Christmas Traditions

I love the traditions of my childhood and I am enjoying passing those traditions on to my children. And of course, establishing new traditions in my own home. Here are some traditions from my childhood that I am passing on to my children:

We always got a new pair of pajamas on Christmas Eve before bed. This year I sent my kids down to get their PJ's on and they were amazed that new pajamas had "magically" appeared on their beds! It was fun to play Santa's advocate.

On Christmas Eve, after a Family Home Evening lesson with the account of the Savior's birth in Luke 2, we always played board games, had a fire in the fireplace, and ate goodies. It is such a cozy memory. We did that this year as well. We taught the kids how to play Sorry and it was so much fun to play it with them now that they get how! What a fun age!

This Christmas we also discovered the magic of "The Polar Express" with children who truly believe. We discovered how much fun it is to get gifts for our children and help them pick out gifts for one another. It was fun to decorate Christmas cookies and have a game night with friends.

Other traditions include a dramatic reading of "The Grinch," and coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas morning. Everyone stays in their pajamas all day long, right? It was so fun to watch the kids go from one new treasure to the next all day. Audrey looked like she really wanted to just roll in the piles of wrapping paper all over the floor...that paper looked so TASTY!

The kids received so many fun and thoughtful and generous gifts: Hungry Hungry Hippos was the request of choice from Santa (Whew! That was only $13!). The kids also got nerf guns, new gloves, new coats and shirts and pants and socks, Build-a-Bear stuffed animals from a secret Santa, books, coloring books, puzzles, and so much more! I got some new kitchen items including a scale, new silverware and Chris got me a dock for my iPod! I suppose my new haircut counts as a Christmas gift as well. I am one step closer to being back to my original hair color. Oh yeah, and Chris himself installed a new (used), WORKING, and free dishwasher for me on Christmas Eve! I love having a dishwasher again! And I thought on a new budget, we would be having a simple Christmas.... Not so! We are too blessed!

Quintessential Housewife

I wasn't pregnant anymore, but I was certainly barefoot for the Father's Day's shrimp buffet I provided for my loving husband. For a girl who doesn't like seafood, this just shows how much I really love this guy. I made him shrimp cocktail, shrimp scampi, and coconut shrimp. The kids enjoyed the shrimp too, while I had tater tots for dinner.

What happens when you watch too much CSI

We just finished watching the first season of CSI. In the past, intense shows like this have given me nightmares. This time it's day-mares. I think it may be time to watch something else for a while.

Case in point:

This morning I did laps at the gym. Mid-workout I paused for a drink of water and a breather. After I'd been standing there in the water for a couple of minutes resting, I heard someone bubble up to the surface on the opposite side of the lap pool. How long had someone else been there and why hadn't I noticed? Were they lurking about quietly so as not to be detected? Now, I'm blind as a bat without my contacts in, so I couldn't tell if this blob was a man or a woman, if they were staring at me or not.

Then my mind started imagining. The blob was a scary man and he was most certainly watching me, his future prey. We were the only two in the pool. If I naively continued my laps in blurry blindness, I would be apprehended by this mysterious shape on the other side. By the time Grissom arrived, I would have had my neck sliced open and my locker key, which had been pinned to my suit, would be gone. A look-alike Jenny would have gone into the locker room and removed my ID from my locker, and then used it to retrieve and kidnap my children from the gym daycare. Then Grissom would interview Chris and find out who my enemies were. That guy who gave me a dirty look on our bike ride yesterday? One of the creepy kids who waits at the bus stop in front of our house every morning? It would turn out that some desperate pseudo friend had me off-ed so she could console and ultimately woo my grieving widower.

I decided to get out of the pool.

The Dust Settles (again)

Remember the last time we did this?

So we are successfully moved in. The first two weeks were plagued by half-finished projects (like breaking the drill bit so I couldn't finish installing brackets for curtains, or having lost a couple screws to put the crib together, etc). Now the chaos has died down a bit and I was able to actually finish something.

Samuel can climb the furniture and is starting to say a few words (uh-oh, cheese, shoes, mama, dada), can sign a bunch (milk, cheese, baby, bath, all done, etc) and looks longingly at the fruit basket at the mention of bananas. Leah walks around demanding taxes, reciting movie lines and singning like Ariel (Oh Eric, I have legs! Now we can be dagezer!). I am enjoying my job as the Culinary Arts Procurement Specialist. In other words, the food shopper. It is really quite fun, I love having a variety in what I do daily, and I just bought a new laptop with my earnings :) Oh, I forgot to mention--I think I lost five pounds! The first five. Ever. Since having two children. Or maybe my scale is broken, but that's okay with me. And Chris is working hard to support our family, exercising 6 days out of 7 and doing homework. He even makes dinner more often than I do. What a guy.

We just had a wonderful weekend with my parents, but I'm not sure if it was much of a vacation for them: we put them to work putting up shelves, hammering the fence, weeding and planting bushes (when it wasn't snowing), sewing curtains, and of course, playing with two cute grandkids. We got the basement (somewhat) organized--meaning you don't have to clear a path through the boxes to cross the room, and we unpacked my china cabinet. Unfortunately the guest accomodations at l'hôtel Fosdique are not ideal: the floor was more sleepable than the air mattress. Maybe we should retire the air matress?

We had a great weekend, including get togethers with both the Sorensons and the Benacs, watching Conference, and Chris and I even managed to get an hour in at a Mission Reunion. But now we're back to the daily grind, which includes going to work and paying a babysitter, washing our own dishes and laundry, and finishing the rest of the curtains on my own

My first item of business this week is to put up some pictures. I want to get an idea of where everything is going to go before I start making holes, which is proving to require lots of planning and switching and restarting.

Here is a mock-up of what I'd like to do on the fireplace, but some critics seem apalled at the idea of covering up the brick facade. So, here we are. I want you to tell me what you think of my fireplace cluster. I have a poll on the left for a vote, and you can also leave a comment with your input.

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

Figure 3:

In case you didn't know

My hair is darker again. Much darker. See for yourself.


Everyone seems to be pretty surprised that it is so dark...me too. But Chris likes it and it is growing on me.

When the cat's away the mice do play

My intentions for "The week that Chris is out of town" were hopeful, at best. I planned to totally clean and organize the house to an unprecedented and unrecognizeable extent, go on outings and bike rides with my happy and non-whiny children, have multiple 'girls-nights-in' with my friends, and so much more.

Since I had the expectation of deep cleaning the entire house by next Friday, I figured I would just do it once before he got home. I started the weekend by treating the kitchen with reckless abandon, piling dishes upon dishes in the sink (unrinsed), leaving PB&J remains on the table for days, sweeping crumbs onto the floor, and ultimately re-trashing the kitchen every 12 hours. My kitchen is kind of an auger for the rest of my house, meaning that if my kitchen is in order, I feel like I can keep the rest of the house in order, and vice-versa. So it should be no surprise that I find it rewarding to marathon-clean my kitchen.

Instead, owing to the state of my kitchen, dirty clothes piled up on the bathroom floor and spread into the hallway, the sheets became a tangled mess on the bed, the living room rug became a haven for leaves and dirt and cereal crumbs, diapers got tossed into a pile. All my well-intentioned projects had been half-started and then abandoned.

Given the state of my house and the solitary company of two children under the age of three, I embraced the opportunity to be depressed and so I resorted to eating cookies over the kitchen sink for dinner while my toddler had leftover mac & cheese and the baby drank a bottle. There's a half-eaten container of ice cream in the freezer-you can bet your life that it will be gone by the end of the week. The bed was too lonely for sleeping, so I stayed up late watching dumb teeny-bopper flicks and reading teeny-bopper books and letting gravity pull the tears out of the eye closest to the pillowcase (I wasn't really crying--does that happen to any one else?). Of course, even though mom stays up late, the kids still wake up at sunrise. Then I have to zonk out on the couch while the kids watch cartoons all morning, after which the pajamas undoubtedly see lunch-time. Again. Plus I look like House, I'm popping so much Ibuprofen.

Okay, so everyone was fed and dressed, but I wasn't exactly enjoying life as a hermit. It is so easy to feel sorry for myself! Then it occurred to me that I wanted to clean the house not just for my honey, but because I like having a clean house too. Why should I wait in a dirty house for him to come home, only to scramble about and stress and burn-out on Thursday, when I could live peacefully in a clean home all week. Come to think of it, if I cleaned it at the beginning of the week, the towels would stay hung up neatly, the toilet seats would stay down, and the shoes put away just how I like it. What an epiphany! (Okay, in defense of my dear husband, he does hang up his towels and he usually puts the toilet seat down, but don't get me started on the shoes).

So I cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed the rug and patched bike tires so I could take the kids on a bike-ride to the park. I set a 50 gallon Rubbermaid tub in front of the house as a make-shift pool, providing at least 2 hours of entertainment, busted out the play dough, ventured to McDonald's for a Happy Meal and playtime on the slides, and let Leah stay up late one night having a sleep over in my bed, complete with a late-night movie. But of course, there was still whining, and in two days the baby cut two teeth. That wasn't fun for anyone.

But here's where I wished I'd had a photographer nearby. The moment when the whining and potty-time bribing and the state of the kitchen didn't matter: One night I had been rocking the baby and singing to him to calm him down before bed time. I went into the kids' room to put him down, and Leah, who had been in bed at least an hour but had heard me singing said "Rock me." So there I sat in my rocking chair, with my 7-month old baby on one arm, and my 2 1/2 year old little girl curled up in the other, each wrapped in a blanket, rocking and singing our favorite primary songs in the dark. "These are my gems," I said to myself. That was a really happy moment. Maybe I can go on one more day.

What Chris has been up to

By popular request, this post is about Chris.

Chris has been doing really well at work and has had some great opportunities lately. A few weeks ago, he was invited to present during an EdNet training, which is streamed live over the Internet to all the Voc Rehab offices in the state. He did a great job and was subsequently invited to participate on an interview panel in Salt Lake City. That's where he is today. Tomorrow morning he will take the GRE. Despite the busyness of life working full time, studying, and preparing presentations, Chris also takes time regularly to play with his kids and read to them, make dinner more often than not, clean the house, teach Elders' Quorum once a month, work out several times a week, and still have time to play!

Every time he comes home, he is greeted by a frazzled wife who exhaustedly faints into his arms and a happy two year old who runs to greet him with a hug. The baby always has a smile ready for his Daddy, who is always extremely goofy. How we love SuperDad!

A sample of Chris' tasty cuisine for the whole family:

Why I hide my toothbrush

As a married couple, you share a lot. Germs, bedroom, kitchen table, dessert, all your insecurities, the list goes on...

I think we may be the only ones that choose not to share a bed sheet--we each just like being able to twist and wrap to our little hearts contentment without having to fight over the sheet's midline in our sleep. (Hey, at least we share a bed, right?) But there are just some things you don't share with your spouse. I'm talking about my toothbrush. I am very particular on this point.

On many occasions in the past five years I have arrived at the bathroom sink only to find my toothbrush either missing or freshly wet. What can this possibly mean, you ask? It means that my honey forgot which one was his and commandeered mine. Sure enough, I'll find it in the shower (where he brushes) or when I ask him he'll say "I thought mine was the green one!" "No, yours is blue, because you're a boy." I have no idea how many times this happens that it goes undetected by me--let's just say ignorance is bliss. As much as I love the man, if I know its been in his mouth, I can't stand the thought of using it again. I relinquish all claim on it and get out a new one. The last time he used my toothbrush and we had no spares, I actually started crying (okay, so I was two weeks post-partum, that might've had something to do with it).

When I ventured out to buy a new toothbrush that time, I bought a bright pink one and a bright purple one--girly colors. So now my toothbrush is pink (because I'm a girl) and the purple one was stashed in my drawer for when I was ready to replace my toothbrush. There's no way a man would willingly pick up a pink or a purple toothbrush, right? Wrong! One evening he comes into the bedroom ready to tuck in and cheerfully announces, "I couldn't remember which toothbrush was mine," (of the three in the house he's stolen from me, of course--they're all his but the pink one) "...so I got out a new one. It's purple!"

Now there are two toothbrushes perched anxiously in their holder: pink and purple. No matter how hard I try, it's only a matter of time.

Welcome to the Family

I'm pleased to announce the arrival of the newest member of our family: Ted Bundy Fosdick.

Ted was born on December 31, 2007. He is made of heavy-gauge electrical conduit, PVC pipes, assorted tennis and racquetballs, and will soon develop a thick layer of foam padding. When fully grown he is expected to have accumulated 540 feet of duct tape. He is approximately 6'2", weighs less than 30 pounds, and has an unusually narrow shoulder width. Nevertheless, we love him anyway.

Ted is Chris's new grappling dummy for practicing Jiu-Jitsu moves, and is so affectionately named in order that we won't have any reservations beating up on him on a regular basis.

I personally think Ted's creepiness factor is rather high and that he has the face only a mother could love...let me rephrase that: a face only Chris could love. Hey, he may be ugly, but he's cheaper than therapy, or martial arts lessons for that matter. And when we go out of town, he can sit silhouetted in the window to keep the real creeps away, right?

Welcome to the family, Ted!

Terrible Twos--An Urgent Plea for Help

So I know Leah isn't quite two years old yet, but she has discovered how to be terrible. I've pulled out my hair all morning listening to her whining and keep wondering if I should choose my battles better. I need resources. I need to read 10 books and pick the parts I like of each to try. I've made a list of the topics I want my parent-help book to address: hitting, tantrums, whining, communicating effectively, picking battles, discipline, time-outs, weaning from a binky, the list goes on. And of course, I want to do it all in a loving way.

In the past 20 minutes, Leah, who had been happily playing with crayons and what's left of her coloring book, traded her canvas for the wall. Of course my rope ended hours ago, so I jumped up and scolded in my mean-mommy voice, removed the fistful of crayons from her clenched and fearful fingers and placed them on top of the refrigerator (she can't reach them but she can see them), ignoring the freely flowing tears and exaggerated pouty lip. Then I swiftly readied a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and handed it to her and walked with her to the wall where we scrubbed together. Chris, who was home for lunch, responded, "Oh, that's what you're supposed to do! I think I'm a softy..." He must not be immune to the pouty lip. Does this mean I'm great and terrible and hard? I asked him what he would have done if I hadn't been around and he replied, "I don't know, but now I do!"

This particular example is not exactly descriptive of her being terrible, just creative, but all things leading up to and following this ordeal have been, and now I'm the one that feels terrible. I did a google search for resources on dealing with the terrible twos, and although I did get a plethera of hits about two year olds (and some on how we should give two-year olds a break), I also found these dynamic duos:

• The terrible two: Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
• Time's terrible two: The perils of Bartlett and Steele
• Latin America's terrible two: Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez
• Terrible Two: Brittney and Paris
• Terrible Two: Skaggs Springs Road and The Annapolis Loop

I just thought these were funny. And I really needed funny today.

Anyway, if you have any resources you'd like to recommend for a mom who wants to nurture and help teach her two, who can't stand whining, and doesn't want to give in, please help!

An explanation for baldness

At the zoo the other day, we encountered a very good explanation for baldness among monkeys, I mean Golden Lion Tamarins (who knows the difference anyway?) This is what the sign says:

Our male Golden Lion Tamarin's baldness is a sign that he is a good father. His hair loss is from transporting babies and being groomed by his family. The veterinary staff has performed a full exam on him and he is in good health. Most of his hair will grow back when he is no longer carrying around babies, but he will always be a little bald due to the grooming by the rest of the group.

We just thought this was great! Good father = baldness. I'd also like to set the record straight by clarifying that although Chris is bald, he is in excellent health. So should we anticipate that Chris's hair will grow back when all our babies are grown? I doubt it. If he had hair at all, I'm sure by then it would have turned grey from dealing with teenagers.

Chris, the Jump King

Here's Chris pretending to be Spider-Man. He said it was just awesome, but was constantly worried about seeing his navajo taco again.

Chaos in the Kitchen

Amazingly enough, I have made dinner five nights in a row. This never happens. More commonly, however, the last five dinners I've made have been very substandard.

Sunday dinner menu: Steak and Potatoes; problem: got the cheap kind of meat, they were tough. I also made the mistake of reading the ingredients on the steak sauce we had on hand (Lee & Perrins) and discovered it has anchovies in it. That was just enough to make me not want any, not that I could even tell you what anchovies taste like. The potatoes were good though, but we could have used some gravy.

Monday dinner menu: Beef Stroganoff; problem: meat was tough, sauce didn't taste like Mom's. I've had this problem before.

Tuesday dinner menu: Bean soup; problem: lack of taste. Seriously, it didn't taste like anything! It had 1/4 of a ham, an entire onion and several carrots.

Wednesday dinner menu: Pork chops and stove top. Okay, I'll admit this one wasn't too bad because I used the thick juicy pork chops I get from Sam's, I just didn't have an appetitite for it.

Thursday dinner menu: Chicken pot pie; problem: not enough sauce, too many potatoes and they were undercooked. Seriously, how do you screw up a Bisquik recipe?

Peripheral cooking: Today I finally made that loaf of banana bread that I auctioned off in June. Problem: I forgot to put in the eggs. By the time I was mixing in the flour and thinking that the batter was more like dough, I realized that I had missed the eggs step. I hastily added them in at this point, but in a double batch, do you really think I mixed them in well enough? We'll find out in a few minutes if they taste alright, since of course I'm still hungry after that miserable dinner.

I must admit that even though I feel that my cooking is very inadequate, Leah continues to grow and Chris continues to scarf down his food and have second helpings on a regular basis. What a comforting thing to know that my husband will eat anything!

Exclusive Interview with Superdad

I had the pleasant experience last night of sitting down one-on-one with a Mr. Chris, Superdad himself. We had (miracle of miracles) a sitter for the evening and stayed out until (*gasp*) 9:30 having some good old-fashioned together time. We ate out, thanks to the luxury of a gift card (thanks Lola!), stopped by the petstore to play with puppies (they don't have puppies at PetSmart!) and then took a tour of Macy's and played Clint and Stacy in the clothes departments.

I was priviledged to hear a run-down of a day in the life of Superdad. He awakes at the crack of dawn, purges the bad blood by lifting weights or taking a quick jog, transforms in the shower booth and is out the door by 7:45 for his home away from the home, the office. Several days a week he comes home midday for rejuvenation, only to be called back by the cries of desperate people who only he can aid. He is always available to swiftly return to home base at a moment's notice should Supermom, his counterpart, crash and burn back on the homefront. After another brief rejuvenation at dinner-time, he sequesteres himself in favor of self-improvement and training at the Fortress of Solitude (or the University of Phoenix, depending on the day of the week).

In those brief but valuable moments when his presence graces the cabin, he is all eyes and all ears to his wife and child. His young one instantly greets him with a smile and begs for a special daddy-daughter game, including but not limited to vertical child-tossing and inverted ceiling ambulation. The weekends are blissful retreats when Superdad wakes up with the child and takes her on long wagon-rides, makes meals, and even changes diapers! He is hero to many, husband to one, and father to...well, one and a half.

Not surprisingly, Superdad-in all his humility-does not consider himself super. He feels he does not spend enough time with the young one or contribute enough in his dwelling. I assured him, his contribution as bacon-bringer is well received (and well spent!) and that I would not have him contributing in any other way. I simply encouraged him, and he agreed, to make the most of the time we all have together. Thanks for all you do, Superdad!

Third Chances

"Do you believe in third chances?" I expectantly ask my husband as he takes a bite. I've made beef stroganoff for the second time in my life, and it still doesn't taste like Mom's. He was eagerly scarfing down the contents of his plate while I was eyeing a box of Macaroni & Cheese in the pantry.

The first time I made it, I had a very poorly stocked pantry so there was no cream of mushroom soup to add as the main flavor of the dish, the meat was tough, and I had defaulted to adding a tablespoon of butter every time it looked dry...lets just say that even though everyone ate it with smiles on their faces, I thought it was blah and had a snack two hours later. Thank you for being so gentle with such a pathetic cook.

Then today, I added too much cream of mushroom soup, too much horseradish sauce (I know, my mom doesn't even put this in at all), and the meat was tough. I'm going to try again. He is willing to continue being my food critic as I search my soul for the true stroganoff. Hey, as long as he gets dinner, he's happy.

I remember going through the perfecting stage with my spaghetti sauce. Two cans of tomato sauce, three tablespoons of sugar, a whole lot of garlic, some dried oregano until you see little flecks throughout the whole pan, onion powder if you accidentally added too much pepper, pepper if you accidentally added too much sugar...But unfortunately, even though my spaghetti may be delicious, you just can't eat it every day. So I'm expanding my horizons and working on stroganoff. (I've also perfected an all-fruit smoothie! 6 fruits and juices, no sugar added...unfortunately, that doesn't really count as dinner)

There are very few things my husband won't eat. He has a problem with fruit mixed with meat, such as raisins or grapes in chicken salad, and pineapples on pizza, he won't eat rhubarb, and he doesn't like liver. You'd think my job would be fairly easy: feed the hungry man who will eat practially anything. But I'm the one that is hard to please. He may say it tastes great and go back for seconds, but if I think its awful, he must be bluffing. So even though my stroganoff may be substandard to me, he just douses it with salt and pepper and garlic and eats it as if it were his last meal. I'm warning you, it just may be.

Money Matters to the Miser

It baffles me that even though my husband is employed full time for the State of Utah and receives an attractive government benefits package, our income still qualifies us for government aid such as WIC and the Earned Income Credit on our tax return. I'm in no way complaining about the tax return part, but doesn't that sound kind of strange?

I had a happy moment yesterday while filling out an online survey. Even though we are ironically still considered impoverished by the government who provides our salary, when I was asked to provide some information about annual household income I did not check the first box. I don't know...something about that just made me feel really excited!

• Under $20,000
• $20,000 - $39,999
• $40,000 - $59,999
• $60,000 - $79,999
• $80,000 - $99,999
• $100,000 - $119,999
• $120,000 - $139,999
• $140,000 and Over

Okay. Frugality. I know its a good thing, but where do you draw the line between penny pinching and being a miser?...miser is only one "y" away from misery, after all. I am reminded of this question every night as my husband and I put ourselves to bed. See, when I was pregnant, I spent $8 on a body pillow so that I could sleep on my side on the pillow and with it between my legs. It was a very comfortable solution. Of course, I got addicted to it and continued to use it after my pregnancy was over--it was just so comfortable!

Then Chris broke his arm and had surgery and made a strong case for why he should get to use the body pillow--to elevate his broken, throbbing arm. Okay, I can handle that. Well, his arm has been fine for 8 months and counting, and he still has nightly possession of the body pillow. Every night we entertain a dialogue that sounds something like this:

J: "Honey, can I have the body pillow tonight?"
C: "Well, I guess you can sleep tonight and I'll just be tired all day tomorrow."
J: "Fine, keep it."
C: "Well, if you really need it..."

For some reason, he wins every night. For a while I tried this tactic:

J: "Honey, I'm post-partum. I need the body pillow tonight."

He saw right through that. So I tried this:

J: "Honey, I'm pre-menstrual. I need the body pillow tonight."

Then a week later,

J: "Honey, I'm post-menstrual. I need the body pillow tonight."

That didn't work for more than two weeks.

On several occasions, Chris has suggested that we simply buy a second body pillow, but I just can't seem to be okay with that...If I concede and purchase a second, it means (1) That I'm not special and therefore am not entitled to any special treatment, and (2) That he wins and gets to sleep with a body pillow every night. Even if it means that we are both well rested, I just can't bring myself to spend 8 dollars more on this issue.

Then today, we used part of that poor-people tax credit to buy a coveted new couch. It just seemed like time to replace the furniture that came from a garage sale 3 years ago with a ticket price of $20. Plus, our new couch was only $400! Lets just say the price was right. Today after an afternoon of seeminlgy endless errands, I came home, put the baby down for a nap and collapsed on our new sofa. I had to try out its nap-ability. Woah! An hour and a half later, my husband came home from work wondering why dinner wasn't ready.

I think it's ironic that we could have solved our body pillow/sleeping issues with only an $8 investment, but instead we spent $4oo and will now fight over who gets to sleep on the couch.

Pack a punch

We finally got Chris's punching station assembled. It's really cool! I got punching bag and speedbag lessons, and I like it! I think I will actually enjoy using it along with Chris. We did make a trip to Sam's because we doubted that assembly was possible, and made many references to the digital pix we took. What I wonder is how they figured it out.

What is truly amazing is that Chris and I were working together and we weren't getting mad at each other. I was holding pliers on one end of a bolt while he was tightening, and we both looked at each other and said, "Huh! We're working together and we like it!" It's only taken us four years to figure this out! I distinctly remember our first Christmas as a married couple (and we'd been married nearly a year), trying to screw hooks onto the back of a picture frame so we could hang it with a metal wire. We got so frustrated with each other and with the thing, that we fumed and took to separate rooms. We were just on separate wavelenghts, had two different ideas of how it should be done, and weren't effectively communicating those ideas. I'm not trying to imply that we now communicate perfectly, but in situations where misunderstandings that, once upon a time, would have made each of us get defensive and forlorn, we now just have the other person clarify what they want, need, or expect. What a difference that makes! Now I can see how my parents, who have been married for 35 years, dont get huffy with each other when as an observer, I would have expected it. And yet they still don't read each others' minds.

The truly sad part is that now that we have finally figured out how to work together, Chris may not have as much negative energy to take out on the punching bag.