Babies

First of all, a shout-out to the new mommies in my world. I don't know if any of them even read this blog. My husband's sister had their first baby, a boy named Henry, back on the 10th of July. They are currently in another state with his internship, but reportedly everything is going well over there. And an old friend I grew up with had her first baby, a girl named Peyton Malia, on the 14th. She posted pictures on her blog. And, leaving the person I am closest to for last, my friend Jen from college just started their family with a girl named Mercedes on the 20th. Congrats to all!

As for my baby girl, we have hit a new transition point. It always amazes me that as soon as you know what you are doing, they decide they are done with that phase. This is especially true in the first year, where they are growing and changing rapidly. Anyway, I was discussing with a friend on Thursday night the sleep habits of our respective babies. She was having real struggles getting her boy to sleep, especially at church, and I told her that Kaitlyn was just fabulous. All we did was wrap her up, stick the binky in, and rock with her and she was GONE. It was wonderful, because I could get her to sleep anywhere, as long as I had a blanket and a binky. The rocking chair just saved me from standing and rocking in place.

Famous last words.

Kaitlyn decided the next morning that she no longer cared for binkies. Or blankets swaddling her. Or rocking. Unfortunatly for her, that is the only way I have ever known to put her to sleep. After trying the usual method for a while and just listening to screams, I eventually gave up and put her in her crib to fend for herself while I took a break, and she dozed off after only 10 minutes of crying! To understand my amazement, you have to understand that Tyler didn't do binkies, and would scream literally for hours if left to his own devices to fall asleep. We tried every method that people told us about, and he just finally had to grow out of it on his own when he was two. Yeah, two years of sleep deprivation. Grrr. But Kaitlyn just . . . went to sleep! On her very own! Woah, the books all told me it could happen, I just never believed them!

Of course there are pros and cons. If you put the baby to sleep, and then set them down in their beds, they go to sleep anywhere, but not with just anyone. And if you left the binkie somewhere, you are screwed. But in the long run, they don't know how to go to sleep on their own, and are more likely to wake up at night and need you to get them to sleep, since they don't know how to do it by themselves.

But now, since she puts herself to sleep, she doesn't nessesarily need me to be there. That means a babysitter can do this! Hooray! On the other hand, when we go on trips, many people who have done this method told me that the baby didn't know where they were, and awful screaming insued. It makes sense, really. Babies don't understand our words, so they are more cued in by surroundings. "You put me in my crib: it must be time to sleep." But if there is no crib, how do they know what to do? Well, this is new territory for me, so I don't know about that yet. I will find out when we go to Ohio next month.

I am just glad for the wisdom that comes with multiple children. No matter how much people try to convince you of it, you don't truly KNOW that it is going to end until you have seen it end. That is why I can relax with Kaitlyn and her over-night feedings a lot more than I did with Tyler. I know they will end . . . someday. It will take work, and crying, but we will fix that problem. (How I am going to fix it now, without a binkie, is a quandry.) But I am still very concerned that Tyler doesn't talk, because I have never had a conversation with one of my children. He is making good progress (not great, just good), and so logically, there will come a day when he can come up to me and say "Mommy, I think I would like a drink now." But that is so far away right now I can't fathom it. Instead, he is currently behind my chair babbling incoherently. Someday!

A busy day

Whew! Tuesday was a busy day. First, Tyler's early intervention group had a "field trip" to a local bounce house. Basically, it is a ware house with about 15 or so inflated bounce houses and slides for kids to play in. Tyler woke up cranky, but he loves slides, so it balanced out. But I tell ya, they don't make those things easy to climb up! Typically the "ladder" was next to the slide and comprised a few rolls in a ladder formation. Socks were not ideal in that case. But Tyler did better than we thought he would at climbing up, proving once again that this kid will do anything for a trip down a slide.

Sidestory: a couple of weeks ago, Tyler got this desperate to get to a slide:

He did this about a dozen times that night. He made it across with no help about 10 of those times, but thank heavens daddy held his hands underneath him for those other two.It didn't even matter that the slide at the top stunk, and he just scooted his bum the whole way. Boys!

Back to Kangaroo Zoo.

Then we went out to lunch with Melissa and Cody. Max andCheese is a cute little place aimed at kids. So there is a huge playplace for kids while the parents sit and eat. After coating himself in the cheese from his mac and cheese, Tyler had a lot of fun with his friend.

And afterward, we even got to go see Wall-E! Another friend really wanted to take the kids to a matinee to celebrate getting her daughter potty trained. I have no idea why she wanted to take toddlers to a movie theater, but she has been trying to get someone to go with her ever since I met her. Wall - E : 98 minutes. Toddler attention span: 30 minutes, or until he saw the other toddler running around. Infant attention span: 3 minutes. Thank heavens there were only two other families there, and they all had older kids with them. This is why we have a home theater in our basement. Pause buttons, no babysitters needed, and the popcorn is even cheaper.

A book review

I was re-reading a book for my lesson the other day in church, and thought I would share. This isn't a "LDS" Book, or even close. But my lesson was on our family traditions and heritage, and this book is all about how to establish family traditions.

Basically, this book is all about establishing traditions and rituals in your family to strengthen your bonds as a family. By his definition, we are talking about predictable events that connect us as a unit. For example, an entire chapter is devoted to family dinner time. Rituals also includes a yearly family vacation together, or how you exchange presents at Christmas time. Or how, for an estimated 15 years, my family went to every single Friday night football game since either one of my older brothers was playing or I was performing with the band.

These events bring us together because we have something to look forward to, and often an identity to tie us together. Our family was a "football family", in this sense. I have friends that are a "Lake Powell" family, since they go to the same spot every single year for vacation. And we can also use these rituals to establish values with our family- to continue my example, my parents (maybe even sub-conciously) taught us the value that we support each other in a family, by going to see whatever our siblings are participating in. There was a lot of comfort in knowing that if I was performing or getting an award or anything like that, my parents would be there, with my dad behind the videocamera.

He spends a lot of time discussing how to integrate rituals into our lives, no matter how busy. We all have to eat dinner, so we can use that time to connect as a family. We have to watch how we connect - we should aim for pleasant, uplifting experiances, and not use this time to harp about chores or report cards. He suggests using our bedtime the same way. It can be a boring routine, or it can be a connecting ritual, if done properly. That is the "Intentional" part. If we just drift without paying any attention, we will drift apart. But by being intentional about how we connect together as a family, everything is more likely to work out.

If you get a chance, I really recommend this book!

Music, mulch and moles

It has been a busy week. Tyler had his first Kindermusik class last Tuesday. I think he liked it, but mostly he just liked having lots of new toys and friends to play with. He didn't seem to understand what was going on at all. Hopefully with repitition, it will come. The funniest part to me was when we were playing pretend with the kitchen. I "filled up" a cup from the little plastic faucet and gave it to him, saying "water", and he got that idea. "Wa-tay." But then he tried to drink out of it and figured out it was empty. He gave me this look that was just classic. (Um, it's empty mom! Geez, what was she thinkin'). He hasn't figured out pretend play yet, which is why they teach it in the class I guess.

The rest of the week was spent in the yard. It is amazing how much longer things take when you have a young baby that needs to be fed and put to sleep and everything all the time, because I would have to wash up each time she needed me. But I am really happy to see that our lawn no longer looks like white trash!

What all the flower beds looked like last week:

What it looks like now:

Basically, the house had been vacant for almost two years when we bought it, so weeds had taken over the universe. I tried to work on that, but I didn't even know what was flower and what was weed, and then Christopher ended up bulldozing over the whole thing the next year anyway. The yard needed to be re-sloped away from the house so the basement wouldn't flood again. We planted grass last spring, but by the time the grass was in enough to walk on and get to the flower beds, we couldn't even tell where the beds began and ended anymore. This is a picture of the worst point, almost exactly 2 years ago, when we had ripped out the driveway and the yard but not put anything in yet (I wasn't kidding about the "trashy" bit):

And this is how it looks currently, after pouring a new driveway, building a retaining wall, planting grass, taking out a dead aspen tree, getting concrete curbing for the flower beds, weeding the beds and putting down mulch:

And now you know why this makes me so very happy. There are no new flowers this year, just mulch. Next year I will get that ambitious, but for now I am content with a clean slate.

Oh, and our other project for the week has been trying out dermatend. It claims to remove moles without surgery, and much cheaper to boot. The downside is that you have to keep a band-aid on it the whole time- which is at least a week by the time the scab heals over. So if you see me with band-aids on my forehead, don't worry. It is going well so far! Hopefully by this time next week I can give these guys a full recommendation.

And finally, if you haven't seen Dr. Horrible yet, I highly recommend it. No really, follow the link. Hilarious! And it will dissapear next week. So hurry.

Hairbows: the new hobby

I think everyone who knows me knows of the baby shoes obsession last year. I currently have a huge pile of leather in my basement, and have been meaning to get back to that for a while. But now I have a girl. A bald girl, to be exact. So headbands with adorable bows have been my new best friend. They are EVERYWHERE at craft shows in this area, and it turns out there is a reason why. If you buy ribbon in the store, it is $2 for 18 feet. If you buy it in bulk online, it is $2.65 for 20 YARDS. So I am signed up to teach a class on them for a RS night coming up. They cost $3-5 at craft shows, but the onese we are making will be 40 cents each!




Here they are. We have a candy corn for Halloween, a butterfly (which Kaitlyn is wearing in the top picture), a Christmas Tree, an "infant bow" (which is a tiny bow that can be any color at all), and a "korker" spiral bow. The korker can be 4th of July as shown or blue and white for BYU, red/white/black for U of U, or anything else you want.

The sad part: no one has signed up yet. Not even one person! Hopefully someone will sign up soon, but in the meantime, I am the only one enjoying the oodles of ribbon. So now I am offering this to all my friends and family who take the time to read my blog. If anyone wants to make them, let me know and come on over. That limits things to Utah, but they are probably more trouble to ship than they are worth. I will be in Ohio in August and my mom wants me to teach a class while I am there as well, so if anyone is over there and wants to make some let me know.

I know this one is too big for her. It is meant for an older girl's pony tail. But I think she looks hilarious with a small planet attached to her head.

As a shameless pitch, let me tell you how cool these are. There are a lot of bows we could make, but the ones I selected are the ones that were easy to make but looked really awesome. They can be used on headbands (like my daughter is modeling) when they are infants, or clipped right into their hair once they have enough for pig tails and pony tails. Also, if you don't have any daughters or baby showers on your horizon, I have magnets so they can go on your fridge to hold messages, etc.

Let me know if you want to come over and make any! I suppose I could try to make a business out of them, but like the baby shoes, I would much rather just pass the savings on to my friends than spend hours making them for a profit.

Our awesome July 4th weekend

We've been looking forward to my brother coming up to visit us for a while. Literally, that is because we first started trying to schedule this in March. But finally we were able to find a time when we were all available, and it worked out well for them to have the long weekend. He drove up from Vegas with his wife, 7 year old daughter and one of their two dogs on Thursday afternoon.

First we went to the parade on Friday morning. We drove around looking for a place to back the truck in and sit in the bed to see over the other people for a long time. Turns out the cops didn't want us to do that. But then we finally found this spot in a covered parking area that no one had noticed yet. Jackpot! Not only could we see while sitting down, but it was shaded to boot.

Our view of the parade:

And the parade's view of us:

We wandered around the downtown booths for a while, but that was too crowded, so we just went to lunch and headed home to let my kids take a nap. Tyler is very much in a "copying everything I see anyone else doing" stage right now, so he enjoyed following Maya around. When she sat on a ball, he hunted until he found one to sit on.

When she sat on the porch to read, he sat next to her to listen to the story.

And they even enjoyed throwing snaps into the street, even if it seemed like only half of them popped. Less, in Tyler's case, since he threw them up instead of down.

Meanwhile, Kaitlyn was enjoying being held by so many new people. She does love having fans! Maya was especially a big help.

That night we did some fireworks in the street and broke out the glow bracelets while we waited for the city fireworks. Tyler adored his glow bracelet, and even slept holding two of them that night. The glorious part was that the fireworks show was just down the hill from us, so we had a great view from our back porch. They weren't very close up, but we didn't have to fight any crowds, so I thought it was a good trade.

The next morning we hiked up to Timp Cave. Gary and his family had never been up there before, and we hadn't gone together since I was pregnant with Tyler. It is a true hike up there, and we spent a bit of it passing around the most heavy backpacks and the kids. Jackie showed us all up though, even though she went running that morning! Tyler and Kaitlyn were carried up, and Maya was a real trooper, going a bit faster than me sometimes.

The best part of hiking up is that you get an interesting, long tour through a 45 degree cave at the end of it. If only all hikes let you cool down like that. Our tour guide used the word "adventure" seemingly 3 times in every sentence, which should be the joke for a while. But the cave is so neat is speaks for itself anyway.

Hiking down is so much easier than hiking up. Both kids conked out in thier carriers, in fact.

Once we got home, we got busy preparing for that night. We had a BBQ with my extended family from SLC so that they could visit with Gary and family. We had burger and dogs, but since Gary and his family are vegetarian we also tried my friend's Mushroom burger recipie, which was fabulous. I was worried that after carrying out all of the food it would be to hot out there, but we could not have asked for better weather! We all had a wonderful evening in our backyard.

And Tyler was absolutly LOVING their dog. It was fun to watch them play!

Kaitlyn is a few months younger than my cousin's daughter, but they really seemed to like inspecting each other.

This was the debut of my lunch trays. Christopher thought this was my silliest purchase ever, but I thought they were really fun when I got them from a surplus school sale. They are more stiff and bigger than a paper plate to have in your lap, the compartments keep the food apart, and they are "green" since I don't waste paper plates. Plus fun!

Tyler's bedroom

About a month ago, I decided that I would start working on Tyler's bedroom. His room is currently in exactly the condition we found it in, which is a bad thing when you buy a repo house. I have been waiting to start until we knew what he was "into" for a theme for the room, whether that was space or cowboys or football, etc. It turns out that Tyler loves anything with wheels, and a significant portion of his vocabulary is now the names of construction equipment. So I spent hours on the internet and bought a bedspread for a twin bed. The plan was to use the blue from the quilt to paint below the chair rail in the room, then paint the chair rail brown and have "dirt" sponge painted along the top of it with little construction trucks going around in a border.

But then I got the quilt, and it turns out that instead of the denim/dark navy blue I was hoping for, I got a primary blue instead. I washed it (it was "gently used" off ebay) and set it out today to think about how to cope with the fact that I didn't love the blue. Sell it and buy a new one? And then Tyler ran in and climbed up on the bed with me. "Tuck-ck-ck!" His whole face lit up as he spotted a truck. He likes the "ck" sound, if you couldn't tell. "Bull-do-do!" Yes, there is a bulldozer too! And then I got to thinking, am I trying to make his room look like a magazine spread, or make a little boy happy? Because he doesn't care what color blue the walls get painted. He was just really happy to spot a digger on his bedspread.

"Tuck-ck-ck!"

He won me over. The bedspread stays. Hopefully I will have more pictures to come as I get the rest of my dream fleshed out!