Conversational Maxims (or How to Have Really Awkward Conversations)

 My husband, Tyson, the English major has adopted a kind of social experiment from one of his class lectures.  It is a very awkward yet hilarious way of responding to people in a manner they are not expecting. There are unspoken rules of conversation called the conversational or Gricean maxims.  I am sure you’ve all had exchanges at one point in your life that have just been completely uncomfortable (I think I have them daily when I ride the light rail…) But those conversations you’ve had were probably because these rules of speech were broken.  Tyson’s favorite victims are Wal-mart cashiers.  Anyways, the conversational maxims are:

1)      The maxim of quantity- giving more information than anticipating. For example, one person may ask something like, “Hey, how’s it goin?” And the expected response would be an equally simple answer like, “It’s going great. How are you?” To break this maxim, one would say something like, “Well, I am doing ok. I woke up early this morning and I was just really tired but I couldn’t go back to sleep so I got up and played on the internet for a little while. I saw a couple good youtube videos and some that were just ok.  I am really not much of a morning person.  When I was little my mom told me I was a morning person, but that all changed when I hit puberty…” 

2)      The maxim of revelance- giving totally random answers.  For example, “How are you doing today, sir? Did you find everything ok?” “I am going to get a new hamster. A brown and white one that doesn’t bite…”

3)      The maxim of manner- a clear, unambiguous, brief and orderly response.  Example, “Will you take out the trash?” “Well, it is probable that I would take out the trash more often if someone weren't flagrantly wasteful, such that the majority of trash weren't always coming from that person.”

4)      The maxim of quality- people naturally assume that you are going to tell them the truth.  For example, when people enquire after your name, you usually don’t tell them, “Jose Luis” if your name is Tyson Adams.  Also, you wouldn’t give your new home teachers in the ward you just moved into the run around that you’re inactive and afraid to go to church because of the Russian Mafia or something equally ridiculous…

If you know Tyson, I am sure you can picture him breaking all these maxims on purpose just to make people squirm and having a ball with it! Don’t worry though, he usually tells them he is kidding before too long. So whether I am playing along with him or rolling my eyes the whole time, going to Wal-mart is always an adventure with Tyson.

 

My Nursing Baby

I have had a lot of people ask me how nursing school was pregnant and with a newborn.  And I usually just say, “It was hard…” because if I explained any further, as Tyson would put it, I would be breaking one of the 5 conversational maxims (Which is: giving more information than people would want to hear by their simple question [for more on the other maxims, I will do another post at the bottom or something…) But I have more to say than it just being hard!  It was the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life.

I found out I was pregnant the same month I found out I was accepted into ASU’s nursing program.  Getting into the program was a feat all in itself because I spent the last 2 years trying to finish up all the prerequisite courses and ASU’s program is very competitive. 

Going to school and being PG. I was four months when I started nursing school in August.  It was great because I was past the really sick stage and I wasn’t huge and totally uncomfortable.  I felt really good.  The only thing that was kind of hard was the clinicals in the nursing home and having to lift a bunch of old people.

The BIRTH story

As much as I tried to go into labor before school started, it unfortunately was not meant to be.  I walked and curb-walked, and jogged and tried to talk my doctor into inducing me two weeks early but no, I started the Spring semester 9 months pregnant.  It was awful to have people staring at you, knowing you look like you’re going to explode, and getting comments like, “Wow, you haven’t had him yet…” and “What are you doing here, shouldn’t you be in the hospital?”

I had a doctor’s appointment on Thursday, January 20^th. I was so excited because I thought I might be at least a little bit dilated this time… but nope.  I was 0% effaced and 0% dilated.  I was so discouraged! The doctor even had me go in for an ultrasound to see if anything was wrong.  Luckily nothing was wrong; Traejan was just happily floating around in the womb.  It was actually neat to see him so developed and see what he was doing in there.  Funny how the little things were so incredible to me- Traejan opening and closing his mouth was really exciting!

I started having really hard contractions Friday, the 21^st of January (right after my first test of the semester). And went into the hospital that evening around 5 or 6 PM. 

My whole family (except Jeffrey) came into visit me in the hospital around 11 PM- which was really fun. It was literally a party! And I felt great and social after the epidural.

I started pushing at probably around 2:30 AM. And Traejan Walter Adams came into the world at 2:53 AM 8lbs. 11 oz.  I can’t describe how amazing this event was or how much love I could feel for such a little person.

Right after he was born I was taken into surgery because my broad-shouldered little boy tore my cervix on his way out.  This surgery is a story in and of itself because I was awake and completely upside down while they stitched up my woman parts. Awkward.

A New Mommy

It has always been a top priority of mine to finish my Bachelor’s degree, but being a new mom made me want to quit more than anything.  I felt torn… I couldn’t give 100% to anything and it was really difficult for me. 

I felt my heart breaking when I left this perfect, so dependent, 5 day old baby in the arms of someone else.

SLEEP- I didn’t really get any.  I would try to be in bed by midnight or one after I finished homework, studying and getting ready for the next day.  And then I was up a couple times a night to feed and back at school or clinical as early as 6 AM. I don’t think I ever got more than 3-4 hours of sleep a night. I was running mostly on adrenaline I think.

There was about 10 out of 60 in our nursing group that failed this last semester.  And I was NOT one of them!! I actually did pretty well.  It wasn’t my best GPA.  My lowest grade for the whole semester was a 84% (which is technically a C by nursing school standards- ah, wretched grading scale!!)

There was always something that gave me the will to keep going (like support from my husband, my mom, my mother-in-law, and my friends in the nursing program- concern and a hug usually did the trick!) …I was pushed to the edge but never over it. 

I was aching physically and emotionally every day but I would just take deep breaths, look at the clock, and coax myself, “I made it through one hour, I can make through the next.” Eventually, my hours turned into days and my days turned into weeks. I slowly made it through each day and accomplished things I didn’t think I could.

Firsts!

This last month there have been a lot of new “firsts” for Traejan. Here are some of them: 

 First Circus! ( This technically did not happen in July but it's close enough ;)

Me, Traejan, and Andrea Paxman wearing our souvenir clown noses.
Traejan wasn't very fond of his nose!

The elephants were the coolest! (However, I missed most of it, Traejan
was pretty much done for the night by the time they came to the stage.

First 4th of July! We partied it up at the parade in Show Low.

Happy 4th

Sis-n-law Britt, and her baby Maxwell with matching flag shirts.

The whole Moffat clan minus my dad (too cool for the parade)

  

First solid foods (well at least more "solid" than breastmilk...)  I think he only took maybe 2 bites... it was not super successful.

First tooth. See the little white bump!

This was a surprisingly very hard picture to get. 
I swear he does have a tooth there somewhere!

First Smith family reunion! (Which was amazing!)  This year we had it at Zion National Park.  It was beautiful there and just fun to see everyone.  Traejan and I weren’t champion hikers on this trip but still had a good time hanging back with my sister, Rachel, and her boys.

Sleepin on grandpa

The whole Moffat clan (minus Traejan) We never can seem to get us all together for a picture.

All the girls, and a couple boys trying on great grandma Aamodt's jewelry

 First camping trip. We camped with the Adams' up in Pinetop July 29-30. Lots of good food, family,  planned activities, some rain, a big camp fire, and lots of little kids! We all had a great time!



The happy camping family



All the cousins!



Traejan and his cousins, Maxwell and Brylee

First earned Indian name (my husband has a thing about giving people “Indian Names”.) Traejan’s Indian name is “the claw”.  He has the stickiest fingers I have ever seen or heard of.  If there is hair in reach (or sometimes just out of reach) Traejan nabs it! He grabs, holds on for dear life, and pulls it too. I regularly see loose long blonde hairs wrapped around his chubby little fingers.  If I go bald prematurely, I will blame my son. No hair is safe, not even beard or pony tail. Quick Story: One sacrament meeting, I was sitting there holding Traejan on my lap and my little niece, Kate, who has the cutest little bob hair cut was sitting in front of us.  She kept turning around to smile at and entertain Traejan but was remaining a safe distance away.  She turns around and I start to listen to the speaker when all of a sudden I hear a shriek and then a cry. Traejan has her by the hair and he is not letting go!  We eventually pry his fingers from her hair.  The poor girl was really upset, and to make matters worse, it was her birthday!  

My little angel.

10 Fun things you probably didn’t know about Traejan (who is 5 months old today!)

1.    He’s really a vampire.  He hates direct sunlight. He flinches and whines and turns his head away when we go out during the day. And he’s pale as all get out! My neighbor even refers to him as “ghosty boy”.  He also grabs onto our faces and starts gnawing on our necks (and chins and cheeks and fingers and I guess pretty much anything he can get a hold of- I am pretty sure he is just in the beginning stages of teething; however, I wouldn’t be surprised if when he starts cutting teeth that his canines are a little sharper and longer than the norm.)

2.    He is ticklish along his rib cage just under his armpits.

3.    Tyson’s elephant noise makes him cry every time.

4.    And aside from being a vampire, our son is also part velociraptor. He squawks and squeals just like that dinosaur on Jurassic Park.  He found his voice pretty early and he uses it!   It’s so much fun even though I hardly ever get to sit through a church lesson because he is so loud. 

5.    He is a ham.  He loves attention!

6.    And he’s quite the ladies’ man. Here is his flawless flirting strategy: He stares and smiles until he catches their attention, then he gets embarrassed and buries his face into me and then looks back and smiles and giggles and jabbers until they practically swoon over him… he has women eating out of the palm of his hand.  He already has a harem consisting of all my nursing school girls.  Young or old, he has girlfriends galore! (and I’ll let you guess which parent he is already taking after)

7.    He likes to grab his toes and then catapult his legs down in the bath water to get me soaking wet!

8.    Most of his weight is in his legs. And he has a cottage cheesy bum!

9.    We think he is allergic to ice cream… or possibly the metal spoon we feed him the ice cream on.

10. He has many different laughs. He has a courtesy laugh- a short little grunt of a laugh when I guess we are really not very funny.  He has a little chuckle that I catch him doing at really random times (ex. me trying to fix my bad hair day was apparently very funny to him!)  And my favorite is his real belly laugh when we bounce him on the bed or tickle him. He gets slap happy just laughs and laughs until he spits up.

Thanks Rachee-Poo!

Much to the persuasion of my sister, Rachel, I have joined that ranks of Mormon Moms who have blogs! It seems that almost everyone has a blog nowadays which is, I think, a really good thing because it is a great and easy way to record and remember all the things and feelings at this point in our lives.  So hopefully I can utilize this blog much better than the manual pen and paper journal I have at home... :S

Traejan 3 month pics