Spring Break

We may not get a spring break here at BYU but we made sure to take advantage of seeing all our friends and family who ARE lucky enough to get a spring break. 

We started out up in Heber two weeks ago where we got to visit with our good friends Anne and Micheal who drove out from Iowa. Anne and I met our freshman year living in DT and then we roomed together with Kaitlin, Kaitlyn, Molly and Courtney our sophomore year and we've been friends ever since. I always felt like Anne and I had a bit of an east coast connection since her family lived in Virginia when I met her. It was SO nice to catch up and meet her sweet baby girl. Why can't we live closer!?

Next, we took a little trip up to Layton to visit with my good friend Bridget and meet her husband and baby girl. They drove up from NM for a few days. Bridget was my BFF in middle/high school. I looked up to her so much and wanted to be just like her. When I moved out to UT, I didn't know anyone, except for Bridget. She was so sweet and invited me to hang out with her and her friends and would always offer to help me with anything. It's been too long since I've seen her so I had to take advantage of her being so close to visit.

After Layton, we took advantage of being up North and stopped by Amelia's and then went to Darin's good friend Lances place. It's been awhile since we've seen Lance and his wife Sara so it was fun to catch up with them as well and show off our bebe. 

Finally, last weekend Darin's brother was in town with his family as well as Darin's mom. Shae got to meet his little cousins for the first time! (And his Aunt Linzy and Uncle Derek). I only had one cousin growing up and he lived across the country in CA so I never really knew what it was like to have cousins, which makes me all the more excited for Shae to get to know his cousins.

Claire meets Shae

Kyler meets Shae

Grandma with her grandbabies

Thursday night we went to the volleyball game and watched Grandma Sharon drool over Taylor Sander. He's a beast. It was Shae's first sporting event and he did great! Ra ra raing right away.

Friday night, Grandma stayed with us and let me and Darin go out on a little date to the BYU baseball game together. Then Saturday we took advantage of the beautiful weather and had a little picnic up in the canyon.

Kyler: "This glove is too big for me."

Shae's first sunny day outside experience. I didn't even think to bring him a hat or sunscreen. Thank goodness Amelia had some sunscreen. I'm new at this okay.

Sunday we went up to Amelia's in SLC. We went to church and had Easter lunch/dinner there. I somehow didn't take any Easter pictures. I blame being tired from not getting a good nights sleep the night before. 

So overall, our lack of a spring break was still pretty exciting. We sure do love our friends and family!

Smile Sunshine!

The boy started smiling about two weeks ago. He smiles sparingly, but it's adorable when he does. His favorite time to smile seems to be when mommy lays him back in his crib in the middle of the night hoping that he will go back to sleep. Apparently Darin and I aren't very good at capturing the smiles on camera.

My smile attempt went a little like this:

  

Fail.

Darin's smile attempt went a little like this:

Fail.

Amelia's smile attempt went a little like this:

Bam. Easy peezy Success.

And this is is why we have aunts. 

Who's It Gonna Be?

One of my favorite hobbies (I guess you could call it that) is trying new foods. I get SO excited when I see a new flavor of Doritos on the shelf, or a new kind of cereal or ice cream or gum, etc. A few weeks ago we tried Peanut a Butter Toast Crunch. Not a fan. Sometimes I like em, a lot of times I don't. 

I love trying new recipes and new restaurants. The bottom line is this: I love trying things.

Apparently this extends to diapers, as I learned this week after getting probably a little too excited to open the new bag of Huggies diapers. You see, we'd been using Pampers up to that point. The Pampers worked well and they had cute sesame street characters on them but I was so excited to try something new. The Huggies also work well. They have Mickey and Minnie on them. It was probably more fun than it should have been opening that new bag of diapers to see what would be on the diapers. I probably get more excited than I should as well when I grab a new diaper out of the bag and I wonder, who will it be this time? Minnie? Mickey? Cookie Monster? Big Bird? 

I need some excitement in my life don't I?

Wu-Wei

Back in the day, when Darin and I were engaged, we took a World Religions class together. Besides getting to see Darin at 8am on school days, competing to see who could get the best quiz scores and watching our teacher teach from on top of the piano in the room... I learned a few things. One of those things has become one of the Darin and Brillante Self Family Motto's. It continues to be so.

WU-WEI

"Wu -wei Darin, wu-wei." 

"Brillante, Wu-wei. Just, wu-wei."

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the concept of wu-wei, shame on you. It is a Taoist concept that means non-doing or non-action, basically, it means to let life take its course. Don't try and change the natural way that things are to happen. Don't fight it. 

I've been reminded by my dear sweet husband of our family motto many times over the past month. For example, at night when I have trouble falling asleep because I know that the baby will start crying in two hours, three hours, four hours...sometimes I feel like trying to fall asleep is pointless because I have to wake up again so soon (obviously not true, just roll with me). Darin turns to me and gives me the Wu-Wei speech. Relax. Just let life take it's course. Don't fight it. 

To me, the below pictures explain Wu-Wei in all it's glory. When it's between 4-7am and the baby does NOT want to go back to sleep in the crib, Wu-Wei. Just, Wu-Wei. Do what works. Don't get frustrated because you would rather be sleeping in your bed. Don't get frustrated because the couch is short. Just let life be. Don't fight it. Do what works.

Is it just me or does Shae's cutey patutuey "i'm in paradise" baby face look like it is saying "ha ha ha...i win again." That you do my son. That you do. (He's the boss. That's just how it is. Accept it).

Accepting

I just had a moment. One of those mom moments that you hear about. One of those moments that makes it all worth it. Just a simple moment. Probably nothing that merits much attention from the rest of the world, but one that I can cherish. Shae was being cranky and as I tried to calm him I pulled him close to my chest with my hand on his head and rocked back and forth. He calmed down and I just kept holding and rocking him. As I did so, I had my mom moment. 

This week I've realized that I need to accept my new role as a mother. I realized that I was getting mad at myself so easily for not being able to spend as much time on school, or for not working as much as I was before, or for not cooking dinner as often as I would like, or all of those together. But then I realized that IT'S OKAY. I can't do everything I did before in the same way that I did before and that is OKAY. 

We went to the temple on Saturday and I couldn't stop thinking about how I need to accept this new role that I am in and treasuring it as the precious blessing that it is. Not gonna lie, it's a pretty drastic life change from one day to the next. I went from being able to work and do schoolwork with no problem for 8 hours a day, to feeding a child for 8 hours a day. And you know what, that is OKAY. 

Some days I feel like I do nothing. Then I hold my child as he calms himself on my chest as he did not too long ago and I realize that I am doing something. Accepting this new role will surely take time, but I'm starting to understand it better and appreciate it more. 

(Even when the kid teases mommy into thinking that he is asleep enough that she will get to sleep and as soon as she lies down, decides he should wake up).

And just for fun, we went on a walk last night and this was the face that kept staring up at us. That's it. I accept him. I accept motherhood. Done. Babies are cute for a reason.

(He smiled at me this morning!! yay!)