hurt them. But I get better at mothering as Dave becomes more involved in his role as a provider and I I have more experiences with the girls. I truly feel this is what I was sent here to learn, to put myself on the back burner and take care of the needs of my children before my own, to care more about their feelings than my own. That doesn't really jive with today's prescriptive of "Me. Now." but I feel it is right and righteous and I desire to master it so it is an effortless expression of my true and refined nature.

Love to you. E.

Lightning from Heaven

We just came back from an Anderegg Family reunion in Deer Valley. Thanks Grandpa Jerry for the fabulous accommodations and giving us rides on the boat. Calla tried the innertube for the first time and enjoyed it until a big bump at the end. We left our camera on the car so I don't have any good pics of that. Oops. 

Dave and I watched Dan in Real Life with Grandma Cathy. We really enjoyed it. I think Juliette Binoche is hands down one of my favorite actresses. Steve Carrell was great too. I love that scene in the bowling alley when they're acting like teenagers flirting with each other. I must have felt that type of energy and excitement at some point in my adolescence because I remembered it and smiled as I was watching the film. What a neat moment to begin loving another and losing yourself.

I read a really neat article that I'm really stoked about. It's entitled "Lightning from Heaven" an d appeared in the BYU Magazine Summer 2006. Here's an excerpt:

" 'The Great Man,' said Carlyle, 'was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.'

Joseph Smith ignited something in thousands of men and women that connects them to God and to each other in powerful ways...His message resonated because it was a stirring and compelling and exciting synthesis that presented a spiritually hungry humankind with a god who was not a threat to human potential but a being who gloried in that potential and whose work was to bring it to fruition. That was why Joseph's message resonated and caught hold like a burning fire...

Like Brigham Young, they knew Joseph was human and subject to err, but they sampled his words and agreed they tasted like honey. They weighed the beauty of a God and of human origins and of a human future unlike anything before imagined. They found reason to doubt, and they found reason to believe. They chose to believe." Link: http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=1851

I recommend reading the entire article. I felt it powerfully illuminated our relationship to God and why Joseph Smith was so pivotal in his plan. It increased my testimony that the Church is truly a godsend and that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true. I choose to believe it.

New family pics. Thanks to our dear and acommodating friend Lisa Ashby, www.freewebs.com/ashbyphotography