Looking up into the rain

No pictures were taken for this post. Not that they'd have been any good.

Why, why, why do I ever take my kids places.

In my head, I know why. I love to see them experience new things. And when they're happy, it's really really fun. And when they're not, it's horrid.

Last night my brother had everyone over for dinner. I was excited, because they've lived in their house for nearly a year and I hadn't seen it yet. Something about being a little busy in January when they were moving, or something. Their house is 111 years old (or is it 110?) this year. Happy birthday, cool old house.

So. Dinner, and we did the gift exchange early, since Brady and Meghan will be in Oklahoma for Christmas. So, twenty-plus people in a little old house, dinner, and presents. We had a pretty good time, except for the two and a half year old who thinks he's a dictator. "I want a chocolate cookie!" And when you want a chocolate cookie, nothing else will do.

After dinner and presents, we decided to go see the lights at Temple Square. We've been meaning to, and hey, we're in Salt Lake already. Fun, right?

No. Nathan decided he would enjoy none of it, except riding the escalator in the visitor's center and trying to run away. We tried to distract him into enjoying the lights, but no. "No, there are not a lot of lights," he answered crossly. This contradictory phase of his cannot end fast enough.

We'd been there less than ten minutes when we decided to bail. And sweet Clara, who hadn't made a peep the entire time, arched away from me and lay her head back out into the air, her face poking out from under the umbrella, and watched the night sky as raindrops fell on her face. At least one of us was a stoic last night.

And Nathan? If I had my way, which I just might, he may not leave the house again until Christmas. Maybe that way he'll be rested enough to behave himself.

Our Cookie House

I woke up yesterday with a strange desire to make a gingerbread house. I've not made a gingerbread house, a real one, since I was little. For a while my family would get together and make houses out of graham crackers, but it was before I had kids, and I didn't get into it.

Nathan really enjoyed it. This morning he told me, "Look. I put candy on the cookie house."

Clara was bummed she didn't get to help.

I was happy that I cheated and put my house together with toothpicks. And, since the royal icing was a sticky mess, that I had pre-emptively cheated and bought a can of frosting with different decorative tips. It's still kind of a Charlie Brown gingerbread house, but it could have been much worse.

Growing up

 What's for breakfast? Pieces of blackberry. mmm... I'm not sure I thought this one through. But the stains came out of the bib like magic.

 This morning, while we were (not) exercising, I mentioned that I've been thinking of trimming Clara's funny side hair. They're like gigantic sideburns, or little Jewish boy curls. But I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. So, since we were already busy not exercising, my friend got out a comb, a spray bottle, and two elastics. Doesn't she look grown up with big-girl pigtails?

There's no way I can cut it now.

Mostly falling asleep in weird places.

 This is the blanket box that resides under his bed. I'm sure his thinking was, "Mom told me to take a nap in my bed. I'll show her!" Too bad his plan was foiled by actually falling asleep.

 He recently learned how to do thumbs up. So now we have random thumbs-upping throughout the day. I guess we're lucky he hasn't learned thumbs down yet.

And this was Sunday, when he woke up with a fever, and fell asleep over his PBJ.

Re-enacting our favorite parts of Christmas Story

I think this was Thanksgiving weekend. We went to see the Christmas lights at the Roy city offices. Because I was feeling Christmasy, but unambitious. And it was frigid. We thought Nathan would love seeing the lights, and the reindeer, and sitting in Santa's sleigh. And he did. But after a few minutes he said, "I want to find the car." And by that time Clara was moaning in misery. I guess it was a good test run. If we go out to see more lights, more bundling will be in order. If that's even possible.

 "I can't put my arms down!"


The only way this could be better is if this pink snowsuit had bunny ears attached to it.

Wherein I dwell on the positive

Well, I've done my share of whining already today, over on my "other" blog. Just in case you were wondering.

So here's the good stuff.

Today Nathan told me "I want to singing in my ears." We were listening to Christmas music.

 And my baby is lounging on my lap, delightfully eating her feet, eternally hopeful she'll get her hands on that delicious keyboard. She just glimpsed a picture of herself and got very excited.

And we had an excellent Relief Society Christmas party last night. Y'all who missed it, missed out.

Thankful Turkeys

This was our family home evening on Monday. We talked about--what else?--being thankful. Then we wrote things we were thankful for on our turkey feathers. Nathan's included such gems as:

• feathers
• eggs
• ambulances

Not that we have experience from which we should be thankful for ambulances, but they are just really cool. Can you tell which turkey is his?

Clara did not get to make one. But I'm pretty sure what she's thankful for is this: at one week shy of eleven months, she has learned to crawl. So now she can be more up in her brother's business than ever. Nathan told me yesterday that "Clara wants to be over there," pointing across the room.

Here's another random story that made me laugh. Yesterday as we were getting in the car, Nathan came up behind me as I buckled Clara, and so when I moved he got bumped and fell over. And as he started to cry, I picked him up and asked him where he was hurt. He whimpered, "I hurt my body!" I don't think I gave him the sympathy he was looking for.

My kids, earning their keep

My kids. Goodness gracious. We plod through day after day, getting chores done and managing tantrums. And then, all of a sudden, they develop new and charming behaviors that make it all better.

Clara is about a half-inch away from crawling. She used to push up from her tummy into a perfect little plank position, like the top of a pushup. I think it's just that she's been watching me do yoga lately with a couple friends, and is picking up some moves. We've tried and tried to get a picture of her doing this, but she won't cooperate. Now she's progressed into pushing up on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth. And yesterday she learned to sit up from laying down. So she's getting good at wiggling around and might actually move forwards one of these days.

What else is new? Check out those two front teeth in the photo above. Those cost us some sleep. Her gums look swollen again, like her incisors might come in soon. Wouldn't that look lovely? Two front teeth, two empty spots on either side, and two eye-teeth to make it symmetrical. What a lovely gap-toothed baby she will make. The hair on the back of her head is finally coming in and is forming lovely baby curls. And she's decided she hates baby food.

I had a talk with her and suggested she should hold off on wanting slices of apple until she gets a few more teeth, but she won't listen. Stubborn baby.

She acts pretty insulted when we expect her to eat baby food. But hey, there's at least one baby-related expense I can skip out on. By the way, anybody interested in potty-training a two-year-old?

Speaking of a two-year-old, lately he has:

Learned his dad's name and used it to ask where dad had gone.
Begun protesting when we say it's naptime. "No. Sun is up!" 
Taken to calling me momma dude.
Begun telling me "yes, sir."


I'll take any signs of respect I can get, even if they are gender-misinformed. He likes to talk about mom is a girl, dad is a boy... although I think he feels left out when dad is at work, and tries to claim that Nathan is a girl just like mom and Clara.

And he may have tried to use his cereal bowl as a hat yesterday, but he asks to wash his hands after every meal. Some progress. I'll take it.

Our life, videographered

Um, Halloween?

 Whew. Sorry it's taken so long. It's been bugging me, so here are Halloween pictures, at long last. This year I was super crafty (for me) and made the kids' costumes. You can see I spent hours and days laboring over them. I am pleased with how the hat turned out, though. My 20-year-old cousin liked it so much she was going to make one for her Halloween costume. How did that work out, Paige?

 Here's Clara giving a thoughtful founder-of-the-Red-Cross pose.

 Is that a turtle face? It must be.

 Nathan chose to dress as a turtle. But once I got it made, he hated it. He wouldn't let us put it on him. It took a lot of coaxing from cousins, aunts, and uncles to get him to put it on, and he only wore it for a few minutes. By the time he'd worn it several times, though, he loved it. He found it last week and wanted to wear his "turtle tummy."

Do you think Clara would like to be a turtle next year? That would make things easy.

Octember

 This is a happy baby. She likes to pick up her bottles and chew on them. She hasn't yet figured out that you  need to tip it up to get the milky goodness. Did I ever tell you how she didn't like baby food at first? It was some work to get her to think it was okay. She was like, "Thanks for this weird mush that tastes weird, but I'm really more of a powdered milk kind of gal." Then for a while she loved baby food. But I think she's realized she's the only one in the house who eats it, and she feels she's getting a bum deal. So she'd really rather have big people food. Too bad she only just got her fourth tooth. You've got a long way to go, baby.

 October 10, 2010: The day Nathan first fell asleep at dinner. This was two Sundays ago, the day after Emily's baptism, the day he did not get a nap since we were gone all day. And you know what a toddler automatically does the day after he does not get a nap? That's right. He gets up early. We have 1:00 church, so we tried our darndest to get a morning nap in there somewhere. Nope. Instead we had locked doors and crying all morning. He was pretty good at church, but then fell asleep at 5:45 at dinner. He then slept thirteen glorious hours and...refused to take a nap the next day. I finally won by pulling Clara's crib over in front of the door so he was truly stuck. I wouldn't have bothered but I knew we'd have another late night, having an empanada night with cousins since my brother-in-law and his family were in town. We fought all last week about naps, but this week has been better. Although I still do have to lock the door to get him to stay in his room. He's only occasionally lucky enough to rattle the lock open. I don't know how he does it.

Pictures from the hike we took Monday. I don't know why, but I forget that it's not impossible to go hiking with two kids. We don't go very often, but we all love it. Fall is at its prime up the canyon. We'll have to try to get more hiking in before it snows.

Union Station

 We like our family. And we like trains. So, we decided to take pictures of both at once.

 My sister-in-law's friend is a photographer. And so...

They turned out exquisitely.

Somebody's teething...

Can you guess who?

This is how I found Clara one morning as we dragged ourselves through puffy-eyed, runny-nosed, cranky days. Nathan saw me taking a picture, and asked "Picture, mommy?"

I said okay, and before I was done taking Clara's picture he had climbed up into her bed and was posing for his copy-cat shot. Toddler sees baby get attention for doing something cute, toddler does the same cute thing to get attention.

(These pictures are at least two weeks old. Clara's bottom two teeth are coming in nicely and get more visible every day.)

As I was taking some pictures of Clara's quite impressive post-ponytail look, he came and plopped himself down.

Same thing for the cute laundrybasket routine. Not that I did this "to be cute," but it's a good way to carry a baby and a load of laundry at the same time. She didn't love it. But Nathan did.

He still climbs into the excersaucer sometimes to play, but this was a first. As I got out of the shower one day I heard a very soft "mommy..." Since it wasn't an urgent death cry I continued getting ready. The cries got louder and louder.

Is he...? Yes. As I was taking a shower he was walking around with scissors before buckling himself into a baby seat. I've really got to start taking faster showers.

Here he is "taking a nap" in his laundry hamper. He continually amuses me with the things he finds fun.

And one more of Clara. This post was going to be very short and to the point. Instead this turned into a catchall post for August and September. But, with such cute kids, how could I keep these pictures to myself?

We had a fair time

By the time we got home from Mexico, I realized, the summer is almost over. And we still need to do Many Fun Things. And so we did.

We went to both the Weber and Davis county fairs. These pictures are from the Davis one. We had a great time seeing all the animals. We figured we'd go all out and let Nathan pick a ride, which I don't remember, ever in my life, my parents letting me ride the rides at the county fair. Which, yes, they're kind of a ripoff. First he sneaked into the bouncy house, and there was no ticket-taker in sight. Oh, well. It turned out to be too bouncy for a small boy to have fun, so I didn't feel at all bad not giving them any tickets for his seconds-long stay. We next picked out this car ride. He loves cars. He'd love this ride, too. Right? Well, he did. For about twenty seconds. The ride was a little too long, though, and the next thing I knew he was whimpering and calling out "Mommy!" And still the ride went on for another eternity. This is how he coped.

One of my favorite things about the fair is Fair Treats. Fresh squeezed lemonade and elephant ear scones take me back to childhoods spent at the Weber county fair. This year we tried a fried twinkie. It was not great. Don't waste your money. But we got some Zeppe's Italian Water ice that was delicious. Don't believe Clara.

Too cold! A couple weeks later she tried a snow cone at her NICU reunion, though, and loved it. The NICU threw a pool party at the North Ogden aquatic center, and served pizza and snow cones. And, hey, why not get into a pool for free? Nathan loved it. Clara loved splashing in the shallows too. And it was good to see some of our old nurses and have them (pretend to, at least) remember Clara. Too bad we forgot our camera.

We went to see the cows just before we left, and one of the owners let us into the pen to pet the big black cow. Nathan didn't want to at first, but wouldn't stop talking about it later. "I touch a cow!"

And then, on the way home, he found a hole in his shorts we didn't know existed. You can really tell in the picture, but there are little cargo pockets that are apparently fake. He got his hand stuck and was really unhappy until we got the camera out.

Days on the beach

One of my biggest concerns was sunburn. But, voila! A shade tent. It was our salvation from sunburn. The only drawback was that it blocked the wind as well as the sun. The humidity made it a little like a steam bath, the moisture trickling down your back and making it feel like you'd been in the water whether or not you had.

So, armed with our shade, we could play in the sand for hours at a time. The sand, which sticks to skin very well, does not stick to itself. Sand castles were disappointing. Luckily, though, we had a dump truck and a digger, with which we could play Truck Stuck. Truck Stuck is endlessly entertaining. You use the digger to bury the dump truck, and then you pull it out. Sounds great, huh?

Indeed.

By some cruel twist of fate, Nathan had to go more than a week without playing trains. And that was just too long. So he made his own. The shell he's holding above was his engine; he'd drive it around in the sand. The going was rough, since the engine had no wheels. But did that stop him? Oh, no. He's a determined train driver. It was a little hard when he wanted to make bridges in the sand for the train to drive under, but we managed.

Nathan wasn't the only one who had fun with the sand.

My favorite part? Our house was only about a hundred yards from the water. So it was easy to haul our stuff back and forth, and easy to go back for nap time.

And the sunsets. The sunsets were great.
 

Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico

Sonora is a harshly beautiful place.


These pictures are from a morning trip we took to a biosphere reserve. We drove to see some volcanoes.

Pretty good volcano, huh?

We were impressed. We were also very glad to get back in the car with its lovely air conditioning. Just a couple minutes' walk made you all sweaty, especially if you happened to be the one with a baby.

This is just a part of the group we were with: the "peoples." Not pictured are the "kids." Those were Nathan's names for the groups our houseful naturally devolved into: the teenagers, the young adults, and the family. We weren't sure how a family on vacation with a bunch of single people would go, but it was excellent. A houseful of people who view kids as playthings, so there was nearly always (unfortunately, not at 6 am) someone willing to play with them. Not to mention, a houseful of people to pitch in with cooking and cleaning.

But I digress. A few words about the place we visited:

We went to a small resort town that clings to the ocean for survival: fishing and tourism. The house we stayed in is in a gated community, a narrow strip of elegant houses along the pristine beaches. Across the dirt road that leads to those houses, though, is desert. Dry, hot, desolate desert. The economy and American concerns about safety have hit the town hard. Everywhere, we saw someone's ambitious plans for a new beach house, or a new hotel, a skeleton of a partially-built structure, abandoned. Not so unlike the States, in that respect.

We enjoyed our stay, but we agreed we couldn't go there too often. It's too sad. In America, we live a very basic lifestyle, but it's relative opulence compared to what we saw there. We saw people living in a plywood shack underneath the power lines. We saw a man sleeping by the side of the road, waiting for someone to buy one of his load of watermelons.

What accident of birth or capitalism made us the ones zipping through town in our air-conditioned car, with our plentiful food and clean water to drink? Why do we as Americans feel entitled to a standard of living that is ridiculous compared to the rest of the world? I feel guilty, and lucky, and feel guilty for feeling lucky.