When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed

(Although we're about a week and a half late to be really commemorating Lincoln's death. I'm just out of clever titles.)

These are some pictures from last Sunday--the last hurrah of my favorite brown dress on Evelyn (she has, alas, outgrown it. When we didn't manage to get Christmas pictures in it, I was hoping we could get some pictures of her for her birthday, but sadly, this is not to be!).


Andrew insisted on getting some pictures too. He's not quite dressed here, as you can see (shirt unbuttoned, no tie). And he's developed an annoying self-consciousness in front of cameras which means I can't get a normal smile out of him.

This week has been pretty low-key. Dan has worked, as per usual. I've finished up my grading, but mostly taken a week off from working (next week I need to start gearing up towards some summer workshops I'm helping with). Generally, the kids and I have been trying to enjoy the nicer weather. (Well, it was nice until this weekend anyway. Back to April rain/snowshowers.)

We went to the local park earlier in the week, where an older gentleman was flying some cool model planes (about 2 feet wide--big enough that they required about a 10 foot bungee type cord to launch). I think he was doing a demo for some local school children who had arrived in a bus, but Andrew sat transfixed long after the teachers herded the school children together.

Other than that, I can't remember anything outstanding. (So why, you might ask, bother posting? Well, I happen to know we have one or two faithful blog stalkers [who also happen to be related to us] who get tetchy if we go too long without posting. Besides, this blog--as a potential exercise in narcissism, is really for us.) So, what you're going to get here is some assorted pictures and random commentary.

Here's a picture of Evelyn napping. She has only recently started sleeping on her stomach--a by-product of our sleep training, I guess--and she looked so sweet with her hands clutched together that I had to sneak a picture. But I didn't center the camera between the crib slats well enough (and didn't want to press my luck by taking another picture), so this is all you get.

With the resurgence of warm weather, my mom has been outside a little more working on the yard and garden. And of course, Andrew loves to "help" her. Here, he "helped" her dig a hole in the dirt. Then, without any prompting (read: permission), he turned on the hose and made himself a mud pit. He had covered himself before my mom realized what he was doing, and had to be hosed off.



Earlier this week, Andrew put on his knight costume and then insisted that Evelyn needed to be dressed up too. I refused to put some of his costumes on her; instead, I dug out this tutu I'd gotten off ebay. When I pulled it out and asked Andrew if it would work, he said, "Oh, she will look a-dor-able in that!" And so she does, if a bit coerced in the picture. (Andrew proudly told me afterwards that he "made" Evelyn look at the camera. Poor baby.)

Our big excitement of the week came, of course, in the weekend. On Friday, Dan had an elder's quorum activity where they got together to play video games and eat. So, he asked me to make some cupcakes to take. I reprised the hostess cupcakes from a couple of weeks ago, and apparently they were *the* big hit of the evening. (Who knew that it was so impressive to be able to put a relatively steady curlique on a cupcake? Apparently I've been underestimating my talents.) I think Dan had fun, but he reported when he got home that he clearly didn't play video games enough. (Jeni: a wii party may be in order soon!)

On Saturday, we went up to my brother's place. They'd purchased an inflatable slide on clearance, and were eager for the kids to try it out. Of course, the weather was uncooperative (it was cold and windy and wet), but that didn't seem to dampen any of the kids' enthusiasm. And of course, it was nice to visit while the kids ransacked the basement. Afterwards, we went to Sarah's house, where Dan and Aaron hung out with the kids while I "helped" Sarah spend her Gymbucks at Gymboree. Actually, we weren't gone all that long (I hope!); afterwards, we took the kids to Red Robin for dinner, and then took our two very tired children home. A fun, but busy day. It was a relief today to have a much lower-key agenda--just church and an easy dinner, then early bedtime for both kids.

The thoughtfulness of students

I know that title sometimes sounds like an oxymoron (especially for you teachers out there), but it doesn't have to be. I know I've mentioned a few times in this blog what a great group of students I've been able to work with this past year, and it's true. As evidence, last night I went up to campus to collect a late paper, and found an envelope with my name on it, stuffed full of short thank you notes from many of my students. I was really touched by this gesture--not only by the the thoughtfulness, but by the validations of many of the notes. I've put a lot of myself into this program in the last year; it's nice to see that much of that effort was recognized and appreciated by my students. One unintended influence: I have been surprised by the number of female students who have commented that my personal life was an example to them. One student wrote that she'd like to be like me: serve a mission, go to graduate school, have cute kids (her words, not mine!), and possibly teach some day. (She's already on her way--she went into the MTC this last week). I didn't necessarily mean to hold myself up as an example that way, but since apparently students *do* listen to the offhand comments I make about myself and my family, I'm glad that it was (mostly) positive!

Story time trauma

We've been enjoying our re-discovery of story time at the library, now that Andrew's old enough to actually want to pay attention to the stories. Today, I sent him through the little green door as usual (the 3-4 year olds have their own story time, sans adults, in a little room off the children's library), browsed books and movies for a few minutes, and then Evelyn and I sat down for our own story time with the littler kids. Evelyn was engrossed by the singing and all the other little kids. I keep forgetting how old she's getting--she'll be one next month--and so I was surprised by how much she enjoyed it. We'll have to try that again.

Well, the younger children's story time ends first, so I started browsing books nearby, listening for the bell that signals the end of the older children's story time. I must have missed it, though, because the next thing I knew, there were little children all over the place--and no Andrew. I did a hurried look around the children's section, up and down the rows of the picture books, and still no Andrew. At this point, I started to panic a little, since I wasn't sure where he would have gone if he'd left the children's section of the library. I rushed Evelyn across the hall to the adult's section and found, thankfully, a very distraught little boy who had gone straight to the information desk and was telling the nice librarian there that he couldn't find his mommy. I felt horrible: Andrew was completely undone. He really thought he'd lost me. Apparently, losing his mother on accident is a very different proposition from losing her on purpose! (He's lost me before in the library--he slipped upstairs on the elevator once before I could catch him). But at least his instincts are good--he went right to the very place he needed to go if he was lost.

A vaticinator?

(Don't worry if you don't know the term--I didn't either until I looked it up a minute ago. It's basically the same thing as a prophet or foreteller).

Apparently, this might be one of Andrew's new specialties. At lunch, I told him that I had two kids, and he responded that three would be better.

"So how will we get another kid?" I asked, curious to see where his logic would take him. (One of my favorite things to do, incidentally, is to ask questions like this.)

"Oh, I think we can just go to Heaven and ask Heavenly Father to get us one."

"And when do you think we will get this baby?"

"In about ten months." Foretelling? Or just wishful thinking? I suppose we'll find out . . . Oh, and apparently, it's a girl.

Sleep training and other traumas

With both of our children we've reached a point where we decided to try sleep training (aka letting the baby cry himself or herself back to sleep), either for naps, nighttime sleeping, or both. I always resist it, coming up with excuse after excuse (because who really wants to listen to their baby cry?) and trying other options until concluding, reluctantly, that nothing else seems to be working. And every time, after two or three days, I wonder why we didn't do this sooner. In the last four nights, Evelyn has gone from waking up 4-5 times a night to waking up only once, for just a few minutes. (Apparently she was awake for 20 minutes last night and I slept through it--the first time in a long time that Dan heard her and I didn't. I think my subconscious has finally absolved me of the responsibility of waking up to go feed my baby every time she cries.) As a result, last night was the first time in a long time (I try not to think about how long or it makes *me* want to cry) that I actually slept more than 3-4 hours in a stretch. I can't begin to describe how nice that feels! And Evelyn seems as charming as always--no hard feelings, apparently.

Last night, I had a funny (if a bit traumatic at the onset) discussion with Andrew. It went something like this. I had just put Andrew to bed and was about to leave when he said (typical delaying ploy), "Mommy, I'm scared."

"What are you scared of?" Thinking, of course, spiders, monsters, whales, all the other things he usually brings up to prolong bedtime.

"I'm scared of you."

What? "Why are you scared of me?"

"Because sometimes you do bad things."

With some trepidation (I do know that I'm not perfect, but I don't think I'm *that* bad of a mother), I asked, "What bad things do I do?"

"Sometimes you don't get your work done."

Alas, too true! When I relayed this story to Dan, he just laughed and told me that my son knew me too well.

April (snow) showers

This last week has been crazy, and not simply because of the workload. (Dan's load, of course, remains fairly constant.) Since this was the last week of classes, I was literally swimming in final papers for a while, grading frantically so I could return them to my students at their final exam yesterday. (I more or less succeeded). We also had our final meeting/social of the semester for Writing Fellows, where I told my students I would be leaving this summer. That was harder than I expected--I didn't expect to get choked up, but I have really come to care about these students (I wonder if that's partly a measure of how much I have put into the program). At any rate, I cried a little, and they gave me a standing ovation--which I hadn't expected (and which made me cry harder, truth be known). I hope that someday I learn how to graciously handle appreciation.

This is what we woke up to on Thursday (the first reading day): snow. This picture was taken about 9:30 a.m., when the snow had already started to melt (to give you some idea of how much there was). Of course, by that afternoon, the snow was mostly melted on the south side of the house. But it gave Andrew an excuse to put his snow gear on one more time, so he was in heaven. (Not literally, of course, although he did tell me this week that he needed to go to heaven to tell Heavenly Father and Jesus something.)

And yesterday, the backyard (on the north side), looked like this:



Evelyn has discovered the sit-n-spin. She thinks she's pretty hot stuff when she sits on it, as you can tell from both the picture and the video. We just think she's cute.





Our final update for the week: we are finally gritting our teeth and sleep training Evelyn. We've started a gradual training two or three times in the last several months--we usually get four or so days into the program and Evelyn gets sick, so we end up abandoning our plans. So this time, we decided we just need to let her cry it out. I have a hard time doing this, but from all I've read, this is the fastest, most effective way to do it (apparently the crying actually helps babies unlearn their bad habits). And a bad habit she definitely has. At her age (even if we adjust it for prematurity), she should be sleeping through the night, not waking up every 2-3 hours. All night.

So last night was our first night. I was braced for a horrible experience, but it actually wasn't that bad. She woke up about 40 minutes after we put her to bed, and we let her cry. She managed to sit up in her crib (something she's just mastered) and then couldn't figure out how to get herself back down to sleep. After listening to her cry on and off for an hour and a half, I finally went in and rescued her, promising myself I'd let her go the next time. She didn't wake up again until one, when she cried for a few minutes and went back to sleep until 5 (when I fed her and she slept until 7). All in all, *much* less painful than I'd been expecting. We'll see how tonight goes!

Arts Fest and Easter

For Easter weekend, we went down to Southern Utah to spend the time with Dan's family. They have a kind of family tradition where the extended family gathers for the St. George Arts Fest (Dan's uncle has a booth there). So we went down and met up with Dan's cousin Ashley, her husband Ruskin and son Rowan; Dan's cousin Jenny and her family; and his cousin Joshua.

After enjoying some fair food (Poppy said the snow cones were the best purchase he'd made, as they kept all the kids in one place for a good twenty minutes), we headed over to Dan's Aunt Nellie's, where we found Jana and her family, and Jodi and her kids. It was fun to hang out with so much family at once!




The day before Easter dawned wet, cold, and snowy. Not to be daunted by the weather, we took Andrew to the local Easter egg hunt (the organizers claim it is the largest in the state--even bigger than some of the SLC hunts; I don't claim to know if this is accurate or not!). At any rate, Andrew had fun, though we had to restrain him from starting early. He even won a little Easter basket (there were about 50 for each age group, so this may not be saying much). Evelyn stayed home and napped with her dad, who had no interest in viewing the proceedings.


Easter Sunday was enlivened by the arrival of cousins: Andrew was so excited he could hardly stand it. We managed to get a few pictures after church before he finally shed his suit coat (a $6 bargain from Walmart!). Dan tried valiantly to get some pictures of all the grandkids, but he was thwarted by the inability of the youngest ones (i.e. everyone but Katie) to look at the camera, and Jake's refusal to put his Easter clothes back on.



After a nice lunch of ham, potatoes, rolls, broccoli and cheese, etc., Dan and Aaron hid eggs in the backyard for the kids. Since the weather decided to cooperate, everyone was able to go outside and enjoy the day.




I love this picture: the kids had a fun time laying on Bubby's hammock for a good ten or fifteen minutes. Evelyn doesn't look too comfortable (I only put her on for the pictures)--I love her death grip on the ropes!
All in all, we had a nice mini-vacation. It was hard to come back to the reality of papers to grade and finals to give.

Catch-up

In the next little bit, I'll be posting snippets of what we've been up to in recent weeks, since the crush of finals has pretty much knocked me off the blogging bandwagon. However, having given my final yesterday morning, I now have a little breathing room before finals are done, and so . . .

Just before Easter, I decided to try out this recipe from Family Circle magazine. Mine aren't quite as pretty as the original, but they turned out pretty well. I gave most of them to the women that I visit teach, as I didn't think our family needed 24 cupcakes. Even if they are cream-filled.


I also invited Jeni and her kids over to eat the cupcakes, er . . . decorate Easter eggs. The decorating held their attention for all of two minutes, but they did seem to enjoy the cupcakes.





And Evelyn, of course, just gets cuter and cuter. She's really blossoming recently--moving more quickly (still not crawling, but she can get from one end of the room to the other on her bum in fairly short order), getting into everything, and burbling happily at the same time. If we could just get her to sleep at night (we're working on it!) she'd be perfect.

Family pictures

So, almost two months ago we got our family pictures taken by a talented SLC-based photographer, Sara Boulter. Our order finally came in last week (the sitting itself includes web-sized copies of all the pictures), so here are some of our favorites:



We took the pictures at Wheeler Farm, in SLC, on a February day that was at least somewhat sunny, if a bit cold. The site was a good one for Andrew, since he could roam around between shots (instead of trying to get into the photographer's equipment). I couldn't justify paying for a full-sized picture of this shot, but I thought it was funny (and typical of Andrew).





Another picture that pretty much typifies our shoot: Evelyn and I hanging out; Dan running after Andrew.

And, of course, the real reason we went: a new family photograph. Aside from Evelyn's frown, I think this one turned out well. (Translation: I look good, and Dan actually has a natural expression on his face.)

Of fools, fairies (faeries), princess, princesses, and other fey folk

Another busy week. I can't believe how quickly they are sliding by now as we approach the end of the semester. (As a teacher, this means most of my spare moments are taken up with grading 10-pg research papers. And one more paper yet to come! Why do I do this to myself?)

I don't remember a lot of details about the week: I know we went to the Bean Museum, which Andrew loves (second only to the dinosaur museum, but with the added bonus of being free and closer to home). And the grocery store (where Andrew promptly got put in the cart for disappearing for a full three minutes while I was trying to strap Evelyn in the cart. He went through the door ahead of me and I then panicked when I followed and didn't see him. He eventually emerged from somewhere, just as I was getting ready to have the store clerks help me find him . . .). And Target, where he also ended up in the cart for running ahead of me and disappearing. I keep hoping that someday he'll learn, but so far, no luck.

Evelyn is really starting to blossom--she has such a funny, sweet personality. Even now, when she's got a cold, she's generally pretty even-tempered. Here, she managed to pull Andrew's Ikea dragon on top of herself. She didn't really seem to mind, though.

One of Andrew's most frequently repeated requests in the mornings these days (and sometimes at other times) is "Can I build a nest?" We finally managed to convince him that he couldn't pilfer our blankets and pillows without at least asking--so now he asks all the time. I usually have to stipulate that he can only add a blanket, pillow, and one toy from his own bed, or I turn around to find that his entire bed set (pillows, blankets, myriad stuffed animals) have all migrated to the foot of our bed and are blocking the doorway. He's got such a funny precise way of assembling his nest--he usually starts by stripping out of his pajamas (to better enjoy the burrowing? I have no idea why), and then assembles some kind of "wall" out of blankets and pillows. After pulling everything off our bed, he has to get his stuffed dog and a water bottle out of his bed (which, since he buries them, tends to make walking over his nest a little hazardous).

We didn't do much for April Fools' day--neither Dan nor I are very big fans of pranks (pulled on one another, that is). I'm don't like them because I usually fall for them; Dan, I think, appreciates a good prank (he still laughs about the office episode where Jim created Dwight's desk out of wrapping paper), he's just not interested in the effort it takes to do them himself. I thought about trying to prank Andrew, but he seems just a little young to get it.

Wednesday was, however, the day that I was supposed to bring cookies for our office cookie jar. I thought about making some kind of prank cookies, but just didn't have the heart for it (I've seen too many disappointed faces on students who come looking for cookies and find only an empty jar). So I compromised by making sugar cookies (from a mix) using Andrew's cool arctic cookie cutters (a polar bear, seal, igloo, eskimo, snow flake, and penguin). I figured that was random enough for the first of April. (As it turned out, though, it snowed that morning, so my cookies were more ironic than funny). I thought using the mix would save me some steps--and it would have, had Andrew not held up the box the cookie cutters came in and said, "I want to make them look like this!" And I, clearly not thinking, said okay.

Of course, my cookies were not nearly this polished looking. Here is how mine turned out:

Still, they all got eaten (even if the black frosting does look somewhat toxic).

Saturday morning, we headed up to SLC (as mentioned in my earlier post) to celebrate Lydia and Katie's birthdays (Lydia's was Tuesday, Katie's today). Andrew insisted on putting on his prince/knight costume over his clothes in honor of the princess themed party. We had a good time hanging out with family, although all the kids made things pretty chaotic (Andrew especially, as he was so excited to be with cousins he could hardly contain himself). As per usual with family functions, we had a lot of great food: Dutch oven potatoes (with bacon and cheese), bread and spinach artichoke dip, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and meat prepared two styles. And cake, of course. We gave Evelyn some of the ice cream and she *loved* it. (She also discovered the joys of yogurt for the first time this week. Our family fascination with dairy is holding strong.)



After the festivities, I took Andrew and Evelyn home while Dan spent the night in SLC. He attended priesthood session of General Conference in the Conference center with Poppy and Aaron; afterwards, Sarah joined them at a local Thai restaurant (which apparently garnered rave reviews from those involved. I wouldn't know--I was home grading papers!). Bubby and Poppy brought Dan home this afternoon on their way down south. And I have to say, I was glad to see him! I don't mind being on kid duty all day--I'm used to that--but it is nice to have a partner at night and in the wee hours of the morning.

Soundbite

Yesterday afternoon, on our way back home from SLC (where we spent the day with Sarah and crew to celebrate Lydia and Katie's birthdays), I was talking to Andrew. I asked him if he knew his mom (me) loved him. After a little pause, he said, "Sometimes."

Curious, I asked why. (I was thinking maybe because sometimes I get mad at him, etc.) Instead, he said, "Sometimes you're too nice." (What?!?)

He continued. "Sometimes there are too many toys, too many treats, too many rides. . . ."

At this point, I started to recognize his source, The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmies (which explains that sometimes moms and dads can be too nice to their kids, and that it isn't good for the kids). But it was still funny to hear a somewhat sophisticated read on me, since I do have to struggle to keep from spoiling my kids sometimes.