Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Today was...

Paying the neighbor girl next door to kill a spider for me. 
Abigail showing me how she can take off and put on her shirt.
Matching pink strawberry shortcake scented toenails. 
Abigail raising the fruit basket and choosing a plum and a tomato for breakfast. 
Puzzles. And lots of me doing puzzles while Abigail documented with pictures. 
A red robe, Mickey hat, and finger puppets all found while I was cleaning out our guest room. 
Making crock pot Santa Fe chicken, creme brûlée, squash casserole, and the biggest egg white omelette ever... Using ten whole egg whites. 
A trip to the mailbox. Of course. 
A super sleepy (and consequently, fussy) Brady boy. 
Watching America's got talent. 
Tag teaming bath time and bed time with honey. 
A killer headache. 

*pictures to be added later... hopefully.

** look!  i actually added pictures!!!

  
 
 
 
she's getting really good at trimming her nails.  better each time.
matching strawberry shortcake toenails.
plum and a tomato.  it's what's for breakfast.
 
going green.
and now she's taking pictures of her toes.
and her puzzle.
finger puppets for brady.
in nate's old bath robe.
i think she looks like elmo.
see the ears on the mickey hat?  i love them.
 
 
i think boiled egg whites are her favorite food.  or at least at the top of the list.  i hate ending up with all the yolks of her boiled eggs so she really doesn't get to eat the egg whites as much as she'd like.  but i had 10 egg whites left over from creme brulee so i made her the biggest egg white omelet and she was in heaven.  although she kept calling it pizza...
paula deen's squash casserole.
picture for mom of the homemade powdered laundry detergent.  i used 1 bar of fels naptha (grated), 2 cups washing soda, and 2 cups borax.  and a little bit of the pink zote.  just for kicks because it's pink.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Young pups learn new tricks

Today was a busy day. 

I woke up and prepped for our trip to the pool. It wasn't til 11 and even with my best planning we were still five minutes late. I met up with my visiting teacher and then was joined at noon by my favorite spider killing friend shaylee. And maybe half of my ward was there too. Aside from four teenagers and two neighborhood families (who I actually knew too) everyone at the pool was from church. We all joke that it's like a ward party every day. Anyways, we didn't leave til 2. 

We had lunch and I got the kids down for nap time and had a few minutes to pick up a little bit before my laurel president came over for a bit. Then I had a little more time to do random stuff like renew our library stuff online and I finally got in the shower for the day. 

Then it was a rush to hurry and get ready for our yw activity and I was of course still five minutes late. And I was sweating from showering and blow drying my hair and getting dressed so fast after my hot shower. Major con of showers during summer time although still better than freezing after showers in the winter. 

Anyways, the activity was great. We went door to door collecting canned food items for a food drive going on and ate brownies and hung out. On my way home I dropped off three girls and all the food we collected. 

And then I got home to a super bad headache husband. So even though my own head hurt, I was a really great wife and told my honey to head to bed (which wasn't actually that noble because he was just sprawled on the floor while our kids watched tv and fended for themselves) while I took care of everything. 

I got a text from Emmy telling me his huge list of stuff she accomplished in two hours. Like making tomorrows dinner, feeding and getting kids to bed, making a treat, packing lunches, providing food and clothing to third world countries, and creating world peace. Here's what I did in the space of two hours: got two kids fed and put to bed.   Ummm why does it take so long?!?!  The first kid was simple but the bigger kid is the slowest eater I've ever known. I'm pretty sure that's called karma. And genetics. 

Anyways, my head still hurts but it wasn't a bad day. Just a little crazy. But I guess I should have anticipated that with the way it started this morning with Brady's new trick. 


And, yes, I'm fully aware that it is highly unusual to still be swaddling a kid of this age. We can talk about it later. 

Monday, July 29, 2013

It's about time

For well over a year, I've wanted to make my own laundry detergent. And today, I finally did. 


Not quite sure what took me so long. 

Thursday, July 25, 2013

turbo

just another day of pictures

last night i was cleaning the kitchen and couldn't find the root beer cap.  honey couldn't remember where he'd put it either.  this morning... i found it and texted honey this picture with a "found it!" caption.  his response?  didn't know it was lost.  what?!  the CAP honey!  not the chick peas!
that was his make shift solution from the night before.
it had been a month since baby girl hung out with her little bestie.  they were in heaven riding their matching bikes together.  first playing dollhouse, then bikes, then trains, then ballpit/car/playroom toys.
 
 
they get along so well it's ridiculous.
birthday card from granny came in the mail.  baby girl opened it up... "it's a farm!!!"  how perfect!
and the back was the same picture but just coloring book style.  baby girl couldn't sit down to color it fast enough.  like made a straight beeline for the table when we walked in.
after nap, we had a girls night out to see turbo.  she insisted on her purple sunglasses and so i had "i wear my sunglasses at night" stuck in my head for the next three hours.
 
 
 
 
 

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?!

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

I might die

I have seen a whole lot of spiders in my house in the last week. Somehow my Christopher has not been home for a single one of them. Luckily, they've been small and on the floor (much easier than finding one on a lampshade) and although a few of them have been crazy fast and put up a good chase, I've been able to take care of them by myself. But after the one this afternoon (crawled out if Brady's shirt as I was getting him dressed!) I've just been crazy jump and on end. That incident happened after his morning nap and I just got him dressed and my mother in law came over for a while and then there wasn't much time until we headed to the pool for our yw pizza party and the. I hurried home and got the kids to bed before my friend came over for a movie night. We had an awesome time despite the tragically horrific movie we watched because shaylee is one of the easiest people to talk to. I love it.  But the movie ended and we were tired so she left and I started to close up shop. Putting things away, getting my glass of milk to keep on my nightstand, turning out the lights. I went to turn off Brady's monitor and I caught a glimpse of a huge you know what on the bottom of the curtains for our kitchen sliding door. My fingers instantly dialed my neighbor friend across the street. Her husband killed a big spider for me late one night when Chris was out of town. Several rings went by and she wasn't picking up and I realized it was almost midnight. WHOOPS. she's my friend but were probably not that close that it's okay to call at midnight. So I called shaylee. "How do you feel about spiders?"  Because I NEEEEEED you to turn your car around and come back to my house right now. I'm in a terrible full body sweat and I have goosebumps all over. Thankfully, she came to my rescue. I had a panicked moment where I thought "ohmygosh, what if it's just a moth and I'm paranoid and seeing things?!"  But it wasn't. And hallelujah that Shaylee took care of that guy. And then she said "umm, you might want to spray. I just got another smaller one too."

I. Might. Die. 

That was two hours ago and I'm still paranoid. Also dreading Brady waking up tonight because I never want to leave the safety of my bed ever again. Until tomorrow morning when I pack my kids in the car and we don't return home til I have my honey by my side. I know he works long hours and travels quite a bit, but statistically, I'm sure he should be home for more of these sightings. 

On a 100% unrelated note, I saw princess Kate leaving the hospital with the new little royal baby and I love that she looks fat and pregnant two days after having a baby. Just like the rest of us do. I don't mean that in a mean way. I mean it sincerely that I love that she wore an empire waist dress (it was adorable and I want it) and not some sort of something that would completely conceal her puffy belly. Way to keep it real!  It's about time people started to see that it's normal to look 8 months pregnant when you're two days not pregnant. Small and simple things make my day. 

Back to that spider issue though. Do you think it would be more cost effective to hire out someone to spray our house a few times a year or to just suck it up and get myself therapy for this? I'm not gonna lie, this is getting out of control and I don't like where it's headed.



Tuesday, July 23, 2013

vintage dollhouse

my mother in law has a vintage fisher price dollhouse from when christopher's sister was a kid.  so it's probably from the late 80's sometime.  abigail is in love with it and it entertains her forever when we're over there.  so for her birthday, my mother in law hunted around on ebay and found an identical one to give to abigail for her birthday!  well, it arrived a little later than anticipated so it made for a fun surprise (since it was a week after her birthday and other presents).  

 
check out that tiny pony tail i attempted for baby girl
 
 
 
 
 

it was a huge hit.  to say the least.