Mike Gets Tenure!

Great news. Finally, finally, we hear that Mike has received tenure. We're now in Irvine, in this house, for the rest of our lives (probably). We're dang lucky. Way to go, Mike!

To celebrate, we're watching Burn Notice (Mike's favorite show) and eating homemade salsa.

Mike was also wanting to make guac - here's a condensed version of the conversation we had when I got back from the store. I'm not capturing the humor here, but it was actually pretty funny.

Mike (disappointed): Umm, Care, you really don't know how to pick avocados, do you?

Caroline: Why, are they bad?

Mike: Well, they need to be riper and softer and the skin looks a little different.

Caroline: Oh, sorry. I don't know what I'm doing since I don't eat guac.

(A few minutes later)

Mike: Oh, I found the avocados you bought. Great!

Caroline (laughing): Mike did you think the mangoes on the counter were unripe avocados?

Mike: No, but I thought that you thought that the mangoes were avocados, and I didn't want to make you feel stupid, so I didn't say anything.

Mike's a sweetheart for trying to protect me from my own (supposed) ignorance. :)

Adventures in Potty Training

Some highlights of the last five days:

• E doing pretty well the first day. Accidents half the time, successes half the time.
• Things beginning to unravel on day two.
• A hellacious third day, with E constantly lying and saying "no, I don't have to pee" and then peeing on the floor five minutes later.
• A partially hellacious fourth day, with Mike and me terrified of E peeing all over the church. Mike has an intensely nervous experience with E in the foyer during Sacrament meeting, seeing as he had recently drunk a juice box and hadn't peed in 2 hours. I take the first hour of nursery (E has accident) and Mike takes the second hour, in which E tackles six or seven other kids.
• A fantastic fifth day! Only one accident. Amazing. E turns out to be highly motivated by candy. 

Life Update

I've been a blog slacker. So here I am, with an update on my pregnancy and all sorts of other mundane information that no one should be interested in. 

I'm about 6 months pregnant now, and just got an ultrasound today. It looked bad initially. The placenta was almost completely blocking my cervix. That's a definite C-section. Then it looked like my cervix was too open. Hello, bed rest.  The technician decided to wait 15 minutes and do it again, and luckily things shifted (very strange). My placenta was still low, but not blocking. I attribute this change to gravity since they decided to put a huge pillow under my hips the second time around. My cervix also wasn't as open - apparently I had probably been having a contraction the first time. Very, very weird. I go back in another 4 weeks to see if things have improved.

Other than that, things are ok. Beast is terribly cute and charming, but a challenge. The things I have to do to get him to go to sleep - bribe him with marshmellows, threaten him, get him endless cups of water, fetch various cars from downstairs, cover him meticulously with his blanket, drug him with triaminic (I'm not proud of that), etc. 

I'm also exploring the world of discipline. I spanked him (once, lightly) the other day when he hit me. That was the first time, and he didn't handle it well. Started shrieking and sobbing, but then he just wanted to be cuddled. I think I hurt his feelings more than anything else. I also over the last month or two have flicked him on the hand once or twice as a punishment. Same reaction as to the spanking. Mike does not approve of these corporal punishment tactics. 

It's hard to know how to handle him. He doesn't take me seriously at all. When I say, 'No, E, that's not nice. That's bad!" He'll turn to me and say in a serious tone, "Bad mommy, that's not nice. You don't flick me! Bad mommy." And then I have to try to not laugh. 

As for other parts of life, school is great this semester, particularly since the Claremont Women's Conference is over. That was a huge stresser.  Apparently during my presentation I came off as "hard-edged" according to one man, though to Mike he used the more neutral word"forceful." Please, just because I don't lisp and speak in a primary voice... 

Valentines Day Well Being

Ok, so this wasn't Valentines Day, it was a few days later. But yesterday as we were driving home from Daphne's Greek Cafe, Mike said something very sweet. He told me that when I called him earlier that day, he felt a nice sense of well being that he had a wife who was going to come and pick him up and that we were going to go out to dinner, and just in general that he had a great life. (This feeling might have been sparked, he confessed, by his desire, at the moment I called him, to get away from students who were in his office and preventing him from getting work done.) Anyway, I thought it was sweet.

I told him that I had also had a well being epiphany that same day, but mine was sparked as I was at TJ Maxx buying Mexican pottery. I was so enjoying the acquisition of these cute dishes that I was thinking how awesome Mike is to make money and and that I get to go out and buy cool pottery with it.  What a great life.

 I know, not my greatest feminist moment. 

Mundane Details About My Wednesday (you don't want to read this, people)

6:45 - E wakes up. I am already up, so I climb the stairs to get him
6:45- 9:00 - E watches T.V. I try to steer him towards Sesame Street, since it seems a bit more educational than Dora or Clifford, but usually I have to put those on eventually. He eats breakfast (pop-tart usually - thank Mike for that) or recently lemon yogurt.
8:00 Mike comes down the stairs and takes E for half an hour so I can go up and get dressed.
8:30 Mike leaves for work
9:00 - 11:00 E and I go to the gym. Thank you, gym! You have hot water (unlike my house), you have cheap babysitting, I get to read my novel as I pretend to work out. Good times.
11:00 to 12:00 - I wrack my brains trying to figure out ways to waste time. Now that I'm pregnant, I'm usually hungry, so going and getting an early lunch works. Yesterday it was El Pollo Loco. E actually ate something.
12:15-1:30: E messes around at home. Unfortunately I buckle and turn on Sesame Street, even though I know I should not let him watch this much T.V.
1:30 to 2:30 - The great nap battle begins. I coax him up the stairs, with the agreement he can bring a crayon and a balloon. Bad decision. He marks the crayon all over the chair in his room. I read books to him, then chase him around the room in order to grab him and dump him in the crib. He's not happy. Have to go up the stairs a number of times to see what's wrong. It's generally that he dropped his balloon outside the crib and wants it back. Eventually I turn on the TV downstairs and put my ear plugs in so I don't have to hear him cry anymore. He eventually sleeps. I crash on the sofa and sleep too.
4:30 - E wakes up. He weasels a tortilla out of me, even though it's almost dinner time.
5:15 - I go pick up Mike. We go to Panera. E eats nothing.
6:00 - I'm home and I'm free! Mike takes E. He plays with him and deals with his tantrums. I read stuff for my classes.
9:00 - We watch Lost together.
10:00 - I go upstairs and read more.
11:00 - Go to sleep.

Bonhoeffer

I heard a sermon preached last week about Bonhoeffer. Loved it. I wish I could remember more, but I was fascinated by his response to the horrors of Nazi Germany. He was a German theologian who was appalled by what he saw happening around him, and he said there were three responses the church could take. 1) initiate a conversation with the state and question their policies and decisions 2.) Nurse and comfort those who had been thrown under the bus by this regime. 3) Grab the steering wheel of the bus and try to save the people being mown down.

Ultimately Bonhoeffer chose the third. He justified his non-pacifist response to Hitler by saying that it was morally superior to try to grab that steering wheel when a lunatic is driving and try to unseat him, rather than continue to let him kill innocent people. Bonhoeffer was arrested for being involved in a failed assassination plot against Hitler and was hung a few months before Hitler killed himself.

I don't know what I would do in that situation. After watching Valkyrie and seeing how frightening and precarious the situation in Nazi Germany was, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that I would just want to live. I would just want my family to live. I felt so bad for those people that had to choose between Hitler and the resistance, and if they made the wrong choice they would die. So many of them just wanted to live too. It was only a few of the bravest and most principled who were willing to risk their lives as leaders of the resistance.

I'm taking a class on moral agency right now. Traditionally, the most moral person would be the one who made decisions based on principles, rather than the one who makes decisions based on emotion or relationships or individual context. Feminist ethics critiques this traditional view and says that no, making decisions based on relationships, emotions, and subjective inclinations can be just as moral as making those decisions based on principle. I think I firmly fall into that contextual and relational way of making decisions. If my children or spouse were to be put at risk from me being involved in a resistance movement, I doubt I would involve myself. That's kind of seems sad and cowardly to me. But that's an ethical decision too.

New Resolution

My second semester at CGU has just started, and I am taking an autobiography class. Our prof has heavily encouraged us to start keeping a diary, so I hereby resolve to blog more about my daily life. If my daily life bores you (and it should) I heartily recommend you not read my posts for the next few months.

This weekend started off with a bang. I had a fantastic Friday. Loved my class "The Moral Agency of Women" which I went to for the first time. I had actually intended to go there and drop it, since I was worried I would want to strangle myself because of all the theoretical readings, but it turned out to be better than I could ever have imagined. Yes there's a lot of theory in the beginning, but the latter part of the course we'll be watching movies and reading lit and applying these ideas of women's moral agency to them. Yay! What fun. Because by the end of the class I'll be great with child, I do think I'll just audit it and get out of writing the 20 page research paper.

In class we watched the devastating Emma Thompson movie Wit about a woman dying of cancer who has moral agency stripped away from her. It was so awful and sad and wonderful. Lots of us were sniffling and crying as we watched it. It helped that the prof herself admited to tearing up every time she sees it. And afterwards, the prof had us sit in silence as we thought of all the people we know/knew who have dealt with the horrors of terminal illness. She told us this time was to 'hold these people in the light' and recall their presence. Very Quaker-esque and very pastoral. I thought it showed great sensitivity on the prof's part.

Had lunch with the WSR women and headed home to pick up E from Rebecca's. At home, while he napped, I napped, until rudely jarred awake by the doorbell fiercely ringing. An older Asian couple was there and kept trying to tell me something in Chinese, but I had no idea what they were saying, and I was dazed anyway by my recent nap. I felt really bad. Eventually they went away. I'm still wondering what on earth they were trying to say to me.

Our evening ended with us taking E back to Rebecca's so she could b-sit him while we went to go see You, Nero, Mike's Christmas present to me. (He had resolved this year to actually buy me a real present. This was somewhat unusual.) We were happy to have some time alone since E spent the whole 6:00 hour screaming and collapsing in tears whenever Mike and I tried to talk to each other about my moral agency class. "Talk to me!" he'd passionately sob as he crumpled to his knees.

You, Nero turned out to be very entertaining. Also entertaining was the program which showed next to his bio a picture of the main actor. The picture was taken at least 25 years ago. Mike refused to believe that that guy was the same one playing the main role. It totally was, but the guy really needs to update his picture.

Today: not nearly so exciting. Took E until 5:00 since Mike had to go to a conference. Long, long day. Wish I could figure out ways to make E care-taking less dull and lonely.