Wednesday, July 16, 2008

You CAN Go Home Again... It's Just Weird

So, we've been home for almost a month now. Home being Idaho Falls and actually living IN my childhood home. It's been a real adjustment, to say the least. My parents have a home that was just fine for us growing up: Enough room, more than enough love, all that. But now, it's not just me and my little brother, it's me, my husband, and my three kids. Oh, and let's not forget Mayzee. It's a little crowded. We're making it work. The kids go back and forth between trying real hard to be good and trying real hard to make me go out of my mind! I think the hardest thing is that we don't have our own stuff and what we do have doesn't belong anywhere in this house. So it's very hard to keep things neat and tidy. And I feel we MUST keep it neat and tidy since we are the invaders in this little play. We are so grateful to Mom and Daddy for letting us stay here while we take care of a few bills and then find a new home. It's such a blessing that we have a soft place to fall during this transition. My parents ROCK!
Then, there's the issue of church. I am going back to the same Ward I was baptized in, the same Ward I grew up in. It's so strange. For one thing, the boundaries were re-drawn while we were gone, so it's not the 6th Ward anymore, it's the 7th. Then, there's the people. Of course, all my friends are grown up and have moved away, but their parents are still there. Only now, in a way, they're my peers instead of leaders and teachers. So WEIRD!!! There's also a girl in the Ward that I went to school with at Bonneville. She was a cheerleader. Now she's a mom with kids and everything!
Speaking of friends from high school, I took Zach to the dentist yesterday to get the ball rolling on fixing all the problems going on in his little mouth. The dentist? Bryce Burtenshaw, another kid from my class! Muy Bazarro! Notice the terms I keep using? "Girl" "Kid" It's because I don't think of them as adults. Why is it that I know I've grown up. I have started a family and all that. Why then, can't I see my friends from school as grown-ups too? Why does my mind have a hard time wrapping around the image of them as grown-ups with their own families and REAL jobs?! I wonder if I'm the only person who thinks like that, or maybe it's normal? So many adjustments to make!
As a side bar, Dr. Bryce (as the people in his office call him) is my hero. After examining Zach's teeth, he settled in to explain all the problems in Z's mouth. The Mommy Guilt hit almost as hard as before, but Bryce explained things better than the dentist in Vegas had. He started drawing on a sheet of paper. He drew a top view of a molar and said, "I want to explain this to you so you understand and don't feel like you're a terrible mom or anything." (Was it that obvious?) He showed me how the grooves in the molars work to help us tear and grind food, yadda yadda yadda. Then, he drew a side view of the same tooth and explained how on most teeth, the grooves are only so deep. Occasionally, the grooves are really deep. So deep in fact that the toothbrush can't get in to get all the food debris out. Those super deep grooves aren't Zach's fault, it's just simple genetics. (Which makes it again my fault, just less directly. lol) I asked him how we're supposed to clean that nasty stuff out and he said "You can't." However, when he finishes Zach's "baby root canals", the crowns he puts on will be less deep and will prevent him from having junk left in his mouth. He went on to tell me that he can tell that Zach is doing a great job with brushing his teeth because the teeth in the front that don't have those silly grooves are healthy and beautiful. Yeah Bryce! You truly are my hero!