Stinker

So, I notice that Ryan is hanging out in the pantry and being rather quiet. Oh, please tell me he didn't find what I think he found. Of course, as I walk over to him he turns around with gooey ant bait all over his hands with a few upset ants running around his feet wondering where lunch went. Come on, that was in the very back corner strategically placed to be where he wouldn't see it but the ants would. Okay, at least it's not on his mouth. I wash him up, place him on the floor and go to wash up the mess where the ant Terro was on the floor in the pantry. When I finish I turn around and notice him once again playing rather quietly on the floor with his back to me. Now he has one of the girls' tubes of lip gloss, and I guess it's good to know that now he can get it open. I run grab a wipe to clean off his hands and he proceeds to run to the door and wipe them off himself. Today he also learned how to climb onto our kitchen table chairs.

I'm just blown away that this is my child. I feel like maybe I have now on my third kid really entered motherhood. Why didn't I appreciate Hannah's toddlerhood while it lasted? I just didn't know how lucky I was. Or how merciful Heavenly Father is. Ryan and I wouldn't have survived together if he had come first.

Family Pictures

Ryan's birthday was a couple of months ago, and one thing after another has happened so that every time I tried to get his one-year pictures taken it just hasn't worked out. But today there was no stopping me. And since Nate took a little time off in the morning so I could go to a teacher conference and the girls are tracked out, we decided to just make it a family affair.

And I just have to brag on my kids a little bit. We had to wait like 20 minutes for them to print out the pictures, and there is a Toys R Us next to the studio, so I asked them if they would like to just walk around the toy store and have some fun instead of sitting and waiting. They knew we were NOT buying anything, and they were great! How many kids can you take into a toy store and play for 20 mintues and then walk out without them asking even once if they could have something?! I love my children.

Oh, and I said to them, "It's a lot of fun to take pictures of good-looking kids. Thanks for being so cute." And Hannah said, "Well, I think that was Heavenly Father's idea to make us that way." :)

Nikki's Journal Entry

I am happy when I go to the park.

I am happy when I ride my bike.

I am happy when I see my mommy.

I was reading through Nikki's school writing journal this morning. Wow, I really needed that one today. This parenting thing is really hard, and I'm not sure sometimes, okay a lot of times, how I'm doing. Thanks, Nikki.

Halloween fun

Kristen, thanks for a fun idea. I really needed it yesterday when Nikki came home from school early with a fever, but it was just slight enough that she wasn't laying around acting sick. We're making Halloween shaped Jello jigglers today.

On my mind

• General Conference is always wonderful. Nate was gone over the weekend on a scout leadership training campout, so he missed all but the last 45 minutes of the last session. I'm looking forward to watching it over again with him in the evenings. Elder Bednar, Elder Holland, President Monson's talk Sunday morning, Elder Scott, the one that talked about heart surgery (I don't remember his name) -- and there were more that really stood out to me. I was just praying Saturday morning about recognizing the Spirit more easily and then Elder Scott was the very first speaker who spoke about exactly that. Such a great weekend.
• Everyone in our family has now come down with our miserable cold/virus/?. Being able to sniff is really a great skill. I can't wait until Ryan learns how to do it rather than let it just run down into his mouth.
• Today's weather makes me want to curl up on the couch with a good book and a nice bowl of soup and homemade bread. I guess that means today would be a great day to hit Panera Bread. :)
• My oven has a light inside but no window through the door. I think that is incredibly stupid.
• Does anybody else like paying bills? It gives me a sense of security to get it done and know that it is all taken care of.
• Last night as I was falling asleep I realized that Christmas is coming and I want to go ahead and get all presents taken care of now. Nate and I have talked about making this a homemade Christmas. We've never gone too crazy and gotten loads of presents for the kids, but it always seems like we end up with more than we had originally planned. I wonder what the girls would think if all the presents were just service or things we make for each other? Actually, I know what they'd think. Hannah would be so excited and Nikki would be so disappointed.
• Ryan lost our cordless mouse yesterday. He has also lost the memory card reader that we use to download the pictures off of our camera since I dropped the camera one too many times, and it won't connect directly to the computer. We watched conference on the internet and he turned the computer off three times while we were watching it. He's a mess. I guess it's my fault because I'm the one that's supposed to be supervising him.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I keep thinking about this book. First, I feel like I need to give a disclaimer. There was a scene in the book that I wish wasn't there. It's not a love scene, but it was disturbing. I understand that to the author it would have been an important part, though, because it is the first time Minny ever experienced a white woman step out of her place of comfort and do something for her. And then there is some language in it. Why did she wait until I was sucked in a few chapters before she did that? It makes me tempted again to justify that I see why the author did it in trying to tell the story in the voices of the characters, but I still don't like to read that and feel like I should mention it before someone picks up this book because I said I liked it -- and then they'll think I don't mind books with language and a disturbing scene when I do. I just don't know how to explain to myself that I didn't like that, but I did like this book.

Anyway -- on to the book. It is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, and it is told through the viewpoint of three women. One is a young white woman who wants to be a journalist, and the other two are maids to the rich white women of Jackson. They are "the help."
In an attempt to have their voices heard after being silent and frustrated their whole lives, these maids agree to tell their story to a white woman who wants to write about what it's like to be a colored maid in Mississippi from the viewpoint of the maids.

It was such an emotional book. I laughed right out loud, and I even got real tears in my eyes. I was afraid of what the white people were going to do to them. I felt such contempt for the white women who were so calloused and rude. I was moved when Skeeter and Aibileen really became friends, a white woman and a black woman crossing lines and breaking rules that their society said would always be that way. How frightening to try to change something that is ingrained not only through violence, but taught to the minds of innocent children by their mothers from before they even enter preschool.

It made me think about my own ancestors living in the south. My mom and dad were in the high school class that first integrated about 9 black students into the white high school in Edenton. I remember asking Mom about it one time, but she didn't have too much to say about it. She said they were pretty quiet and she didn't really know them. I think that's probably typical of high school students to be in their own world, but then coming to the same high school didn't bring them to the same neighborhoods and after school hangouts. Those lines were still drawn when I was in high school in that same town, maybe not as strictly adhered to but they were there. My grandparents used the term "colored people," but I know Granddaddy was friends with a black man named Sambo. I would like to think that my family members that I love would have known even back then that black people were not diseased, dirty, and immoral just because of their skin color. Even if social lines were drawn so they couldn't associate too much with people who were different. I would like to think that I myself don't think of stereotypes first and question them secondly.

Anyway, this would be a fun book to discuss with somebody. There is so much in it.