MamaBlogga

It’s Hayden’s birthday! For someone who has talked about his birthday for six months, he’s not that excited. I told him he was four this morning and he said, “Wight now?”

When Rebecca got up, he told me to “Tell her what I have now.”

I correctly guessed he wanted me to tell her he was four. Hayden came to stand over her, and Rebecca grunted at him to go away, using her sign for “all done/all gone/no more.”

“See wants my fee years old back,” Hayden explained.

Birthday boy needs a haircut

Just a few of the inventions Hayden claims are in “his car” (the red Honda we haven’t driven in years, but still have):

• wings, so it can fly to Nana
• guns (that go “pew! pew!”)
• a machine that makes purple monkeys with sad faces and happy faces
• two ovens
• [added later: bathtub]

Some words Hayden puts his personal spin on:
woo — you
wuze — use
Werbecca (still)
foon — spoon (and all other words beginning with sp-, sm-, etc.)
[added later: DVDV ("divvydivvy") — DVD]

Words Rebecca can say (at 18 months, in the order she learned them as best I can remember):
des/dah (yes/yeah)
dat (that)
Dada (this was a long time before the next ones)
Mama, Nana, Papa
Beebe (baby, sometimes Pinky)
Deesa (Jesus)
oooh (no)
oosh (shoes or juice)
[added later: mmmmooowa (more, which came after Dada), boo' (book), ba'/bap (bag), ba' (ball), hi, bye]

Words Rebecca can sign:
more
shoes
cookie/treat
Jesus
milk
apple
cheese
Pinky
Hayden
baby
cracker
clean
no more/all gone/all done/FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY STOP CHANGING MY DIAPER!!!!
[added later: hi, byebye, please, thank you, bread, excuse me]

Body parts Rebecca knows:
Hair
Head
Eyes
Ears
Mouth
Nose
Chin
Tongue
Cheek
Neck
Knees (sometimes)
Feet
Toes
Fingers
Hands
Belly

Update: speaking of looking back of the last year, Esther Elizabeth’s Saturday Evening Blog Post is asking for your favorite post of your own for 2009. I chose my post on how to choose happiness. What’s yours?

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever cared less about New Year’s Eve and Day. Ever. My husband spent the evening patrolling the parking lot at a local youth dance (10,000 youth were expected to attend and the organizers solicited several hundred chaperons) so I didn’t even get a kiss.

I’m also so over resolutions . But I suppose I can still take a look at my resolutions from last year and assess how I’ve done.

• Better prayer and scripture study (specifically a 30 minute scripture study/prayer time first thing in the morning). Eh, not really. I did do pretty well at making at least a page a day. Mid-year, in line with our local (stake) goal, I decided to read the whole Doctrine and Covenants by the end of the year and finished it in about 3-4 months reading 2 pages a day. I only missed a couple days and I completed the goal, so that was good.
• Run a 5K. I’m kind of shocked that I actually did this (along with my sister Jaime). I liked being in shape, but apparently not enough to maintain it. I think I’ll do another 5K this year (again, I must be insane), but probably not until September at the earliest.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables. I neglected this for a while mid-year, but in the fall I had some health issues come up and I had to start eating more veggies again. I wish we could eat a greater variety of vegetables . . . but we already eat almost everything we like. Maybe we’ll have to get more adventurous this year.
• Do more around the house. Yeah—no.
• Write tons a reasonable amount (specifically, finished the first draft of my latest MS at the time, get through the first drafts of two more MS and finish revisions on the two 2007 MS). Well, I finished almost all of this—I finished the first draft and revisions on the aforementioned manuscript and also drafted two more in 2009. I never did go back to the first MS from 2008; if I ever do, it will require heavy re-conceptualizing. I actually went even further than the goal—I submitted that one manuscript for publication. Also, I want to revise the resolution: three manuscripts in 365 days (nearly 250,000 words) is more than a reasonable amount for me.

And my most important resolution: I will choose happiness. That, of course, is ongoing, but something I both did well (since I focused on it), and continued to struggle with (especially with the ongoing health issue).

So several of those are things I’ll want to continue to work on this year (maybe). But most importantly, I want to work on the habit of choosing happiness—doing more to foster that attitude on a daily basis.

Resolutions are hard to keep because they’re not the same thing as goals. So this year, this is my attempt to start channeling my most important resolution(s?) into goals. (For a blast from the past, here’s my post on setting goals, specifically for your blog; I’ll have another one on my writing blog on Monday.) One of the things I need is to work on breaking down the amorphous “choose happiness” into more specific, concrete things I can do to remind myself of and strive toward that attitude.

What do you think? How can choosing happiness become a habit?

Photo by Neal (Visiting this local attraction was the fulfillment of one of his resolutions)

This year I’ve thought a lot about choosing happiness. I named it as my big resolution for the year and used it as the theme for a group writing project. Back in October, several pieces fell into place as I figured out how to choose happiness and why choosing it can seem so hard.

One more piece fell into place this week.

So back in October, I pointed out that

Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.

Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness. . . .

Choosing happiness means doing what I may not want to do most right now—it means choosing the thing that I know is right for me, what’s important in the long run.

The rest of my realization might not seem like much of an epiphany, but I think the last piece fell into place this week. I had my first true “White Christmas” this year—but it’s really not exciting. Yeah, I know I live in Utah, but I am already tired of the snow. It seems like it came to stay a lot earlier than normal (and I can’t ski this year, so there doesn’t seem to be an upside, either).

For Christmas Eve, however, I decided that one fun family thing we could do was to play in the snow (and the snow has been here basically all month, but we’ve never played in it, unless shoveling counts). So bundling up is a hassle, and you get cold and wet pretty fast, but I thought this would be a fun thing for all of us.

Of course, Ryan came down with a cold and Rebecca needed a nap, so it ended up just being me and Hayden tromping through the backyard, digging in the partially-refrozen snow, and throwing snowballs. (My very first one hit Hayden in the forehead and burst. He didn’t know what hit him!)

After about half an hour, I decided I’d had enough and brought us back in. After stripping out of our wet winter gear, I had Hayden help me put the cookie dough onto cookie sheets.

Sounds pretty idyllic, doesn’t it? For the most part, it was—there were fewer fits and screaming and begging and yelling during those hours than most of the ones of the previous week—the hours I spent worrying about getting shopping and packing and work done, and the time I spent on the computer procrastinating dealing with those things. It was a time I could spend enjoying him and enjoying being his mom.

The realization that hit me? Choosing happiness means choosing my children. It doesn’t mean that I am completely subjugated or I have to ignore all my own needs—but when I take the time to really work at being a mom, the whole family is happier—including me.

What do you think? What does choosing happiness mean for you?

Photo by Grant MacDonald

Enjoy your holidays!

This year, I wanted to get my kids involved in the spirit of Christmas, and not just by having them pick out gifts for cousins or telling the Christmas story every. Single. Night. So I looked for service opportunities in our area, things that the kids could do and maybe even see the people they were helping as they performed their service. (At 3 and 1, they’re still a little young for that, but I wanted to do what they could).

One place that I found great opportunities in our community was the local United Way website. in the volunteering section, you could even search for opportunities by age group—as young as 5. (Five is like three, right?)

I found one that I particularly liked—preparing stockings for underprivileged and homeless families in our area. We bought the stuff and Hayden helped me stuff the stockings. I made sure to take him with me when we dropped them off. We also took some other things they needed for homeless families being placed into housing.

Now, you know I’m not normally one to pass these along, but a few days ago, I got a press release in my email. They pretty much had me the subject line: “Five ways for parents to teach children the true spirit of the holidays.” Here are their suggestions:

1. As a family, select a charitable organization you’d like to support. Use online tools like Charity Navigator to find an organization that you trust. Give your children a budget and encourage them to decide how your family will donate to that organization this holiday.

2. Cherish the stories of your family. Have your children talk to their grandparents and write down the stories of their past. Create a book to share with the entire family or record it online through Story Corps.

3. Consider do-it-yourself gifts, like no-sew fleece blankets, that you can make with your children. Donate those blankets to a local homeless shelter. Find other homemade gift ideas at About.com’s Family Crafts page.

4. Work with your children to create a coupon book for your neighbors that might need an extra hand this year. Coupons could include shoveling their sidewalk, watching their children, or providing a meal.

5. Bake cookies or sweets with your children and deliver them to your local nursing home or school-in-need. Get started with this list of holiday recipes.

(It feels like cheating if I don’t mention the company the press release was supposed to be touting: World Vision’s Gift Catalog, which lets you make a gift purchase—in the name of a friend/family member/whoever—ranging from clothing, shelter and food to education for families in the US and abroad.)

Finally, if you’re looking to make an impact, one non-profit I can recommend is SainTerre. I know it’s not glamorous to discuss, basic sanitation (yeah, potties) is something 2.6 million people live without—not even pit latrines. SainTerre is working to provide the people of West Africa with environmentally-friendly composting toilets, through its non-profit (okay, the business structure is a lot more complicated than that, but you can just stick to that side of it). My cousin was one of the founders, and you can contact him, Ammon Franklin, for information on how to donate.

How have you gotten you children into the spirit of giving this Christmas season?

Photo credits: toddler hands—McBeth; giving rice—Kris

A few months ago, we looked a how to sign up for and use Amazon Associates, an affiliate marketing program that gives you a small percentage of any sales you generate for Amazon. Now Blogger is making it even easier to use Amazon’s program—without ever leaving your post window.

You may have noticed the Monetize tab Blogger added back in April. Up until yesterday, only Google ads (AdSense) for your site and feed appeared here. Now you can also find your Amazon Associates information there, too.

To start, go to Monetize > Amazon Associates. Here you can either enter your Associates ID if you already have one, or start the sign up process (and again, we have a step-by-step walk-through on signing up for Amazon)

Once you’re finished with that step, you have the option to add the Amazon Product Finder to your Edit/Compose New Post page. I say go for it, and I’ll show you why.

The Product Finder is a widget that lives on the Compose New/Edit Post page. When you’re working on a post and you want to include a product link to Amazon, just type in part of the name or highlight the title in your post (you can also search by category with the pull-down menu where it says “Amazon.com”).

Once you find the product you want, you can choose the link type to insert into your post—text, image or both. In my example, I went for both:

There are lots of other ways to use Amazon on your blog—so get started!