Mother of a Filler Post

I began this post over two months ago, if that tells anybody what kind of priority this blog has been. It's been so long since I blogged that those of you in cyberspace might be wondering what in the Sam Hill is going on at the Olson Homestead. Not that you've lost any sleep. But your theoretical concern piques my heart, nonetheless. So here's a beginner of a filler post on what we've been doing here.

• Learning. We're heading into Week 18 of homeschooling--yes, that means we started back up in July--so we've been hip deep in larnin'. Reading? Check-check-check. Writing? Check. 'Rithmatic? Check-check. Catechism and daily prayer and bits of ancient history and science too. And Latin and piano lessons (for the Little P). Then there's tunnel-making and ball-rolling and leaf-pile-design and all kinds of free play for the littles, and all sorts of random stuff (I'm hoping the recent fascination with arachnids passes soon, because wheesh). It sounds like a lot, but it isn't. Maybe I'll explain that more thoroughly someday.

• House-selling. Well, it's not sold yet, and maybe I should have filed this under "learning." But it's been an interesting few months in a very small market. "Why are you selling your house?" you're probably wondering. Well, the short version is we'd like to both get rid of some debt with our huge equity and possibly get a bigger house before this one gets way too small. And the good news is we don't have to rush (if we sell, we can move, but we don't have to move rightthissecond). The better news is we've had five positive showings--a solid showing for this area--and springtime is a better time to sell. So we're optimistic.

• House-moving. Internally, that is. After eight years of a series of remodels and getting used to everybody sleeping on the first floor, Papa and I finally moved up by moving down to the ensuite master bedroom in the basement. With a walk-in closet and our own bathroom, I feel like I've finally reached some point of adulthood I didn't know I was missing. And it's really quiet down there! Unless Small Dude is screaming into the monitor. Pearly Girl transitioned cleanly into a big girl bed and her own room, and Superman and the Little Professor enjoy their big boy room. Yes, Papa did a three-room furniture shuffle (and repainting one room). I was awesome at giving directions, pointing, and picking up random screws. 

• Exploring regular freelance writing. Since late August, I've been given an awesome opportunity to write a weekly column for our local paper, the Star. It's been great practice for me, and the editor is amazing--constructive, insightful, encouraging in pushing me to improve. You can look up my columns here, under "Thoughts in the Heartland." 

• Kid growing. The Little Prof (6) is seriously steaming ahead in lessons (again, possibly more on that later). Superman (4.5) is looking to follow in his tracks ("I'm crazy about history!" he announced the other day). Pearly Girl (almost, almost 3) wants to do everything the boys do, and more. And Small Dude is a year old--a YEAR OLD! No walking yet, but he's crawling everywhere and starting to pull himself up on his knees (and eating random Cheerios off of the kitchen floor. Score!). We're thinking he might, just might, decide to go bipedal by Christmas, but it's actually kind of great that he's not walking or running or climbing stairs and furniture yet. Because..

• Kid growing, part V.  Yes, we have been blessed again. Olson Child will arrive in mid- to late April 2015! I'm doing much, much better in terms of energy and appetite than for a few months there in early fall, but keeping up with four kids is, for some reason, kind of time-consuming. I keep wondering why I'm so surprised by this. Like getting used to this life somehow also should mean it gets easier. It does, in some ways--few things they do surprise me--but in other ways, it's just a dump-fest--laundry, books, toys, needs. Thank goodness Someone Else is ultimately their Caretaker! This season is just that--a season. That gives me both heartache and incredible relief.

Well, that's about all I can put down for now. My pillow is calling.

Jellicle Time

Aside from the normal excuses I give about not blogging regularly, another event has cut into my typing time, and it involves fabulous feline fun. Disclaimer here: I'm not a cat person. I'm not even much of a dog person. We have no pets--which probably isn't that surprising, given the number of kiddos we have--and if we do ever get a pet, it will be years from now, and it would have to be the absolute right time and right dog. I've pretty much ruled out getting a cat for many, many reasons.

All that being said, I don't dislike cats. I've taken care of them before--our neighbors had my sister and I take care of their five cats when they were gone on vacation, and they were pleasant enough when they weren't hiding (the cats, not the neighbors). I pet them if they'll deign to allow it when I visit friends or family. But cats tend to be distant. They're particular. They don't lend themselves to blind loyalty or random snuggling with the nearest human unless they really want and need some love (see Socks when baby Charles shows up). And now I have a reason to possess a renewed respect for these aloof-yet-sophisticated animals.

T.S. Eliot wrote a wonderful little book called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats in the 1930s, and Andrew Lloyd Webber used it to write the blockbuster musical CATS, which premiered in 1981. Our local theater organization, the Calumet Players, decided last fall to tackle this gigantic show, and it's currently completed its first weekend run.

And who's involved with this production? Well, many awesome and talented people. And me.

Yes, I'm actually playing a cat (her name is Jemima). And would you believe it? It's been amazingly fun!

If you're available next weekend--like, within fifty miles of here--you should come see the show. Not because I'm in it but because you'll love it. Even if you don't fancy yourself a friend of cats. Trust me--I know!

Quite the transformation is an understatement.

One is ten. Two is fifteen. Three is seventeen. Four is BOOM.

Four months into to life with four ex utero, and my days are a mix of peace, fulfillment, meaning. Oh, and nine parts anger, stress, and denial that this--this noise and chaos and bodily-fluid-and-rambunktion cocktail--is our relatively-newish normal.

In the last five and half years, Papa and I have weathered the new parent experience (an insanely high learning curve), the two-under-two juggle, the three-easing-in gig. Pearly Girl's arrival was smooth, and within three weeks I was thinking, "This is easy. Cool!" Deluded, I thought I was proving to be just the kind of mega-awesome mom I always knew I was.

But the last few months have exploded my self-satisfied smugness. No, I can't point to crime-worthy messes or even particular instances so much as my general feeling of physical and emotional exhaustion. And I began realizing a few months ago that this wasn't depression; it was life. And if this was what my life was like, then my understanding of myself was being blasted to smithereens.

I had a breakthrough last month when I struck up a conversation with another mom of four whose kids are roughly a year ahead of each of ours. "So, does it get easier?" I asked hesitatingly, half-giggling, hoping that she could hear, and yet hoping she would miss, the barely-disguised hysteria behind my generic question.

"Yeah, it does," she said. Then she gazed down at her one-year-old and helped me to some perspective. "But four is hard. Everybody said, 'If you can do three, you can do four, five six.' And three for us was cake. But four was..." her voice trailed off. She looked at me. "I had a hard time. I had postpartum depression, which I'd never had with the other three kids. But my sisters-in-law helped. [They have four kids each, too.] They told me four was tough for them, too, but that it would get better." She paused, steadying the barely-walking brave soul hanging on to her pant leg. "Now the baby wants to go off on his own, and I'm like, 'He's not my baby anymore!' and at the same time I'm like, 'Go! Go!'"

Empathy comes in many forms, and sometimes it trickles into our lives almost unconsciously, emerging as in-the-trenches shared experience. Mom-of-four Amy put into words what I had been struggling to admit even to myself--that four kids is somehow astronomically harder to manage, but in subtle ways, that makes the very difficulty in care somehow negligible. I had felt like I was slowly drowning--and in truth, I still do, many days--but I felt like I couldn't acknowledge it because, well, three kids had been easy, and so many people told me that "if you could manage three, then you can manage four fine." Maybe someday I'll start second-guessing gross generalizations about parenting and spare myself the unrealistic expectations and inevitable guilty fallout.

I also felt like I couldn't acknowledge what our life is like because to do so prompts many people to jump to an illogical, if tenaciously popular, way of thinking. It goes something like this: if I, a mother of four, say that being a stay-at-home mother is hard, then I'm admitting failure. If I admit failure, then I 1) should really look into doing something more productive with my time, like working at something away from my children that tangibly and reliably rewards my efforts (unlike my current routine, which swings from high highs and low lows, like a bipolar monkey. Yep, pretty much like that), and 2) should stop embracing life and being open to more children. Because who in her right mind wants more of what causes her stress, sleeplessness, and six days straight of no showers? (Okay, it's usually not that bad. I had to pick a number that started with 's.' And 'seventeen' would have just scared people away.) In the midst of this juggle, I didn't know how to begin to respond to these arguments. In fact, I wasn't sure that I could personally categorically reject them, though logically I knew they were flawed.

A few years ago, Glennon Melton, a blogger at Momastery, wrote a great post entitled "Don't Carpe Diem," which went viral. In it, she discusses this very conundrum.

Parenting is hard. Just like lots of important jobs are hard. Why is it that the second a mother admits that it's hard, people feel the need to suggest that maybe she's not doing it right? Or that she certainly shouldn't add more to her load. Maybe the fact that it's so hard means she IS doing it right...in her own way...and she happens to be honest.

I disagree with some points here: I'm not doing it right, and I can't judge motherhood by my own standard (more on that in a bit). But the honesty part is what struck me, both when Amy talked to me and I read what Glennon wrote to the blogosphere. What is this life but hardships? And why was I stressing so much about the sheer hardness of life with small children? When I spend more than two seconds listening to myself, I realize how often the wambulance wails in my head and how I really do need to kick the wimpiness to the curb. In Lutheran-speak, I need to confess and repent the real culprit behind my stress: my own pride. I need to banish the Pharisee of Superwoman who, in a different but related vein, tries to keep me enslaved to the belief that I can control my life the way I want--and show the world how I really can live the perfect parent-magazine-spread life and put all those other moms to shame. That I can, in fact, do motherhood right, and do it right all the time, perfectly.

I realize that I am staggering from one ditch of self-pity and naval-gazing to another ditch of self-glorifying Mommydom. Both ways leave me with zero comfort and plenty of pent-up anxiety. Worse yet, I am leaving the One who can actually steer the ship, right the course, calm my heart, and lead me and mine to the Way Everlasting when I insist on thinking all of these gifts are entitlements and rewards. And I end up buried. As hard as I pity myself or congratulate myself, the law written on my heart whispers the truth: I fail at this mommy thing. I sin against my children daily, hourly. And real pity doesn't apply to evil. The meek were truly helpless and deserving of pity; I'm a sinner worthy of death. And I dwell on myself to the exclusion of every real good gift, like a massive quantity of explosives simmering before a lighted fuse. As Chad Bird put it in this blogpost among many other fine ones, "Behold, the sin of the world, that takes away the Lamb of God!"

Struggling is not abnormal. Struggling is what we do in this life. But struggling should not excuse the sins that hide behind it. I am angry many times because I think God is unfair to make my life something other than an Emommy awards show, that my service to my children goes unnoticed by most of the world, usually including my children; that my efforts don't merit a paycheck or an impressive job title or an awesome alumni magazine write-up. And my anger is so incredibly sinful, so immeasurably petty and juvenile, because God Himself did for me what I so dimly, blunderingly do for my own children. He loves me first and puts Himself aside. And He did this in His earthly life with the ultimate humility and grace and endless love. And remarkably, He still does love me, the merit-less and worthless, and gives Himself to me still.

And for this I am eternally grateful. And I am reminded, however fleetingly in this frenzied life, that He carries my sorrows, even the silly ones; He was cursed for my transgressions, even from my most terrible hatred down to my most childish anger. Upon Him was laid the chastisement that brings me ultimate peace, and by His stripes, I--with the messy remnants of my pride and sins raining in and on and through me--am healed and cleansed.

Because explosions can be beautiful.

We are still here. Promise.

To the few of you who read this blog but don't see us everyday (or a few times a year, or are friends with us, particularly Papa, on Facebook), relief is finally yours: we are still here! No kidnappings, computer stealings, phone snafus, etc. Just plain old summer craziness.

In the midst of three summer trips since late May, two conferences in July, roughly three thousand miles of travel (I don't actually know how far we went, but with all of the flights and driving, that's probably pretty close), vacation recovery--including fixing an interior water leak from an exterior hose, which is almost almost ALMOST totally cleaned up!--hitting homeschooling hard (we're into Week Four), and my insane nesting drive of this month (rummage coming up in September! Oh, and six weeks out from Baby's due date!), we've been,er, busy. And, obviously, unplugged. But hopefully this is a sign that we're replugged. At least on this our blog. Thanks for hanging with us!

If only I could slip a newborn baby pic in here somewhere...

New Teeth

See 'em?! Aren't they cute?! And C of course, too. :)

For my first blog post in months (yes, that's with an "s"--yikes), I contemplated an array of topics.

Basement flooding and floor redo? No way. Too depressing and practical. Plus, it all got taken care of pretty quickly, thanks to Papa and insurance and Pipestone Interiors, so the entire post would have been just about as long as these sentences.

Graduations of friends and church members?  Better, but not quite right.

A 30th birthday college friend reunion at our house? Super duper with a cherry on top! But that's a post to come, so not quite yet.

S and P's birthdays (two and four, respectively)? Awesome, but now other events have crowded in. Those will come, too.


A log of the travel Papa has done without us and I have done without him and we have done together, including our most recent trip to see Papa's parents and grandpa and to throw my sister's bridal shower? Well, that's not all that interesting as a list. Maybe when I go through some of the pictures...

The head-injury-prone S, the feverish P, and the newly toothie C, all post-vacation. And they're still smiling!

I guess the truth is that I'm still figuring out what this blog is for. I mean, it's for us--for family and friends, for people near and far who want to keep up with our goings-on. But it's certainly not a play-by-play of what happens here every day. I can't, and frankly don't, want it to be that way. It's too much work and too guilt-inducing (as in I can always be thinking, "Oh, I should have blogged about that! And because I didn't, I've failed as a mother."). I think that way enough as it is about a thousand other things that happen (or don't) every day.

So this is more of a "I'll-blog-when-I-can" blog, a "when-I-think-of-something-worthwhile-to-say" blog, and most important, a "when-my-time-doing-it-isn't-outrageously-cutting-into-my-real-life" blog. And cutting here segues nice and beautifully into the "actual" blog topic here: new teeth. (And really, what can compete with a cute baby?)

I can't fully empathize with teething children, despite having gone through it myself. Frankly, the whole process looks, feels, and often sounds like a big mess. During our first leg of our official summer travels last week, as we sweated under one-hundred-plus temperatures with three kids just-barely-four and under through four states, C's first two teeth decided to make their appearance. This is an embarrassing Mom admission, but I didn't even notice that the first had broken through until a saleslady at a store pointed it out to my mother-in-law. Um, thanks, Eddie Bauer lady! You're obviously more plugged into details than I am.

After we marveled over that little white wonder, then the temperature spiked across mid-America and the floodgates of C's salivary glands went into overdrive. I've seen a lot of saliva in my time, but I personally think C broke records. She even put on a really impressive projectile show at a nicer-than-average eatery in Edwardsville, which is a first for any Olson kid. Luckily the recipient of most of her theatrics was me and the floor, both of which are washable (thank goodness!). And C felt a lot better after channeling her inner sicky-diva. Toughie that she is, she made it through the rest of the trip, and so did we, and now we'll all recover--extra teeth and all--in the next weeks before Mil and Chris's big wedding coming up at the end of the month. Too really overkill the metaphor here, every new transition requires a little bit of pain, right? Just hopefully not so much slobber.

Teething wears out a girl.

Why I've Only Been Blogging Once a Week Lately

1. I hid the laptop. No, seriously. I do my little online tutoring thing in the basement guest bedroom, which is seriously one hundred miles away from the rest of the house. This is great for concentrating on tutoring away from every-sleeping-body, but not so great for blogging when I'm not by the laptop. Even if I think about blogging during the day, I have to hike one hundred miles to do it. So usually I think about it and do nothing instead.

2. I have this guilt thing about tutoring when the kids are awake. Well, that's not totally true. I mean, I DO get guilty, but I've also found in the last few weeks that every time I get online for two minutes or more, someone gets hurt. Running into a counter top, slugging Brother, crying hungry Baby, you get the drift. So then I feel double-guilty that I've neglected my kids for two minutes and it's resulted in agony (kid-agony, that is). Weirdly, they don't get hurt or seem to mind when I'm washing dishes, scrubbing floors, or feeding another kid instead of being with them. At least not in such extremes. So that leaves me with...

3. I enjoy sleeping. I mean, enough so that I'm not a total crab, which lately hasn't been happening. I mean, I haven't been sleeping a lot, not that I'm not a crab. I have been a crab. So when the boys go to bed between 7:30 and 8:00, I am ready.to.collapse right after that. When C doesn't need to eat at 4:30 a.m. before I tutor, then I think I'll have a little more time to blog, since I'll (theoretically) be sleeping more.

4. I lost the camera. For about two weeks. I had literally picked up my phone to call a lady whose house I'd last seen it at when I found it. Of course, I've got a ton of pictures on it, which makes me dread going through them, uploading them, etc. Which makes me feel guilty that I haven't posted pictures of our lovely three lately. Vicious, vicious cycle. But at least I found the camera!

5. Um, have you NOTICED the weather? We've been playing summer every spare afternoon minute. And the laptop collects dust.

6. People say, "You must be so busy!" Well, yeah, but not much more than any other mom of at least one kid (wait... ). Basically, that means we spend a lot of time reading The Cat in the Hat and nursery rhymes, singing songs, doing the fun kid stuff. And though I love posting about our life here, I guess I like living it more than blogging about it. That sounds like a really defensive "Take THAT!," but I mean it in the best possible way. And I think you dear readers understand.

Happy Living!

Paper Chaos

My life in pulp.

I have a big box on the buffet of announcements and pictures and thank you notes that lie awaiting. I have blog posts stacked in cyberspace, twiddling their proverbial thumbs for pictures; short bloggy thoughts patiently queuing in my head; a big one stewing and bubbling on the back brain-stem burners. But all that must wait in the chaos that is Regular Budgeting, Catch-Up Budgeting, and--cringe--Tax Time Prep. Behind my laptop are currently six piles of varied and assorted bills, receipts, and catch-all, and that doesn't count the bin to my right on the floor with two binders full of Necessary Financial Stuff. I'm always so glad when all this is done, that is completed. It's important. It's vital to our family's survival. But paper chaos is poopy.

Secondhand News, Part I

A few blurbs here from the Outer Banks of the Midwest (and Postpartum Life, mostly including learning how to live with three children under four. Without freaking out too much about the horrendously dirty kitchen floor.), where real news tends to come like the reverbs from the cotton string on the tin-can telephone--that is, not usually directly. So here's our contributions:

1. It finally snowed here last night -- about half an inch, perhaps. Enough to make it look wintry. I can't believe I'm saying this, but huzzah for white wintry fuzz that covers up the brown deadness!
2. I was pleasantly surprised to learn last week that some awfully awesome dames at this great blog
had selected my submission on Advent and Barrenness as the winner of their contest. So I get a copy of the book! It's a delightful Christmas present. ... 
3. ... and I was even more excited by the news that my awesome sister-in-law (Papa's sister) had also submitted and won a posting slot! Yay, Mrs. J.L.! Beautiful words by a beautiful lady.
4. And the excitement just keeps on coming! My brother and sister-in-law officially announced (that is, alerted cyberspace) that they're expecting their first child! We are SO excited for them! I should probably have posted this first or last, to at least emphasize the incredible awesomeness of this news... but I think Mr. Fartlepants will understand. I get to be an auntie! WAA-HOO! :)
5. The new year arrived, creeping in at midnight last night. Welcome, 2012! Here's to auld acquaintances and beginnings and all that newbie jazz!

Next year this will be YOU, Mr. Fartlepants! I mean, if you have a lot of hair. And teeth.

Coming Soon: Pictures, pictures...

Currently, we have over 600 pictures on our little Sony camera. That means I haven't downloaded them to my computer in way too long. It also means you--few, we happy few! dear readers--haven't seen some visual updates of the boys in much too long. But my goal for July is to go through them, edit out the blurry ones, and post about the last three months' major events for us--birthdays, vacation, etc. AND keep up with regular, everyday pictures that we happen to take. And putting that goal on our blog will make it happen! Right? I said, am I right?

Excuses, excuses

Harra, harra. I don't know what that means, but I guess it's my alternative to "harumph." Like the noise you make when you want to sound cynical and suspicious, but you don't have any words. Or when you don't know what to say. 

We I Olson have been lax on the blog lately. Papa gets a pass--he's been prepping for Holy Week, Easter, and a host of meetings/congregational life things that pastors tend to get in clumps (kind of like funerals always seem to happen in clumps. Like two years ago when Papa officiated at four funerals in two weeks. An older member came up to him after a service and said, "Don't worry, Pastor. I'll try to save you some work and not die.") Yet I digress again.

My excuse reason for not blogging is domestic. I'm a control freak, and I like a neat, clean house. With two--check that, three--boys, that gets challenging, which isn't even necessary to  say. Actually, my cleanliness fastidiousness waxes and wanes--I can actually go (two) weeks without cleaning the bathroom. (!!!) Anyway, I started getting behind, and not just with dusting the piano. We had dishes sitting by the sink for about four days. I hadn't gone into the laundry room for a week and a half. (Thank GOODNESS for a wonderful husband who does laundry!) So the thought of blogging just made me tired. And guilty. Because how could I blog when I had toothpaste residue on the sink? And other unmentionables that would guilt me into not typing.

This is borderline OCD, I know. And I've actually gotten better at setting some of this aside since we've had the boys! But what really put it over the edge was a few weeks ago I started feeling S-I-C-K. All day long. This was after the positive test but before the first appointment. In the back of my mind, I thought, "I started to feel like this at around six weeks with the boys, but... nooooo. I'm WAY past that." Yeah, right. If you pay close attention to this blog, you'd have noticed a few days ago that the baby calendar suddenly changed. Well, our baby's due date is December 11. Which means that I'm currently seven weeks, three days pregnant. Which is way earlier than what we originally thought.

So as these next weeks slog trickle go by, I'm praying for more energy to do dishes, laundry, and to blog. That sounds really pathetic and woe-is-me.  I've got it really easy. I'm healthy, Baby's healthy--we have the eensy, weensy, picture to prove it! Sorry, no digital version yet!--and I already get to nest when I have the urge. Like last week, when I ignored the dishes and the blog to clean out the spice/baking cupboard. Just wait until I hit week ten and I've got loads of energy again! Here I come, clothes closets!

You should have seen it BEFORE! Seven dirty piles of laundry not shown. And now you know why I've been exhausted for the last week and a half--this really took it out of me. All that cinnamon and ground ginger sorting.

Ain't Nothing Like a Mocha! Especially for Momma!

Selling one life-changing caffine addiction at a time.

Thanks to my wonderful Momma for starting a blog! In the past few years, she's not started drinking mochas after decades of abstaining from AM caffine (!), she's actually moved into  drinking coffee with no sugar, no cream, and no shots of chocolate or other flavoring (!!!!). And now she's blogging (explanation points are pitiful completely inadequate symbols here :D). Check it out!

What could be better than a mocha and two beautiful grandsons? Enjoying them at the SAME TIME.

We're going to try this again.

Hiya, New Year folk. (I have no idea what that means. I just made it up.) After months and months of nothing from our blog, we're going to "man up" and try again. I've got approximately 1,000 pictures from the last few months I'm hoping to upload... eventually. All of you faithful readers (like our immediate family) know our home computer (well, and J's work computer) have been slowly dying. Our trusty Dell is almost 7, and J's HP is almost 5--which translates to, what, 87 and 95, respectively, in desktop and laptop years?--and both have major issues, but I digress. (I'll just add that this little updating here took me 20 minutes. In the life of a young mom with two kids under three, dirty dishes, dirty laundry, blah blah blah you get the drift, 20 minutes on the computer is FOREVER. No exaggeration. If it's 20 minutes oogling books on the Amazon site, that's one thing. Photo/editing frustration is another. But more on that some other time.)

The good news is MERRY CHRISTMAS (Day 10!) and HAPPY NEW YEAR! And my New Year's resolution, other than keeping the kitchen counter by the back door clear, is to get this baby hoisted to its knees and shuffling back to the track. Your prayers are appreciated.



Ahhh. The essence of new starts... untracked snow.

On Birth and Miracles

Okay, I'm realizing that this blogging thing is becoming more of a cathartic experience for me and less of a post-about-family thing that I originally intended. Therefore, I'm seriously considering starting another blog for my mind-rambling in order to keep this one focused on our lovely family. But before I get overly ambitious and allow this one to peter out, I'll just combine my two loves (random commentary and my wonderful fam) here. So, for those interested parties, please consider reading several terrific blogs by (mostly) Lutheran women that I enjoy. I read this one fairly regularly, and Rebekah, especially, alternately tickles me and inspires me. Her latest longer post dealing with induced labor and links to another awesome blog have reminded me how incredibly, incredibly blessed we were that P was born naturally. I think I've been incredibly naive about the fact that he was induced but somehow I (and he) avoided the knife and all the complications it can carry. I understand c-sections can be necessary, but all too often they're overused for, frankly, selfish and/or practitioner-protection reasons (NOT with the mother and child's best interests in mind). Anyway, P is a wonder, and so is S (bless his little yet-en-wombed heart). As Anne Shirley (or some screenwriter put it), "Babies are never common. Every one is a miracle."

A Start, At Least

After several hours of reading, writing, occasional but irking Facebooking (a topic fit for another post), I've realized I've just got to knuckle down and start a blog for our loved ones who 1) don't get the fuzzy familial updates you deserve, and 2) seriously lack the pictures of Olson youngsters you most certainly deserve. So here goes nothing: my attempt to finally be a more consistently loving daughter/sister/niece/family member/friend by placing our lives in an accessible place for you.

Just one more note: I still love phone calls, and don't plan on using this as an excuse to not jabber away at you whenever I can. I know, I know -- you're all so relieved to know I won't stop talking anytime soon.