Decade

Milestone of milestones - Mr Renn and I celebrated out 10th wedding anniversary.
We got our annual reminder that the convenience of getting married over Christmas break does not make up for having your anniversary get lost in the bustle of the holidays forever more.

But.  This year we will really be celebrating our anniversary, just not on our actual anniversary.

We are crazy kids, us two rather adult-aged people.  We are constantly sharing looks across the room to share a silent laugh at something hilarious one of our kids say or do.  We buy each other cookbooks like they're going out of style.  We are both really rather hoping (though for differing reasons I'm sure) that this is the year that our family gets a home of their very own.

Mr Renn has really held his own since I started school.  He's had to.  I allow him space to do things his way and he's really very comfortable homemaking.  He is the only person in the world I can leave the kids with without giving instructions, and I can let him order food for me with total trust that I'll get something I like.

School has been fairly rough on our marriage so far.  It has steamrolled our already sparse moments for real communication.  We are more like ships passing in the night than ever.  (Which inevitably paves the way for too many miscommunications.)  But, since we both undertook this endeavor with the understanding it wouldn't necessarily be pleasant, we are so far weathering that storm ok.  And it's terrific for me to feel supported in pursuing my goal, and I think it's terrific for Mr Renn to feel like he's doing something for me that not all husbands are willing to do for their wives - to prioritize my education and skill set.  We're really blessed to be able to make this work for our family right now, even if "making it work" sometimes looks really frantic.  We evaluate often enough that I think if it ever starts really not working for our family we'll both be able to fess up.

But truly, despite the rough patches, sending me back to school is my love language. I'm experiencing a ton of growth there and growth is almost always both good and difficult.  I'm still able to be home with the kids during the day, and somehow the laundry is still getting done, food prepared, and the house occasionally gets cleaned.  We are making it work.

Though blogging about it?  That is not doing so well at making it to the top of the list.  I will continue to not give up.  I will also continue to post my homework over here. Hopefully I'll eventually get some self-initiated content going there too.  (Next semester is History of Animation and Screens Theories.  Try to contain your rapture.)

So just let me say, that if you are going to try to carve out a life and make it mean something, Mr Renn is an awesome guy to have in your corner. My luck is not lost on me.

stretch marks

Why yes, I did just accidentally go a month without blogging one word.
It's lunacy - my life.
But it's nice to be able to say I haven't blogged for a month because I've been too busy doing things.  In the past when I've gone a month or two with mostly radio silence it's been because I've been essentially depressed and overcome with unhealthy apathy.
So sure, the effect of my absence is the same either way, but I prefer a more buoyant excuse.



The month of November ... the blur... I have no temporal details for you just now.

But things floating to the top of my brain include:

We are becoming genuinely concerned about Sir O's intense anti-social habits.  It is becoming apparent that the kid sets himself up to get picked on; he makes enemies easily.  He's intensely defensive and likes to lord over people when he can get away with it.  He also goes to ridiculous legths to avoid dealing with new people or new experiences.  Altogether not a super-loveable pile of characteristics.  Lucky for him we love him anyway, but I can't take away the social awkwardness he faces.

Conversely, my 3 other kids make friends wherever they go.  The Captain, despite his physical awkwardness, is often the center of socialness because he's so dang delightful.  And Bunny flirts with most strangers (though only from the safety of her parent's arms.)

Bunny also plays with her tongue all day long.  And on her it's darling.  But her brothers have started copying her, and a 3,5,or 7 year old blowing excessive raspberries at you is not cute.  It's just rude.

Mr Renn has been picking up a lot of slack for me this holiday season.  He's taken ownership of all of our holiday baking, gingerbread building, neighborhood gifts, and contributions to family parties.  In other words, he is a lifesaver.

I've realized that despite my proclivity for it, I have a rather pathetic collection of holiday decorations (for every/any holiday).  I may never arrive at that place where I feel I can give myself permission to spend time or money toward that end.  Over the years thousands of items have been put in carts, only to be removed before purchase.

Mr Renn claims we can start looking into buying a house of our own in earnest come February.  You cannot grasp the weight of this promise - but I'm posting it here to hold him accountable.  10 years of "I don't want to bother with that until it's our own house/I don't want to have to move that" have taken a toll.

Sir O has developed an intensely irritating habit of discarding and losing expensive articles of clothing.  He never loses the cheap stuff, only the newer and most expensive things.  If I had a dollar for every time that kid has lost or destroyed an article of clothing the first time he wore it - I'd have at least $50.

My first grad school finals are December 17th, and I am a mess until then.

I am not getting nearly enough sleep to function properly.  Hence my sluggish responses and reflexes.  And yes - this blatantly affects my performance in class. Vicious cycle.

Our gentleman began potty training and then quickly lost interest.  Time for plan D.

Bunny is standing often, and her brothers are the best cheering section a girl could ask for.  But when they cheer too loudly she realizes she's standing and quickly gets herself back down.  She's only taken 1 step, and she's still mad at me for tricking her into that one.

She's also terribly fond of playing peekaboo, and while her favorite is to hide in the curtains, she'll also hide her eyes with the backs of her hands, and make a squished up face that is beyond charming.

She still loves her dad more than anything or anyone in all the world.

I bought Sir O some sketchbooks, and I love what he comes up with.  Today in church we got 5 pages of clone trooper helmets.  We've also gotten a lot of dinosaurs, volcanoes, trucks, tall buildings, and mountainsides (with either a U or a Y emblazoned on them).

Our Gentleman's tongue thrust shows no sign of letting up.  I watch him talk and all I see is his tongue hanging out.  Speech therapy forever more, because that's how we love to spend all that extra time of ours....

Our Christmas cards are running late this year.  Hopefully they will arrive this week and we can create a super-sonic assembly line to get them back out in the mail without eating up too much study time.

Because yes, finals at Christmas time is utterly brutal for moms who are students.  I cannot speak for moms who are teachers or professors, but in a great many households Christmas is a production put on by mom behind the scenes.  When mom's time, focus, and energy is at a crazy premium, things get hairy.  Let's just say we're going to be flexible with celebrating St. Nicholas day this year.  Like - almost a week late flexible.  Same goes for St. Lucia.  I am giving myself a year off, and hopefully next year Bunny will be old enough to be the center of that celebration.

I only bought 2 new Christmas albums this year.  So far that's a record low.  But when you have over 1200 Christmas songs on your playlist, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify new additions.  Still really loving Joshua James, Sleeping At Last, Sufjan Stevens and Bebo Norman.

So, there's some catchup of the random-crap variety.  I hope I don't prove this spotty for the entirety of grad school, I still want to document life outside of film responses.  But you know, I'm dropping balls all over this place.  I'll try not to leave this one lolling on the floor for too long at a time.

Persistence from a Distance

This is the theme when Mr Renn tells his version of our dating story.  Be persistent, but not oppressive.



It looks like it works both ways.  I've been asking to go to a Rooftop Concert for years.  We finally made it happen, to see the Lower Lights, with dinner beforehand at Station 22.  It might not seem like a big deal, but it was way outside of Mr Renn's comfort zone, and the man does not expand his comfort zone lightly.  He finally humored me, and it was a big deal for me, and for us.  The fact that it happened still feels like a victory for our marriage.  (Even if he complained through the opening bands.) The fact that all of our kids got sick on our babysitter while we were gone feels rather like karma.  Of course they got sick on the one night I'd been hoping would happen for such a long time.  Parenting, I tell you, is chuck-full of irony. Too much of it to find it funny in the moment, but always enough to evoke a smirk in retrospect.

living with me

Let's take a moment for you to be grateful you are not poor Mr Renn.

He gets more than he bargains for every day he's married to me.  

I must be exhausting.

The other night, I found him reading the Ensign and asked him what he'd read.  He made the mistake of telling me that the story that had stuck with him the most was X.  I immediately hounded him to find out why that story had stuck out to him.  How did it make him reflect upon his own life and choices and the world within his influence?  Was there anything about it that stuck out to him because of something he's struggling with or working on or wishing for?  I went on and on and he, being one who doesn't function well after about 7pm gave me a startled, glazed-over look and said, "I just liked the story."

Then I went off on an angry tangent about how consuming stories purely for entertainment and not gleaning some value from them was not the best use of one's resources and how so many problems in the world today result from people wanting to be entertained without putting any effort of their own into their relationships with the stories they encounter.  

Now, I believe all of these things and will defend them in any adult conversation, but pouncing on Mr Renn when it's past his prime functioning hours is undoubtedly unfair of me.  I do it a lot.  I think it has to do with a shortage of adult conversations in my life.   I have a brain that never slows down, is always analyzing and asking questions.  This is a big part of why I'm such a night owl.  Getting a brain like mine to shut down for the night is a big project.    There are lots of downsides to this part of me.  My mouth and my fingers can never keep up with my brain, and it causes a lot of tripping over myself.  I do very poorly in social settings because I fail miserably at small talk.  Plus my voice is so darned miniature.  But the biggest downside of my inquiring mind is how impatient I can be with people who are content.  It makes me awfully hard to live with.

I'm sure every human out there has quirks that make them tricky to live with, so there's no perfectly ideal situation to be had.  Still, I often think that Mr Renn had no idea what he was getting himself into when he pretended so well to stay awake through our late night conversations when we were dating.  Did he really think that my need to talk my head off at night would go away?  Sometimes I think he really did.  Poor man, I am a handful.  One-on-one meaningful conversations are a staff of life for me and I'll probably never stop seeking them out and craving them like mad.  

9 years

Just after the New Year began, Mr Renn and I celebrated our 9th anniversary.  We're part of a large population of people with unfortunate anniversaries that were based on University Winter breaks.  It is tragically hard to properly celebrate an anniversary wedged between Christmas, New Years, and the Captain's birthday.  But we always try.  This year we wrangled up an oversized babysitting team and had a nice date.



A temple outing followed by the fanciest dinner we've had since our last anniversary. (At the Chef's Table in Orem.)   And as we reflected on the last year of marriage?  Well let's just say we're both glad I'm not pregnant anymore.

Prospects

Our Dear Mr Renn is in for some big changes.



Chief among them being the transition from a 50+ hour workweek to a 30-35 hour workweek. We're mostly excited about that, but there is some trepidation as he is easily prone to stir-craziness.   If we can manage to cut his hour-long commute down to a 10 minute one, we are going to find ourselves with a barrel full of time.

My hope is that while most of that time is bound to get eaten up by long to-do lists and projects, that Mr Renn finally gets a chance to pursue some of his non-dentist aspirations that have been shelved for pretty much our whole married lives.  The man wants to learn to play the bagpipes, certify as a master gardener, earn scads of indexing points, perfect recipes, and teach his kids lots of cool stuff.  It's easy to remember how I fell in love with him.



We're just so out of practice in the realm of "pursuing interests" and "having a life outside of school/work" that we may have to get our sea legs as a family as we adjust to it all.  It will be the first time since I've even known Mr Renn that he won't consider himself a student.  And redefining your identity is always tricky.

And a little bit exciting.

It's a jolly holiday

Happy President's day!
I hope you're doing something fun.










We're all about fun around here.
(And Mr Renn would point out that his snow fort puts mine to shame).

Weekend Recap: lots of singing people

I wish I could keep my head on straight.
There have been at least a dozen things this week I was certain would "make the blog" which not only didn't "make the blog" but have also completely evaded sticking in my memory at all.
I want my brain back.

My kids have been cute, and better behaved than usual this weekend.  (Which isn't to say well-behaved generally, these things are relative).  Sir O has been venturing into the world of make-believe where his shadow of a little brother is not yet equipped to go with him.



Friday night I left Mr Renn and the older boys to fend for themselves and took the Gentleman with me to see my cousin star in a High School Musical.  He was stellar, nevertheless I hold that high school students will inevitably struggle to bring to light the depth of meaning in Fiddler on the Roof.  Their lives are just too cushy and narcissistic, there's nowhere for them to pull context from.

Saturday brought round 1 of my anniversary present to Mr Renn, so we dressed up and went to the Opera.   Mr Renn thought he was being a good sport, since he so strongly disliked the last opera he went to (Madame Butterfly, 15 years ago).

Wouldn't you know, he LOVED it.  I was even surprised by how much I loved it.  Entertaining, engaging, and  oh such gorgeous duets by an impressive hansel+gretel.  The evening prayer was breathtaking.

(photo Deseret News)

I have to say that I love real date nights.  They are such a hard hard thing to prioritize sometimes, but they lift my mood and clear my perspective like nothing else can.

midas' touch

I am still essentially house-bound; bleeding and bladder control and all.  But that doesn't mean everyone has to be, so yesterday Mr Renn took the boys and his parents up Farmington Canyon to celebrate Fall.  He promised to come back with pictures so I wouldn't feel left out.  Sir O also brought me two fists full of leaves.  Doesn't it look lovely?   I'm sad I had to miss this one.













Autumn is so entirely here, and I can't help feeling excited about it.  Then I remember that November is taking Mr Renn 6-7 hours away and then panic eats up all my excitement.  We will survive that one, but it may get ugly.

Home Soil

I appear to have a typical reaction to strong pain-killers in that they turn my brain to mush.  (Combined with postpartum hormones it's an especially mushy mush).  I've tried at least 4 times to sit down and compose something sweet and all that comes out is an abrasive parade of statistics and facts.  I do hope this improves as my pain goes down and I can function sans popping pills like clockwork.  (But as I'm currently dealing with milk-coming-in-ness, pain is still ever present).

Something sweet is definitely in order.
I did, after all come home to:











yes, that is the wrapper from my kouing-aman.  
I ate it before I had a chance to take a photo.


Mr Renn picking us up from the hospital to go home:
(he was on duty with the boys at home and didn't get to spend much time at the hospital with us).




I shall try to collect my scattered powers of coherency and record this whole experience as soon as possible. Hope you're in the mood to indulge me!

There is nothing like a fresh coat of paint

Pretty soon this room is actually going to start looking like something.
I am excited.
And awfully grateful that Mr Renn was willing to paint for me.
3rd trimester + poorly ventilated rooms+ climbing ladders = bad combination for painting.
The paint for the walls was supposed to be matched to Martha Stewart's "Rainwater"

 but the paint matching machine at Mr Renn's alma mater Ace Hardware was broken, so I picked a new color right in the store, Pratt & Lambert's "Nevada Sky", and I'm pretty pleased with it.

With this done, (almost done) I have an awfully long to-do list for next week!  Lots to do, and this baby will come whether I finish it all or not!

Doctor

And, just like that, it's over.
Mr Renn is now Doctor Renn.



It was a long evening (looooong evening), but the boys were troopers.  The Captain took many trips into the hall with my parents, and Sir O drove his truck on every conceivable surface.






Despite some really whiny student speakers, it was still a ceremonious evening with some emotional moments.   At one point while we were seated in the balcony (we later migrated to the unclaimed box seats) my mom noticed that almost a1/3 of the graduates had their phones out and were texting or otherwise checked out.  I don't know whether that's funny or sad.  And the venue, the Academy of Music, was gorgeous.  It's the oldest continuously running theater in the country.  I couldn't help wishing I was watching an opera from those box seats instead of a graduation.

Mr Renn got to drive in to the city with his carpool for the last time for their early roll-call.  He said it was a fairly emotional experience for him to drive with these guys for the last time.  They have spend a lot of time together, and seen an impressive amount of traffic and crazy driving.



Temple allows students to bring their children with them when they cross the stage to be awarded their diplomas.  It's a nice gesture, and I appreciated it.  However, we became the perfect example of why they might want to change their policy (skip to about 1:20 for Sir O's antics)



And so we have officially been excused from student life.  It's funny how there's melancholy in parting with even unpleasant parts of it once they've become so familiar.  But lest our evening be too sentimental, Sir O disappeared for 15 minutes during the post-ceremony reception and was finally found trying to exit the building on the ground floor.  Gray hair, here I come.

Ta Da

Oh, the busy, busy nature of these days!  I'm so short on energy that the whole world seems to be racing past.  My parents are in town for Renn's graduation tomorrow, and today we all caravaned down Broad street (yikes!) to support Renn at his Senior Awards ceremony.  The boys finally got to see where their daddy is when he's "at school" all the time.



And Mr Renn got three awards!  We are so proud!  He was pleased to be awarded the Isadore Auerbach Memorial Award, The Academy of General Dentistry Award of Excellence, and a Certificate of Recognition from the American Academy of Implant Dentistry.  (And wow everyone with his 2 1/2 children, who were almost reasonably behaved through the event).  



I'm feeling so proud of Mr Renn for excelling at school and balancing his time effectively so his family was not neglected.  This is not a small thing.  Tomorrow we graduate!!

City

This is what happens when Mr Renn has two snow-days in a row.

The mother of invention

I've been itching for a toy-storage solution since well before Christmas. And because I had something like this in mind, I could never talk Mr Renn into it. He is not in the mood to be buying furniture 4 months before a cross-country move.

So the toys kept spilling into the corners of the house, and I kept feeling frustrated.

Then one day, after a particularly sad bout of looking for used expedits on craigslist (where they are still not cheap), I happened to be walking through our laundry room, and I noticed the broken dresser filled with cigarette butts that had long been there with new eyes.

So, after 10-20 screws, wood glue, a bottle of pinesol, and a bucket of elbow grease this is our FREE solution.


It still sort of smells like an old man, but otherwise I think it's slightly brilliant.



I might just look for another dresser for the same purpose (to keep) someday.



(In which case I would probably give the dresser a facelift, but since this one is certainly only living with us a few months I cannot justify it).

Guess What?

We're moving back to Utah!

Renn matched with the U.

Still trying to wrap our brains around all the implications.

There is so much to do!

But we are SO HAPPY. Not only do we not have to come up with a plan B, but we get to hang out with our families again. (Which for us is a good thing!)

Now on to Boards part II, and completing graduation requirements. Mr Renn has a full plate.

One year older

Mr Renn had a milestone birthday today.

He is officially old.
( I post video of my awesome "happy birthday" serenade to keep me humble)
To celebrate he wore his black scrubs and told me stories about pulling 14 teeth out of a man's mouth in one day (!?!)

I love my crazy dentist husband. Especially because he gets this excited about getting a Le Creuset dutch oven for his birthday.

On letting the boys play legos with their dad

Mr Renn: on Father's Day

Em asked me to share something in honor of Father's Day because I should contribute to the blog more often and after all I have sired two sons; I am a father. Thinking back 3 years now to when Sir O was first born, how the time flies, how far we have come as a family...how much we have learned about each other.
I remember well sitting in the hospital room just a few hours after Sir O was born holding him, studying his face...thinking of what he might one day become or what character he might have...and pondering what name would suit him best. I remember driving home from the hospital with him, (feeling like a sixteen year old taking a driving test) all the way home...I was very cautious. And then watching him grow...his first steps weren't towards me or Em but rather the vacuum cleaner. And then having the Captain join us earlier this year and having those same thoughts and pondering s all over again.
I am very thankful to be a father, to have been blessed with such wonderful boys, who love to laugh and play with their dad. Of all of the things I have learned in the past three years, one thing that stands out is the importance of being a good example. I am amazed at how much Sir O mimics what he sees me do whether it is reading a book, or fixing something, or working on the car. He is very perceptive, as I believe all children are. I have taken care to try to use uplifting language and control my temper so that he might hopefully do the same. We have a long way to go, but hopefully he will just pick the good things I do to follow.
Happy Father's Day!