"I wanna sing a song please, mommy"

i'd put a springtime max and ruby dvd on for the kids and then settled in my bed with my laptop to write my 31 week pregnancy post.  i was most of the way through it when brady opened the door to my bedroom.

hanging on the door handle, he said, with his sweet toddler voice "i wanna sing a song please mommy..."
me: "what?  right now?  what song do you want to sing?"
brady; "i'm a child of god"
me: "okay, come on over and snuggle up with me then."
so he ran over and i lifted him up, heaved him over my belly, and put my arm around him while he snuggled up to my belly and laid his head on my chest."

and then i sang.  i sang 'i am a child of god' and had barely finished when he instantly requested 'jesus sunbeam' so i sang that.  and then it was over.  he was all done.

"brady, should we sing another song?"
"no."
"what song do you want to sing?  i am a child of god again?"

but nope... he was finished.

that is the epitome of short and sweet.  after all the crying he's done today and him pulling abigail's hair in the car (and not letting go forever) on our way back from the airport and crying through nap tie instead of actually sleeping... it was much appreciated.

my sweetest little boy.

fake food and diy potpourri

thursday night i left my honey at home with the kids so i could go to a presidency meeting at my secretary's house.  my christopher is always so willing to watch our kids when i have things going on.  thursday night he was just slightly less than happy about it though because he'd woken up at 5am (as usual but it's still exhausting) and had had a super extremely rough day at work.  my meeting was at 8 and brady woke up at 8:30 (timing with his naps has been tricky with dropping the swaddle... i swear we'll eventually get back on schedule) and was wide awake.  all of this is really not relevant... why do i always share so many details?  anyways, towards the end of the meeting, he was texting me and anxious for me to get home so he could go to sleep.  i told him we were allllmost done.  then i told him i was just leaving.  but i stayed a little longer talking with my friend.  so then, as i was walking to the car, i told him i was just leaving again.  

i clicked to unlock the car, climbed in, grabbed the keys from my lap, and... couldn't find the car key to start the car!  i had driven my christopher's car and he had recently taken his key off my keychain and put it on again.  sooo he must have put it on a loose link because it came off.  well, it was pitch black and i spent a good while using my cell phone light to try to find this key.  i knew christopher was getting impatient for me to be home and that brady needed to eat and was probably getting fussy and tired.  but ohmygoodnesswherewasthatkey?!  then i got an obviously annoyed text from my honey "let me guess... you're just leaving again?"  ha.  i guess i'd cried wolf too many times.  so i told him i was looking for the key and would be back asap.  eventually i got desperate enough to call kylee and tell her i was still parked in front of her house and i needed a flashlight.  she brought out a huge flashlight and we laughed as we searched every inch of my purse and the car.  one of her first comments was "wow!  your car is so clean!"  so i had to tell her, actually, it's because it's not my car and our kids never ride in it.  three minutes later, kylee pulls a dried orange out from under the passenger's seat.  so much for that "clean car."

she put the orange in the cup holder (i think?) and we laughed some more trying to guess how old it was.  eventually i found the key (lodged down between the driver's seat and the console) and texted chris that i was on my way home.  he responded and told me that his mood had deteriorated fast in the last hour and that when i got home, i should probably just let him be.  i really love those warning texts because it completely avoids so many situations where i would get offended about something that didn't concern me, just because christopher was having a bad day.  so when i got home, he handed me brady and went to bed.  

today he had another crazy horrible day at work but sucked it up and put on a good face when he got home.  he wasn't home more than two minutes before he said "you put fake food in my car?!" and handed me the petrified orange.  

i laughed out loud telling him the story from the night before.  it literally looks exactly like the potpourri my mom has in a basket in her kitchen.  this naval orange has shriveled down to the size of a clementine and is as light as air.  

 

i think the last time i bought these oranges was the beginning of june.  so here's my three step do it yourself recipe for homemade potpourri:

1. send your husband to work with an orange for a quick and healthy snack

2. have him forget it under the seat of his car

3. retrieve it three-ish months later and put it in a decorative basket

made my day.

entertaining kids

that title is meant to be an adjective and a noun.  not a verb and a noun.  it's not an activity, it's how i view my children.

anyways...

hallelujah my honey is home!  spiders, if you must make an appearance in the next few days, make it between 7pm and 7am and i will have someone close by to quickly escort you out of our home.  mi casa no es su casa.  (that's what two years of high school spanish got me.)

highlights from tonight were...
a few especially funny stories from my honey.
seeing him come home completely exhausted but still in a good mood.
my honey planting himself down by abigail's new dollhouse so she can show him everything about it.l
not being terrified of seeing spiders, knowing i don't have to call a neighbor or friend about it.

my day was pretty slow.  normally when my christopher is out of town, i'm super productive with organizing projects and cleaning and stuff.  today was the complete opposite because i was still spooked about spiders.  so i would just plant myself somewhere to play or read books with abigail and not move for an hour.  at 1:30 i was still in my pajamas and had heard "let's go downstairs and get you dressed" at least 30 times.  literally at least 30.  granted, there were some variations like "i will get you dressed and then  we can go outside, okay?  that's how it works.  i will get you dressed and we can go outside."  i just kept wanting to say "just let me be a bum!  i want to stay in my pj's all day!  i don't want to get dressed yet!"  but how do you tell that to the kid when at least five days of the week you play that exact situation in reverse order.  my bribe is always that eventually it will be time to sleep again and the butterfly pjs will still be there!  anyways, i eventually took a shower and put on real clothes (i did that just for honey.  so he wouldn't come home to a bum.  and because after waking up at 5am and having a million meetings and almost missing his flight, the least i can do is look like i was a good mom and try to make a hot meal, right?!) and blow dried my hair.  no makeup because honestly, he can't tell if i'm not wearing makeup and therefore doesn't appreciate when i do.  but even without makeup... i was looking like a wife that had her life together.  and baby girl didn't even spill the beans that she spent 4 hours of her childhood this morning trying to get her mom to get dressed.  she really is wise beyond her years.

also, when we were at the beach, we found a horseshoe crab.  don't know what that is?  i didn't either.  but i would have if i had paid attention to A Beach Tail a little better.  before we went to the beach, we checked out some beach related books so i could prep baby girl and get her pumped.  and we still have those books and she loves them because now she's extra familiar with the beach because it's so fresh in her mind.  well we were reading this afternoon and i heard myself say "horseshoe crab" and i looked down and sure enough!  there it was!  exactly what we saw at the beach!  so i showed baby girl a picture of the real thing and she was all excited "it matches!  it matches!"  i'm a nerd but i thought it was the coolest thing.  books are just so educational like that.

and baby girl thought this was so cool that they were at the monster show like she went to a monster show with daddy.

also, when we were reading, we were cuddled up on the little loveseat in her bedroom and we read a book that was dedicated to "all the parents curled up reading with their kids" or something like that.  it almost made me tear up because i was so grateful to be in that moment.  and if i had seen that when i had been working in the daycare it probably would have made me tear up but more in a suicidal sort of fashion.  so if i ever author a children's book, that probably won't be who i dedicate it to.  but i probably won't author a kids book because i too frequently end my sentences with prepositions even when i know it is incorrect grammar.

brady has been crazy sleepy lately.  he used to have a happy wake time of 2 hours but lately he just seems soooooo exhausted after an hour.  in the mornings he more often than not has NO waketime (just nurses and goes back to sleep as if it was the middle of the night) at all.  it's a pretty extreme regression (i know that's not the right word right there) and i'm curious as to the cause of it.  would a growth spurt cause that?  or hitting a developmental milestone?  it's happened since we've gotten back from the beach which is when he's started sitting up.  that's the only major milestone i've been noticing as of late.  if we're out, i can keep him up longer... maybe just because there are interesting things going on... but if we're at home, he's just rubbing his eyes so violently like he might die if i don't put him down for a nap asap.  kids.  always a mystery.

i am absolutely loving both of my kids these days.  and my husband (but i try to limit that sort of talk on the blog because he's less of an oversharer than i am ... who isn't?! and who really wants to hear about that sort of stuff?!).  but seriously, brady is so smiley and laughs more easily than any baby i've ever met.  and abigail is all sorts of sweet and hilarious and helpful.  she's not just helpful when i have my hands full and i need another person, she's helpful when i'm too lazy or selfish to do something and i know she'll just do it for me.
right now my favorite things that she does are
1. throw away all diapers without asking and either saying "thank you" because i allowed her that privilege or giving me the most welcome "you're welcome!" of her life.
2. hanging out with brady when he wakes up but before i go up to get him.  sometimes i'm just really enjoying my lunch or my shower or my words with friends RIGHT WHEN BRADY CRIES for me to come get him out of his crib.  this is horribly inconvient for me because i am both lazy and selfish in my parenting.  when i ask abigail to go help him, she drops what she's doing and runs up the stairs as fast as she can saying "BRADY!  I"M COMING!" and then she turns on his light and hangs out and entertains him until i come to take over.  this is going to be amazing for future children when she will actually be big enough to physically to do more.
3. being completely self sufficient.  for a while she was in that somewhat annoying "i want to do it all by myself!" phase.  right now she's in the awesome just-goes-ahead-and-does-it phase.  i went to get her up the other morning and i was holding brady so i just one armed, lifted her out of her crib.  i could smell that she had pooped in her diaper so i told her to just wait for me while i turned on the bath water.  well, when i came back, she was completely naked.  she had taken off her shirt and pj pants and managed to carefully remove her diaper, get a wipe and wiped herself, and when i walked in, she was rolling up the diaper with the wipe neatly inside.  that's pretty impressive if you ask me.  so then ten minutes later i took brady out of the bath to get him dressed and told abigail i would be right back to help her out of the bath.  but then i saw her with her towel wrapped around her as she tip toed into brady's room to tell me she was actually all done already.  and then, she went to her room and got herself completely dressed.  underwear, shirt, capris.  they were the clothes she had worn the day before (and obviously not cleaned up) but i didn't have the heart to make her change.  i was just so dang proud of her independence!  parenting is so rewarding.

getting home and putting away her shoes without being asked.

also, somewhat difficult at times, i actually love when she tells me "it's okay."  she said something about "our bed"  and i asked her "your bed or my bed?" and her response was "but it's okay i can share with you."  or "it's okay we can go outside" or "it's okay we can share a treat right now."  she's big into sharing.  also, she likes to start sentences with "but" and often combines that with contradicting herself and/or not making sense  "but i want the pink binky but it's purple but it's not purple but i can."  she combines a million thoughts or just says the same thought in five different ways that she can easily string together 20-30 words (probably more but i always lose count) in a single breath without coming up for air.  or so it seems to me.  but really (maybe that's where she gets it from?), hearing thirty something words in a row from a kid that barely turned 3?  i'm wondering when i won't think it's so awesome and cool.  because, once again, i find this kid insanely impressive.

and now it's time to go to sleep.  why do i have to be such a night owl?!

video monitors are priceless

well, the day finally came.  baby girl finally climbed out of her crib.  physically, she's been capable of it for a long time.  and i know that at least for a while, she's mentally known she has that option.  but yet, she's never done it.  she semi climbed out of her pack n play while we were on our utah trip so i knew she knew she had that option... but yet, she happily went to sleep in there and always waited for me to come get her out.  it deserves a whole post of it's own but i'll just summarize things a whole bunch and say that baby girl has turned into a naughty little devil and is insanely rude and extremely disobedient and has been throwing fits about anything and everything.  sooo of course this is an optimal time for the mini shawshank to happen.

it first happened today at naptime.  baby girl has been fighting naptime and bedtime more and more saying stuff like "i don't need to sleep!" "i want to go downstairs!" and "i don't want to nap!"  normally though, with a little explaining, i can get her to lay down just fine with the promise that we'll play when she wakes up.  this afternoon i was trying to get her ready for nap and she was being a terror as usual.  i just picked her up, threw her in her crib, grabbed brady, and closed the door on my way out while she continued the screaming and crying.  i took brady to his room, gave him his medicine, and went right back to abigail's room.  when i opened the door, she was about to put her feet on the floor, having climbed over the railing of her crib.  i just calmly got her and acted like nothing had happened.  "are you ready to be sweet now?  let's pick out a book and we can read it together before nap."  and i told her if she was a good listener and took a good nap, she could watch thomas after she woke up (since she hasn't watched any tv for two weeks since i took her movies away).  so she went right to sleep and all was well.

then tonight when bedtime came around, she was stalling and throwing fits as usual but we were going about it like we do every night.  i was just about to leave the room when she was insisting "daddy say night night good night!" and wasn't having it when i told her he was already asleep and had already told her goodnight.  normally we would just battle this topic for a while and then she'd go to sleep but it wasn't happening and i got so frustrated i just shut the door and left her screaming.  all of that woke up chris who had fallen asleep on the sofa downstairs and he went up while i brushed my teeth.  i semi watched on the monitor and he wasn't having luck and it looked like she was climbing out of her crib again.  so we traded places.  after trying to reason with her and help her want to sleep in her room (she kept saying she wanted to sleep in my bed and go downstairs), i gave up and told her she could go downstairs but i wouldn't help her, she had to do it herself.  she didn't like that.  i went downstairs, made sure all the lights were off and doors were locked and then i went to my room and locked the door because i knew she'd try to come in.

sure enough, watching on the video monitor, i saw her climb out of her crib. then i heard her walking down the stairs (because of course, she's still crying) and try to open the doors to our bedroom while crying "mommy!" in a voice that would have been sad to hear had she not been so absolutely terribly miserably misbehaved today.  chris and i were completely quiet and the lights in our room were off and... after about a minute or two, she stopped shaking the doors and her crying got more distant and until it picked up on the monitor again.  and then i couldn't stop laughing.

because she went back to her room, climbed back in her crib, and went to sleep. 

clouds

so yesterday, there we were... hanging out on the patio... enjoying the perfect weather.  i was laying on a towel, sunning my legs, playing trains with abigail when...

"i see clouds!"

"yeah?  what color are they?"

"they're brown!  and white!"

"what?"

"yeah!  i'm gonna go look at them!"

and then i discovered what my color-knowledgeable child was talking about.

i laughed out loud at that one.

and then seconds after this picture was taken, she fell head first over that fence... in between two fences of chicken wire.

covered in grass and holes in the leggings to prove it.  and i can't get her to give up those snow boots.

 

spring and summer finally came!  i can't say enough how much i looooove those cows grazing behind my house!  oh so happily situated indeed.

so happy she's verbal

i am so very grateful every day for verbal communication with my sweet girl.  normally because she's freaking hilarious and makes me laugh out loud allllll the time.  but today i was grateful because she came to me crying and i didn't know why.

if you were trying to trouble shoot this situation... what would you guess was wrong?

 

well, thank goodness she can talk and express herself because all i had to do was ask what was wrong and why she was sad.  and, did you already put in your guess as to what the problem was?

 

she had picked out her outfit and gotten all dressed and told me she was ready to go downstairs.  as i was getting brady, she checked herself out in the mirror and decided that actually she would prefer pink leggings instead of the purples ones she was wearing.  i guess she was worried it was too late to change?  anyways, have no fear, we got things all sorted out.

when abigail was a baby i wasn't really looking forward to having a talking kid because i was afraid it would just translate to a little person yelling "NOOOOO!!!!" at me all day long.  glad that's not the case.  talking with my little person is awesome.

lost and found

last night i had a yw fireside/meeting to attend.  while i was there i realized i had forgotten to put on my wedding ring.  i typically don't wear it while i'm at home but i'm normally pretty good about remembering to put it on before i go out.  oh well, whatever.  when i got home i noticed that one of my chapsticks (i keep two of them by my bathroom sink so i always have one to throw in my jeans pocket at the beginning of the day) was on the divider ledge between our kitchen and our great room.  i'm assuming abigail got a hold of it somehow and started eating it (judging from the bite marks and slobber i noticed when i removed the cap) before christopher took it and put it out of reach.  whoops... not a big deal.  

this morning as i was finishing getting ready, i went to grab my rings (engagement ring and wedding band) and noticed there was only one there instead of two.  thankfully the one present was the expensive one with the diamond but still... what happened to the wedding band?!  and then the eaten chapstick thought came back to me and i started scouring the floor and asking baby girl to remember where my ring was.  she kept getting distracted and she also just kept telling me about how she ate my chapstick.  i searched the carpet in my bedroom and still didn't find it and even tried my best to look down the drain of my sink.  i finally gave up and went on with my day although i searched a few more times as i passed through my bedroom/bathroom.

well, tonight i got brady up from his nap and was listening to a voicemail from my dad (my phone was on silent yet again so i missed his call) as i walked back into the kitchen to check on abigail in her highchair and..... something caught my eye!  my wedding band!

 

 

and then i breathed a sigh of relief and texted my christopher the good news.  hallelujah!

still not graceful yet, but my kids are alive and unharmed.

did i ever mention the time when the christmas tree fell on baby girl?  it was within a few days of having brady and i was in bed nursing him or something when honey went to take a business call in his office.  and wouldn't you know but baby girl was playing hide and seek under the christmas tree in our bedroom and managed to tip it over!  luckily it fell mostly on the bed and baby girl could get out okay but seriously?!  of course honey steps away for a moment and a tree falls down on our kid.

so this evening i left honey at home alone with the kids while i went to a youth fireside from 6-8.  he texted me as i left and told me everything went well but when i got home he also told me that brady hadn't slept while i was gone (he seems to wake up from whatever his afternoon nap is and then stay awake and be grumpy and fussy for several hours until 9:30 or so) and i could tell it was wearing on him just a bit.  so i had a few things to do real quick but ten or fifteen minutes later i heard my honey call out to me "brady needs you!" which is our code for "i'm done with this kid and it's your turn now!" (we started using that with baby girl without realizing it but it works well so she doesn't know she's getting passed off for grating on our nerves) so i took over brady (and consequently baby girl too... because she seems to go wherever brady goes and because she's super clingy and attached to me since he was born) and brought him to our bedroom to nurse him in bed. and then to burp him, bounce him, and whatever else him to try to make him happy and comfortable.  meanwhile honey was in his office or something... who knows what but i told baby girl not to disturb him because he was taking a break.

so while i'm trying to help brady, super attentive big sister baby girl (i swear i love that she loves him so much but it does sometimes drive me juuuust a bit crazy) starts climbing on my bed side rails to reach over my nightstand to get brady a binky or nose drops or who knows what because she seems to think she always knows just what he needs to stop fussing (which is pretty much all the time) and i kept telling her to stop (this only happens fifty or a hundred times a day) climbing because it's dangerous and brady doesn't need anything right now and blah blah blah of course she's not listening.  and then i'm telling her she needs to be careful because she's going to knock the lamp over and then christopher walks in the door just in time to see baby girl knock the lamp over and hear the lightbulb inside crash and shatter into a million pieces all over brady's clean clothes and blankets (i dedicated that corner to him for the time being because his room is all the way upstairs and i'm too lazy to actually go up there for naps, diaper changes, etc.) and ummm, that didn't make honey happy.  he might have looked like he wanted to punch someone.  or throw something.  so, deciding that he needed another break (while he was cleaning up shards of glass) i took the kids upstairs to the play room (have i mentioned that baby girl thinks the playroom is actually called the ball pit?  "i want mommy and abigail to go play trains in the ball pit!"  ha) and we stayed there for a long time.  long past baby girl's bedtime.  because honestly, i know what it's like to need a break and i wanted honey to reap the benefits of it.

eventually my son fell asleep without waking up two minutes later.  and eventually (like at 10:00), my daughter got to bed.

this is what my nightstand looks like... nose drops, nail clippers, binky, and currently MIA nose sucker hang out on the window sill so they're within reach when i need them.  ps- thanks for the lamp, ashley!  luckily it made it through this unscathed.

and this is the current state of things.  sometime tomorrow i will skillfully text honey and ask him if that area is safe. anyone have tips for making sure your onesies and sleepers are free of tiny glass shards?

wanna know the great part?  somehow i kept my cool with baby girl.  she and brady did so well last night and all day today (in my opinion) that i'd stock piled enough patient parent points to help me handle my night of two gorgeous children crying (often at the same time!) and still feel compassion for them, myself, and my dear husband.  there's always blessings to be found.

is anyone else enjoying this mini series on "carrie is handling this two kid thing like she's stumbling through the dark in flippers and a straight jacket" or is that just me?

red barn fall festival

first, i just have to start this post with my favorite story from this morning...

a few weeks ago, my mother in law sent an email to us kids in the area informing us about a fall festival going on at this barn across the street from their neighborhood.  she forwarded us the actual informational email.  it had a picture of the barn and windmill and then listed the times and all of the activities and everything.  i immediately knew where it was (you drive by it on parker road every time you go up that way and it's seriously right across the street from the entrance to my in law's neighborhood.

so this morning i'm talking to honey about it and said something like "well, we'll be up by parker and arapahoe anyways because of that barn fall festival thing this afternoon" to which he replied "what?!  no we won't.  we won't be anywhere near there.  that thing is just right by us on the other side of parker road."  and then we got into a semi long discussion about it with him being [in my opinion] overconfident and condescending because he assured me that he knew exactly what 17 mile house was and it wasn't by his parents'.  so i went back and checked the email and then googled the literal address and showed it to him on google maps.  then i showed him the picture of the red barn from the email.  and basically, just pieced it together like i would for a foreigner visiting from out of the country.  i can't remember if he said anything (probably not) but we pretty much just silently agreed that i was right.

so then we're pulling out of our neighborhood to go to this thing and he asks which way to turn.  you know where you're taking us?  (says the guy who's lived here pretty much since he was single digits old.)  "yeah, just go like you're going to your parents house and you can't miss it.  so then as we pass by it on parker road (it's seriously so obvious) he insists that he's never seen that barn before in his life!  what?!  how can you miss it?!  and really, you've probably seen that barn literally ten thousand times because your parents have lived in this neighborhood across the street from it for the past TWENTY YEARS!  i found it to be so hilarious that i'm still laughing.  another funny thing about it?  my christopher's brother (who's my age) was there too and he insisted the same thing.  said he'd never noticed it before.  my mother in law and i got a good laugh out of that too and just reassured ourselves that it was a really good thing that they're so skilled in so many other areas.

and in case you're tempted to side with the boys and say, "well maybe it just isn't that noticeable" then i'll add this picture of the view of the barn as you drive by.

it's not super easy to miss.

anyways... moving on.  here are some picture from our fall festival fun.  petting zoo, pumpkin patch, hayrides, bluegrass music, hot chocolate, and "a milking cow."  ha.

also, in case you were wondering about the most unflattering angle to be photographed at 30 weeks pregnant...  i found it.

it is the one that makes the distance from your love handles to your belly button look at least as far as a half marathon. 

also, i am doubting my friendship with stripes.

in other news, baby girl enjoyed a nutritious lunch of fry sauce and ketchup.  

she supplemented that lunch with french fries, onion rings, chocolate milkshake, and frozen custard.  and a few bites each of hamburger and hotdog.  

i'm sad

baby girl is so cute.  one of my favorite things she's been doing lately is getting more in tune with emotions and feelings.  when she hears a baby crying, she gets worried and tells me that the baby is sad.  when she's swinging on the swings at the park she tells me that "abigail's happy!" and when she cries she always tells me, "abigail's sad" which is so sweet and adorable it melts my heart every time.  so now whenever i'm feeling down, it's my first reaction to think "i'm sad" (sorry, i don't do third person) with almost the same simplicity and honesty as baby girl.

you see, pregnancy is a tricky thing.  so are kids, but that's for another post.

i feel like i've been doing pretty well this pregnancy managing my emotions.  concentrating more on monitoring my emotions and keeping myself in check.  well, saturday on the way home from our outing i went from happy to sad faster than most cars can go from 0 to 60.  when we got home, christopher took abigail in to put her down for a nap.  i stayed in the car and cried.  then i collected myself while i collected our crap load of food, sweaters, shoes, trash, etc from our outing and headed in the house.  i was supposed to meet up with friends at noodles to hang out before the relief society broadcast.  i was already late and would have had to just change clothes and run out the door.  but seriously?  that wasn't going to happen when my face was splotchy and i'm still on the verge of tears.  i headed up some leftover soup and climbed in bed.  i was hoping it would pass but it didn't.  at the last possible second i managed enough self discipline to get out bed, put on a jean skirt, and leave for the broadcast.  i showed up and sat with my friends but didn't talk to them.

the broadcast was great.  especially the talk from the second counselor.  but there were at least ten times my eyes were welling up with tears at the words i was hearing (pres eyring, might i remind you that there are many pregnant women in your audience and this one right here that was at six months pregnant to the day, didn't appreciate your story about your six month pregnant daughter having emergency surgery to deliver her child 15 weeks early.  the thought was nice though.) because i was touched but also because i was still so sad.  and after it was over?  still sad.  i felt so awkward as i tried to make conversation with people while i ate some amazing cheesecake.  cheesecake makes me happy but apparently not enough.  i went to bed sooo not looking forward to sunday but also so grateful for no meetings before church.

church was fine.  everything went well.  baby girl was well behaved during sacrament, i spent second hour discussing all the research one of my yw advisers has done for the trunk or treat (i could build a shrine to her right now that's how grateful i am that she's taken the ball on this one), and third hour i just sat back and listened as a member of the bishopric taught a lesson to the young men and young women since we were combined for 5th sunday.  the rest of sunday was also good.  german pancakes after church, naps, and honey's little brother, nate, came over to hang out for a while.  it would have been a fabulous day if i wasn't feeling so down.  it's just one of those things like when i woke up from my nap, i wasn't tired still, but i just didn't want to be awake.  and at 10 that night, i also wasn't tired, but i was just so eager to be asleep.

so i woke up this morning not excited about my day.  nothing planned but i knew we needed to get out.  we went to story time at the library and then hit up the dollar store and goodwill.  then baby girl watched thomas while i did some cleaning.  then we ate and baby went down for a nap and i did some more cleaning.  i write this down and think "what's so terrible?  this sounds exactly like one of your this-was-the-most-amazing-day-ever type of days!"

anyways, it's hard anytime you're struggling emotionally but i keep thinking back to the general relief society second counselor's talk and think "at least i wasn't that pioneer on the trail that lost her husband and only child within months of each other... or any of the other people placed in the horrific situations she described.  but somehow i'm still flawed and selfish enough to think, "BUT I"M STILL SAD!"

so as far as this pregnancy goes, physcially, i'm feeling my best.  emotionally, not so much.  how is it than i can go from being euphoric to super sad and no matter which one i'm feeling, the other feels a million miles away?!  tell me i'm not the only one that experiences this.

belated pictures from atl to dia and "fearless"

and here are pictures from this past friday's wonderful whirlwind that go along with that novel of a post i wrote. 

when baby girl decided she was done with us, she left our booth and spent at least five minutes with this nice man and his three kids.  two year olds are oblivious and except from social norms.  my dad took this picture with his blackberry and emailed it to me with the title "no fear."

this has got to be at the top of my list from favorite pictures from this trip.  ps- typical varsity that you get a full mix of customers.  us in the middle, the semi-ghetto lady to the left, and the ultra prep southern frat boy to the right.

how perfect that my shirt was the very color of a frosted orange!

precious.  she kept calling it ice cream.  and as i've mentioned, grandpa never says no.

they're an adorable pair.

i wonder what the poundage was that i was lugging through the airport.  baby girl weighs 23 lbs, that carseat  weighs 25 lbs, my suitcase weighed at least 40 and the duffle bag almost broke my back.  and because i can, i'm going to add my unborn child in utero to that list.  because, despite it being constant, i was carrying him too.

sleep deprived baby catching a power nap on the way from the airport to the game.  she seriously NEVER falls asleep in her carseat.  unless she's been awake for 11 hours i guess.

well hello there.

family photo!

not napping... just super tired and snuggly.

like snuggly enough to curl up with this stranger down the row.

and i mean, all the way down the row.

we convinced her to come back and snuggle with us though.  

honey caught one of the rockies t shirts they sling shotted out while we were waiting for fireworks. 

it's good to be back as our little family of three.

also, about the lack of stranger danger, here's an email about it that i wrote to my parents yesterday (titled "fearless part two")...

remember this picture from friday at the varsity when abigail left usto sit with the family nearby?  well, we went to a rockies game thatnight after our plane landed and part way through chris turned to meand said "ummm, the people down the row are holding our baby."  sureenough.  and she sat with them for a long time before chris finallywent down there to retrieve her. 

today we were at a playdate at the park.  abigail was crying while iwas away putting something in my car.  when i came back she wassitting on my friend's lap (we never hang out with these friends soabigail really didn't know who she was).  so i said "thanks forholding my crying child" to which my friend replied "oh no problem...i was just surprised that she actually came to me and let me holdher." 

ha.  you're surprised?  i'm not.

at what age are you supposed to teach your child about this sort of stuff?  currently, she calls everyone "friends" in any context that any adult would just use the word "people."  like yesterday when we were playing out on the driveway and she saw a woman walking her dog up the street (in the direction of our neighborhood playground) and she kept telling me that our friend was going to the playground.  if we're in the car and she sees two men jogging on the sidewalk, she'll tell me that she sees her friends running or that her friends are running fast.

oh baby girl, with that mentality, the world really is your oyster.