Sunday, December 21, 2014

Relief Society

I left Relief Society on the verge of tears today...

After our practice song I just couldn't stand sitting there for one more minute, so I walked out to my car (trying not to run into anyone on my way out), and I just sat there fighting back tears and watching the raindrops slide down the glass....

I felt so incredibly lost and alone.

We moved into this ward three months ago, and our first Sunday here I realized it's HUGE. Seriously, like Sunday school is split into two giant rooms, and it's still packed. I admit, I have a lot of issues with social anxiety and going to a new ward in general is tough for me, but this ward is a challenge all its own.

After three years in our last ward, I was finally feeling like there were a few people I knew and who even cared that I existed, and now, I know almost no one. In my last ward I was finally starting to get a feel for who was who and who lived where, but in this ward, I feel like it's impossible to ever figure out, let alone get to know, even half the members. I do love my dear next door neighbor, Julie, but she leaves after sacrament meeting every week because of her arthritis. I've never really met the relief society presidency, I know Julie emailed them about us moving in and needing help, but we never heard anything back. I've been having a hard time with life and I don't have any visiting teachers that I know of, and I just feel so alone and forgotten by the world.

Anyway, enough back story, there I was sitting in Relief Society all by myself, and there were people (SO many people) sitting all around me and all talking to each other in these chatty little groups to the point that it was difficult for the sister conducting to start the meeting. Then a couple of sisters got up and distributed some hymn books, offering them to people around me, but I didn't get one... and the women near me didn't offer to share. I knew the first verse of "The Day Dawn is Breaking", but by the second verse, I was at loss half the time.

I felt hopelessly alone in the middle of a sea of people... and that's when it all just fell apart. I could feel the tears coming. I tried to stop them, because it was stupid to cry over something so silly, but they just kept coming despite my best efforts.

And writing it down, it really does seem so silly... I absolutely know it's silly to feel hurt, or overwhelmed, or stressed by such a normal situation. No one had done anything to hurt me or offend me. Nothing was really wrong; I should have been fine.

But I wasn't. I didn't feel fine. And I think that's part of the reason I fell apart.

I hate that I can't deal with these situations like a normal person. When I was younger I had this idea that being a grown up, getting married, becoming a mom, etc. would somehow, magically make me able to deal with these social situations. At the very LEAST I had hoped that I'd grow out of it, or gain enough experience to be able to deal with it. But no, here I am at 26 years old, with two children who need me to take them to church every week so that they can be a part of the gospel, and I am still freaking out over such simple human interactions.

I desperately want friends, but I am terrified of the small talk that it takes to make them. I know, the answer is just "put yourself out there, sit down next to someone else and strike up a conversation, bring cookies to your neighbors, join a book club..." Which would work wonders, I'm sure, were I an extrovert with out anxiety problems.

I will figure it all out in the end, I'm sure, but for right now, I just want to have it recorded that this day happened.

This is not a sympathy post or a complaint post. I don't want people to feel sorry for me, and I'm not trying to feel sorry for myself. This is also not an inspirational post where I tell you the uplifting, spiritual experience I had to get me through this. I'm not there yet, and I think that's ok.

What this post IS, is just me telling you that this happened. This is how I felt today.

There are cute pictures of my kids and funny quotes that I'll probably be putting on Facebook later, and that's all you'll see and you'll assume you know how my life is going from what pops up in your newsfeed. But, this day happened and I want it to be known.

#Honesty





Monday, December 8, 2014

Evie #3

My little baby is 3 years old!! THREE! Where has the time gone?


I was just thinking about this, since I have a dear friend who is anxiously waiting for her own overdue December girl--I remember how excruciatingly slow the time went waiting for her to finally get here! Those last weeks, days, and hours before my labor finally started were an eternity! And yet, as soon as she finally made her appearance in the world, time refused to slow down for a minute (weeeeell, except for those eternally long nights when she refused to sleep... but I digress)!


It seriously seems like just yesterday I was hurrying her out into the world, and today she suddenly seems so grown up! How is she not still that tiny little thing that we brought home from the hospital (with much care and anxiety on our first car ride)? 

In my mind she is still that scrawny little newborn, the rolly-polly, determined infant, and also the crazy kid she's grown into, all at once!

Sometimes I really wish I could save each stage of her life in a different room and could visit her at each age whenever I wished. I love the bright, beautiful child she's grown into, but I miss my bebe too.

And now I'm feeling all sentimental-y...

*sniff*


But, enough of that!! Here is our 3 year old Evie cakes!

Evie weighs 26 lbs (11 %) and is nearly 36 inches tall (21%)!

She is so smart, and beautiful, and kind. She has been a wonderful big sister to her baby brother ever since he was born... this year, lol. We've had very few jealous moments, and even then she would just say "mom, put Declan down." when she'd felt I'd been holding him all day long and just needed a little mommy-time.

Catching her brother :)
  She is always looking out for him; I was getting frustrated that she kept running ahead of me and closing all the doors on whatever floor of the house we were on... until I realized that she was closing them to keep Declan from crawling into places he's not supposed to go. I never asked her to do it or discussed it with her, she just noticed that I was always pulling him out of the bathroom and telling him not to go in there, and she decided to help! She'll also hold onto him if he starts to crawl or sit at the top of the stairs to keep him from falling. Although, if he's crawling UP the stairs from the bottom, she just runs up ahead of him, cheers him on, and tells me not to "grab him", haha.

Evie has a fantastic little memory; she loves to memorize books, movies, and songs. She knows the majority of the lines to "Frozen", of course, but some of them are lines she makes up because she doesn't understand the real ones. Some of my favorite Evie lines are: "it get's a little lonely, all these empty rooms, just watching these owls skip BYYYY" (or: watching the hours tick by), and, "(Anna:)Elsa, please! I can't look like this anymore! (Elsa:)Then leave." There are more, but I can't remember them for the life of me.


Needless to say, Evie is obsessed with "Frozen". She has basically BEEN Elsa for nearly a year now. She loves to sing every song from the movie (including the instrumentals and one on the end credits) in a row and at the top of her lungs. It makes it difficult to have any other activities occurring simultaneously, but she is very passionate about it. Her other passion is acting out all the scenes from the movie, sometimes with us, sometimes as a one-girl show, and sometimes with whatever toys or dolls she has on hand.

She also discovered a show called Peg + Cat this fall, which she loves too, probably because Peg is a precocious little smarty-pants just like her ;) The other things she likes to watch are Super-Why, Daniel Tiger, Arthur, and she recently found that she loves the movie "Maleficent".

Evie as "Peg" for Halloween
 Evie still loves books and reading. We tend to make a library trip about once a week, and every single visit we have to raid the "Little Critter" shelf. She also likes The Berenstain Bears, Piggie and Elephant books, and the Llama Llama books.

Being all mature and reading books on her Kindle...
Evie loves to go to the museums at Thanksgiving Point and the Bean museum. She also loves to go to both the malls around here... for their playgrounds ;)


She also loves to play with ooblek, paint, face-paint, cloud dough, play dough, and anything else that's messy!!




She is still very active and adventurous, and she's starting to like people again finally! Yay! She's a bit less shy these days--she still takes a minute to warm up to new situations and people, but she's come a long way in the last year! She is (generally) a very sweet little girl. She says "thank you" all the time, and is actually very good at sharing for her age.


These past 3 years have been so intense, but I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am to be this little girl's mother. She is going to do awesome things in this world if she decides to, I just hope I can help her become the amazing person she is destined to be!

Happy Birthday, Evie May!

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