People talk about having “good” babies. I stopped and thought about it one time. Why in the world do we call easy babies good? I would not consider Curtis an easy baby. He can get fussy. Sometimes we do not get along all that well either. But that does not make him a bad baby. All babies are good. They are their own little person, and just because one might cry a little more than another baby doesn’t make them any less good.

For that matter, an easy baby isn’t one never cries, sleeps all the time, etc. They are babies that mesh well with our own personality. What might be an easy baby for me could be more difficult to deal with for someone else. But we can adjust our lives to match up with our babies temperament. I think that’s one of the greatest challenges of parenthood: changing ourselves to be able to meet the demands of our children.

And you probably don’t care about all that, you just want cute pictures. I’ve been messing around with PicMonkey, hope you enjoy.

I’m grateful for change. The next move will make five since I was married three and a half years ago. But each move and coordinating life change had brought lots of excitement and helped me grow lots. Going cross-country will certainly bring new challenges but I’m very excited for them.

I’m grateful that I am having another baby boy. I love feeling him move inside me, and looking at tiny diapers and realizing I’m going to have another little kiddo to fit inside. Peter gets to be a big brother too, which will be lots of fun.

I’m grateful for the end of gardening season. This year has been a blast with all the projects I was able to work on. I saw a couple of my designs go in, maintained several landscapes, and was able to put lots of input into other people’s gardens. I grew a nice crop of vegetables and today discovered that blue hubbard squash makes excellent pumpkin pie.

I’m grateful for my husband and all the hard work he puts into school. Pretty stocked to have a physical therapist for a husband and graduation is only a year away.

I’m grateful for my grandparents. Living with them has been quite the fun experience and I have learned much about generosity and selflessness. (And aging. Not too excited for that.)

I’m grateful for the Gospel and the knowledge I have of the atonement. I love that I am able to learn so much of Christ in my life.

I’m grateful for Life, because it is awesome.

I have a confession to make: I am a smart aleck. I realized this the other day. I started an online class recently (on irrigation design and I love it). I commented on a post and just relished in the fact that I knew a lot. People have always thought I was smart. Sometimes it seems like I don’t even need to do anything smart, and people still think I am. I guess it is just part of my personality. I know that in some ways I actually am. School is one of those ways. The last B’s I ever got were in 8th grade Drama, and Plant Pathology the last semester in college. (I’m still kicking myself that I didn’t just take that class pass/fail. Than I would have gotten through college with all A’s. I could have even got an A in that class if I had bothered to apply myself.) School has always come easy to me.

I missed school, because I miss being really good at something. Motherhood and the business world don’t come as easy to me. Most of all it requires tons more patience and I’ve never been a patient person. Being good at school was wonderful. That’s the main point of life for the first couple decades and it was always something that no matter what else was going on (and I struggled at times socially) I was good at something.

Every phase of my life I’ve found a way to come out near the top. I remember starting out college, coming from high school where I was near the top of my class and very involved, and just feeling like I wanted to get more out of my college experience. Eventually all the experiences I wanted came: I was on good terms with my professors, did undergrad research (originally the thought behind that was grad school, but plans changed), worked several amazing jobs (UBC and Extension service rocked), had good friends, and even found a husband (which I did not expect but was absolutely delighted with). It didn’t happen when I wanted it to: it took some time to get there. My first couple semesters were frankly quite boring. But I took the opportunities as they came and I ended college back at the top.

Sometimes, as I struggle to connect with people (I’ve always struggled with that) and find my place in life right now, I need to remember that I’m still starting out. My business can succeed (garden help anyone?), I will figure out how to be a better mother, and I will feel accepted and loved in my community. Thinking back, I realize that I am marching in the right direction, and I have made improvement. It just takes hard word, looking for ways to help others, taking advantage of the opportunities that come, and most of all patience. Because I’m still the smart kid I’ve always been.

I have a new goal: to take a picture of the sunrise everyday for a year. The picture above was taken this morning. It was wonderful. I was feeling sorry for myself, looked outside and all bad feelings were gone (mostly). I find it easy to get discouraged about life. For instance  today I baked dozens of neighbor cookies that took up a large portion of my day. And I do not like cooking cookies. So at first I felt quite badly about my day. But on the plus side, I have fun cookies to give away. And I did not waste my day away. There is optimism in everything we do. We just have to find it.

Why is it that so many moms are able to pull off amazing feats? My one child is all I can handle right now. A large part of me aspires to be on of those moms with too many kids to fit in a normal car, that have impecable houses, homeschools, do all these amazing projects, cooks amazing food for nearly nothing, and even finds a way to run a good home buisness.

But do they really exist? No one can do everything, and especially not all at the same time. But I do not think its a bad thing to look up to other mothers. So here are some I look up to.

• My own mother. She made a career out of being the mother of seven kids all squished together. It certainly wasn’t easy for her: but we are all smart, successful kids .
• A neighbor who has two kids under two, works from home, whose husband is way busy. And she does some of the coolest sewing projects ever.
• The blog-mommies. I’ve come across several moms on the web that are raising unique families, with some really cool ideas they share. (Owl-haven, crock-pot lady, are some of my favorite)

Even though I admire these other women, I always need to remember that my life will be different. We are all made differently, and so our lives will be different. The worst I can do is try to be better than others I see (and yes, I have a problem with taking pride in doing just that) or try to live up to someone else’s standard of living that I see from the outside. I need to be content and non-prideful with who I am, what I can do, and what the Lord expects from me.