Our (Neurodiverse) Family

You just came out with your own battle with depression and anxiety, and you have the crippling fear of people not liking you. I thought I was the only one! True, you say that you compensate by being bubbly and fun. I compensate by acting like I don't give a damn and proceed to subconsciously sabotage friendships so I can have a reason to say nobody likes me! Yes, I am totally screwed up. Okay, maybe we can't be friends then. Or maybe you can teach me to be bubbly. Or at the very least, my four-year-old and I loved you in Frozen and our daughters can be friends and play together! Maybe I'll watch you in "Bad Moms" this summer. Anyway, thanks for being open about your own struggles with mental illness. I already thought you were awesome for being pro-vax and just being cute all around, but opening up about your own battle just makes you all the more real. Let's have a playdate sometime, okay girl? Okay! Signed, Laura

Check it out! A video of me! This is my first video where I'm actually...talking to people. My husband took this, and forgive my poor eye contact...I'm a little shy. Enjoy :) I make really weird faces.

Kate's maternal instincts have been growing recently. She will feed her toys. Chocolate milk, if you were wondering. But remembers to feed herself too Put them in the stroller. Snuggle her baby in bed. Don't strangle Baby, please! Have her dolly on her lap in the swing. Push her kitty in the swing. She'll even push real babies in the swing. Have them in her lap. She BEGGED to hold him.  I suppose she is mimicking me, which is further confirmation that I'm doing right by her. Or maybe she's telling me that she wants me to give her a baby to play with. True story: when my brother was born, I thought my mom had him so he could be MY baby. And Mom was worried that I would be jealous of him. These acts of nurturing are not limited to toys and real babies. They also extend....to tomatoes. Observe: Tucking the tomato in...with an exercise band. She even made sure Tomato was buckled in! Let's take ...

Happy New Year, everyone! I know, I'm two days late, but better late than never. 2013 brought many trials but also many blessings, and I'm happy to be starting afresh. Last year, we had one illness after another. I'm pretty sure a lot of it had to do with our Primary calling, and the fact we got ourselves a toddler and they like to get sick plenty. Stephan excelled at work and got a really nice raise, which is always really nice. I finally realized how much depression and anxiety were controlling my life and went back to counseling, and had the dosage to my antidepressant increased. I can honestly say I'm happier now than I was a year ago. Last week, we went to visit my family in Texas. The day before flying out, I got a lovely stomach virus that hit me fast and hard. Luckily, I was feeling better by the time we flew, but it took me a few days to regain my strength and appetite. I had my birthday on Christmas Day and officially reached my late twenties. What's f...

I never knew what eczema was until I married Stephan, and only because his mother and grandmother have both struggled with it. Even then, however, I really didn't know anything about it. Then I had Kate. See the eczema patch on her left eyelid? It eventually cleared up, thankfully. When Kate was almost four months old, I noticed that she kept getting dry patches on her thighs, but I assumed that because summer was coming, she was just getting dry skin and I needed to be more diligent about keeping her clean and rubbing lotion on her. At her four-month visit, I showed the dry patches to the PA and she said that it was eczema. She told me to stop using Johnson's baby products and instead to use Aveeno products and to start using hydrocortisone cream. That was all the information I got. So, I bought Aveeno creamy baby wash and cream to go with it. Again, I didn't really know anything about eczema--just that it was dry skin. When Kate started scratching herself si...

Okay seriously, this has been the month of the germ invasion.  Let's start from the beginning. The night before the presidential election, I woke up to Kate crying. This is normal--this usually means she's hungry and wants to nurse. So, I go to her room, and as I'm picking her up, I notice that her pyjama top was very wet. It didn't take me long to realize that she had thrown up! I turned on the light and saw that she had vomited all over her bed :( Needless to say, I was traumatized. I called for Stephan and we got her out of her dirty pajamas, brought her into our bed so we could monitor her, and I nursed her back to sleep.  Then a few hours later, she threw up in our bed. We changed her clothes and our bed sheets, and went back to bed. I nursed her again, and yes, I realize that she was throwing it up but how do you say to someone incapable of verbal communication that nursing will only make them throw up again? And then a few hours later, we were chang...

Unlike the vast majority of Utahans, we do not do our banking at Zion's National Bank. When we were first married, we agreed that since we were open to the possibility of leaving Utah after Stephan finished school, it would be wise to go through a bank with a more national presence (I have nothing against Zion's, for the record). I already had a bank account through my family's bank, so we just put Stephan's name on my account. Well, Stephan finished school and we are still in Utah, albeit in a different city now. And we seem to have a talent for not moving very close to one of our bank's branches. This isn't always so bad because Stephan's job automatically deposits his paycheck into our account every payday. But on Monday, we got part of our cleaning deposit back from our old apartment. Yeah, only part of it, but that's a whole 'nother blog post for another time. I picked Stephan up from work and we were going to run a couple of quick erra...