Sundries

Well, no pictures this time. Turns out I haven't taken any pictures since January. So, a little about what we've been doing.

Clara has decided that unless I'm holding her, she's been neglected. Maybe she keeps playing with the phone because she's trying to call DCFS on me.

She was fussy on during sacrament meeting, and was starting off Sunday school in the same vein. A friendly, sweet older man walked in and good-naturedly growled back at her. She started shrieking. I went in the hallway for a few minutes, came back, and sat down. The man had sat down in the row ahead of us, and once she saw him, the shrieking recommenced. I spent the rest of Sunday school hanging out with my friends in the primary presidency, and in the nursery. She caught sight of him in the hall later and started whimpering. He felt really bad. Poor brother Parker. He's such a nice man.

As for Nathan, it's begun. The potty. We started I think last Friday, just sitting on the potty for a few minutes all weekend. By Monday, I had a goal to just get him to pee on the potty once, so he could get an idea of what it was all about. So, once we got home from exercising, I started giving him drinks. Then we sat on the potty, read books. After every book, and after a while after every page (Richard Scarry books can really take a long time), I gave him a drink of water. Every now and then I would hopefully check the potty. Nothing. After an hour and a half, I was done. "Are you ready to get off the potty?" Nope. He wanted another story. His enjoyment of reading really is helping us out with this whole potty thing. And I really couldn't let all this time I'd invested go to waste. Another thirty minutes and one more story did the trick. Two hours. It was excruciating. Can you imagine how excited I was? I'm pretty sure Nathan got the gist of how happy Momma was with him. Today, the second time he's peed in the potty, he only had to sit for 30 minutes. Which is good, because I don't have the kind of mental energy it takes to sit in the bathroom all day, every day. I'm getting some books from the library because I really don't know what I'm doing.

And what's Clara doing during all this? Sometimes she's napping, sometimes she comes and peeks at the book we're reading, sometimes she whines for me to hold her, and the rest of the time she's emptying the drawers and cabinets of toiletries.

Nathan also really enjoyed getting to see pictures of Ethan on the computer. It made him want to go to Ethan's house. Which I guess, since we have passports, we will do sometime. After it warms up, of course. Thanks for updating us on all your Canadian adventures. We miss you guys.

And, not to brag or anything, but it's been freakishly warm here. Yesterday we went outside to play. Clara was napping, Nathan played in the sandbox, Danny (we were babysitting) played baseball, and I raked leaves. It snowed before all the leaves had fallen last November, so I'm just getting around to it. I tried to not let myself get seduced by the feel of spring, but I was. Which makes it all the more awful that I know it will get cold and snowy again. Curse you, fickle Utah weather.

We got our groupon.

 Groupon is in Ogden, and we are excited. We scored a membership to the Eccles Dinosaur Park for super cheap. So, on a boring Friday, we didn't feel at all bad about heading there for only an hour. We would have stayed longer, but it was super cold, getting to be lunchtime, and Nathan was ornery because he fell face first onto the parking lot while getting out of the car. I have a feeling this may become our summer hangout.

Finally the 31st!

 How's life here? I think this picture sums up January pretty well: just snuggle in and wait for it to end. Have I mentioned I don't like January? I keep thinking it's over, just to be reminded that no, January will last forever. Or till tomorrow, at least.

This is actually our little baby being surprisingly chill at bedtime. She does not like bedtime. But this night I don't even think she cried when we put her in bed. The last couple of months it seems like she's been sick, or teething, or both, all the time. But the last couple of weeks have been a little better. We're even making progress on weaning, which I didn't think we'd ever accomplish. We're down to just one before bed. And this weekend she learned to crawl up the stairs. So no more wailing at the bottom of the stairs when mom leaves her down there. Now it will just be wailing at the top of the stairs because she can't get down.

And this is the state of Nathan's blanket when I finally threw it away. My grandma knitted this for him, and it was his favorite (can you tell?). He loved all the holes and strings; it made it easier to carry around. Just poke your head through a hole and it's a hands-free blankie. It also figured in many games. A couple of times I tried to tie off all the strings and trim it up to make it last a little longer, but it was a lost cause. I threw it away once while he was sleeping. He saw this picture though, and asked where it was.

Excercising linguistic creativity

"Hey mom, you decorating my bed?"
Yes, I guess it really is that rare that I make his bed. Because what's the point? A made bed is an invitation to play. Today it stayed made for less than a minute.

* * *

"Nathan, go downstairs and pick up your crayons."

. . . . Nathan continues playing.

"Nathan, go downstairs and pick up your crayons."

. . . . "Okay."

"Nathan, say 'Okay, mom, I hear you and will obey.'"

. . . . Nathan walks downstairs and says in the manner of the most obedient son, "Okay, mom, I not hear you."

Another Saturday Night

On the way home tonight, Nathan asked, "Mom, did you get married?"

"Yes, I got married a long time ago."

"Mom, you gave cake in dad's eye?"

?

Okay, well, technically it wasn't in his eye, it was up his nose. And, yeah, Nathan has seen our wedding video...months ago. What a memory. And an interesting sense of historical revisionism.

Coping with January

I don't like January. By the middle of January, the post-holiday glow is gone, you're a little fatter after the holidays, and you've got a straight stretch of hazy cold days until about April.

But I'm coping. I've got projects. I've been de-junking the house. I ate cake and laughed over silly things with my book club, and stayed up way too late.

So, I'll pass on my coping mechanisms and share with you a story. This made me laugh this morning when my sister mentioned Tums, so I hope you enjoy.

This was months ago, last spring or maybe early summer. I'd been upstairs doing something, and the house was too quiet. "Nathan, what are you doing?" I walked down the stairs.

He had pulled a chair over to the counter and had climbed up enough to be able to pull things out of the cupboard. Before I could see what he had he yelled "Pink! SO YUMMY!!!" He thrust out his arms and they shook a little with the intensity of his jubilation. His entire being was in ecstasy.

He was eating Tums.

The Tums and the chewing gum have since been moved. In fact, all delicious things have been removed from the bottom shelf. He's not so tempted by packets of taco seasoning and boxes of jello.

How I wish I had video. It makes me laugh every time I think about it.

Happy birthday!

A few days before Clara's birthday, we looked at some video of her as a newborn. It took me right back to that time, so full of stress and uncertainty, and how gingerly I held the smallest baby I'd ever seen. It took me a week to feel comfortable changing her diaper, and I never got used to all the sensors and alarms that were always going off at different stations around the room.

And how far we've come. I took her in for her twelve-month visit this morning, and she's now 18 pounds, 28 inches, 18 inches head size. That's 10th, 25th, and 80th percentiles.

We celebrated by going to Chick-Fil-A for dinner, which she didn't really care about, but I didn't want to make dinner. And birthdays really should be about the mom too. Afterward we went to the play area in the mall where both the kids had a great time. It was kind of a ghetto little birthday party, but at least it was cheap.

She wasn't at all sure about the cake, although she did eventually dig in. Although I guess I can't blame her for being cautious, since the cake was an experiement.

Do you remember Amelia Bedelia? In one of the Amelia Bedelia books, she made a sponge cake by cutting up sponges and baking them in a cake. I don't know why that's stuck with me, but when my brother named his little girl Amelia, that came flooding back to me. And now that I'm an adult and knew that sponge cake was a real thing, I wanted to make some. So I found a sponge cake recipe for a cake roll, and customized it to what I had in mind: dainty heart-shaped tea cakes for my dainty little girl. They turned out pretty good.

I don't know what it is about birthdays, but they make me want to make fancy cakes. Last year I made a devil's food cake with chocolate ganache, all from scratch, for my husband's.