I Often Go Walking by Phyllis Luch

I Often Go Walking

I often go walking in meadows of clover,
And I gather armfuls of blossoms of blue.
I gather the blossoms the whole meadow over,
Dear Mother, all flowers remind me of you.

Oh Mother, I give you my love with each flower
To give forth sweet fragrance a whole lifetime through
For if I love blossoms and meadows and walking,
I learn how to love them, dear Mother, from you.
--Phyllis Luch

This is the quintessential Mother's Day song for me. I know there are others, but this is definitely the best. I had been helping out in Primary, filling in for the chorister a few weeks ago, and taught the kids this song -- it was really cool because I knew that they'd be singing it for my first Mothers Day as a real MOM! I was scheduled to fill in again two weeks ago, but Elizabeth and I had a BAD night at the height of her nursing strike, and we couldn't even make it through Sacrament Meeting. I asked Peter if he would sub for me subbing for Rachel and he bravely said yes. When I asked him how it went, he said it was fine, except that he had never heard the second verse of that song before, and got all choked up trying to lead the kids in singing it. I said, "Yes, It's definitely a song that's designed to make people cry."

A few random bits of vaguely Mother's Day related news:

• Heather's baby Anna is home from the hospital and can now breathe and eat on her own. Hooray for modern medicine giving her the few extra days she needed, and hoorayer for Heather for making it through this trying time.
  
  
• My Aunt Dalita just had a baby too! That makes FIFTY grandchildren on my Dad's side. I know that there had been a lot of pressure to bring it to a nice round number, but because all Tim's older siblings quit having kids years ago, it mostly landed on him (and Dalita of course). Their last child was born in 2004, so most people had given up hope. I started hearing rumors a few months ago, but considering the source was somebody who's mostly deaf and has a bad memory, I wasn't sure I could believe them. This latest baby (as yet nameless) is Tim and Dalita's NINTH! Way to go above and beyond the call of duty there!
  
  
• We went to see Ironman Saturday night as a kind of pre-Mother's Day couples night out. It was our first real date since the Baby was born. We hired a babysitter and went with another couple in the ward -- Peter actually suggested the whole thing. I could really care less about seeing the movie from the previews, but I figured that if Peter wanted to go, and wanted to spend time with friends, that I could sit through something that might be vaguely stupid. Well, it wasn't vaguely stupid. It was really pretty cool. I knew just about nothing about the Ironman story going in to it, but the movie's plot and character motivations actually made sense (if you could forgive some magical technology -- and if you can't, then why are you at a comic book movie in the first place). Then there were the explosions. They were big. I do love a good blowing-things-up movie.
  
  
• Elizabeth has a new trick -- I call it proto-sitting. She doesn't have the balance to sit up by herself yet, but she's gotten to the point where she can make a kind of tripod by putting her hands down between her legs and she can hold herself up like that for a few minutes. I tried to get her to do this a week or so ago (I had seen a picture in one of my baby care books), and she couldn't do it. But now she figured it out on her own! She's also getting a lot closer to crawling -- she can scootch along a little on her belly, and is pretty good at holding her head and chest up in that position. There's still too much friction between her belly and the floor for her to get anywhere significant though. She has also started drooling profusely, which is new for her. Her shirts end up being constantly damp around the neck.

Well, that's all the news for today. Have a good Mother's Day everybody!