Life Upstream

feeling like an outlier

2012-01-20T16:09:00.001-07:00

I have debated about whether or not it is necessary for me to add my (published-on-my-blog) voice to this topic, and after thinking about it all day today, I've decided to write about it. Mostly because I sort of feel like I'm on an island when it comes to this topic and I'm wondering why I feel so differently than most of my friends (at least the ones who've spoken up) about something that we're all so invested in. I'm wondering if by adding a different perspective I'll find that some of you actually do feel the same way that I do and I'll feel a little less weird about not being sure why I feel differently. So here we go.

The topic I'm referring to is the Huffington Post article written by Glennon Melton called Don't Carpe Diem (click on title to link to the article-- and if you haven't read it yet you'll probably want to before you read my post so you'll understand what I'm talking about). I don't often read links that people post on Facebook, but after about a dozen (literally) of my friends linking to it with such (SUCH) high praise for it, I clicked over.

I immediately knew I didn't love it the way everyone else did. I immediately started questioning myself and wondering why the author's sentiments did not resonate with me the way that they did with some of my dearest friends.

(A quick disclaimer: can we agree on the fact that either side (resonating with it or not resonating with it) is perfectly acceptable? I understand and respect that everyone who posted about it felt validated and uplifted by Melton's words, and I hope they would understand and respect that all this is is me feeling differently, not me feeling like what I feel is a superior. Let's all still be friends, K?)

As I've thought about it today, there are about 4 things that I keep coming back to that help me understand why I (and maybe some of you?) might not relate to the opinions in the article.

The first thing (and the most insignificant to me), is that I actually really appreciate and value it when someone tells me to enjoy the time I have with my children. I never hear the message "ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU'LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN'T!" TRUST US!! IT'LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!" I simply hear someone who has been in my spot before saying, "Hey look, I know there can be rough patches, but as a whole, these years of your life as a mother to young children are such a little blip of time and then they are over and you'll look back on them with such fondness and happiness and gratitude that YOU got to be the mother, that it was YOU that had the opportunity to spend your days in such a meaningful way." I hear someone who maybe feels a little nostalgic for the days of her past when she was the one with the screaming kids in the cart. Really. And I don't think she's trying to tell me that I can't feel frustrated and overwhelmed and frazzled at those screaming cart moments, just that all of it, the exhausting and invigorating, the frustrating and the glorious, will add up to the sum of our days as Mother and once we are on the other side of them, they'll seem to have gone too fast. I just hear someone else who is in this sorority of motherhood reminding me that it truly is the most beautiful blessing. And I'm always grateful for the reminder.

Another reason I've thought of that perhaps explains why I don't relate to the article as a whole is because of my own childhood and mother. Again, I don't want this to sound like people who don't mother/feel the way my mom and I do are inferior or don't love their kids as much or something (ridiculous!). I am simply stating that the way my mom mothered has influenced the way I mother. And so the fact that I knew so 100% clearly that her children were her delight and joy, that she wanted us with her constantly, that I never EVER heard one word of complaint about taking care of us, that she almost never took vacations without us because she would just rather have us with her, those things all have influenced me. I also had the sort of rare experience of watching, as a teenager, my mother be a mama to new babies. I watched her drive my carpool to school the day after she had come home from the hospital with my new baby sister, and now I look back on that and wonder why she didn't seem exhausted or overwhelmed-- she had a 3 day old baby to care for now in addition to the 4 of us, and she just took it all in stride like she was made for it. (She was.) After watching her find such incredible joy in the days of her motherhood it is not hard for me to understand why I love it so much too.

On that same note, I have been taking care of babies for a long time. Like, really taking care of them. When I was 9, my baby sister and I shared a room as soon as she was old enough (probably 3-4 months) to move out of the bassinet in my parents' room. From then on out, my mom never had to wake up in the night with her because I did it. If she woke up crying, I'd pick her up and bring her to bed with me. If she needed to nurse, I'd bring her to my mom and then she'd end up back in bed with me after my mom had returned her to her crib. She was my baby. I've wondered if the early (and constant) exposure to taking care of babies that I loved (I had two more baby sisters after that first one) helped me to be equipped to take many of the challenges of motherhood more in stride-- I had been blessed with 3 dress rehearsals before I had the real thing :).

So, those reasons above are things I've thought about, but they aren't actually what I think are the main reasons that the article didn't resonate with me. These final two things seem more significant to me.

I am not that hard on myself. I don't need someone telling me that it's okay to not feel guilty for not enjoying every moment, because I don't feel guilty if I don't enjoy a moment. I have never thought that I am supposed to be reveling in all of the tough moments as a mother-- I know they are going to be there, and I know I am going to get through them (hopefully with some amount of grace), and when they are over, I'll be glad we got through them and move on. It never occurred to me to feel "guilty and panicky" (the author's words) for not loving moments that aren't really intended to be loved. Does that make sense? I still love motherhood, and feel like I am truly soaking in these fleeting days with my children, but if I am feeling overwhelmed and frustrated in a moment where my child is pushing boundaries, I am fine with that. That is an okay time to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. I don't feel any guilt for not enjoying that specific moment. I just am not that hard on myself. Sometimes I actually feel like I am a little too easy on myself. Which leads me to my last thought...

I much prefer (and need) people to expect things from me than for people to tell me that I am fine just the way I am. I need people to hold me to a higher standard, and I think it is because of what I said above, that I am not that hard on myself. This was first evident to me in a church setting. I have never been able to relate to the talks or lessons (usually specific to women) about how we need to be gentler with ourselves or stop expecting so much of ourselves. I have come to realize and appreciate that there are many women who value those sentiments because they are genuinely quite hard on themselves, and need that reminder. I feel like I need the opposite though, and end up feeling patronized by the "be patient with yourself, you are good enough" lessons. I want (and need) talks about how much better I could be doing, about how great and valuable my contribution could be if I'd just put forth a better effort. So when I read in the article about how trying to enjoy every moment "just doesn't work" for the author, I felt that same feeling of someone telling me that I am fine just the way I am, that I shouldn't worry about trying to be better. I know that wasn't the author's point (and again, I feel like her point is valid and I'm happy that it resonates with so many), but that is what I felt from it.

I also felt conflicted by the idea of segmenting time into Chronos of Kairos because I feel like I should be making a valiant effort every day of turning Chronos into Kairos, of seeing and feeling the beauty in the small bits of our lives. Obviously I'm not talking about turning the moment where your 4 year old chops up your curtains with scissors into Kairos (though actually you totally could if you wanted :)), because that is an okay time to feel frustrated and angry and to not feel guilty about it (am I repeating myself enough here?). But mostly, I WANT to live in Kairos, and I WANT people to want that for me, not to tell me that it isn't possible or worth trying for. I think it is.

Do any of these thoughts ring true for any of you? I'd also love to hear thoughts from those of you who loved the article. Do I seem totally off base? What was is specifically about the article that you loved? I hope I haven't muddled my words too much or made anyone feel judged or inferior. That was not my intention at all. Just wanted to express my thoughts and opinion. We can still love each other, I hope :).

the days leading up to

2012-01-12T23:19:00.001-07:00

I know I write this pretty much every time I blog, but you guys! The posts! They pile up so quickly and I can't seem to catch up. Just keep plugging away, I tell myself. So, here we go. All the stuff leading up to Christmas.

One of the things I really try to do in December is make homemade gingerbread houses. I never liked gingerbread houses until I realized that I could make my own from scratch instead of buying a kit. Then it became this delightfully drawn-out December tradition that feels sort of ceremonious and eventful to me. This year I quadrupled the batch so my little sisters and mom could join in and have a house, too.

I loved how all of the unassembled houses looked. So much potential in those cut-out cookies!

Using fruit roll-ups to mimic stained glass for windows is one of my favorite tricks.

This was a project that was mostly just for George and me. Pearl was a little too destructive and grabby this year, and she didn't mind just sitting close by and eating the candy instead :).

Here are a few shots of the final product. I especially love the Mini Charleston Chew bricks and the Tootsie Roll wood pile.

My little sister Rachel made this cute house and I loved how the Chocolate Frosted Mini-Wheats turned out on the roof. I never got a picture of my Mom's creation (and it was seriously awesome) because she finished a few days after us and never remembered to go back and take a picture. Blast.

One of the other fun things we did in December was go to the Christmas program for our school. George and Pearl both had darling little songs to sing and do actions to and I loved how completely unintimidated they both were up on that stage in front of everyone. Pearl was especially delightful because she was (by far) the littlest one up there and she owned it. Seriously cute.

See her there in the Mrs. Claus jammies (this was a Polar Express program so all the kids wore pajamas) totally working out those actions?

And I love this one of her doing the "he knows when you're a-WAKE!" part of the song. That was her specialty. And then a photo of me with my kids since we are all at EA together.

Here's George and his friends doing a little Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

They pretty much wore these jammies every night in December.

Grandma and Grandpa were there to watch the kids, along with my parents and siblings (they just had to leave right after the program to soccer practices and YW so I didn't get any photos with them). So many people adore these two kids-- they are lucky little people.

We also visited with Santa a few times in December, and George really loved it. Pearl actually did really well with the whole thing considering how scary this experience could potentially be. She just kind of looked at him, slightly unsure, but totally go-with-the-flow.

Let's skip right ahead to Christmas Eve, shall we?

On Christmas Eve morning we decided to have a breakfast with John's family instead of trying to run around to everyone's houses on Christmas Day (plus we were all leaving to The Beach together on Christmas, so we thought we should simplify the other festivities).

George and Logan were pretty happy about spending the morning together.

Lisa prepared a most delicious spread of gourmet breakfast delicacies. No picture, but trust me. We were all happy, even if Topher ruined her crepes :). (They weren't ruined, by the way.)

The kids had a table all to themselves and especially enjoyed the Lil' Smokies.

I am not quite sure why (maybe just for fun? Or did we use coconut for something, Lis?) the boys got to try their hands at scraping out a coconut. George did it for about 37 seconds.

Logan did it for about 47 seconds. So Lisa stepped in and finished the job. Like she is known to do. Being productive is one of her many specialties.

Then it was time to open presents, yay! Pearl was seriously delighted by this stuffed penguin. I love her giant, joyful smile.

A few of the other gift highlights:

Baby Stockton was too little to be in on any of the action, so he gets his own little spot. Hi cute little baby! Have I mentioned that I want a newborn? A lot.

I seriously love his little sly smile in this first one. So dang cute.

We bid one side of the family farewell and headed over to another for the evening. We first made cookies for Santa (George was very insistent about that). Two kinds, in case Santa is picky.

Pearl was quite thrilled to lick the beater.

In the late afternoon we (brilliantly) decided to do our typical Christmas Eve night activities right then so we could get home a little earlier than normal to let our kids at least attempt a decent night of sleep. We opened our pajamas and the one present from the person who drew our name this year. George got the highly coveted opportunity to have my dad draw his name and was lead on a scavenger hunt around the house to the garage where he was surprised with a new car (a Power-Wheels Mini Cooper).

Pearl was just happy to be around and included in on all of the fun.

But she was not forgotten in the gift-getting, and Madeline thrilled her with a little shopping cart that she can push around by herself. She is obsessed with doing things that grown-ups do and gets so mad when I have to help her push the big grocery carts around at stores, so this was a seriously perfect present.

So perfect that she got a little impatient while Daddy was assembling it and started yelling in frustration.

She spent the next several hours with her shopping cart.

Later that night we had our annual Christmas Eve party with my Mom's family which is always one of my favorite things in the world (so favorite that I didn't even take my camera out once to take a photo). It was awesome though, promise.

Then we changed G&P into their new jammies and headed home to put them to bed.

Exhausted little ones went right to sleep and John and I were able to put the finishing touches on our presents before Santa came. John banished me to the living room for a little while so he could wrap his gifts for me, so I took a hundred pictures of the lights on our Christmas tree. There was nothing else to do :).

Santa came, oh yes he did.

whoppers and undershirts

2011-12-23T17:11:00.000-07:00

I need at least 2 more weeks of pre-Christmas. I am not ready for the anticipation and bustle and festivities and spirit to end. Happily we have our annual trip to The Beach to look forward to or else I think I'd be pretty sad to see Christmas come and go so quickly. Here are just a few notes about what's been going on at our house lately mixed in with some pictures that I took of the kids a couple of Sundays ago. I had to bribe them with Whoppers to get them to cooperate for a few photos in their church clothes and as soon as I got a couple that I thought were okay the kids stripped off their clothes and sat down in front of the tree to enjoy their treat. I was folding up their clothes and watching them out of the corner of my eye when I realized that THOSE were actually the moments that I wanted recorded on my camera. I started snapping from the corner and truly ended up with some of my most favorite photos that I have of my children. I love that they are in their undershirts. I love that they are (mostly) not looking at the camera. I love that I can really feel who they are when I look at the photos.

George has been really into Luigi, our elf. He loves finding him every morning and yesterday was pretty thrilled when a man at the gas station told him that Santa came and told the man that George had been a very good boy. We got out to the car and George exclaimed to his Daddy, "Luigi HAS been telling Santa that I've been good! That man said Santa knew!"

The one gift that George has been consistent about asking for is a red ninja Lego set. I had no clue if those were even a real thing until we braved Toys R' Us to see an entire aisle dedicated to Ninjago. Who knew? I mean, besides George, obviously? His request was put into Santa and George is certain Santa will come through.

Pearl talks about Santa Claus and sings Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (the "so be good for goodness sakes! about kills me) and totally attempts a deep voice as she mimics, "Bye Buddy! Hope find DAD!" (If you don't know that movie I am not sure we can be friends.) She doesn't get that Santa is bringing presents really, but I know she'll love opening them and finding treasures inside. If you ask her what she wants for Christmas she tells you "a baby," but I think that's an idea her brother gave her (though she is in fact getting a baby that I know she'll love).

She is now able to have full on conversations of back and forth dialogue where she understands what she is being told/asked and answers appropriately. Most of her phrases are between 4-7 words now and it seems like she is talking more every day. I keep telling myself that I need to get her little voice recorded more often because she'll be out of this phase so quickly.

(These might be my favorite pictures of her ever.)

This morning George came into our bedroom after he woke up. I had just slipped back into bed after getting home from the gym and showering so I smiled at him and motioned for him to come join me. He walked over to my bedside, bent down and gave me a big kiss on the lips before turning around to go to the bathroom. It melts me so much that that is who this boy is. He is so tender, so affectionate, so dear, and it is just so naturally who he is. My family watched our kids last night while J and I attended a party and my mom reported that they had watched John's and my wedding video and George could not stop kissing the TV screen whenever I came on. (She also mentioned that Pearl screamed and sobbed every time she saw me in the video because she wanted me. So nice to be so loved :).)

Pearl has been attending nursery at church for a few months now. She was slightly hesitant at first, but after a few minutes of John or me waiting with her she would warm up and get playing with the other kids and we could leave. Now one of the nursery workers (a charming old grandpa) comes and takes her out of my arms immediately after Sacrament meeting and Pea happily goes right with him into nursery. We periodically go check in on her, but she is always fine and happy. Hooray for being able to sit through Sunday School and Relief Society lessons.

Last week one of our chickens (Willa) was getting pecked by the others and was bleeding and not doing well. George was very concerned about her and as we were driving home from my parents' house to check on her we heard George in the back seat praying to Heavenly Father that she wouldn't be dead when we got home. We went into the backyard to find Willa doing better and George said, "Sometimes prayers come true, huh?"

(Here are a few of the photos of them in their church clothes)

To finish up tonight I want to briefly mention how grateful we feel as a little family for the many ways that blessings have been poured out upon us recently. We are in the middle of making some very big decisions for our family about where we want to end up next year as John begins his PhD program and we have felt so guided and directed throughout the whole process. Part of the process began a couple of months ago when we made the decision that John should quit his early morning job at UPS. This was a leap of faith for us in many ways and I struggled to know if we would be able to really make it without the benefits and security that the job provided for us. It truly has been humbling for us to see how God's Hand has been evident in the details of our family throughout these past couple of months. From unexpected envelopes of money on our door to extended insurance benefits that we didn't know about, we have had countless confirmations that if we try our best to follow the spirit and to be in tune with what God's will for our family may be, things will work out and we will be happy. I feel overwhelmed when I take time to really think about how immeasurably we've been blessed. I am so grateful this Christmas season for our Savior and for my personal faith in Him. I don't just have blind faith and I don't always feel so certain about everything, but I have had enough personal experience with really trying hard to seek God's will for me and then being blessed so abundantly as I make those decisions that I am certain of His influence in my life and I am certain that He loves His children. I feel grateful to celebrate His birth, life, and atonement this weekend.

Merry Christmas, dear friends!

the fall i was going for (mostly)

2011-12-14T23:37:00.000-07:00

I have to purge my mind of the guilt from not posting these photos. There are lots. Just so you know.

We spent a lovely fall day up at John's grandparents' cabin in Midway clear back in October. Yes, I'm going back there (not to worry, I'll be re-visiting summer once Christmas is over). I brought the camera along and snapped a few photos.

This was only a couple of months ago and already she seems so much bigger to me now than she was then. Someone get me a new baby. Mine is gone.

Lisa and I were laughing about how perfectly Pearl decided to pose with her little leaf. Yes little lady, just hold that fall leaf up in the air, twirl it around daintily and beam at it for an extended period of time so I can take your picture.

Loved that leaf-littered path.

Here are my children sitting nicely on a rock:

And here they are making out on the rock:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: kissing is serious business in this family.

I just like these two people so so much.

Someone (maybe Lisa?) demanded the camera so that she could snap a shot of our family. I wish I could love this picture but I totally look like I have a horrific bowl-cut going on with my hair so it's a little hard. I am trying though because I really love it of the other, normal hair-styled members of my family.

To wrap a little bow on my Fall posts (ah! I haven't posted about Halloween! Maybe I won't?) I'll finish off with a plethora of photos from an afternoon that we spent at our neighborhood park just a few weeks ago. The weather was starting to get nippy, but it was the definite space of Fall before Winter. I had not planned on taking many photos and only brought the camera along as an afterthought. I had planned to read a book and lounge while the kids played but those darn leaves drew me in. Also, George and Pearl were being so cute and it is a crime to ignore cuteness when you have a camera in tow to capture the moments. So basically my book sat on a bench by itself the whole time.

I love G's face in this first shot. A little bit smirky, a little bit mischief, a little bit sweet.

Pearl is so easy to take pictures of when she will actually cooperate because of those big eyes. And those big teeth. Oh how I love those teeth.

"Saucy minx" is a new phrase that Pearl has been spouting out lately. Because she hears me call her that frequently.

"Hey kids! Come lay in these leaves and let me drop some down on your faces! Sounds fun, right?"

Haha, this one of them with matching leaves covering their mouths is funny to me. George was doing that on his own so I told Pearl to do it as well.

These were ones they threw on themselves :).

They wanted me to bury them with leaves. So I did.

George was loving riding his bike through the leaves to make them crunch and break apart. And Pearl's little face is so funny to me, flinching away from a handful of leaves thrown her way (thank you, George).

Leaf-littered paths seem to be a theme in this post, no?

Pearl looks so concerned in this one.

Look at all those leaves! We were lucky to catch them before the clean-up guys came to blow them away.

After sufficient time frolicking and laying in leaves we made our way back to the playground. I tried to entice them over to the slides so that I could sit down and read, but they insisted on playing on this big cement wall that I was sure Pearl was going to fall off of. So I stayed close by. It worked out because I got a few pictures with those barren tree branches in the background that I ended up really liking.

Aren't those branches cool? I was really enjoying them. (As you can see.)

They were pretending and playing so well together. I was spying on them through this random cut-out in the wall.

I mostly included this because that first picture cracks me up. I so love how George has Pearl captured and distressed with a simple stick to her hood. And oh his smirk. He doesn't typically tease (in fact, he usually hates teasing/being teased), but when he does it is good.

I love her little toddler legs negotiating those stairs.

We finally did make it back to the playground, but the light was almost gone so I only snapped a few pictures.

I love his handsome face so much.

And her bright, sweet face, too.

And finally, a token shot of the leaves because they are pretty. And because I like that Pearl is crying in the background.

Whew. Now I can post about winter/Christmas activities without all the guilt :).

fall photo flop

2011-12-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

I am not sure why, but I am sort of attached to the idea of getting some "Fall Photos" of my kids. I am drawn in by the loveliness of colorful, crunchy leaves, maybe. For whatever reason, I have taken some of my favorite photos of my children in the fall (I've done it every year since G was born), and I was determined to keep this tradition going.

Well.

Doesn't this picture just scream, "Fall is so beautiful! We are a happy family! We love each other!"?

No?

What about this one?

Hmm. Not so much? Maybe this?

Hahaha, oh George, you are killing me. It's nice that I can laugh about this now because let me assure you that I wasn't exactly laughing at the time.

The story is this: It was a pretty Fall day. A bit chilly, but I didn't know how many more days we'd have with leaves and no snow, so when I had an open afternoon I decided to quickly rush the kids over to the park to snap a few pictures. Pearl was already wearing something that I thought was fine for the pictures, but I needed George to change because he had a Superman shirt on that had short sleeves. Plus, Superman wasn't exactly the look I was going for.

George was not happy about having to change his shirt. I mean, he really wasn't happy. I can almost always reason with him, and he honestly never throws tantrums. But he was unhappy about changing his shirt and he let me know it. We sort of worked it out (or so I thought) and I told him that I would just take a couple of pictures with him in the shirt I wanted and then he could put his Superman shirt back on. There weren't any tears, and only mild protests continued, so we forged on to the park. I even sang some of my best Michael Jackson to George in the car to get him to crack a smile. It only sort of worked.

We got to the park and I sat the kids down in some leaves by a tree. I backed away to start snapping like normal and noticed that George would NOT wipe the tormented expression off of his face. You guys, I take a lot of pictures of that boy. I have NEVER not been able to get him to cooperate even for just one or two shots. He wasn't budging. I started out being nice, tried getting silly, and then got frustrated. I went over to him and firmly held his arms so he would look at me in the eyes. He pulled his arms away in rebellion and accidentally smacked Pearl (who was sweetly and perfectly sitting next to him) in the face. She started to cry and I yelled at George and picked up Pearl. I almost never yell at him and rarely even raise my voice at him, so this really hurt his feelings and he lost it and began sobbing. I calmed Pearl down and then attempted another conversation with George, but he was still pretty heartbroken. He just kept saying, "You hurt my feeeeelinnngssss!" The first picture on this post was snapped at this point. Oh the drama of it all. This one was right after Pearl had calmed down. You can still see the remnants of her tears.

He did finally calm down but he continued to really have difficulty putting on a happy face. He was seriously cracking me up though because he was really in a bad mood and did NOT want to appear happy, but he knew I meant business. So he'd be like this one second:

And then I'd pull out my youhadbetterlistentomeNOW voice and he'd instantly do this:

Seriously!

It was honestly hysterical how fast he could pull out that smile for one photo and then put it right back away. Like so:

Oh, the grumpiness, little George. Pearl was happy though.

This is a bad picture of Pearl, but I have to post it because George had just been scowling ferociously one second earlier (the third picture from the top was taken moments before this one), and then magically did this when the threatening voice came out:

I totally felt for him. I know what it is like to just be in a grumpy mood and it is lame to have to suck up your pride and slap on a happy face. I sort of feel bad that the whole thing unfolded that way because it really was my fault initially. I shouldn't have made an issue over the shirt and I should have fed him some dinner before we left. He was hungry and his autonomy and power had been totally taken away (I hadn't tried to do that, but looking back I can totally see how he felt), and I was really sorry about that. I took a minute and had a meaningful conversation with him and apologized for what had happened. I didn't excuse his naughty behavior and he said he was sorry, too. We hugged and he smiled a real, unforced, un-coerced smile. As you can see, he had already put his Superman shirt on (though that hadn't really done anything to help his mood up to that point, and yep, count it up, that is 5 different shades of blue he is rocking).

By this time the light was almost totally gone. I took a few more photos of my now happy children and we played in the leaves (until Pearl fell down and skinned her hands, but that's neither here nor there). I didn't get any Fall Photos that I really liked, but here are some of the better ones. (By the way, who is Pearl's mother and why didn't she do her hair before these pictures? Not sure.)

This is probably my favorite one of the bunch.

I think some of these could have turned out okay had George been cooperative from the beginning and the light not faded so fast. It was just getting so dark.

Oh look, happy children playing together! Weird!

He's a sweet, smiling boy most of the time. Just don't mess with his Superman shirt.

I was actually able to get some more Fall Photos of my kids on a different day completely accidentally. Maybe it was the fact that they were unintentional that made them turn out so much better. I'll post those next.

snowy update

2011-11-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

When I get behind on blogging I feel like the journaling and writing get neglected most. I get anxious to catch up and feverishly try to plug away at posts that are mostly pictures with a few sentences of caption. I'm not really a fan of that. I want details and stories recorded. I want feelings expressed in words that I can re-read at a later date. I want memories described in text. I love pictures as much as anyone (we all know that), but I want to write about the details that pictures miss. Someday I want my children to be able to read about the days of their childhood from the words of their mother. So here is a start at what I hope will become a much more consistent part of this space. (Along with some pictures, naturally. These are from the first snowfall of the year that came last Saturday. George woke us up with shrieks of, "It SNOWED! Can we go outside and build a snowman?!" We bundled up and quickly found that one child had a snowsuit that was getting too little, and the other had a snowsuit that was still far too big. Oops. The kids had so much fun, though, and it was especially memorable because it was Pearl's first experience with really playing in snow.)

We have fallen into a pretty good weekly rhythm that we can count on, and, though I am totally a free-spirited polychronic (also described here) party girl at heart, I am grateful for the structure that we have in place to build our days around. Since our outside running weather is gone, a few friends and I have been going to the gym together at 6:00 AM. I get home around 7:15 or so and get myself and the kids ready for school. Three mornings (8:30-12:30) a week (Tuesday-Thursday) all three of us go together to school where George is in his own early childhood Montessori class (with a teacher that I adore), and Pearl is with me in a class where I am the special educator. It is a pretty incredible blessing to our family the way this whole me still teaching thing has worked out, and I am so grateful that we get to all be at the same place together. On Mondays just George goes to school for the morning, and Pearl and I get to spend a few hours just the two of us. George loves school and I love that I have some built-in time that is just for my girl. On Fridays we are free to go whichever way the wind blows us. We can often be found at our neighborhood park, Target, my parents' house, a friend's house, the zoo, or the mall. Sometimes we stay home and do projects or play with cars, "guys," baby dolls, or markers (Pearl's current favorite thing). We have a relatively simple life (though it doesn't always feel that way), and I am so grateful to spend my days with the people I love most. One day I'm sure I'll come back here to read this and long for the simplicity and beauty of this time. That's why I wanted to quickly jot it down.

Speaking of school, both children are really thriving and learning so much. I didn't anticipate that with Pearl (as I would have NEVER put her in a preschool at her age under normal circumstances-- it just works out that she gets to be there because I am there), but holy cow, I am constantly amazed at the way those few hours a week manifest themselves throughout the rest of our days. She loves cleaning up, and will often put her toys and things back where they go without being asked (this is because she has learned to clean up and restore the works at school when she is finished with them). She stacks things constantly (thank you, pink tower), and tries to roll up dish towels while doing the "pat pat pat" on both sides to keep it neat (the kids either place their works on tables or little work mats that they roll out and roll back up themselves while singing, "Roll up the mat, tap tap tap." It really is so darling.). She has learned the routine at school so well and is usually the first little student to be in her "ready body on line" when she hears the clean-up chimes. Most of the other children in the class are much older than her, but there is one other little boy that is just two weeks younger (he is the son of one of the other teachers). He is bigger than Pearl, but for some reason (probably because he is just beginning to talk and still throws little tantrums when his mama takes something away :)) Pearl insists on calling him "Baby." She calls the other students by their names, and she knows his name, but she is convinced that he is a baby that needs her mothering. If he cries she'll go pat and hug him and say, "Oh, Baby cry. Baby sad." A few weeks ago, she noticed that he had a runny nose, and without missing a beat, rushed over to the "Care of Self" area in the classroom, grabbed a tissue, wadded it up, and went over and wiped his nose while noncholantly commenting to herself, "Baby. Nose." and then threw it away in the trash. She is a confident, assertive, funny, sometimes demanding, little mother-er, and I super love that about her.

George is also a happy little student. He loves math and numbers and is starting to work on place value and basic addition. He knows almost all his letter names and sounds, though his teachers report that they have to really entice him to work in the language/reading area. He is happier in math or practical life. John and I have talked with him about how good it feels to choose and complete some more challenging works because he seems (like most people, probably) to prefer to work in his comfort zone. He'd also almost ALWAYS prefer to work with a friend. His teachers are constantly commenting about how social he is, which occasionally results in a little visit to the "Watching Chair" until he is ready to sit back on line without talking to his friends, but most often is such a dear quality in our boy. We just had parent/teacher conferences and one of the things that his teacher wrote about him was that he is well-liked by all of his classmates and an honest leader in the class community (the honest part is because if he does something he knows he shouldn't do he will readily admit guilt and tell the teacher the whole story which kind of cracks me up).

On Monday I got to accompany George and his class on a field trip to a local farm. When I walked into the classroom to get the students I'd be chaperoning, one of his teachers ran up to me giggling. She had a funny story to tell me about George, she said (this is a regular occurence). When his teachers told George that morning that he would get to be in the group with me as the leader he proudly and joyfully exclaimed, "Yeah!! 'Cause she's my BFF!!" They cracked up laughing. Oh little boy, we really are BFFs, and I am so glad.

I've had to engage in a couple of conversations over the past two weeks that I wasn't expecting to be having so soon with George. They both happened in the car when we've had quiet time to think and talk. I was just driving along minding my own business when George asked, "Mom, how are the babies in the girls' tummies?" I wasn't sure what his question was exactly so I asked for clarification. He said, "When they are mommies their tummies get big with the babies, but when they are girls, their tummies are still small. How are the babies in there?" I explained that babies are not just chilling in little girls' tummies and that when girls get older and are grown up then the babies can get in the tummies. The lightbulb moment came for him, plus an additional, lovely little question: "OH! So the babies aren't in the tummies when the girls are little! So how do the babies get into the grown-up girls' tummies?" I quickly tried to gather together the bits and pieces of my answer for him so that he was given correct information, but without giving him too much information. This isn't a conversation that I am scared to have candidly with him, but I did feel like Holy cow, he is four. He doesn't need details. Edit, Liz, edit. So I edited and ended up saying that the mommy and the daddy create a new little baby together with Heavenly Father. He was totally satisfied with that answer and didn't ask any further questions about what exactly that creative process entails :). In fact, I even said (mostly for fun so John could be in on this too), "George, why don't you ask Daddy that question when we get home," to which he replied, "No Mom, that's silly, we already know the answer. They get created!" So there was that. And then there was the time last week when he asked me (again in the car), "Mom, when do girls get the breasts?" (pronounced "breast-ez," naturally). So we had a conversation about puberty and how boys get hair on their faces and girls get breasts when they are 12 or 13 or 14. He was like, "Yeah, I'll get hair on my face. Probably when I am five." No sir, not you will not. We will delay those milestones as long as possibly, pretty please.

Somehow (I think from Veggietales, actually) George learned about castor oil and has referred to it a couple of times when describing how something disgusting tasted. It's a little funny to hear your four-year-old be like, "Ewww! That is so yucky! It tastes like castor oil!" And then this past week I got some food poisoning and threw up and when George heard about it he said, "Oh, probably because you ate some castor oil, huh Mom."

(She wouldn't keep her mittens on but then got so sad when her hands got frozen)

George got sick about a month ago and was up all night throwing up. In the morning when he woke up I sat down by him at his make-shift bed on our bedroom floor and asked, "How are you feeling, buddy?" He looked up at me and gave a sweet smile and said, "Like I love you." Not exactly the answer I was expecting, but wow does that little tender boy know how to melt his mama's heart. I love him so much.

(George had just thrown a snowball at Pearl here)

Pearl is seriously a little fireball of joy and delight. Yesterday John and I were talking about how completely adorable she is (something that we discuss pretty much daily) and John asked, "Does she just have an enormous personality?" because there really isn't any other way to describe her. Enormous, happy, loving, spicy, independent. Her personality cannot be contained in adjectives.

One of the most precious things about Pearl to me is how much she still loves to nurse, and I am not so sure she'll be ready to give it up any time soon. My plan right now is to wean right around 2 (which is what George did), but I am wondering if she'll be as ready then as George was. I am giving myself permission to extend that if I feel like it isn't going to be a painless transition for her. I am a big believer in child-led weaning, and while I think I can facilitate that a little bit to meet my needs, I am not going to take something away from her that she isn't ready to be finished with. I adore our nursing time. I feel so blessed that I have been able to spend so many hours giving my children this part of me. I will never regret nursing for longer, but I know I'd regret it if I stopped too soon.

Pearl's favorite things (besides her Mama, Daddy, and Brother (who she still refers to as "Bruh Bruh")) are babies and animals. She is obsessed with babies. Mostly real ones (she cannot keep her hands off of the babies at church and her new baby cousin), but dolls will also do. She is especially in heaven if she can push them around in some kind of stroller or shopping cart. She thinks she's a grown-up. She also loves animals, which is fun because George really doesn't care for them much. He doesn't like the way dogs smell and just isn't really a pet lover (aside from our chickens-- he really loves them). But Pearl is another story. She adores my parents' dog, and cannot get enough of looking at animals in books. She tried to steal a horse calendar from a mall kiosk and cried wildly when I made her put it back, "Fosie! Fosie! Want fosie book!" (Fosie is horsey, in case you don't speak Baby.)

(These two pictures are my favorite ones from the day)

George is so patient with Pearl. She steals his toys and messes up the "guys" that he spends hours arranging, and he will just calmly redirect her in his little sing-songy voice, "No no, Pearlie. These are Bruh Bruh's. You go in your room and play with your toys." He does occasionally get frustrated with her persistence (she really loves taking his toys from him and running away while squealing with delight), but he is almost always just so gentle and patient even then. And even though Pearl does love to torment him with things like that, she also just really adores him and wants to be around him all the time. George is a back-scratch lover and can often be found begging anyone nearby to scratch his back. Pearl will always do it for him and it is so heartwarming to walk into the bedroom where they are playing and see George splayed out on his stomach, his shirt pulled up, Pearl leaning over him tickling his back with her small fingers.

This post has been all over the place and got really long. I wanted to document these stories and feelings though, and mostly just want it recorded that I am in love with my little family. I had to get a prescription filled at the pharmacy the other day and when I was told it would take 30 minutes, I decided to take a walk up the street with my two little tagalongs. We ended up at Smashburger at George's request and as we sat there together eating fries and sipping root beer I marveled at how blessed I felt. Even running errands with those two little people turns into a party. There are big moments of overwhelming joy as a parent, and then there are little ones. Little ones that happen over and over again throughout the hours and days that you spend with them, even when (maybe especially when) you were just supposed to be running a pesky errand to the pharmacy.

It's a happy life, this one.

the generalization of men with beards

2011-11-08T16:31:00.001-07:00

Pearl just saw this photo (of author Mo Willems):

and declared, "Birdie, Jesus, head. Tweet tweet."

Made me pretty happy, thought I'd pass it along :).

Real post coming soon.

(photo source)

5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate

2011-11-02T00:14:00.000-06:00

I am determined to keep plugging away at this thing despite my lack of blogging mojo lately. I will get back to Costa Rica (mainly for my siblings and mother who harass me about it regularly), but tonight we'll keep it a little more current.

We have explored a different pumpkin patch every year since George was tiny (our first one was when he was 3 months old, and we've been to a new one each fall since then), and the one this year was really lovely. We were the only people out there for most of the time, and there were hundreds of pretty pumpkins for the picking.

Pearl and George wandered around checking out the pumpkins for a bit before deciding on the ones they wanted. George made good use of his feet to flip pumpkins over and check out the other sides.

There was some pretty golden light for about 4 minutes right when we arrived, and I was able to snap a few of my favorite photos ever of my little Pea. I just love her in these.

George found the pumpkin he wanted (which, upon kicking over, was discovered to have a completely flat back but he wanted it anyway-- or maybe, I'm just realizing this now, he wanted a pumpkin with a flat back and that is why he was kicking them all over and checking them in the first place??) and he proudly rolled it down the path towards our car.

He enlisted his sister's help.

And, naturally, she took charge just as fast as she could. (She doesn't yet know how lucky she is to have such a mild, gentle, kind soul for a big brother.)

He just nicely held her hand while she took over his hand-picked pumpkin. I really, really love these two people and all of the different things that make them just the way they are.

Happily for George, Mama stepped in and redirected Pearl towards some new pumpkins that were a little more her size.

She didn't need pumpkins to distract her once she spotted the horses. She screamed "Forsies! Forsies!" and made a beeline for them. She kept tripping over pumpkin vines so I gave her a little lift.

I love how you can tell that it was freezing outside by Pearl's watery eyes and red nose.

A closer look at that chilly little face.

We loaded our pumpkins into the wheelbarrow and let G and P go for a little ride on top of them. They thought it was the greatest thing ever.

A couple more pictures (including a rare shot of all 4 of us-- thank you, Kind Pumpkin Farmer!), and then we ran to the car and cranked up the heat :).

And what, you may ask, did we do with our pumpkins? Well, let me show you.

We scraped out the gooey guts. (Or "endocarp," as George will quickly inform you.)

Pearl got to work making sure George's was completely seed-free, bless her heart.

I love how huge the pumpkin looks compared to her head at this angle.

We drew on a scary face with the ever-important "spikey mouth."

We sliced off the tops while people watched in fear that we might slice off our hands (we didn't, and I am a perfectly competent pumpkin cutter, thankyouverymuchMomandJohn). And Pearl ate pizza.

We carved. George was very serious about this part.

I love how focused he looks in these.

He cut out that nose all by himself and would've done the rest alone too, if I had been willing to extend our pumpkin carving time by about 16 hours :).

Pearl thought carving looked like fun so she helped herself to a recently sharpened kitchen knife and the side of George's pumpkin. I didn't mind. My mom, however, did, and in case you were worried, the knife was taken away right after these pictures were snapped.

Pearl recovered quickly when she found another sharp object to hold. I am with her-- if her brother can do it, so can she, right? :)

Madeline broke out the power tools for her pumpkin.

John carved a happy pumpkin face for Pearl.

She thought he looked hungry. How about a carrot stick? No? Perhaps some pizza?

When the pumpkin didn't bite, she fed the pizza to Daddy and herself, respectively.

George and me smiling after the carving was complete.

The finished products (L to R: my mom's, Mady's, mine, Pearl's, and George's):

A closer look.

Pearl came out by the pumpkins and wanted a light. We gave her one and I told her to put it up by her eyes in the hope that it might illuminate her face enough to get it in the picture. This picture cracks me up because of how obedient she was being-- RIGHT by her eyes :).

She was being so silly and crazy right there with the pumpkins, but we couldn't really tell what she was doing because it was so dark. I turned on my flash to see if I could capture any of it. She is so entertaining. (By the way, how cool is that pumpkin on the left? My mom found that somewhere and I have coveted it all season long.)

Madeline came out and she and Pearl had fun playing with the lights.

I sort of can't believe that we just barely carved these and now it's already time to throw them away and start anticipating all of the other fall/winter holidays that I love. This fall went by so fast for me, and though I'm not quite ready for winter yet, I was super happy that Mother Nature gave us one more blissful fall day for Halloween yesterday. It was so beautiful outside that I even took George and Pearl over to a park for some pictures in their "inside costumes." (I almost always plan for a second costume that is plenty warm for trick-or-treating if the other costume they are wearing for all of the school/church parties isn't going to keep them warm enough.)

Here is a little peak of my Zookeeper and Garden Gnome.

More (lots more) to come.

costa rice: days 4 & 5 (a little rainforest, please)

2011-10-17T22:50:00.000-06:00

On our 4th day in Costa Rica we set out early (really, it was around 5:00 AM) to make the 4 hour drive up to the town of Monteverde to spend a couple of days in the rain and cloud forests there. Our kids were so tired and I expected them both to sleep for a good portion of the drive. George met those expectations. His sister, however, decided she'd rather read science books and enjoy the views the entire time. She finally fell asleep for about the last hour of the ride. Just in time to ruin her afternoon nap :).

But with the incredible sights to see I guess I can't really blame her for not wanting to miss it. We couldn't get over how beautiful it all was. We drove on a highway for a little bit at first, but then the rest was little winding roads up mountainsides through rainforest. The roads started out paved (but still very narrow) like this (that is my parents' rental car in front of us):

After about an hour on that road we graduated to a dirt road with many, MANY potholes. It was an adventure. We had been warned not to attempt this route without a 4-wheel drive vehicle, and we were glad we had heeded the warnings and gone with bigger SUVs.

This was such a lovely way to see more of this remarkably beautiful country, and the 4 hours went by quickly because the drive was so pleasant (and bumpy-- it was like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland :)). I kept snapping photos out of the window as we drove because I wanted to remember those sights. Here are a few:

See all those lovely houses down there in that little valley? Can you even imagine living somewhere like that? So beautiful.

The rows of plants off in the distance we decided were coffee plants, I believe.

Here's a closer look at those pretty rows of coffee.

We drove through a few really lovely, tiny towns like this one. It was fun to see the schoolchildren out playing soccer during their recess.

I have a strange affinity for laundry that is hung out to dry and we passed dozens of lines like this one. I look at this and wonder about the people who wear those clothes-- what their lives are like, what they do for work, if they have children. John and I kept commenting about what it would be like to relocate to a home like the ones we drove past. I am certain we'd be in for some culture shock, and I'm certain we'd miss many of the conveniences that we're used to (like dryers), but in so many ways it is a lifestyle to be envious of. Hard work, hard play, not a lot of distractions. I understand that I am totally generalizing (and perhaps romanticizing) here, but the point is just that I found a lot of beauty in the simplicity of the homes and the lack of excess, and actually felt some yearning to find a way for my children to experience their youth in a place that allows for those things (hard work, hard play, few distractions). It seems so hard to come by where we are at right now.

After we arrived in Monteverde and checked into our little hotel, we headed out for some adventures in the rain/cloud forests. We started off with some ziplining (since George and Pearl were too little for this John stayed with them and didn't come on this part).

Here is my mom getting ready to take off while my little sisters watch from the stairs.

Ben looks slightly miserable, but I'm pretty sure that's just because it would be far too much work to actually look like he was enjoying something for a camera, and not because it wasn't actually fun.

See? Here we all are happily smiling for the camera as we walked through the rainforest to the next set of ziplines and there is Ben back there looking like a serial killer. He's not. Pretty sure. (I'm making this sound like he is always angry which is pretty much the opposite of the truth. He is always laughing and teasing. He just refuses to be a normal person in a picture.)

Another walk to the next set of zips.

The one and only picture of me ziplining from the day.

There were a couple of ziplines that were super long and you could choose to ride with someone. This was so great because you were zipping along forever and you could have someone up there to enjoy it with. Here are my dad and Rachel coming down.

Here are Adam and Madeline. We were chuckling as they came zipping in about Mady's long giraffe (draf) legs hanging straight down for miles. It's just because we're all jealous, Mad.

You weren't supposed to take photos while actually ziplining, but this one was so long and I was with Hannah (I always feel more rebellious when someone is around to witness it), so I snapped this shot. You can really get a feel for what it was like to float along above the canopy of trees in the rainforest. It was so much fun.

After ziplining (which spellcheck keeps telling me isn't a word), we went back to rescue John from our rowdy and tired children. Pearl pretty much fell asleep instantly when I put her in the baby carrier and nursed her. See her little legs dangling down there? We donned our rain gear and got ready to go walk along the bridges through the rain/cloud forest.

One of the many bridges we walked across. It was pretty dreamy.

I love this picture. My dad was pointing out in the distance to where you could see one of the ziplines that we had just been on way above the trees, and I just think the clouds above us and the rainforest below us look so beautiful.

George thought this was pretty exciting. He was a trooper, too. When we set out on this little adventure we had NO idea how long it was going to take. Let's just say that by about the 10th bridge (with good hiking distance between them) we were all ready to call it a day :).

Our little family. Pearl is in there asleep under my poncho.

We walked for so long that eventually Pearl woke up...

...and George really needed to go potty. Pretty sure this will be the coolest place he's ever peed for his entire life. This picture makes me laugh so hard. I added a modesty patch to keep things PG-13. That's a pretty impressive little stream, if I do say so myself :).

That night we stayed at a very quaint hotel in the rainforest that was first built by Quaker families who had settled in Costa Rica to avoid persecution. We had cozy rooms with windows that looked out into the rainforest for miles. There weren't any portable cribs to rent from the front desk like at most hotels, so we got a little creative in making Pearl somewhere to sleep. Happily our hotel room had three big beds in it (it was almost like a cabin or something), so we had plenty of space to get her all set up. We re-arranged some of the furniture, pushed the bed against the wall, and added our suitcases around as a border to keep her from falling, and voila, who needs a crib? See her slumbering over there in the corner?

The next morning we set out for a bit more of an adrenaline rush. My mom wasn't interested in huge freefalls, so she stayed at the hotel with my kids while the rest of us went to a different place for some higher adventure ziplining and freefalling. I decided not to bring my camera along this time, so these pictures were from Hannah's (much smaller and therefore more zipline-friendly) camera. There was one zipline that you could clip in so that you flew down like Superman. It was super fun and only a little bit alarming to come flying down headfirst at lightning speed towards trees and trust that they would stop you before you crashed into the large tree at the end. From top left to right, the pictures are of me, Mady, Dad, Adam, Ben, and Hannah. John did this too, but he went first with the camera to take these pictures. And Rachel was too small to fly like Superman so she just zipped down normally.

After doing about a thousand speedy ziplines, the finale was a gigantic Tarzan swing that boasted a 150 ft. free fall. It was seriously intense. So much fun. Here is my dad walking the plank. You got to the end of that platform, some guys quickly hooked you up to a couple of ropes, and then they push you off. It was crazy.

Here are the rest of us swinging back down to earth after we had jumped. (John did this too, but for some reason he ended up going at the beginning to take photos again. Why didn't that occur to me at the time?)

We loved the two days we spend in Monteverde. It was such a perfect way to break up our days at the beach and do something different. John was loving all of the insects of course, and only wished he had some vials and alcohol to bring them home in :). Here are a few pictures he took of the bugs. (There are dozens more, but I figured most people who read my blog aren't here to see pictures of insects.)

I hate spiders, but these were kinda cool guys. Like a Daddy Longlegs on steroids.

We headed home (i.e.: back to our hotel on the beach) in a ferocious downpour which caused caused some of us a little concern about the safety of the dirt roads we'd be driving down, but we were fine.

And this time the kids slept almost the whole way :).

Back to the beach next!

return on our investment

2011-10-04T21:01:00.000-06:00

I am interrupting my s l o w Costa Rican recap to bring you a chicken update. We have eggs! We actually have for about 3 weeks now, and it is so exciting. One of our most favorite things to do in the evening is go out and collect the eggs-- even though we can pretty much guarantee a few eggs a day (usually around 5 to 7), it is still pretty thrilling every day to go out and actually have a bundle of eggs to bring in. Our kids love it, too, and we cannot walk out the door without Pearl asking "Chicken? Egg?" and lunging out of my arms toward the backyard to go see for herself. George shed some tears on the first day that we got eggs once he realized that these eggs were going to be eaten rather than hatched-- he had been thinking all along that we would be getting eggs that had baby chicks in them to hatch like we did last time. He was pretty disappointed, poor little kid. I felt bad that we hadn't thought to make that clear to him and had broken his heart like that-- he really was so sad about it. He still sometimes says that he wishes our eggs had baby chicks in them, but he's not sad about it anymore, and he loves going out to get the eggs and bringing them in to be washed and put away (both chores that he completes happily).

By the way, we absolutely LOVE having our chickens. They come running to us when we walk in the backyard and they kind of hunch down when we reach out for them so we can pick them up. They are seriously the best pet in the history of earth: they live outside, they are so low maintenance, they let us hold them when we want to, but we don't have to attend to them like other kinds of pets, and hello, they give us food! I'd like to see your dog do that :).

Here are the kids on the morning that we found our first eggs.

And here is a shot of a carton that we filled up just today. We hadn't gotten the eggs yesterday, so when we went out this evening there were 14! We were laughing as John just kept pulling egg after egg out of their little nest. I love the different eggs from the different breeds (the brown/tan ones are from our Plymouth Barred Rocks (Luigi and Blue), Rhode Island Reds (Maude and Spot) , and Sexlinks (Leapy and Colorful), the white ones are from our Leghorns (Strongfluff and Willa), and the blueish green ones are from our Americana (Bevisa)). I'm telling you, go build yourself a coop and get some chickens-- you'll love it!

costa rica: day 3 (happy b-day to me)

2011-10-02T21:48:00.000-06:00

Our third day in Costa Rica also happened to be my 27th birthday (how lucky am I?), and it was such a happy day.

You know the day is going to be awesome when it starts out with your two brothers smuggling large numbers of towels out of the hotel :).

We spent the morning at Flamingo Beach and we were pretty much the only people there (except for that one guy off in the corner having a solo yoga session; he left once we got there, I'm sure because our rowdy crew started throwing his chakras all off balance). It really was so picturesque and serene. Here is a wide angle shot of various family members spread out doing their thing on the beach and in the water.

I basically never held or took care of my children on this trip (except for at night when Pearl decided to be a newborn again). I adored having my kids there experiencing and seeing all these new things alongside us, but it was also so glorious to be able to really r e l a x (in a way that isn't possible when you are chasing around two active children) because my family members just jumped in and took care of my babies so often. Traveling with extended family is seriously underrated. Best of both worlds, for sure. Here is Rach taking Pea out for a stroll in the pretty water.

Ben and I were so! happy! to! be! there! (Rachel holding Pearl, and George and Madeline in the background.)

Pearl must've learned a few moves from the yoga man before he left. Here she is with some fine down dog form.

I like this baby and her unruly, wispy, flippy hair. Lots and lots.

John caught another crab. This one was bigger and more threatening than the tiny one that pinched Pearl, and she knew better than to pet him. I was actually surprised she wanted to get this close after how mad she had been the day before.

I married a pirate. A very sweaty pirate.

Remember when I said that we took lots of pictures of our toes? Yes, well, here are two more.

Pearl helped herself to a little personal ocean-bath, so we decided to get her out of her salt-water filled diaper and let her play.

Her little squished bottom makes me laugh.

After a couple of hours on the beach we had to head into town to catch a sunset sailboat cruise thing that my dad had planned for us. Once we boarded the sailboat my first order of business was to get a certain little girl to sleep. She was happy to oblige. Tired baby.

We were riding out to a beautiful little cove with a reef for snorkeling which was about an hour away. While Pea slept everyone else enjoyed the ride.

It was such a fun thing to see some of Costa Rica from the water-- it is so beautiful!

Once we got out to the cove we ate a traditional Costa Rican dinner and then had a couple of hours to explore-- we swam, snorkeled, and kayaked.

Mom and Rach lookin' fine in their masks.

My dad offered to stay on the boat with my kids while John and I (and everyone else) went out snorkeling. When we got back George was chomping at the bit to get out into the water, so my dad took him out in the kayak.

Pearl had happily watched everyone out playing in the water...

...Until she saw George out in the kayak. Then she wanted in on the action. I rounded up a miniature lifejacket and sent her on her way. By this time George had decided the kayak wasn't as much fun as swimming, so he had jumped into the water, and I had to get John to snorkel on over to keep an eye on him.

There they all are, a little closer.

My happy, water-loving boys.

We loaded back onto the boat and began the ride home. For some reason things got a little crazy on the boat ride back. Mostly with my kids. They were being so wild. (Also with Hannah who decided to recklessly flirt with some Canadian college boys :).) Thankfully we had many people to help corral my children.

We tried to get a picture of our family, but as you can see, the kids were most uncooperative. I am blaming the Costa Rican food we had eaten for dinner.

This was the best we could do :).

We frequently made fun of Adam for bringing a book with him EVERYWHERE we went and reading it at pretty much any free second he could. We were laughing because John took this photo of all of us hanging out together at the front of the boat...

...and then he turned around and took this picture of Adam, book in hand, giving us a dirty look for laughing at him and his book-loving ways.

A couple of the calmer moments-- one of me with George (I love that he loves me):

And one of Daddy and his girl looking at the ocean.

And then one of Pearlie giving me a kiss. Oh, wait. Scratch that. This wasn't calm-- look at her! She was attacking me. We are serious about our kisses in this family.

Have I mentioned before that George is not shy? Well, he's not. Not at all. In fact, sometimes John and I cringe a little at the comfort level he has with complete strangers. He and one of the Costa Rican boat drivers became buddies. They turned the music up and had a serious dance party. We were all thoroughly entertained.

Then G's new buddy asked for him help driving the boat. George took his job seriously, and had to be redirected from time to time because he really wanted to turn that boat around.

Pearl got to help for a bit, too. I love her little hands all ready to go on that steering wheel.

This was billed as a "Sunset Cruise," but it was a pretty cloudy day so we didn't know if we'd really end up getting a sunset. The clouds parted just enough for a decent show as we were sailing back to shore, and though it wasn't the most spectacular sunset ever, it was still beautiful.

John took this one after we had walked back to shore.

It was such a full, fun day that most of the time I didn't even remember that it was my birthday. On our drive back to the hotel we decided to stop at Super Compro (our BFF-- we were there almost daily) and pick up a birthday cake to make it a legit birthday celebration. We chose some kind of concoction that was sort of like a giant tres leches, and I was officially declared 27 once my family sang "Happy Birthday" to me in the most horrific (seriously, my brothers were singing like injured cows) tune you can imagine. Just the way I like it :).

Rainforest is next. If I can find the motivation...

costa rica: days 1 & 2

2011-09-19T23:05:00.000-06:00

Oh Costa Rica Pictures, why are there so many of you? I am staying up past my bedtime (ha) tonight to get a few of these posted, mostly to satisfy the demands of an anonymous commenter (that I'm pretty sure is my little sister who just went away to college). I need to go on a blogging kick this week because I literally have dozens of posts in the works. I have been negligent in keeping caught up this summer. Let's get started.

Since a soccer tournament almost cancelled our Costa Rican vacation, it was fitting that a soccer tournament also make it so that we had to catch a flight at 1:00 AM instead of a time when normal people with small children get on airplanes. John and I put our kids to bed at 7:30 PM like usual, and then woke them up at 11:00 PM to head to the airport. It felt wrong, but also made it pretty magical for George. He thought it was awesome to be up in the middle of the night to get on an airplane. The kids were really superb travelers, for the most part. George was easy as pie. He just went with the flow; he slept in crazy, hunched over positions on hard armrests, and sat quietly reading books when he was awake. Pearl was a little more difficult to get back to sleep on that first flight, and it was a bit stressful since I was sitting with her next to slumbering strangers that I didn't want to drive crazy. After forcing her to nurse for about 20 minutes, she fell into a fitful sleep (she wanted to lay down and get comfy, and being curled up in my lap was less than ideal), but she slept and was quiet. I might have gotten 15? 20? minutes of sleep in there somewhere, but who cares, we were going to Costa Rica.

When we got to the airport in Atlanta it was around 6:30 AM, so we ate breakfast and then our entourage headed to our gate to hang out.

People who did not have small children to chase around (Adam, Ben, Hannah, Madeline, Rachel, Dad) made makeshift sleeping quarters on the airport floor to try to get some more rest. It was a little difficult with my two monkeys crawling all over everyone. Notice George peeking his head out of the middle of the chairs and Pearl over all up in Hannah's sleep space :).

Adam (not to be mistaken for a terrorist) slept, and Pearl looked out the windows at the airplanes.

Lots of people walked by and laughed at John sleeping underneath a row of chairs. That man can fall asleep anywhere.

The happiest thing happened on our flight from Atlanta to Costa Rica when we realized the plane was pretty empty and we could spread out. Pearl fell right asleep and slept for almost the whole 4 hours because she had so much room to lay down and roll over. John and George were across the aisle and it was the easiest with-children flight I've ever been on.

Stepping off of the airplane and immediately being enveloped by the warm, damp air of Costa Rica was the signal that our vacation had begun. Our first order of business (after getting the royal treatment and being escorted to the front of the customs line-- having small, unruly children really does pay off at times like that) was peeling Pearl's sticky, sweaty jammies (overnight flight, remember?) off of her body and putting her into something a little more weather-appropriate, right there in the middle of the tiny, outdoor Liberia airport.

We hopped into our rental cars, turned on the A/C, and headed towards the coast. Our drive was only about 70 km, which should have taken an hour or so (the roads are bumpy!), but ended up taking us closer to two. We took some pretty awesome scenic detours, but they were happy accidents because you never can see too much of a new, beautiful place. We should have realized that we were a little too off the beaten path when our path took us down windy, cavernous dirt roads that went in circles to tiny, lovely houses where the neighbors that had gathered outside all stopped their socializing to stare and giggle in our direction. Clearly large rental cars filled with white people were not the norm in those parts.

We finally did make it to our hotel. We stayed here, and let me just say, it was glorious. Between the gigantic pool and the ocean being just out the back door, we didn't even have to get in the car on some days. Here we are after our first night, doing some exploring around the hotel. We were happy to be there, can you tell?

Our first full day in Costa Rica was spent mostly hanging out at the beach. We made the drive into the nearest town (Tamarindo) to do some grocery shopping (why is it that even grocery shopping feels like a party when you are on vacation?) and get dinner, but other than that, we just played in the sand and waves all day. So happy. I love these handsome boys. George was in LOVE with the ocean. We had to drag him out of the water (which was seriously the temperature of a warm bath) at the end of the day.

Despite what it looks like in this picture, Pearl really loved the water, too. She was just ready for a nap at this point and was letting me know it. That was another lovely thing about this hotel being right on this beach; one of us could take Pearl back to the cool room for her naps and everyone else could stay out and play.

Adam gave himself an exfoliating mud treatment.

And then my kids followed suit.

And then George insisted on slapping some mud onto anyone and everyone who came near him. That is why my legs are muddy in this second picture.

John caught a little crab and was showing it to the kids while I snapped this photo. Who knew that at this same moment Pearl was also giving the crab a little pet and the crab would decide to give her a little pinch? Bad, bad parents.

Poor lil' thing. She was pretty sad about it all.

John tried to show her the crab again so that she wouldn't hold a grudge against the little pinchy guy forever, but look at that face. She is a tough sell.

A close-up of the mean guy himself.

My mom played with the kids in the water,

and on the shore.

Hannah, Ben, and John held hands and were awkward. No one knows why.

Cute little babes walked along beautiful beaches.

I did not plan for them to have sort of matching swimsuits, (really, Pea's is a hand-me-down and my mom bought George's), but you know that I loved the happy coincidence that it worked out to look like they went together.

We bought this really pretty blow-up lifejacket from the Super Compro there so that George could swim and play without us having to hold onto him the whole time. It was rather unsightly, but he LOVED it. He didn't want to take it off even when he didn't need it. So thumbs up for that!

After the entire afternoon in a plastic lifejacket, there were some chin-chaffing issues so the lifejacket was removed. George didn't let that stop him.

Do pictures of feet make you uncomfortable? If so, I am sorry. This is only one of at least 30 pictures that we took of our feet. As a special pre-vacation surprise, all of us girls went and got coordinating pedicures together. And that needed to be well-documented. These toes belong to Hannah, me, and my mom, respectively.

Lastly, I'll leave you with a series of photos of Ben just casually throwing down a backflip on the beach like it is totally normal to be able to do that.

There you have it! Our first day. Next up: my birthday, Costa Freakin' style.

do whatever i want day

2011-09-04T23:46:00.000-06:00

We had a big day on Wednesday. It was the day before George's first day back to school and I knew we needed to have a special day. I wanted us to just soak each other all in-- I wanted them (J, G, & P) to have all of me and I wanted to have all of them. I didn't have any real plans-- just to be together. That night after George had neatly laid out his school clothes and backpack for the next morning, I tucked him into bed with lots of kisses and a full heart. He was asleep quickly, but my mind didn't let me rest for awhile.

(it's a dark photo, but I had to take a picture because I love his clothes and backpack laid out on the floor. and i also love that he refuses to sleep under his covers because he doesn't like having to re-make his bed the next morning.)

I wanted to memorize our day.

We started off going to Provo with John. Like I said, I really wanted all of us to be together. John had a class in the morning, and then nothing else until later on that afternoon. We figured that if we went with him to Provo we could spend the majority of the day all together and just drop him off when he needed to be in class. While he went to a real fun class (ha, I believe it is called Biometry and Experimental Design), the kids and I explored campus. Pearl ran away and I sent George to retrieve her. Like usual.

Come back, Little Sister.

I love the vice grip that he has on her arm; she doesn't seem too pleased about it, however.

Our first stop was the BYU Bookstore. We looked at books and clothes. We followed Cosmo the Cougar's paw prints down the stairs to the kids' clothes while George creatively (and independently) started singing, "Follow the paw prints, follow the paw prints, follow the paw prints, don't go astray!" to the tune of the Primary song Follow the Prophet. We ended up at the candy counter where my kids wanted to park and stay awhile. And since it was "Do Whatever I Want Day" according to George, I let them both pick out a treat and bought 1/2 pound of each. At 9:00 in the morning. (If you start to twitch at the thought of kids eating lots of sugar you may just want to skip this post. Seriously. It's bad.)

Then we meandered through the Wilk to the Cougareat (warning: more sugar ahead). I have so many memories in these places, and it was fun to be there with my kids, with no pressure to rush off to a class or the stress of needing to study. We bought two donuts: sprinkles for George, and a giant glazed Y for Pearl (ahem, me). John met up with us here so we all sat down and shared bites together.

Pearl liked hugging hers more than she liked eating it. Don't worry, it didn't get wasted :).

She did, however, really like her brother's. Luckily he likes her so he shared.

When the donuts were gone we slowly made our way around campus to our car. It was fun to just walk along at the pace of little kids and look around. The kids alternated walking and riding on dad's shoulders.

Pearl loves her daddy. He gets way more cuddles than anyone else.

Walking to the car. If she looks like she has spunk it's because she does.

I really love BYUs campus. I am partial to my Salt Lake valley mountains, but I always find myself marveling over how majestic and beautiful the mountains surrounding campus are.

We left BYU and drove towards a toy store that I had sort of heard about this one time but didn't really know if it existed or where it was (if that sounds vague it's because it is). Happily, we found it the very first place I drove to and we didn't even have to enlist the help of Google. We spent quite some time there. George rode various toys all around the store looking at all of the fun things on shelves.

Pearl wanted to ride on something, too, and was happy when she found this little pink animal. John put her on it and walked away. That didn't go over too well. Now you see her, now you don't. Sorry about the blur-- I took the picture as I saw her fall and started to move quickly to help her up.

Here she is riding something a bit more stable.

Pea LOVED the little shopping carts and she pushed hers around the store like it was her job. She was a baby on a mission.

She did make stops occasionally to point at something cool or to add something to her cart that she wanted to purchase. She thinks she's a grown up.

In the end there were no toys purchased (unless you count the $1.00 little whirly tube thing that John said he got for George but really got for himself), but we did leave with some gumballs and old fashioned sodas in glass bottles. (I love Pearl zooming by with her cart in the background.)

Oh, the sugar!

For lunch George chose pizza, and remember, it was Do Whatever He Wants Day, so pizza it was. While we waited for the pizza to cook, George colored and Pearl poured salt in my water.

And then she stirred it around.

I'm including the picture of Pearl feeding me the breadstick even though it's really awkward looking (both my face and the giant blurred breadstick in the foreground) because it's the only picture of the entire day that I am in. When my kids look back on this in a few years I want them to know I was there, too :).

Pineapple, onion, and tomato pizza. Our favorite. Except George pulls off the onions.

Pearl doesn't, though. She just goes for it. She will eat anything and everything. As long as she is allowed to feed herself, preferably with a fork. Ha ha, that full mouth is cracking me up.

After lunch we had to take John back to a class, so we went to the mall while we waited for him to be done. George wanted to go the the Disney Store and look for Halloween costumes and I had told him that he could pick out a new shirt for his first day of school. I didn't take many pictures in the mall, but George was loving these Spiderman gloves in the Disney Store so much that I had to pull it out and snap a couple. Plus I really liked the sparkley floor :).

We came home (by this time it was early evening), and I took Pearl to Target with me to pick up a few school supplies for George while the boys stayed behind. (I had wanted George to come with me to pick out his own supplies, but he wanted to stay home with his daddy, so I brought Pea with me instead.) When we got home John had to rush away for some church meetings, and while I normally would prefer him to be home with us, I actually kind of relished the time to put the kids down to bed myself and reflect alone in a quiet house. We loaded up George's backpack with his new supplies (he was so! excited! about the disposable camera that is his very own), and laid out his clothes (including the new shirt that he had picked out) on the floor. We read scriptures and said prayers on George's bed. He laid down while I went and nursed Pearl. I promised him once Pearl was in bed I would come back in and scratch his back. When I went back into his room he looked like this:

And so we are full circle, now. I scratched his back anyway, and laid down on the bed by him. I whispered to him that I loved him and that I was so glad we had spent such a happy day together.

Then I walked out the front door and under a sky of pink clouds I sat on the porch and thought about what an incredible privilege I have to be a mother. I had felt some guilt earlier in the week because I had been away from my children way more than I ever normally am. I had a bunch of meetings for work, and even though they were with either my mom or John's mom, and even though it was just for a couple of hours at a time, I still had been feeling like I had been away from my precious children too much. I don't like feeling like I am not the main person that they spend their days with. I am their mama. They need me. I need them. I just like them so much. Sitting on the porch I felt so grateful for the time we had together that day, and for the hundreds and hundreds of other days we've had together that have been perhaps less purposeful in our intent, but just as happy and just as full of soaking each other in. I know that this time in our lives is such a little blip-- that the season of just having young children at home with me is so fleeting. We are already losing bits and pieces of it three mornings a week when we head out the door to go to school. I just don't ever want to feel like I haven't sucked the marrow of this precious phase enough.

Thursday morning we were off. Both of my babies, ready for their first day. (Pearl is in the classroom with me again, but still, she really is a little student in our class. It's pretty much darling.)

George was so happy (and perhaps a little too social and talkative, but we're working on it :)) for his first day at school with his new teacher. I am excited about the things he'll learn and the growth we will surely see in his beautiful personality. But am I a little sad that he's so big? Yeah, a little. And kindergarten next year? Forget about it. (Sorry about the blur of these pictures. I was in a hurry and didn't have time to adjust the settings on my camera for the low light.)

(Don't you love George's "quiet shoes"? The kids change their shoes from outside shoes to "quiet shoes" for the classroom (another Montessori thing that I love), and these slippers are hand-me-downs from my little sisters. I love them so much.)

And here's my baby, looking much too old herself, checking out her new classroom. I seriously love this little school, and am so grateful to be teaching again, so grateful that my children are blessed to be in such an enriching and nurturing learning environment, and especially SO grateful that I get to be there with them. The best of all worlds, that's what this is.

Back with Costa Rica pictures soon, as promised.

lightning on demand

2011-08-22T22:27:00.001-06:00

We just returned home from a dreamy trip to Costa Rica, and there are hundreds of photos to sort through. I wanted to quickly post what is probably the most incredible photo of the whole trip now though (I can say that without sounding like a braggy-pants because I didn't take it-- John did). On one of our last nights there John, Pearl and I ran down to the beach from our hotel room (which took oh, you know, about 20 seconds-- I said it was dreamy, didn't I?), to catch the sunset. John was taking pictures (you think I am the only one in this family that is borderline obsessed with the camera? Wrong. I take most of the pictures of the people, but John is just as into taking pictures of nature and landscapes), and he had Pearl and I get into the frame for a few silhouette shots. Off in the distance I noticed the lightning and mentioned that it would be freakishly awesome to get a picture of the sunset with the lightning. But what are the odds, right? As we were walking back to the hotel I was clicking through the pictures on the camera to see a few and I seriously screamed "You got one with lightning!!!" We were both pretty excited. I've tried to capture lightning on camera before and it is almost impossible to time it. You just have to get lucky. And we did.

And just for the record, this is the picture straight out of the camera-- no editing to enhance colors, saturation, or contrast at all. Go John.

More from Costa Rica soon :).

terrifying children's literature

2011-08-10T08:29:00.002-06:00

I was going through some of our little family videos yesterday because John had just uploaded them to the computer. When I got to this one from a couple of months ago I just laughed and laughed. I typically don't post videos because I don't think many people are super interested in watching long clips of other peoples' children, but this was so funny to me that I figured at least our families would enjoy it.

I was reading a new book to Pearlie one evening before bed and she was loving all of the pop-up animals on each page. Until I got to the page with a flower that opened up to reveal a cute little bumblebee inside. I have no idea why this was so incredibly alarming to her, but I thought it was so hysterical that I had John come film me torturing her with it for several minutes. In the beginning of the video John's hand is covering the screen at times because he didn't want her to see the camera and be distracted, just so you know why his big hand is blocking the view a little. It is kind of long, but I decided to post the whole thing because the flower torture continues to produce results throughout it. She literally starts running away from the book at one point. It also shows her talking a little bit (this was when she was about 14 months) and just generally being cute.

And lastly, don't mind George screaming in the background that his nose is hurt and us not doing anything about it except asking if it is bleeding. Parenting at its finest, folks.

Oh, and also (I just watched it again), many apologies about Pearl pulling down my shirt a little too much at one point. Sorry.

Funny, huh? :)

four

2011-08-08T23:28:00.000-06:00

Four has always been one of my most favorite ages. There is something magical about a kid who is four-- the innocent curiosity, the ability to express their hilarious and brilliant thoughts, the tender way that they want their autonomy but still need their mamas.

I am still baffled sometimes when I think about the fact that I am one of the lucky ones that has a little boy who is four. I only get him this way for one year and then I won't ever get him as a four-year-old ever again. And he just might be the greatest four-year-old boy to ever exist.

He's not perfect. In fact, four (okay, it was more like 3 1/2) has brought more limit testing and defiance. We have also dipped our toes into the ponds of Not Always Being Kind to Friends and Sneaking Out of the House to See the Neighbor Girl (for real). But along with those challenges is the opportunity for my parenting thoughts and philosophies to evolve. Where I once felt that every parental request or command should be met with compliance, I now feel like it should be okay for him to tell me "no thank you" to some things and I should respect his independence. I am realizing that he needs me to honor his choices (and therefore, him) more than he needs me to demand that he be respectful of authority. Of course I still want him to be an obedient and respectful little boy-- I just feel like modeling that in the way that I treat him (Montessori would call this "following the child") will be more effective than pounding in precision commands.

The four-year-old George is assertive and confident. He is still just as friendly as ever with strangers, and especially loves boys/men between the ages of 7-25 (he thinks that they are seriously just as happy and excited to play/hang out with him and he is with them and calls them all "dude"). I sometimes have to bridle his excitement so that he doesn't drive my siblings' friends/boyfriends crazy. He isn't intimidated by adults and asks for what he wants. In fact, my mom bought him a brand new booster seat once when she wasn't planning on it (he needed one anyway, but she was going to wait until I was there so she told George it was too expensive and wasn't on sale) because he went over to a salesperson and said, "Excuse me, we want to buy this carseat, but we can't because it costs too much money so is it on sale?" And for whatever reason, the salesperson decided to put it on sale for George. So they bought it.

The four-year-old George is still my cuddly lover boy. He is still so tender-hearted and affectionate with the people that he loves. He often just kisses and hugs his baby sister for no particular reason, and he'll stop what he's doing, look over at me and wink (oh how I love his winks) with an "I love you Mama." He loves to have his back tickled and he'll lay on me forever while I scratch his back. His favorite person in the world is still his daddy. He loves me, but he'll say things to me like, "Mom, Dad is a star and you aren't a star." They have a club and I'm not invited :). I did once acquire star status for a brief moment when I let him go swimming with his cousin, but it was short lived. By bedtime that night I was informed that I was no longer a star, but of course, Daddy still was. His second favorite person in the world is probably his sister. He seriously loves that girl. He is so patient with her, and is so, so willing to share with her. I am actually often amazed at how readily he helps her and shares his things with her. He is a fantastic brother. I am probably his third favorite person. And I really am okay with that :). I love the way he loves his dad and sister. And he really does love me too, promise :).

The four-year-old George is a thinker. He always has been. He wonders about how things work and asks good questions. He pays attention to details and knows about them long after I've forgotten. He knows all of his letter names and sounds and asks what things spell and wants to make words all of the time. He wanted to type out a letter to his friend one time so I made the sounds of the letters in the words, he figured out what letter it was, found it on they keyboard, and typed the letter all by himself. Four-year-old Georgie is also starting to think about and be curious about things like how babies get out of mommies (I explained this all to him and he was very happy that I am not a mom that has to get her tummy cut open to get the babies out and then wanted to see exactly where the baby came out of me. We didn't go there :)), and is starting to wonder what is underneath the clothing on the mannequins at department stores. We're trying to find that balance between helping satisfy his curiosity (because it is totally normal) while also being respectful and appropriate. It's a delicate thing, answering these four-year-old questions.

The four-year-old George is still very cautious. He isn't a thrill-seeker. We went to Lagoon last week and he didn't really want to go on any rides except for the tiny boats that go in a circle (and were made for babies), and the bumper cars. He loved the bumper cars. He was happy to walk around with us and watch everyone else go on rides. The highlight of his day was when he begged his daddy to try to win him a plastic bat by throwing over 70 MPH, and John did it and won. George was ecstatic, saying things like, "You are the biggest star, DAD! If I can find a gold medal in our house I will give it to you!"Who needs rides when you have a strong daddy and plastic baseball bat?

The four-year-old George is learning to do chores and is actually an impressive little cleaner when he wants to be. The other day I asked him to clean up the floor in my bedroom (he and Pearl had been playing in there so there were toys all over and Pearl had ripped up little pieces of toilet paper and thrown them on the floor) while I nursed Pearl down for her nap. Pearl's naptime is usually when I allow George to have some time to watch a movie or play a game on the ipad, and I told him if he got it all clean he could get on the ipad. When I walked back into my room and saw George laying in my bed with the ipad I almost started to get after him (because I really didn't think he'd clean it all up by himself), but then I looked around and realized that he had totally done it all. He had even put some of my clothes into my drawers and in my closet. I just started to laugh. He has been picking up his own bedroom and making his bed and helping with the dishes after dinner for quite sometime now, but this whole "clean up my bedroom while I nurse the baby" is a new thing for us. A new thing that I may just have to take plenty of advantage of. All in the name of teaching him to work, right? :)

The four-year-old George is still such a delight and miracle to me. I cannot imagine loving any person the same way that I love that little boy. There are parts of my heart that he opened and that will always just belong to him. He is my little buddy and is one of my favorite people in the world to hang out with. He makes me laugh and fills me with joy and gratitude in ways that I hadn't ever felt before he came to me. I say prayers of thanksgiving daily that his beautiful, sweet presence is in our home, that we get to spend so much time with him.

For his birthday this year we invited his two favorite friends over to my parents' house for a little swimming. At first George was concerned about the logistics of it all ("But Mom, Logan doesn't know Sevrin. Do they know Ne Ne? How will they get to her house if they don't know her?"), but once I explained to him that it would all work out and they all knew each other he was ready for the party.

Here are the three four-year-olds in the pool showing me how old they all are now.

(Sev, Georgie, and Logan)

I can't believe that my tall son is the shortest of this bunch. We have some tall friends!

Georgie and Logan had fun jumping in. Sevie wasn't quite ready for that yet :).

For being such a cautious soul, this little guy sure doesn't have any fear of the water. He would seriously swim for 8 hours straight if I let him.

My beautiful BFF Rachael got in with her boys.

The party was right during Pearl's naptime, but I let her splash around for a little bit before I put her to bed. She is obsessed with the water just like her brother, and would dive right in and drown if we weren't careful.

One of the best things about my parents' pool is that there is the whole waterfall area where little ones can play in the shallow water. Pearlie loves it.

Grandma with Pearl, taking a break from dipping her in the water, and Logan showing off his pet toad with his mom, Aunt Lisa.

We wrangled the boys out of the water and up to the patio for cake and presents. I love this picture of them in their towels. Little boys are the best.

I love this of all the little boys so excited about the superhero presents George was getting. So cute.

Georgie was one happy little boy.

Mama and Daddy with our birthday boy.

After presents we moved on to cupcakes. John and I spent the morning making these fun little jungle animals. They turned out pretty cute, even if my grandpa was totally dismayed that I made pink flamingoes for a boy's party :).

Here is G blowing out his four candles. (If you look closely you can see the hippo cupcake that my father desecrated. He was trying to put pretzels in the nostrils with blue frosting. Because he is a grown-up.)

Sev and Ollie liked theirs :).

This is when Baby Pea woke up and joined us. Nothing like a cupcake right after a nap :).

The boys stayed out of the water long enough to eat a cupcake, but then they jumped back in and happily began splashing Hannah's boyfriend.

A group photo of most of the people that came to celebrate our boy.

George was ready to jump back in the water, but first he had to say goodbye and thank-you to his guests, and then take a picture with all of us since Pearl was awake.

He wasted no time in trying out the water mask that Grandma had given him for his birthday. (He also insisted on jumping in with his dinosaur from Hannah, as you can see.)

After George swam for a better part of the afternoon, it was time to go home. We still had one more present to give him and wanted to get there before it was late and he was tired. We thought that leaving around 6 would be fine, but as you can see, it was pretty hard to keep him awake on the way home. I kept asking him questions and having him show me how old he was to try to keep him up. Sooo exhasuted, little cutie.

But we made it home, and he immediately perked up because his little friend from next door (yes, the one he snuck out of the house to play with when I had already put him to bed) came running outside to see him open the present that her mom had made for George. Darling, right? (The gift and the girl :).) And Pearl took a book that my grandparents had given George and started reading it on the sidewalk while this was going on, so I took a picture of that, too.

George's present from us was a balance bike that he can use to help him learn to ride a two-wheeler. He loved it and was so excited to ride it, but we think he might be too tall for it. We are actually still going back and forth about whether to keep it or not. It was a fun surprise anyway, even if only for that day :).

Then, since George had gotten a second wind, John helped him set up the marble block toy that my parents gave him. He was in heaven.

And to top off a pretty perfect day, "our Bucherts" ("Buchert" is the last name of our neighbors and I think George thinks that the word "Buchert" means "neighbor" because he is always referring to them as "our Bucherts" or saying things like "Mom, can I go play with my Buchert?") came over to wish him a happy birthday and play with the marbles.

It was a happy day indeed, and in case you were wondering, it took George about 7 seconds of laying in bed before he fell fast asleep. Happy 4th Birthday, Little Boy.

the fourth then and now

2011-07-26T21:41:00.001-06:00

I am not sure what it is about documenting the 4th of July that is so difficult for me, but apparently it's a pattern; in the five years I've been blogging there has not been one single 4th of July post. All that is about to change, folks. In true speed-blogging fashion, I'm going to mingle a few old photos in with the new as an attempt to make myself feel better about slacking off for all these years. Plus, it's actually really fun to see the different years' celebrations side-by-side as documentation of the evolution of our family. So here we go: a look at our 4th of July traditions and fun, mostly from this year, with a few of the vintage ones for fun.

There is a group of girls that I run with every morning when the weather is good (meaning: late spring, all summer, and early fall). There are typically 3-5 of us that go, sometimes as many as 6 or 7, all of us pushing jogging strollers (many of us pushing double joggers, one of us pushing a triple) and it is especially awesome when some of the older kids ride their bikes along. We get plenty of smiles, laughs, and comments as our entourage moves along the parkway. Anyway, one of these running friends of mine and I have run in a little race on the 4th of July for the past two years, and it has been a fun way to start off our holiday. Last year we ran the Riverton 10K-- she was a few months pregnant and I was a few months un-pregnant (ie: Pearl was 3 months old), so we were a good team :).

These are from last year. Christina and I after finishing, and then me nursing a ravenous Baby Pea who was not sure why her mama was not at home that morning to feed her.

And then here we are this year, after finishing the 5K in Murray (they didn't have a 10K option or we would have done that, but after the race I was pretty happy it was only a 5K-- I don't know why I felt so weak, but I was glad to cross that finish line after 3 miles instead of 6!). Now our boys are 4, she has a new baby, and I still have my nursing baby who was still a little mad that I wasn't home to nurse her, but now she's 15 months and can walk over and squeeze my legs when she sees me for the first time instead of just screaming.
(As an aside, do you like how I am wearing the exact same outfit both years? That is my favorite tank top to run in. It was John's dad's basketball jersey from long ago (I'd guess the 80's, but I suppose it could be the 70's), and John inherited it along with a few other choice articles of clothing (including some pretty sweet track shorts) that he would never wear. I figured I should not let a perfectly awesome tank top rot away in a pile, and now that tank top and I have run miles and miles together. I love it because it is the perfect length and tightness and the perfect shade of retro blue, but also because it was John's dad's and I like to think about the amazing man who used to wear it. A man that I've never met that I owe so much to. I think he'd like that I get to hold his grandbabies while wearing his basketball jersey :).)

Baby girl missed me and wanted to nurse, but was soon distracted by a banana and popsicle.

We stayed and watched the parade (much to my husband's chagrin), and George thought it was pretty much the best thing ever. By the way, I do not know why he insists on wearing his hats sideways, but he does, so we roll with it.

George and Jakey got bags to collect their candy in, and it was a miracle there were not little boys fist-fighting over pieces of taffy. They were serious about their candy-collecting.

Pearl and I watched from the curb and saw a couple of lovely things.

The first was Mayor Snarr with his fantastic mustache.

And the second was the happy surprise of John's darling cousins marching in all their Scottish attire. We didn't know they were going to be there and I probably embarrassed them as a ran along backwards in front of them taking their pictures and smiling and waving frantically. Look at how cute they are though! You would've been excited, too!

Oh look, what do you know, we went to a parade last year, too! It's cracking me up that George is pointing at a firetruck in this one from last year in the same way as the one above from this year. This was a parade down Main Street in Vernal, UT. We had gone camping that weekend near there and decided to make it into town that morning for the parade. I really need to post more pictures from that weekend last year because I have a billion and I love them. Soon, maybe.

After the parade this year, we went home and decided to go play at our park for a bit before we had a barbecue. George rode the 100 yards over to the park in style on his PowerWheels truck that our neighbors generously gave him a couple of years ago. We all played around on the basketball courts for a bit...

...Some of us more seriously than others :).

These little legs were made for walkin', and she is a little maniac, walk-running as fast as she can to get to places that she knows she's not supposed to go.

Like down the sidewalk and up the stairs to the road with her daddy and brother in hot pursuit.

This sweet moment was captured right before he tried to "help" her off and ended up running over her foot. There were tears, his not hers, because he had to take a break from the truck (he was being mighty careless and hasty in his driving :)), followed by an early escort home for him from his mama, followed by angry sobs coming from his room and, "I want a NEW mama! I'll never be my mama's friend again!" It is pretty rough to be my offspring, apparently.

After George had decided that his life really wasn't so bad and some apologies and hugs were had by all (and after he had changed into his favorite basketball outfit), we lit a few sparklers. Don't let Pearl's squinted eyes fool you-- she was fearless with those things and swung them around like it was her job, prompting us to run and duck for cover. Really. We finally had to just take them away from her because she would not let us hold on to them along with her to prevent her from burning and maiming her brother and the trees.

Later that night we headed to Sandy for the Real game that has become tradition for us on the 4th.

Sugar is always a notorious part of these games as a means of keeping busy children happy and seated. Unfortunately this method doesn't really fly with Pearl. She is obsessed with going up and down stairs and makes demanding screams in their direction until we finally cave and go climb up and down with her. If it makes you feel any better (it does me), we always make sure she uses a nice voice and says please before we fold :).

Here is a shot of our little family this year outside the stadium.

And here we all are last year in the stadium before the fireworks. Look at that chubby little Pea!

She was much less disruptive last year when all I had to do to keep her happy was nurse her.

George has always been easy and mellow at the Real games. Last year on the 4th we splurged on some cotton candy and he was in sticky-fingered heaven.

My boy enjoying (with caution, of course) the fireworks at the stadium last year.

He has always been cautious (unlike his sister). This was when we lit fireworks at home last year.

And this was from the year before (2009) when it was just the three of us. I love these pictures.

Sparklers have also been a constant at our 4th of July celebrations. Here, in 2009. George, of course, held the flame as far away from his body as possible. His sister tried to grab the flame this year, for the record.

Here are a couple from last year (2010).

And finally, from this year.

We also had fun with a few little fireworks in our driveway.

Someone always had to keep ahold of Pearl so she didn't run right into the fire. Look at her delighted grin. She cracks me up.

Here her responsible big brother held onto her with both hands to keep her nice and safe.

John suggested that we go up on the roof to watch some fireworks from around the valley. It was so much fun because we could see them in all directions.

I played around with the settings on my camera because it was way too dark to get any kind of focus without a flash, but I didn't want a harsh, bright flash. I liked the way these shots turned out, especially this one because it looks like George has a little twin ghost.

Perhaps the roof wasn't the safest idea with our daredevil one year old. Don't worry, we were careful :).

Proof that I was on the roof, too.

All in all, a very happy day (all three years :)). Until next year! (If I post about it... or I guess I could say, "Until 2015, when I post about the previous 3 years of 4th of July celebrations!)

best friends forever

2011-07-21T23:32:00.000-06:00

I have massive amounts of stuff to post (I'm talking: 4th of July, fishing (lots), water play, G's birthday etc. etc.), but this picture is my current favorite and deserves a post all to itself. I look at it and just feel so full of love and gratitude for these three people that I get to spend my days with.

John is everything that is good and steady and teasing.

George is everything that is playful and tender and testing.

Pearl is everything that is spunk and joy and loud.

I cannot get enough of these three. Feeling super blessed, now and always.

july 4, 2003

2011-07-07T08:27:00.002-06:00

I need to write about our 4th of July fun, and I still have more Chasing Pteronarcella to post, but I wanted to take a minute for something else first. The 4th of July is mostly about barbecues, family, summer, and fireworks for me just like it is for you, but during quiet moments I always find my mind wandering back to Romania, thinking about the July 4th of 2003.

I find myself imagining a mother (Maria is her name) giving birth to a baby boy and there are so many questions I want to ask her. I wonder about how old she was, if she gave birth to him in a hospital or at home, and if there was anyone around her to give her support. I wonder if his father was there or if she had been left alone. I wonder if she had other children, if that baby boy had any siblings that he would never meet. I wonder if the mother's heart broke when she first set her eyes on him because she already knew that she would be unable to care for him. I wonder if she thought he was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen, or if it was too painful for her to have those thoughts, knowing what was ahead. I wonder how long she held him before she left, or if she even held him at all. I imagine her facing the impossible task of saying goodbye to her baby boy, her kissing his perfect cheeks one last time, the tears that had to have been streaming down her face, the agony she must have been in. Did she know she wouldn't ever see him again, or did she hold on to hope that maybe one day she would be able to come back for him and raise him? Did she know he'd be going to an orphanage, or did she think that perhaps there would be a foster home and adoption in his future?

I don't know the story of how she left him and he came to be an orphan, but I do know that she was the one who gave him his beautiful name, that she was the first one to call him George. I know that he grew into the most beautiful baby boy, that his eyes were bright blue, that he fell asleep readily in my arms, and that I loved him like he was mine. His mother couldn't have known that her baby boy would impact my life so deeply, that still, six years after I saw him for the last time, I would sit and cry, wondering about where he was, hoping and praying that he was okay. I imagine her crying for him, too. She couldn't have known that one day I would give birth to a baby boy of my own, that he was due to come on a July 4th, too, and that I would choose the same name for my son as she had chosen for hers. She couldn't have known that a picture of her George would sit in a frame on the bookshelf in my George's room, and that my three-year old George would shed tender tears of sadness as he heard the story of her George not having a family or home.

I daydream about meeting George's mother. I imagine hugging her tight, and I imagine us both embracing her boy that we love so fiercely. I imagine us being so much more alike than we are different, and I imagine asking her to forgive me for once being angry with her, for once, in fits of agony myself, asking (no one in particular) how she could have abandoned her child. I imagine us understanding each other. I imagine the pain of her past being cleansed, her son's grief and loneliness and heartache being swallowed up, and them being able to be a family. I will live next door with my family, and our Georges will be brothers.

On July 4th I celebrated Independence Day, but I also celebrated a little boy turning 8 years old. I said a prayer for him, that wherever he is he feels love, that whatever his life is like he has peace. Oh how I wonder about him. One day I'll know.

These first few photos are of my Romania Georgie that first year that I met and fell in love with him in the hospital.

And these are from the second year I lived in Romania when George miraculously ended up in the orphanage I was working in. I couldn't believe his curly hair. The first picture is from the last time I held him and said goodbye (he's wearing a shirt my mom sent for him), and the second picture is from the last time I saw him, when I happened to catch a glimpse of him outside with the maintenance man painting pesticide on the trees. I miss him.

chasing pteronarcella: in the trenches

2011-07-02T09:08:00.000-06:00

The main objective on the collecting trip was to sample rivers and streams and collect insects, obviously. This post will show you what that looks like when you have a toddler and a baby with you. Adventures, for sure, but I love that this is just their lives. This is what they know and it is (and will continue to be) an intertwined part of our family story now. George knows how to just dive in and collect the insects with forceps and transfer them to the alcohol without even being asked. Pearl is fascinated by these icky little creatures and enjoys picking them up with her chubby fingers for closer examination. I am not as naturally thrilled about these bugs as the other three members of my family, but I am learning to be less horrified when a three-inch long stonefly lands on my face and wants to hang out there (those pictures will come in another post). When I think about the direction of John's career path, the overwhelming emotion I have is one of gratitude. Gratitude that he has found a way to do something that he loves and feels so much passion for. Gratitude that it will mean that our family has built-in adventures almost constantly and that our children will grow up with these kinds of experiences just being part of their lives. Gratitude that my horizons and interests will have opportunities to expand as John shares it all with me. I know that it is still a long road and that there will be bumps along the way and that there will be days that I don't like that my kitchen dishes have been turned into bug-filled sorting containers, but right now I just feel really blessed and grateful.

I love these photos because they are just an accurate glimpse into what collecting bugs in rivers looks like for our family. These people are my favorites.

Most of the time our collecting routine consisted of me hanging out with the kids on the banks,

while John went out into the river to kick up some rocks and see what he could find.

Then the whole family would get involved in the sorting/examining process. Notice Pearl reaching right in to help out. I tried to keep her away from the trays as much as I could (ya know, 14 month olds and open containers of alcohol and all), but she was so interested in it all that I had to let her explore a little.

I love George's gigantic stick here and the very pleased look on his face :). This was right about when I would have to put the camera down and run snatch Pearl up before she just trotted right into the water,

I don't mind helping with the sorting of bugs as long as I have forceps. George, on the other hand, is happy to dig right in with his hands. Pearl, too. I am not there yet. Maybe give me a few more years of this and we'll see.

She likes to touch and hold them. I don't get it, but I'm happy she does.

Often times John would be in the river for quite awhile trying to find what he needed, so the kids and I entertained ourselves. Pearl was just starting to take off with walking, so she loved just being free to roam around on her little feet.

And George is happy wherever there is a body of water and rocks/sticks to throw in, so we were good to go for the most part.

At one spot in New Mexico George taught Pearl how to throw rocks into the river herself. I sat back and watched this unfold (with my camera in hand, of course), without any intervening and it was so much fun to watch George show his little sister how to do something that he loved. Pearl was seriously delighted, as you can see. (George is in underwear because he had fallen on the riverbank and gotten his shorts all wet and muddy.)

Pearl started going for the boulders once she had mastered throwing in the little rocks :).

Here's a close-up shot at what the collecting tray would look like at a particularly successful spot. And look! I was on this trip, too!

Every once in awhile I remembered to give John the camera so that we could document the mama in this family. Here we are walking up from one of the rivers. I was in charge of getting the kids back and forth and John was in charge of getting the bugs back and forth :).

And since we're on a roll of pictures with me in them, here are a couple more of us all looking like we had been camping for a few days (we had). Disheveled and dirty, but happy :).

Camping and hot springs adventures up next.

1640 miles of chasing pteronarcella

2011-06-26T14:45:00.001-06:00

If you want to know what John is researching for his thesis please feel free to ask him, but be prepared for at least a good 7 minutes of answer time. There really is not a short way to describe what it is that he is studying, but for blogging purposes I am just going to say that he is doing a population genetics study on two types of aquatic insects (Pteronarcella badia, or more commonly, the least stonefly, and Drunella grandis, or the green drake mayfly) which involves going all throughout the western United States to collect the insects, preserving them in 100% alcohol (which we cart around in our trunk in illegal amounts), extracting their DNA to learn about their genetic structure, and then generating their mitochondrial genomes. And if that all means nothing to you then you are probably normal :).

John has gone on several collecting trips on his own or with other students, but a couple of weeks ago George, Pearl, and I decided to join him when he headed down to southwestern Colorado and then New Mexico. His research is funded through a grant at BYU so he typically takes a university-issued car and credit card on these trips to pay for the gas, but since we were all coming along we had to take our own car, which means the university will reimburse us for the gas at 50 cents/mile. Which, if you do the math, means that we spent about $350.00 in gas and get reimbursed about $800.00. It almost feels dishonest, but that's how it works, and I won't complain. I think I should get paid to go on road trips with my family more often :).

It's becoming clear to me as I get started on this that there is no possible way for me to make this just one post. I'm going to have to break it up. We'll just see how far we get right now, I guess.

There was driving. Lots and lots of driving. We went 1640 miles in 4 days. I was (understandably) anxious about how the kids (especially Pearl) would handle all of that time strapped down in car seats, but God must've wanted to spare me a nervous breakdown because both of them were pretty great. This fact is even more remarkable when you take into account that the only amount of time where any type of electronic device was used for entertainment was when George got to play games on the iPad for about 45 minutes total spread out over those 4 days. I am not against electronic entertainment on road trips; we just don't have a portable DVD player and our iPad was having charging issues so we needed to preserve the battery since we were using it as a GPS. It might sort of sound like a nightmare, but it was actually really nice to be unplugged from anything other than each other for the whole time. Both kids read/looked at lots of books, played with lots of little toys, ate (way too many) snacks, and George learned the art of the knock-knock joke. (Which, trust me, gets pretty old after 45 completely random and made-up jokes that you have to pretend laugh at, but was highly entertaining in the beginning when John or I would tell him a joke that went something like this: J: Knock knock. G: Who's there? J: Ipe. G: Ipe who? Us in the front seat: snicker snicker, laugh laugh. G: I said, ipe who?! IPE WHO?! Us: uproarious laughter. This sequence was repeated multiple times with words like grape, wipe etc. Poor George.) John also told many, many stories. George would ask him to tell the Toy Story story or something, and John would proceed to relate the entire story with precise detail and many actual quotes, which was thoroughly entertaining for me as well as George. So anyway, there were definitely some rough moments where a little more thoughtless entertainment would've been welcome, but all in all, it was really fun to drive all that way just giving each other our attention. We had fun. Here are some of our en route pictures.

Lots of snacks, like I said. Most were not as healthy as these bananas :). (This was during one of those blessed iPad moments :). And yes, I did keep Pearl rear-facing the whole time. I debated about it because she does weigh (barely) enough to switch and she is 15 months old and I thought she might enjoy the ride more if she could see us and out the windows. In the end I just still felt like she was too small to face forward so I kept her rear-facing, knowing that if she was having a hard time or something I could always switch her around. She did pretty well, though, so it ended up working out.)

We drove through such a variety of scenery, and I was grateful for the opportunity to see places that we would never have reason to go to otherwise. There were some spots of breathtaking beauty, but I seriously have a hard time pulling out my camera just for landscapes, so there aren't many pictures. Here is one shot of a quaint little town called Ouray, Colorado.

And another one of some place in Colorado that I am sure John could tell you the name of, but he's not here right now. I snapped this out the window on our drive home.

George is almost always really good to his sister, and it was so nice to have him back there to keep her entertained when she would get bored or restless.

I love this one of their sweet little hands holding onto each other.

Remember that I said George is "almost always" really good to his sister? There were times on the trip where she would want something that he had (which she always does) and he wouldn't want to give it to her. Under normal circumstances, I would let him have the freedom to make that choice and then just redirect Pearl to something else, but when you are stuck in the car with limited items of entertainment and a baby is screaming for one thing in particular that her brother happens to have, sometimes the opportunity to choose is taken away and there is not another option other than to give the toy to the screaming baby. Which results in this:

He can keep the pout up for about 2 seconds, at which point he starts to cave and succumbs to my pathetic and humiliating (but effective) attempts to get him to smile.

"Must. Stay. Strong. Must. Not. Smile. Must. Cover. Face."

And then he gives up attempting to be pouty and angry and we have a happy boy again. If only adults could be pulled out of grumpiness so readily!

This was what John looked like most of the time. He just kept his waders on all day as we drove from location to location so he wouldn't have to take them on and off constantly. If you look closely you can see that he is absolutely soaking wet in this picture. We were up in a canyon in New Mexico and it started to pour. Like super pounding, huge drops of rain. Of course he still got out to sample the river there. There's not time to have a rain delay, I guess :).

When we'd get to a new river or stream John would typically get out and go do a quick sample to see if there were the right bugs in it before the rest of us got out. Here he is walking back towards us at a spot that there weren't any pteronarcella or drunella (which I was thankful for because I didn't really want to haul the kids and collecting stuff all that way down to the river).

This is a shot of him walking back to the car (in a rainstorm) letting me know that he had found one. One solitary little pteronarcella.

And this one is from a location where some fisherman and his wife saw John out kicking up rocks in the river and collecting the debris in his net and asked him what he was doing. John showed them some of the bugs from the river and the fisherman politely asked if he could have some to fish with. Luckily they weren't the species of bugs John needed so he was happy to give them away :).

Okay, that's it for this post. More of this:

and this:

to come.

spicy sister

2011-06-09T23:31:00.000-06:00

This week we returned home from a 4 day collecting trip for John's thesis research to Southwestern Colorado and New Mexico, and trust me, there are plenty of photos and stories coming. And oh my, so many other things to catch up on! I'm working on it, promise. In the meantime, a few photos of our saucy little gal.

She is such delight and joy that there are not adequate adjectives. I find myself literally squealing to John on occasion about the things she does and all of the spice wrapped up in her small body. She makes crazy, expressive faces constantly (really, like at least 4 a minute, mostly because she knows that she will make us giggle), and she holds her own just fine with her big brother. She talks and uses words to let us know what she wants (a couple of weeks ago in the middle of the night she was screaming and I had no clue why-- after holding her, nursing her, rocking her etc. I decided to let her cry for a bit to see what she would do. 10 or so minutes passed and she was still screaming so I went back in to calm her down. As soon as she got into my arms she started sobbing, "Wa wa! Wa wa!" I felt so bad! I got her a drink of water, layed her back down, and tried not to laugh/cry when she immediately rolled over and fell asleep. Poor little thirsty child.), but she also does a great job of screaming and pointing to get her message across if she doesn't know the word. Mostly she yells "Want! Want!" all day long at whatever it is that her brother is holding. She is demanding, to be sure, but I like my girls with a little zing so it is working for us :). I honestly kind of can't get enough of her.

She seriously loves getting into her brother's things, and usually George doesn't mind. Here she is making her way up to his art table to have a look at what kind of trouble she can make.

Of course just sitting at the table was not adequate. She needed to get up on top of it so that she could reach George's little magnetic calendar that is strictly forbidden to her. (Sidenote: I've had several friends that have been shocked when they find out that I really do just leave paints and paintbrushes down at George's table for him to use whenever he wishes, even without supervision. It has worked just fine for us-- George is careful and has only ever painted on paper, and is good about cleaning up when he is done. The only painting mess we have ever had to deal with came at the hands of one certain baby girl who somehow managed to get a lid off and painted the wall and floor with her hands. Perhaps our free-for-all painting access will have to change with this lil' one. I'm mostly hoping we can eventually teach her the rules and let the paints stay :). We will see.)

And to finish off tonight, another diaper-only shot, this time in the dryer.

I love spending my days with this busy little baby and her mild mannered (but recently much more feisty himself) big brother. No where else I'd rather be, nothing else could bring me this joy.

chickens, part four: the coop

2011-05-30T21:41:00.001-06:00

One of the things I have come to know about my husband is that he can pretty much figure out how to do anything he wants to. So when he said he was going to start building the chicken coop one Saturday and then proceeded to design and draw a plan, figure out and purchase materials, and get to work I was not surprised. Pretty sure he didn't even do internet research for this one-- just came right out of his brain. [Edit: John read this and informed me that I was too generous with my praise here because he had gone over to a neighbor's house and looked at their coop to give him some ideas for ours. So I guess the idea wasn't completely out of his brain, but the rest was :).] My life would be so much less exciting without him around :). Here are some photos of our coop building journey.

Try not to be alarmed that our children are playing so closely to the deadly power tools. We obviously aren't :).

This is the position that George would assume every time John used the saw. He didn't like how loud it was. Pearl, as you can see, was not fazed in the least.

This is where we put Pearl when we need her out of the way for a little while. She likes it.

Until her brother decides to join her.

She is a little walker these days. She can walk across rooms and down halls, but she still probably crawls about 70% of the time. It's faster.

I love Pearl's little outstretched arms to her daddy. She reaches for him constantly and one of my most favorite things about him is that he always wants her back. He adores his baby girl.

This was from a different day out working on the coop. These pictures are supposed to be switched-- the sequence was her coming up and grabbing onto him, him looking over at her,

then her leaning in to plant a kiss on his lips, followed by her turning around to go about her business.

"Her business," meaning: surveying the scene from her tractor, and getting busy with the tape measure.

And smiling slyly.

She was also pretty helpful with the chicken wire :). And there is a peek of the coop up to that point. The chickens looove it.

This is the best photo I have of it while it was still under construction, but I need to get a new one. It is all done now, complete with a galvanized metal roof and dark brown stain (which we thought was a disaster at first but has grown on us).

And to finish our chicken posts off, here are the last two photos that show our immersion in all things chicken. In my class at school we had the students make these little chicks out of yellow paper plates and their handprints and George really wanted to make one. We didn't have yellow plates, but painting was more fun for him anyway.

Pretty happy about the sneeze I caught in this last picture :).

Now I can blog about regular life again! I have much to do.

chickens, part three: meet the flock

2011-05-30T21:13:00.000-06:00

John, George and I had fun naming our chicks. Some of the names have meaning (like StrongFluff, because she was the firstborn of our hatchlings, strong and very fluffy :)), and others are pretty random (like Luigi, because George insisted). Here they are (the photo on the left is from when they were still pretty little and fuzzy, the one on the right was a week later when their feathers were starting to come in more fully):

(Is Bevisa not the most awesome name for a chicken? Makes me laugh every time.)

Here are a few more photos of them together in the backyard. I didn't ever think I would find chickens beautiful, but I must admit, these little babies had their moments.

I like this one of all the eyes.

Pearl likes them now. Maybe too much.

I love this of both my children and their first pets :).

George is a really great brother. He is also a great chicken protector :).

See Pearls sneaky little fingers in there on Maude's back?

Here's a more recent photo of them with more feathers. I need to get a current one because they are now totally feathered (is that a word?).

And there's that touchy Miss Pearl again.

Pictures of the chickens' new house next, and that should about complete my chicken series. Don't be too excited :).

chickens, part two: fuzzy, fluffy, cute

2011-05-25T17:06:00.000-06:00

I mentioned in the first post that in addition to hatching 4 chicks from eggs, we also added 7 more babies to our flock so we could have a good variety of breeds. We gave one of our hatched Leghorns to our neighbors (who are embarking on a chicken raising adventure as well), so we ended up with 10 chicks total. We didn't actually want that many (really, what will we do when they are all laying one egg a day?), but John just kept deciding that we needed "one more" when he was buying them. Luckily we are sharing the eggs with a family in our neighborhood, and John's mom might take two chickens to her house at some point. At any rate, we have a whole bunch of little chickies and this was the scene when we first brought them home.

The kids (Anna was over playing with George) were quite intrigued. At first they just looked.

Soon enough George wanted to hold one. I love his little satisfied grin.

Pearl seemed to like the idea of the chickens...

...But the reality of them? Not so much.

She was seriously hysterical. For the first couple of days she wanted to be next to the chickens' box constantly, mainly just so that she could yell and scream at them. It was like she wanted to enjoy them, but she was almost jealous or mad at them at the same time. We made the mistake of referring to them as "babies" at first and I think she may have started to feel a little threatened with all of the attention they were getting. It was pretty funny. Luckily after a couple of days she got over it and now she is just fine with them. I guess it's a good thing that my desire to have another baby right away is not really working out :).

Chicks are seriously cute. I like looking at these pictures because the chickens are totally in their adolescent ugly body stage right now and have lost all cute appeal.

At first we wanted to keep the brand new chicks (that we had hatched) in a little separate container within the box because they were still so fresh. We didn't know how they'd do around the chicks that were several days older. The brand new chicks let us know, however, that they did NOT want to be separated from all of their friends. They immediately started trying to jump/fly out to be with the rest of the flock. It thought it was sweet and funny that they knew exactly what they wanted and they didn't like being away from all of the others.

Hungry chickies.

Roaming around on the floor while we changed their shavings out one day. The best part about baby chicks is that they really like to stay together so they are easy to take care of. They don't need much space and they don't try to run away. They kind of all just huddle together and hang out.

Look at them all sleeping on top of each other.

Some of our neighbors (the same ones who are raising chickens, too) came over to see ours since we got them a day before they got theirs.

They fall asleep in a heap of funny limpness wherever they are when they get tired. It is entertaining.

A few days after we got them a couple of them started jump-flying up to the top of the box to roost. They didn't want to escape (in fact, if they ever ended up outside the box on the floor they would frantically try to get back in), but they just liked chilling up there.

Here is Pearl checking them out after she had decided they were friends and not enemies.

chickens, part one: incubating and hatching

2011-05-17T23:50:00.001-06:00

Oh boy, it seems that I have taken about a million pictures of our little chicks. Really, it wouldn't be healthy to try and cram all of them into one post, so I'm splitting them up. We'll start at the beginning.

John has been asking if we could get chickens for two years now. His family had chickens while he was in high school (until it all came crashing down in a frenzy of floating feathers thanks to a frisky fox-- I was there that day and I still remember his mom running around the backyard in a sad state of semi-shock from trying to defend her poor chickens), and he knew he wanted to raise them again one day with his family. I wasn't too warm to the idea at first. There were a few very logical reasons for my hesitance, but I didn't want chicken poop all over my backyard, mostly. The more we talked about it this year though, the more I began to like the idea. We figured out the perfect spot in the yard to make a coop and a fenced off run for them so that their mess is confined and my kids can still play in the bulk of the yard without worrying about rolling around in poop. The thing that made our decision final though, was when I discovered that I could order fertile eggs and incubate and hatch them myself. I loved that idea so much. It was perfect because the teachers at school had wanted to do something like that for our students, too.

So without another thought I paid the $3.00 for each fertile egg (I got 4), rented an incubator for the week (only $5.00), and set up a little birthing (okay, hatching) station on my kitchen counter. I was actually really surprised to find myself feeling this wave of maternity as I gingerly transfered each warm egg from the towel that I had wrapped them in for the ride home into the incubator. I couldn't help but feel this womb-like attachment-- I know what it is like to incubate a living thing inside my body and I honestly felt a twinge of that same miracle-feeling as I handled each one of those delicate little orbs full of life. It was strangely inspiring and touching for me to think about the potential that was bottled up in those precious shells. And you guys, these are just chickens-- no wonder I am so crazy about the miracles of pregnancy and birth!

I knew that they would likely hatch on Wednesday (I had gotten them on Monday (April 25)), and is it embarrassing to say that I woke up several times throughout the night on Tuesday to check on them? One of them had started to crack the shell early that evening, and I didn't want to miss it. I also felt this sense of responsibility like I needed to be there to make sure everything was okay. What would it say about my future abilities as a chicken-raiser if I woke up to an incubator of dead chicks, you know? This was the first sign of life from our chicks, and I was pretty excited to realize that we really were going to be hatching some babies:

I brought the eggs and incubator to and from the classroom every day because we wanted the students to be able to learn about the process (and possibly see a chick hatch), but I couldn't just leave the chicks there unattended all afternoon and night. It was a little nervewracking to move the whole set-up twice a day for three days (the temperature and humidity in the incubator need to be stable and I stressed myself out watching that blasted thermometer and tweaking the dial to try to get it to stay at exactly 100 degrees), but the kids at school loved it so much. I won't post school photos, but here is one of two of my favorite students observing our incubator in the kitchen :).

Who knew that chicken-hatching took so long? I had no idea how long (and exhausting for the chick) the process would be. After hours and hours of working (you could see the chicks little beak come up for a few pecks and stabs now and then), she had gotten it to this point:

Like I said, I woke up several times throughout the night to check on the hatchlings. I went out at about 3:30 AM, and there wasn't a lot that had changed, but when I went back out around 5:30 AM, this is what I found:

Well hello there little chickie. It was so exciting! And what was even better was that a second chick had really started working on her shell now and I knew I wouldn't miss that one. If you look closely in the above picture you can see the hole that she was making on the top of her egg (the far right one).
Here is another shot of it. You can see some of her yellow fluff inside the crack.

Oh! Here she comes! This was seriously so exciting for me. I was sad that it was so early in the morning and I was the only one awake. I did run back and tell John, but apparently he wasn't as into it as I was because he stayed in bed. I guess he figured there would be two more to hatch later that day when it didn't cut into his precious sleep time.

A few more pecks and some maneuvering by the chick and out came her wet little head. Seriously, I kept making parallels with chick hatching and childbirth and I would likely sound a little crazy if I kept going with them all here, so I'll just share the pictures. But how cool is it to watch life emerge from the space where it was first created, right? So cool.

Another angle of her working her way out:

Oh, I love this one. This slick little newborn so exhausted from all the work it took to be born.

This was about when Georgie woke up and I immediately called him out to the kitchen to see. I love his morning eyes and blankie.

And this one cracks me up. They hatched just a couple of hours apart (you can see how quickly the first one was already fluffing up), and they just collapsed like that and slept in the same position. So funny.

The third chick hatched later that afternoon, and the fourth, our little runt, had a little bit of a rough time. She had started cracking the shell way early in the day, but really seemed to struggle to get out. She would poke her little beak out and cheep-cheep to us, probably asking for a little help please.

That night John's mom came over to watch the kids while John and I went to a REAL game and we told her what was going on with the chicks and to call us if the last one hatched. We had read that ones who are late and/or struggle to hatch often end up dying once they do hatch so we were a little concerned. Janet was worried about it too, and decided to help our last little one out. John totally predicted it, too. When we got the text from Janet saying that the chick had hatched John's words were, "That means she helped it hatch." He knows his mama :). It worked out well though, because who knows if the chick could've done it on her own (she may have gotten dried out and stuck to the shell since she had been working at it for so long), and she has done just fine.

If you ever decide to raise chickens I highly recommend you start this way. Hatching them myself gave me a sense of attachment and ownership (and maybe even love?) that I know I wouldn't have felt for them otherwise. We added 7 other chickens to our flock (the only variety we could hatch were Leghorns and we wanted some other breeds as well), and those little ones that we hatched are definitely my favorites. It was a really cool experience, and I'm pretty happy I gave in and we went for it :). Lots more chicken stuff to come...

circa 1978

2011-05-12T12:43:00.000-06:00

There is a post about our chickies in the works, but in the meantime doesn't this picture make you believe that it is 1978 and Pea and I are hippie swingers? (Swingers as in, people who like to swing, not the other definition, thankyouverymuch.) Perhaps it's the stripes, the green sunglasses, and the bellbottoms?

(Pearl and Mama at a park in Spanish Fork, May 10, 2011)

the hunted

2011-05-03T21:23:00.000-06:00

When Pearl woke up from her afternoon nap on Easter Sunday it was time to hunt for Easter baskets. George was quite patient to wait all that time, and when we said he could start looking he was so thrilled. He remembered that last year his basket had been in the dryer so that is the first place he wanted to look :).

He found his basket in the bathtub and immediately started examining its contents.

I love his fist-fulls of Dum Dums.

After he had looked through his basket for a few minutes he left all his goodies on the coffee table so that he could go help Pearl find hers. The best part was that Pearl was not interested in finding hers; she had anything she could have ever dreamed of right there in front of her :).

She's like, "Woooww! Mom! Have you seen all these treats?!"

George was hunting for Pearl's basket in the kitchen and I decided I should probably have John bring her in to join the party. I seriously cannot handle how much I love her up on those tippy toes.

She sat down on the tile and watched over her shoulder as George discovered her basket in a cupboard. He brought it over to her for her to look through and she humored us by glancing down at its contents for a moment before speed-crawling back into the living room to attack George's treats.

We didn't know if we'd be able to do any Easter egg hunting with extended family this year since both of our families were supposed to be out of town, so we planned a mini hunt at our house with a few dozen eggs for the kids to find. George was loving it.

Pearl was less impressed, but she did reach out and grab a few colorful eggs as long as they were within about 2 feet of her :).

One thing she quickly learned to do was pop those little eggs right open and sample the contents.

This was our best attempt at a photo with both of them and their Easter baskets. Pearl could not be bothered to look up from her candy.

In the end, John's mom ended coming back into town to be with the family on Easter so she put together an Easter dinner and hunt at her house that evening. I feel really blessed to have all of this family; George only has one cousin at all right now, and I love that when we get together with John's extended family there are so many more "cousins" to play with. Most of them are actually John's cousins or his cousins' kids, but George loves them all so much and they have so much fun together.

Pearl was loving sitting on Grandpa's lap, especially because he was wearing glasses :). She loves swiping glasses off of people's faces and putting them on her own.

These pictures of Pearl with her great-grandpa (John's grandpa) are some of my most favorite photos ever. I think I love them so much because I know how much Grandpa truly delights in and adores his grandchildren, and that tender love is so evident to me when I look at these. Seeing these pictures makes me want to get photos of my children like this with each of our grandmas and grandpas so that I have them to show my babies someday.

Oh, they seriously melt me. Love these two people so much.

Logan had his basket all ready to go :).

Here are some of the younger kids sitting by the door waiting for the green light to go out and start hunting for eggs.

And they're off!

Aunt Lisa helped Pearl find a few eggs with some special things in them just for her like little hair bows. I love that Pearl totally looks like she should be Lisa's daughter-- so pretty with their dark hair and blue eyes!

Georgie was happy with his findings.

Pearl snuck a few treats that had fallen into the grass from someone's basket. Or, more likely, her brother thought it would be really thoughtful of him to give his little sister some peanut M&Ms to snack on.

After all of the eggs were found we decided it would be a good idea to have a little more sugar, so I made this cake for us to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa's birthdays.

I really like the perspective of these photos-- Grandpa's hand and the cake in focus with him blurred in the background. He was trying to block the wind from blowing out the candles before he and Grandma were ready.

There they go, only a few years old it would appear :).

The cake actually turned out to be pretty tasty, which I was happy about because sometimes elaborate plans to make fancy cakes end up being nice to look at but not so great for eating. Yay for a festive cake that was still worth the calories to eat :). (I cannot remember the website where I got the recipe and idea for this cake from, but I know I linked to it from The Pioneer Woman's cooking blog... if you are curious or want to make it I am sure you could find the link there.)

Mama and baby eating some cake. (This was a momentous occasion since it was the first day John and I had eaten refined sugar in quite sometime after giving it up for Lent this year.)

Daddy and his girl waiting for their piece.

John snapped a few pictures of people as we were eating on the porch and I especially liked this one of Spencer. He is so happy and cute.

And this one of Natalie and Prestley.

With cake and candy-filled bellies the kids decided to hit the trampoline for a little jumping. (I love Prestley's flying ponytail in this second picture.)

Pearl is just like her mama in that she doesn't ever want to miss a party, so she made a beeline off the porch to join the big kids.

Luckily Grandma was there to wrap her up in a blanket and take her out for some stories on the trampoline. Lucky for Pearl, but mostly lucky for me because I was getting cold and really didn't want to have to take her out there myself :).

Wowsers, that was a lot! My final Easter photo this year is just to document my stealth thieving ability. John thought it was totally mean of me to steal this many paint chip samples from Home Depot, but I say, they are free, that is not stealing! Who's with me?! I saw this linked to on lots of blogs this year and decided to make one for myself. I'm sure I could dig up the original site to credit it to if anyone wanted it. I love the cheery, colorful splash it adds to my living room and I still haven't taken it down. Easter egg garland year-round, anyone?

sunday best

2011-04-30T22:56:00.000-06:00

Ah, let's get this Easter stuff wrapped up. Unfortch, I won't be able to in this one post (haven't gone through all the photos yet), but hopefully only one more post after this one and I can move on to other exciting things (like, did I mention that we hatched chicks this last week? And we now have 10 little chickies living in our living room?! So much to get to!).

What is the history behind getting new dressy clothes for Easter Sunday? Does anyone know? I suppose I could google it, but that takes lots of work ;). My mom and I discussed it and didn't really come up with anything. At any rate, I spent a few minutes on Sunday trying to get some photos of my wee ones in their Easter finery. None of the pictures of both kids turned out great (oh how I need another newborn who will just lay there and let me take photos without moving), but I still love looking at my sweet little kids.

These first few photos were snapped right before we walked over to church and I was lucky I took a few seconds to get them because they were the only ones that really turned out of both of them together at all. I love their happy little faces so much.

There wasn't time to set up a self-timer shot (and John stays after church for meetings so we had already changed clothes by the time he got home), so the closest thing we got to a family shot was separate pictures of us with the kids. I am sad that I didn't make it more of a priority to get one of all of us though-- I am really wishing I had. Don't mind John's alarmingly large left knee. (He had knee surgery a week ago, remember?)

The rest of these were taken after church in the few moments I had before Pearl insisted on being put down for a nap :). See? Not so great as far as a portrait goes, but I actually do love both of their expressive faces and George's hand holding onto his sister's arm.

Pearl is looking down in 90% of the photos. It must've been a combination of the bright sun and her interest in the dirt and grass. I won't complain though because I do love getting a good look at those lashies.

Hi little lashies!

Still looking down :). Really, I didn't have a choice-- she almost never looked at me despite my most desperate attempts to get her attention. She's a rascal.

Eye issues all over this post-- George's eyes are closed (on purpose) in many of these shots because of the bright sun. Oops.

Ha ha, see?

Oh there we go. Open eyes and a smile. Lucky shots.

We moved to the front yard for a few quick pictures in front of our spring flowers (that are now all tipped over and wilted from the 8 inches of snow that fell on them last night). My two little squinters.

Pearlie was into the flowers. She liked touching them.

And yelling at them.

I thought the flowers were so pretty. I'm glad I snapped these because I don't know if they'll recover from the storm :(.

After we went in to put Pearl down for a nap I figured I'd best try to snap a few pictures of them indoors. You know, so we could document that they do in fact know how to open their eyes. (Pearl was losing it by this point and the only way I could get her to sit there and not immediately speed-crawl to me and start pawing at my chest was to give her the open lotion tub to play in. Seriously. You can see the top of it in her chubby little hands.)

Easter egg hunt's next and then the chickies!

happy little eggs

2011-04-23T22:17:00.000-06:00

Look at me posting about holiday activities BEFORE the holiday actually happens! I actually am hesitant to post these tonight because I know that after tomorrow I will have more Easter pictures to share, but I have some time right now so I figured I would get a jump on it.

John finished up his semester last week and there really are not words for the kind of relief and happiness we felt around here about that. The last three weeks of the semester were truly the most insanely busy, stressful, and wretched weeks of his schooling career thus far. We still have many years left (1 in his masters, 3-5 for a PhD), and there will probably be more craziness to come, but honestly, I think those weeks will be hard to beat. We rarely saw him, he didn't sleep (one of the nights that he was up until 3:30 AM working on something, he came in to the bedroom to lay down only to have his alarm clock go off right then for work), and we were all feeling lonely and frazzled without him around. We are used to him being busy and occupied, but we aren't used to him being non-existent. He had knee surgery on Wednesday and truly, we were so excited about it because we knew it would mean that he could have a few days of down time to rest and hang out with us. We have taken full advantage of having him home this week and were pretty glad to have a low-key day at home to dye Easter eggs together. It ended up being a two day long event (John and I boiled the eggs together late one night, the next day we dyed and decorated eggs with the kids, and then that night John and I boiled and decorated some more by ourselves), and it was so much fun.

Here are the kids all ready to dye their first egg (or eggs, in Pearl's case-- she was not happy unless she had an egg in each hand).

Georgie was excited to watch his sister drop and egg in the dye. He kept encouraging her, "Come on, Peng, you can do it!"

She required much supervision. It was totally a disaster waiting to happen.

She was pretty happy when she plopped that egg down in the dye, and I love that you can see the dye on her fingers.

But then we wanted to let George enjoy himself and do his thing so we thought we'd put the Peachy Baby in her high chair to watch. Um, she was NOT amused.

Luckily her tears were nothing a little cheese bread couldn't cure.

Happy baby-- check. Now George could get to work. (Btw, the leg warmers were all George's idea. We put some on Pearl and he insisted on finding his and wearing them as well.)

George loved doing this so much.

He mostly did his eggs himself, but he did want a little help drawing Bowser (seriously) on one of them.

Pea started to get restless, so while George painted on some sparkles, Daddy walked with her down the hall. (She is loving walking these days. She mostly wants to walk while holding someone's fingers, but she is started to take steps on her own and keep her balance. She can do it if she wants to, but she frequently chooses to lunge/dive to where she wants to go instead of keeping her balance and walking.)

While George and I worked on an egg...

...John caught these little fingers swiping the scissors off of the table. It made us giggle and I was so happy John had the camera right there to snap the picture.

Mama and the babes with their eggies. (Please let's not talk about my bangs. I was growing them out until I saw these pictures. Now I am cutting them.)

Our eggs turned out so vibrant and pretty! This second picture shows why:

Could you see it? Here is a closer look:

We added drops of food coloring (neon and regular) to our dye baths to make the colors that we wanted. We played around with color combinations and ended up with so many cool eggs in the end. I only have pictures of the ones we did that afternoon, but that night John and I made some that turned out pretty good, too. Here is a look at the ones George and Pearl did.

I did not edit or saturate these pictures at all. This is really how bright they are, promise.

Before bed that night Pearl decided a little snack was in order, so she helped herself to her first hardboiled egg ever. At first she wasn't sure about it and kept smiling at us wondering what she was supposed to do with it. She took a few test licks to see what she thought...

...and then she went for it. She really liked it at first, but grew tired of it about halfway through.

Tomorrow should be a happy, full day, and we are so grateful to be celebrating Easter's miracles with people we love. More to come.

loungewear at its finest

2011-04-19T21:53:00.000-06:00

I have been known to coordinate my children's clothes. I have also been known to coordinate their pajamas. Perhaps there is a recovery program I should join-- it's slightly excessive, I know. But really, if you could wake up to this in the morning, wouldn't you do it too?

I mean, seriously.

And since we're posting about pjs, let me throw these in here, too. Just a few cute pictures of my Pea baby one morning fresh out of bed. There are very few things in this world that are more fun (or cute) than babies in the morning.

Let's finish this loungewear post off with photographic evidence of my son's addiction to basketball shorts. Every single time we go to the mall he thinks he needs a new pair. And if we happen to be shopping with my mother and there are basketball shorts on sale, he usually gets some. You might think that this is totally overkill, but you don't know how often my son wears basketball shorts. He happily lets me pick out his clothes for when we leave the house, but as soon as we return home his first order of business is to rush to his room, rip off his pants, and put on some basketball shorts. So he wears at least one pair a day. If we leave the house multiple time he wears multiple pairs. Really. We had fun trying to fit them all on his little body :).

When he tried to walk he tipped over-- that is what the second picture is. (Didn't want anyone thinking I was trying to put my 3 year old in some seductive topless pose :).)

pea turned one

2011-04-12T22:51:00.001-06:00

These poor photos of Pea's 1st birthday celebration have been all ready to post for weeks now. The motivation to actually write the post alluded me, but tonight I am kicking myself into gear and saving these photos from wasting away in the recesses of Photobucket.

I posted about the boys' bug collecting adventures on our way to Idaho, and that (Idaho) is also where we celebrated our little gal turning one. My aunt and uncle that live in Idaho (Kim and Ken) are truly some of my closest and best friends (they lived with us on and off when I was growing up, and I still talk to Kim on the phone multiple times a week), and John and George love them as well (George is borderline obsessed with "Big Jake"), so it was easy for us to want to be with them on Pearlie's big day.

There is something really sweet about going in to pick up your baby from her crib on the morning of her very first birthday. It is a swelling feeling of equal parts overflowing joy and overwhelming love, mixed up with a twinge of bitter that her life really is whirling and swirling by, that she will not ever be this little bundle of one-year-old happiness ever again. How can you measure the heaven that is watching your very own baby become One over the course of 12 glorious, soul-bonding months? There is nothing else like that first year of new life.

John and I both wanted to go get her when she woke up, so we both did. We hugged her and squished her and went into the bathroom for a second (can't remember why) where we took this picture in which I look so awkward and creepy that I should not be posting it. But Pearl was just so smiley and happy and sweet that I am going to take one for the team and let you guys see her. Just try not to look left.

We made our way downstairs to the mantle where Pearl's birthday banner hung and my jammied babies sat for a few pictures. In the second photo Pearl is proudly waving her one little finger around for everyone to see how old she is.

Emma got to hug the kids before she left for school, and insisted on bringing Pearlie out to her bus stop to meet her friends :). There is a picture of me on my first birthday where I am sitting on the kitchen counter in my pajamas (a blue gown), holding one little finger up. We wanted to re-create that with Pearl, but we didn't have a gown and she wouldn't hold her one finger still (she likes to bounce it up and down while we sing, "One one one one one one one! Pearl is wuh-uhn!"), so this was as good as we could do. I'll have to hunt down the picture of me sometime and post them side by side.

Josh is gonna be a good daddy. He loves Pearl and she adores him.

Kim and I went to the store to pick up a few things for Pearl's cake and while we were there I had the fancy idea to make her cake into a little bathtub. I saw a package of yellow Peeps and imagined it being a little rubber ducky, so we went with it. So the outside was covered with plenty of refined sugar, but on the inside there was some serious health. It was mostly just applesauce, spelt flour, some spices, and a little sucanat. If you know my husband at all you will not wonder why Kim has a huge glob of frosting on her nose and doesn't look too thrilled about it.

While the cake baked and cooled and got bathtub-ized Pearl chilled in her birthday skirt, mostly looking out the sliding glass door and wanting to go outside to see the dog, who she insisted was called, "Gah." (My parents' dog's name is "Garth" so that is the word she uses for any and all dogs.)

We've established by now that I am clearly not an awesome party planner/giver, right? I don't really do cute themes or elaborate invitations (or, let's be honest, any of those things at all). Maybe one day I will, but I just haven't really wanted the pressure of a big birthday bash before my kids are old enough to request one on their own. Anyway, I really am not a good party thrower at all. I also am not good at getting gifts for babies who are turning one. Really. She didn't have one single present until the day of her birthday when my aunt and I went out and found some really great clothes for her at a few second hand shops in town. I figured the actual having of a present, wrapped and ready to be opened, was more important than Pearl being interested in what was in the present, so we wrapped up a few of the outfits and called it good. I am seriously not awesome, am I? Don't tell Pearl, she didn't care :). In fact, she really wasn't interested in the presents very much at all. She just kind of held them for a second and then dropped them so she could turn around and grab the balloons (much more exciting).

See?

We let George take over in the present-opening department because he, on the other hand, was very interested in the gifts.

He even feigned some excitement over the articles of clothing for his little sister that he found inside the packages: "Look Peng! Some new pretty clothes for you!" She still didn't care.

So, the bathtub cake did not turn out to be everything I ever dreamed of. It was totally makeshift, and a little messy. Next time it might be a good idea to, oh I don't know, maybe have a plan or picture or something other than just making it up as you go. This is what I ended up with-- it sort of resembles a bathtub, right? Sort of?

I love that she is holding up her one finger in the background of this first picture. And I love the second one because she kept doing that with her hands. She would hold her hands up like, "Really? What is this for? You really want me to just touch that food?"

Haha, see this picture on the right? She had just touched the cake for the first time and she was like, "Seriously? I just get to do this? What is going on here?!" So cute.

She discovered the Peep and had a little nibble. She wasn't so sure about it-- look at her suspicious eyes checking it out. I feel the same way about those icky little creatures.

Eventually she got more into it. This was pure torture for George. He was highly disturbed that we were letting Pearl ruin a perfectly good cake that he could have eaten.

She was very precise about licking her fingers off. It was cracking us up.

Her sweet little frosting face. (And is it just me or does she look like she has a mullet in this picture? Please be honest because I will get out the scissors real fast if I need to.)

Mama and Dada with the birthday baby.

Every good cake demolition ends with a party in the tub, am I right?

And a fresh clean baby for a mama to hug.

So happy and so grateful that this fresh clean baby came to this mama. Oh I just love her.

She got to play with her balloons again (seriously, skip the gifts and just get balloons) before bed, and then, just like that, the huge rite of passage that is turning one was in the books.

I think it should be a rule that people get to have a perpetually-one-year-old child forever.

remember the smiling

2011-04-01T23:14:00.002-06:00

George drew this picture for me yesterday:

I love it so much for a bunch of reasons (what is not to love about a 3 year-old version of his family?), but I think mostly because it paints (draws) such an accurate portrait of what our lives have looked like for the past couple of weeks. The brown person is me, and as you maybe could guess, that is Baby Pearl sitting in my lap. George is the guy drawn in black, his hand stretched out to hold mine. And the little guy on the end is someone that George said was a "weird stranger." Not exactly sure why the weird stranger made the portrait and Daddy didn't, but we went with it, and it is hanging on the fridge proudly.

Pearl has been a sick little girl the last two weeks. It has been a very strange bout of illness; we get rid of one thing and another immediately begins. It started with some random throwing up (George and I also both threw up, but that was even more random so I don't think they were related). She struggled to have an appetite for anything other than breastmilk, and for a few days that is the only thing she ate at all. She had a low-grade fever on and off. Then the coughing and the runny nose started. She would cough so hard at night that I was sure she was going to wake herself completely up, but she always managed to stay asleep. Bless her little heart. Then last Friday she woke up absolutely screaming at about 6 AM. The grabbing at her right ear told me immediately that she had an ear infection. She has tubes in both ears, and within about an hour, sure enough, the right ear started draining. As soon as we got to the parking lot of the doctor's office that morning she threw up (random, seriously, because at this point she hadn't thrown up in 6 days). I stripped her down, wrapped her in a big blanket, and ran through the falling snow into the doctor's office where my baby immediately remembered the shots that had been administered to her just a couple weeks prior there, and was clingy and weepy anytime anyone tried to come near her. The prescription the doctor gave me started out awesome because Pearl really loved taking it, but quickly turned into a nightmare because of the yeast infection that it gave her. It was so bad, and Nystatin wouldn't touch it. I was having to rinse her little bum off after every diaper change because wiping it hurt too badly. Meanwhile her right ear is draining blood and nastiness. By day 6 of the antibiotics I had had it. I couldn't keep doing it to her-- the ear seemed to be under control, but the yeast infection was raging, so I decided to stop giving her the antibiotic. The next day she wouldn't go to sleep for more than 30 seconds if she wasn't in my arms. She would scream hysterically and then she started grabbing her left ear. I was seriously devastated at the thought that she was now getting an ear infection in her other ear. Like clockwork, the left ear started draining, and I knew. That was yesterday. I was so happy to talk to the ENT and find out that stopping the oral antibiotics a day early wouldn't have made a difference in the ear infection (well, actually, I was a little mad to find out that the yeast infection should have never happened because she should have never been on an oral antibiotic for her ear infection in the first place-- just the drops), so we started the drops in the other ear (so both ears, now), and the draining has definitely decreased. Pearl is still not herself, but she is doing pretty well, all things considered. She mostly just wants me, though yesterday she really wanted my mom to rock her to sleep, which was a nice break for a minute.

I love that in his picture, George drew Pearl on my lap because that is pretty much where she has been every waking moment of the last two weeks. She is also portrayed with a sad face instead of a smile, and it's true-- she has been so much more sad, whiney, screamy, and needy. She doesn't feel good. Poor little baby girl. He also said that he drew her ears really big to show the ear infection (it appears that I was given big ears as well :)).

I am relieved that he drew me with a smile on my face. There have been times in the past couple of weeks that a frown would be more accurate, but I'm glad that isn't something that has really stood out to him. I am also really happy that he drew himself holding hands with me. I have been more impatient with him, and less attentive to him because of Pearl's neediness, and I've felt badly about it. He's been heard crying, "I never get to do anything fun!" because it was bedtime instead of frisbee playing time. He's had to compete for attention over Pearl's insistent screams with screams of his own, and in turn, I get frustrated. I am so happy that he still wants to hold my hand. I'm so grateful that in the car tonight he told me that I was his best friend, and that at lunch today when I told him I was the luckiest mama in the world because I have the best boy and the best girl, that his happy reply to his sister was, "That's me and you, Peng!" I'm so happy that he is still smiling, both in his picture and in life. He is my little guinea pig child, the one that I have to learn and grow and succeed and fail right along with, and I hope he always knows that my greatest desire, the purest yearning of my heart, is that he feels happy, safe, and loved.

I hope when he is all grown up and thinking back on his childhood, the picture that he paints of himself is one where he is smiling. I hope he remembers the giggles under the covers instead of the stern counting to three to get him to obey. I hope he remembers the games of tag on trampolines where we both fall down from exhaustion and laughing instead of the times he got sent to his room to "think about it."

Mostly I just really hope he remembers that in our home there was a lot of joy, a lot of laughter, a lot of love, a lot of peace, and a lot of smiling. It's a good reminder to me that I need to be constantly aware of cultivating that atmosphere here, even when I don't really feel like it.

biology, bugs, boys

2011-03-24T23:48:00.000-06:00

Trying not to be sad and mad about Jimmer and the boys tonight (and please, let's not even mention the Jazz. At least there's RSL, right?), so I shall blog of happier times :).

John is working on his thesis right now, and he is in the thick of collecting aquatic insects (pteronarcella, which are stoneflies, to be exact) for his research. He has gone on a couple of collecting trips by himself (he is collecting from all over the western US), and has many more in the plans, but we are also trying to make some family trips out of them. BYU issues him a car and credit card for gas since his research is funded, so hey, why not take advantage of it and hit the road together, right? Yes, well, that is the plan anyway. John needed to collect at a few streams en route to Boise, ID, and my aunt and uncle's family lives right near there, so we decided to combine the two and make a weekend trip to visit my dearest family and collect a few bugs on the way. Best of both worlds, ya know?

One of the happiest things in my life right now is the feeling of peace I have that our family is headed in the right direction for us. There is still plenty of uncertainty (like, uh, where we will be moving to next year for John's PhD), but I feel so blessed to know that the career path that he is on is the right one for him, and the best thing for our family. I love so much that he is doing something that he is so passionate about, and something that he is so naturally gifted in. I am also so grateful that this is a career path that will ensure that our children grow up learning about, experiencing, and appreciating nature and the beautiful creations that surround them. I am so grateful that my kids will have childhood memories of going on collecting and research trips to the woods and streams with their dad, that they will have the opportunity to know and love nature from their infancy. With that said, here are some photos from one of the collecting stops on our way.

Pea and I looking all kinds of disheveled from being in the car for a few hours, and the boys with their collecting paraphernalia, getting ready to head down to the river.

It's really hard for me to get normal pictures of George these days.

George waiting patiently on the riverbank to see what his daddy rustles up.

Waiting patiently is easier when you have sticks to play with.

Or to throw into the water.

And here they are, my two little biologists, surveying their finds.

George seriously loved this. He maneuvered those forceps around the icky little creatures like a pro, and was actually a help to John in getting all the bugs collected quicker. I think they will make a good team for years to come.

Check out his forceps about to snatch up that bug.

When John went back down to the river to get some more creatures, George stayed back by himself to continue the collecting. He insisted on putting a few sticks ("for the bugs to crawl on and sleep on") and leaves ("for when the bugs want to eat") in the collecting jars. I didn't tell him that the alcohol he was dropping them into would pretty much kill them instantly.

Oh see, there he is, dropping a bug into certain death. It's for research, people. It must me done :).

Maybe my favorite picture of the bunch. I just love this little boy and all his boyish ways.

Wielding forceps makes him very happy.

And here are a few shots of the little bugs themselves. The little bugs that are currently living in vials above my computer desk. Lucky me.

If I am remembering correctly, this bug on the right is going to eventually turn into a dragonfly. Perhaps gomphidae? I would ask my biologist, but he's sleeping next to me right now and he has to get up in like 3 hours. I'll let him sleep and risk being totally off on my aquatic entomology terms.

Ah cuuute! They both have one!

This one makes me laugh. He's like, "Wow! Mom! Look at this one!" He was pretty excited about it. Looking at it now, in the photo, I'm pretty sure it's a piece of wood. Good trying though, Georgie :).

Baby Girl and I were there, too. I had my 50mm lens on, which makes self-portaits most tricky :).

We tried a few times. Blurry, runny nose, half of faces. Oh well :).

This was as close as we got to both of our faces being in the frame.

So happy that I have a little pal to keep me company. I'm sure she will be a bug-lovin', forcep-wieldin' little kid just like her brother one day, but for now I love getting to bring her back to the car to warm up while the boys stay out to collect "just a few more."

she is ours

2011-03-11T09:22:00.001-07:00

My precious daughter is one. I wish I could convey in words how much joy she has filled our home and hearts with over this past year, but there aren't any. She radiates and oozes happiness. If her brother made me a mama, she has made us a family, and I cannot imagine not having her sweet little self in my life. She is magic.

She blows kisses. She twirls and twists her wrists in the most dainty way. She grins readily. She is sunshine.

She has bright blue eyes. And brown wispy, flippy hair. She loves to give high fives. She is delight.

She is mama's girl. She loves to nurse. She has turned into a cuddler. She gives slobbery, open mouth kisses. She is heaven.

She adores her daddy. She says, "Dada" and talks to him on the phone. She crawls at lightning speed. She can't get enough of crawling up stairs, especially because she knows she isn't supposed to. She speed-crawls to them, hoping no one will notice, while shaking her head back and forth because she knows it is a "no no." She is spunk.

She rubs her hands on her chest to say please. She screams loudly when she wants something (especially food). She pretends to get shy around new faces by laying her head down on my shoulder and averting her eyes. She has long, dark eye lashes. She is pure honey.

She is round. She is soft and squishy. She is feminine and tender. She is irresistable.

Her eyes twinkle and sparkle with life and thoughts. Her spirit is filled with goodness and joy. She is ours, our very own glimmer of God. She is one.

remember when?

2011-03-07T23:09:00.000-07:00

This is a catch-up post.

Remember when we went to Sev's birthday party? George loves his buddy Sevrin, and that makes me so happy because Sev's mama just happens to be my very best friend. Rachael and I have been BFFs since we were two years old. We lucked out in having our firstborn babies be so close. Hooray for second generation BFFs!

This was the only picture I took of the two of them looking at the camera and it is really unfortunate. George looks like a freaky freak and Sev looks angry and bored.

Here the boys are from behind, sporting their superhero capes as they climb together.

Sev got tired of his cape, but George wanted to wear his the whole time.

I love these cute pictures of the boys going down the slides together.

Much to Georgie's dismay, Sev did have other friends he needed to socialize with, so George hit the slides solo a few times.

Peachy Baby was there, too, and she loved it. Here she is on a little carousel.

There was this little area for babies that Pearlie loved playing in. Little Blue Eyes.

I love how intently she is studying the blocks in this first picture.

These next two are probably my favorite photos from the day. I love the way the composition turned out with the toy blurred in the foreground and her little eye in focus staring right at me.

Sev gave George one of his giant balloons and I snapped a few pictures of George with it as we walked to the car just for fun.

I like how you can see him through the balloon in this first one.

__________

Remember when George learned how to peel carrots and insisted on peeling them all for our dinner one Sunday? That was fun. And required much patience on my part.

This boy loves carrots. It is the best when we grow them in the garden all summer long, but these store-bought ones do just fine for Georgie.

__________

Remember when Pearl had her very first braid? It was just a silly little one that I did after church one day, but I took pictures to document it nonetheless.

Don't mind that from the waist up my kids look ready for church, but from the waist down they are in their party pants (or lack thereof).

My sweet boy still loves his two "gaygies." ("Gaygies" means "blankies. He has called them that from the time he was first talking and couldn't say "blankies" right, and even though he can say it fine now, the term "gaygies" is here to stay.)

He recently informed me that he especially loves his yellow one because the corners are softer and he can poke them in better. If he loses a gaygie in the night and asks for it he always wants to know which color I am handing him. I can't fool him, either. He knows which one is yellow just by the way the silky corners feel (which is strange because they are exactly the same blanket, just in different colors).

__________

Remember when George and Daddy caught a bitty little snake in the yard? (This was clearly quite some time ago before it was freezing :).)

__________

Remember when George painted monsters by blowing on watered down paint with a straw. Hours of entertainment.

And then he used his fingerprints to paint little people. We added details with a pen later.

Disregard the fact that he is not wearing pants.

When Pearlie woke up from her nap she got to join the party. She was pretty happy just observing as long as she could play with a straw. (This was clearly in her pre-crawling days.)

My squishy babies.

I put Pearl up on G's bed to keep her out of the way for a bit, but George decided to join her. He really loves playing with her.

I love her chubby little hand grabbing his arm.

And lastly, luckily I am not in a contest for the Mother of the Year, because this picture (along with a host of other unimpressive habits) would surely cost me the title. Yes those are the airborne legs of my three-year-old jumping dangerously close to his baby sister to make her laugh. And I let him.

Ah, I feel like I just cleaned out my closet! There are a few more things from the archives, but mostly I can post about current events now. (Like my 5 1/2 hour experience in the ER on Saturday for an MRI that showed me three happily bulging discs in my back and some torn muscles on my sacrum. Yay! We are trying to take it easy around here and let things heal, but that is hard to do when you have an 11 month old baby to haul around. Things have improved drastically from Friday night (Saturday morning, I guess) when we called our dear neighbors at 3 AM to have Martin come over and help John give me a blessing. I couldn't walk or move or bend without collapsing down to try to find a position that would bring relief from the pain. Anyway, I am very hopeful that I'll be back to my normal self again soon. Things are getting better every day.)

three-toothed monster

2011-03-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

Remember clear back when Pearl only had three teeth? Two on bottom, and one on top, making her look like a picture-perfect little hill-billy. It was only a couple of weeks ago, but it is already way old news because she is currently sporting two more (both on top) pearly whites in her sweet smile. But these pictures must be posted, so here ye go.

You could see her teeth best when she was baring them in anger.

But she really is a happy eater most of the time :).

Allegedly this baby girl of mine will be one on Friday. I am shocked by that because she still seems so little to me. She is saying new words almost daily, attempting to mimic many of the things we say, but I still can't wrap my mind around her one-ness. She is just a baby. A baby that makes me overflow with joy.

doctor love

2011-02-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

Whenever George wore his Valentine's Day shirt he would ask people, "Are you heartsick??? Because I am Dr. Love!" It was (and is-- he still wears the shirt) awesome. There are a few pictures of his shirt down at towards the end of the post. Here is a little peek at our Valentine's Day preparations and festivities this year.

G needed to make a Valentine's box for his little classroom party. The only kinds of boxes that I was familiar with (from making them for myself and with my little sisters) involved lots of pinks and purples and hearts. George was less than thrilled with the proposition of making such a girly box, so I had to get a little more creative. My sister Hannah had a mini basketball hoop on her bed and I decided to use that as the main focus for George's box; his friends could shoot their valentines through the hoop. George was super excited about it, and it turned out pretty cute (though it is in the dumpster now). I just spray painted a Nike shoebox black (using duct tape to reinforce the creases so it wouldn't fold down), duct taped the basketball hoop in place, and then let George go wild with the stickers. I wanted to let George do as much of it himself as possible, but as it turns out, black spray paint and duct tape are not very 3-year-old friendly, so he mostly just did the stickers. Here are a few photos.

Baby sister played around under the table at our feet while we decorated it. She doesn't like to be too far from the action :).

Georgie is getting pretty good at writing his name all by himself so I let him write it on all the valentines that he passed out to his friends.

If he looks a little disheveled it's because we did this right after he had woken up on Valentine's Day morning :).

We combed his hair :) and then went to his school for his party. It is still amazing to me that I have a little boy who goes to school, has friends and teachers, and sits down at a table to play Valentine's Day Bingo all by himself. He put a bean on the number when it was called out, and was so excited when he won (all the kids won at some point). Here he is with some of his classmates, apparently studying his bingo card very thoroughly to find a number.

While the big kids played bingo and I took some pictures I parked my littlest valentine around the classroom. She was all decked out in hearts :).

After a few rounds of bingo (and some other games), it was time to swap valentines. Here is George all ready with his box.

His hoop got a little clogged with all of the goods that came his way :).

Every time someone would put a valentine in his hoop Georgie wanted to take it out and show it to me proudly. He was excited, little cutie.

I wanted to snap a picture of my two love babies, but Pearl was not feeling it. She was ready for a nap.

She's like, "George, please stop trying to make me smile. Just go away, I am sad."

My happy Dr. Love and my sad heart baby.

The rest of our Valentine's Day was pretty low key. When John got home from school I gave him the little gift that I had made for him, and I'll post a couple of pictures of that so that someone can use the idea next year :). I always like to get creative ideas for fun gifts, so I thought I'd share. This was so easy and inexpensive, but also pretty meaningful and personal. I just made little fortune cookies out of felt, came up with some personal and thoughtful fortunes for John, and then put it all together in a cute take-out box I found at a craft store. I got the idea for the felt fortune cookies on marthastewart.com (if you search for fortune cookies on the website the directions will come up). The only thing I did differently was use pipe cleaners instead of floral wire and ribbon to shape them (which I would recommend doing-- much easier and less expensive). Here are a few pictures.

Pearl still wasn't feeling great that evening, so we opted to just stay home, get the kids in bed, and order take-out. Hey, we're parents, that's what a relaxing night looks like sometimes :).

our latina cry baby

2011-02-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

Pearl does something funny when she cries. Upon exhalation she rolls her tongue on the top of her mouth as she cries/screams out. It is the same sound you make when you are rolling the /r/ sound when speaking Spanish (and other languages), except she does it for a long time. It is a pretty fancy trick, if you ask me because I can't even begin to do it. I can barely muster up a tiny /r/ roll for half a second in a word or something, but the ability to continuously roll your tongue to make that sound eludes me. Not my daughter though. She is a pro. We have tried to capture this on camera a couple of times because it really is a cute little quirk of hers that we want to remember, but she stops doing it whenever she sees us or the camera. One day a couple of weeks ago she was having a hard time falling asleep for a nap (which is not typical-- nursing usually puts her right to sleep if she's tired). I was growing weary and decided to just put her in her bed to see if she'd fall asleep on her own. The answer is no, she did not fall asleep, but YES! we did finally get a little footage of her unique cry.

You'll have to excuse her mismatched and disorganized room. She's almost one and we still haven't made the full switch from a boyish nursery to a more feminine one. There are bits and pieces of George left over in there that I've had intentions to change but haven't yet. And also don't mind the boxes full of clothes on the floor. Those are the things the kids have grown out of that are supposed to be making their way to D.I.. Allegedly they were going there last week. Oops. Maybe this week. Anyway, the best part of this little video is the way she goes from crying in earnest (with the Latina flair, of course) to all smiles and rainbows when she sees her daddy walk in. (You may have to turn up your volume a bit to hear the cry.)

Don't you think that little cry is funny?

She did fall asleep. After John rescued her I went in and nursed her again and she quickly settled into slumber. Her room isn't normally this bright while she naps but I opened the blinds to snap these pictures.

This one is my fave.

while i nurse pearl...

2011-02-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

... George helps himself to a snack. Strawberries. The entire carton. Minus the top halves.

I love this view because it shows exactly what I saw when I went out to the living room to see what he was doing and why he was so quiet. He's just lounging on the couch enjoying his snack quietly by himself, discarding the parts he doesn't want on the coffee and end tables.

This is why I will wash and cut the tops off of the strawberries from now on before they are put away in the refrigerator.

Along with eating strawberries by the half, George does things that make me laugh every day. He tells elaborate stories, asks thoughtful questions, and still loves to cuddle. He is so curious about what letters spell and is constantly saying things like, "Mom, what does G-P-E-T-O-O-L spell?" He is getting the hang of writing his name and he loves to point out letters that are "his" (meaning in his name) wherever we go.

George loves reading (by reading I mean having them read to him) the scriptures and is the first to remind us to do so before we put him to bed. He is fascinated by the stories of Ammon, Abinidi, the Stripling Warriors, Noah and the Ark, and Nephi. We are trying to reinforce that it is really cool to be the good guys, but George isn't totally convinced; he loves the parts of the stories where people use swords and arrows and often says he'd rather be Laman than Nephi when acting out a story. We're working on it :).

John and I found ourselves backpedaling one day when George overheard a conversation we were having about Satan and asked about him. We tried to explain who Satan was and what he did, but all that ended up happening was George sobbing about a scary man that lives in a really dark place where there is never any light who tries to make people be mean and do bad stuff. "Does he live in our town?" he kept wailing, and we were like, "NO! Just forget about him!" which is why we tried to tell him that he lived far away in a dark place (outer darkness, ya know?), but that was so scary for his little mind, too. Ummm, how do you explain Satan to a three-year-old? We calmed him down by reminding him that Heavenly Father could help him feel better and peaceful and asked if he wanted to say a prayer. He did, and there haven't been Satan tears since, but there have still been questions. I guess we're still working on that one, too. How have you taught your little children about this? Have you? Maybe three is too young.

Another thing we have had a hard time conveying to George's inquisitive little mind is the Holy Ghost. We explained it to him and have talked about how it is a feeling of peace and safety and that The Holy Ghost can come to you when you are scared or need comfort. He was okay with that until one day he was alone in the car for a few minutes while I ran in the house and got scared. When I got back out to the car (I was literally inside for less than a minute) George was sobbing hysterically. I hugged him and tried to soothe him but he just kept sobbing, "I said a prayer to Heavenly Father and I thought the Holy Ghost would come, but he didn't!" which of course made me feel like a failure as a parent. I told him the Holy Ghost would come if he was scared, and with his perfect faith, he believed me. But how was he supposed to understand that the person who is the Holy Ghost would not likely actually come to him in the only way that would have made sense to him (an actual being coming to him when he called)? I know that this is actually a really sweet and endearing (maybe even a little funny) story, but it has actually caused me quite a bit of heartache. I can't bear confusing him and losing his trust, and all I can think about is how I will do better to provide him with experiences where he can feel the Holy Ghost, where I can explain to him what that is, and hope that he will understand. Do you guys have experience with this? I would love to know how you have explained these really not-concrete things to your young children.

While it may sound like we are spiritually failing our son right and left :), one place that I think he does have a pretty good grasp is prayer. Somehow he understands that he can talk to his Heavenly Father (and, *wince* don't think I am apostate, but Heavenly Mother, too) through a prayer and that he will be heard. He prays constantly. Almost daily I hear him in the backseat saying things like, "Heavenly Father, please don't let a big storm come to our town, okay Heavenly Father, OKAY?" And then he will announce, "He said okay!" So far we haven't run into any issues with something happening that he had prayed wouldn't happen, but I am sure that conversation is not too far down the road. How do you explain to a toddler that yes, Heavenly Father will always answer your prayers, but sometimes it might not seem like it because it may not be answered in a way we would expect or hope? Agh, this parenting stuff is not for the faint of heart. It makes me weary just thinking of it all.

So I have put all this out there and I know that there are some people (dear people that I love) that may think, "So if you can't even know how to teach your child about God, or how to answer a three-year-old's questions about how the Holy Ghost works, how can you actually believe in these things, how can you perpetuate these confusing concepts onto your child?" And to them I would say with all of the sincerity and honesty in my heart this: while I don't necessarily know all of the best ways to convey these things to my children right now, I truly do know that teaching them about God and their spiritual natures will eventually bring them more answers than I ever could, that it will be the key to finding peace when they are confused, that it will offer them hope and light when anything or everything else fails them. I don't always know how to teach them about these things, but I know that if I don't, if I don't do my very best to at least try, I will be failing to give them the one thing in life that I am 100% sure of: my knowledge that they are children of divinity, that they have access to happiness and peace and love bigger than anything hard or scary that may come their way. Even if I don't always know how to teach them, I know that I must teach them. And I know that I, too, have access to Heavenly Help as I seek to care for and nurture these precious little souls that have been entrusted in my care. I could not do this whole motherhood thing if I wasn't sure of that.

my 11 month-old pea

2011-02-13T21:31:00.001-07:00

I'm feeling extra tender for my baby girl tonight (perhaps because she has had a fever of 102* today and has been so cuddly and patient and sweet despite it). I know I say it constantly, but I truly feel such deep gratitude to be a mama to this little 11 month old wonder. As I rock her before bed each night and say a prayer, that is typically the only thing I can think to say: I am so, incredibly grateful for this precious chubby body to cradle in my arms, for the way that she needs me, for how much she fills me. Taking care of her is loving her, and it is never a burden. I pray that I will always live to meet her (and her brother's) needs.

She is all kinds of trouble these days, crawling like a crazy person at super speed. She is especially fond of crawling into the bathroom and breaking off little pieces of toilet paper to eat, and she has some serious radar for finding small choking hazards to put in her mouth. I don't ever remember George doing that, and it keeps me on my toes for sure. At her 9 month doctor appointment I specifically asked her pediatrician about the Heimlich Maneuver vs. back blows for a baby of that age who is choking because it is something that I have been worried about-- she seriously puts small things in her mouth all the time (it's back blows, by the way, until she is one). I mean, I am not planning on her choking (and I really do try to make sure there are not choking hazards within her reach), but better to know just in case, right?

Her first word was "Da Da," at a little over 9 months. She babbled "da da da" and "ma ma ma" a lot before that, but that was when she started to say it associated with her daddy. He would come in the room and she would grin from ear to ear and, in her high little voice, say, "Da Da!" A few weeks after that she started saying "Mama" legitimately, and she has now added "num num" (for food), and "na na na na" (while furiously shaking her head back and forth for "no no no") to her vocabulary. My favorite thing she says is a very breathy "Hhhiiiiiiiii." We say hi back and forth to each other a million times a day because I love it so much.

She also loves to click her tongue (first picture above and below), and it is my favorite when I can hear her in the other room just happily clicking away. My aunt Kim taught her "peek-a-boo" a while back, and while she sometimes does the typical two-handed eye cover, she often likes to cover both her eyes with only one hand, right in the middle of her face, and I love it. She also does pattycake, waves bye bye, and dances on command. One of her cutest tricks is something she does with my dad every time he holds her. He started having her give him a high five and then bump foreheads whenever he would pick her up, and now, as soon as she is in his arms, she puts her hand up to slap his and then promptly leans in to bump her forehead to his. It is seriously darling.

Pearlie has been pulling herself up to standing and cruising around furniture for awhile now (maybe a month or two), but has just recently begun flirting with standing alone. She loves to let go and balance, and is getting really good at it. This morning she stood up from sitting, without the help of furniture or anything, for the first time. She was so proud of herself. She tried it once and fell down immediately, and then tried it again and stood there for about 10 seconds with her arms out to her sides to steady herself. She was looking at me with a big grin like she knew she was pretty awesome.

The other day she was playing with my mom's phone and put it up to her ear like she was talking on it. It was so cute to me because I had no clue that she would know to do that. And yesterday she found a brush on the bathroom floor and put it up to her hair and moved it around. That surprised me too, because I have never brushed her hair before. Babies don't miss anything, I tell you what.

Georgie refers to himself as her "bruh bruh" and really wants her to learn to say that. We are working on it, I keep telling him, but he doesn't think she is catching on quickly enough :). She loves her brother, though. She is happy in her carseat as long as she can see him, and they are constantly playing a game where they take turns wildly shaking their heads back and forth against their carseats. They think it is hysterical, and I do too, unless I am wanting Pearl to fall asleep. Then the humor wears off pretty quickly and I wish for a barricade between them that is sightproof (not a word?) and soundproof. I owe a separate blog dedicated to their blossoming relationship, so I won't write much more here, but it is so soul-warming to watch your children love each other. More on that (and on Georgie-- he is every bit as delightful as she is) soon.

vintage babies

2011-02-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

A couple of Sundays ago I decided to keep the kids in their church clothes and get a few pictures of them outside on our way up to my parents' house. Mostly I wanted to get pictures of George because, hello, he had a plaid suit coat on. Pearl is just a bonus :).

When Georgie wore this suit to church the first time he asked me if it was an "old man coat." I thought it was funny that he picked up on that. My favorite part of this photo (besides George's over-smile and Pea's sweet smile) is Pearlie's arm up on her brother's shoulder. She likes him.

I stayed in my skirt and forced John to put back on a shirt and tie (he rips off his suit as soon as he gets home from his meetings) because I thought we could maybe get a few shots of all of us. What I didn't bargain for was the freezing cold. John thought I was crazy (and perhaps irresponsible) to have my children outside, so we literally only took 4 pictures. All right in a row. But we got a couple that we can work with, I think. One of these days I just need to get a real person to come snap pictures of us. It is quite the challenge to get Pearl to look at an immobile, mute camera.

This one wins, I think.

Can you tell how cold it was?

blue eyed valentine

2011-02-07T22:12:00.001-07:00

Pretty happy she's mine.

I get the comment, "Oh, isn't she just a little Gerber baby?" all the time. I get why people say it (I think it is the combination of her round cheeks, wide eyes, and dark hair), but this picture really makes me see the "Gerber" look that she has. I took it at a weird angle, but if you tilt your head a bit you can kinda get the idea :).

This first photo was an attempt to photograph her shiny new tooth, but it was still so tiny that you can't really see it.

Here you can sort of see it. Bottom right. I took these pictures about two weeks ago, and they are already way old news. A couple days after this photo was taken she had the other bottom tooth poking through, and a couple days after that, her top right one as well. She waited awhile to get teeth (10 months), but when she did, she didn't mess around. George actually did the exact same thing, and I hope all of my children get those same genes. It is so nice to keep those gummy, baby mouths for as long as possible, in my opinion :). I'll have to get some current photos of my three-toothed wonder-- she totally looks like a hillbilly with that one top tooth.

At what age do baby girls start playing with baby dolls? I want her to love her baby, but so far she only likes holding her for about 10 seconds before she gets bored. She will give her hugs and kisses, but only because I tell her to. I am hoping that I am not raising a cold-hearted daughter that has zero mothering instincts :). She is probably still too little to really "get" the whole baby doll thing yet, I guess.

Something she does love? Opening up her drawers and emptying them, one article of clothing at a time.

Seriously, she could entertain herself for hours with this.

I decided I didn't want the entire drawer emptied, so I sat her down. She screamed (first photo). Then she reached over and got one of her shirts, which for some reason made her stop crying (second photo). Maybe she thought that holding the shirt meant that she would get to go throw the rest of them out of her drawer?

When I made the mistake of taking the shirt away so I could fold it any put it back, she did this again. Baby Girl has got some attitude and definitely lets me know what she thinks about things. I can't get over how much fun it is to watch unique personalities develop in these little people that are mine. George was (is) my mellow, cautious, gentle boy. I have so loved his easy-to-please demeanor. And now I have Pearl. Before she came along I would have thought that I would have always chosen to have an easygoing child over a little spitfire (if we could choose those things, obviously). Oh how she has changed my mind! I seriously adore that she is a little feisty, that she knows what she wants, that she is determined. I love that she has a little sass and spice. Really. She is all kinds of sweet and easy as well, but she can definitely hold her own too, and I love that. She's gonna need all that fire one day :).

George was in the room with us "reading" a book while I was taking these pictures. This book has a CD that goes along with it that reads the stories and George follows along and looks at the pictures. He LOVES this, and I think it is brilliant for times when I can't sit down and read with him. Anyway, Pearl likes the book, too, and I am constantly having to move her away so she doesn't rip all the pages in her zeal to see what her brother is doing (there have already been two casualties). It will be a fun day when she will just sit nicely next to George and "read" with him. For now, George and I are left trying to keep her away. I love these pictures because they show how gentle George (usually) is with his Penguin. She reaches, he, without bothering to look up and see what is happening, knows to just calmly move her hand away.

This happens over and over and I call her name to try to get her to come over to me.

There is no distracting this baby from getting what she wants. She goes for it again.

In a moment of brilliance, George moves the book higher and rests his leg out on his sister to keep her at a safe distance.

Love these little readers.

And lastly, in case you needed more proof that our Pear girl delights in emptying drawers, here you go. This time it was George's underwear bin that she got ahold of, and oh how happy she was. Until I found her :).