i am not in college anymore

Staying up all night kills me. I tried to sleep, but it didn't happen. I think my body rejected the notion of sleep because it knew that even if I did fall asleep, Sprout would wake me up before I got asleep enough for it to do any good. The little guy has been congested for 3 months. I took him to the doctor at the beginning of the month and he didn't find anything wrong with him. I pushed, saying that something HAS to be wrong, because the boy can't breathe out of his nose and hadn't been able to for the last 2 months. Doctor said, "Maybe it's allergies. Try some benadryl at night. If that clears it up, it's an allergy." It didn't clear it up at all. So I'm thinking it's not an allergy. I have an appointment for him with an Otolaryngologist on Thursday. Then at least we'll know if there is some sort of issue or swelling or whatever somewhere that is preventing him from breathing normally. Since Thanksgiving, I've had maybe 2 decent nights of sleep. Before that, Sprout was not a super sleeper by any means, but he would go a few hours at a time most nights. Now his snuffiness keeps him waking about every 45 minutes, at best.

So tired.

Like, Don't Like

Like:

30 Rock
House
Ugly Betty
Glee
Modern Family


Don't Like:

American Idol
Other Reality-Type Shows

Lawyer shows

Crime shows

I like funny. And escapism. I like to be sucked up in a funny world for a little while, not subjected to the drama of other actual people. Isn't that why we have family and in-laws?

My sister is awesome

Actually, both of them are very awesome, but this is about my oldest sister Melody. She has started a blog aimed at sharing the joy that living the gospel of Jesus Christ should bring. She is trying to get it out there, in the hopes that it will help people and help the world see that LDS women are happy and fulfilled. Every day that I've opened it up and read it, I get something from it, some great nugget of truth to carry with me for a few hours. I highly recommend that you check it out (and become a follower--she'd like to have lots of happy faces in that box). Here it is: Enjoying the Journey

Way to go, Melody!

Love is....

banana nutella crepes.

don't you agree?

I got a crepemaker for Christmas (yay!) and hadn't taken the opportunity to try it out yet. As David and I aren't ones to do much for Valentine's Day, I had the thought to start a V day tradition of making crepes. So we bought supersized jars of Nutella and frozen berries at Costco, some overpriced bananas (and very cute baby bananas just for fun) at the latin market, and we had some killer crepes Sunday night. Ours didn't look quite so finished as the picture, but they still tasted divine! We ate some more this morning for breakfast. I think it is a tradition that I will quite enjoy for years to come. I'd like to make "dinner" crepes, too. I've had those before and they are quite sumptuous.

perspective

My Baby is ONE!

This year has FLOWN by. So much so, that it makes me think maybe I shouldn't have any more kids, since time seems to speed up with each new addition to the family.

Sprout has been such a wonderful addition to our family. After Spud was born, I had a hard time adjusting to my new reality as a stay-at-home mom with two kids. Up until his birth, I was a Grad Student Mom with ONE kid. I went through a really rough patch for about 6 months, and then started feeling pretty normal. After Sprout joined us, though, I realized that I'd still had lingering mild depression for the previous 3 1/2 years. When Sprout entered the world, he brought with him a calmness and serenity that really soothed my spirit. It was noticeable to those who were present at his birth and to those who spent time with him during those first couple of weeks.

Not too longer after Sprout's arrival, I had a bit of a scare with a thyroid issue, and (probably at least partly induced by those crazy hormones) I was paranoid that it was going to be cancer and that I'd die, leaving these three mostly fabulous kids without a mom. Through that experience, I came to realize that I had been wasting so much time and energy on worrying about things I couldn't control and hadn't been using energy on things that would bring me and my family true joy. That's obviously one of those lessons that is easy to forget after a while, but I have tried to make it a part of me, and I can see gradual improvement in my attitude and interactions with others.

Sprout has stayed "babyish" the longest of our three kids, and I've appreciated it. He crawled later, and both of the others were walking well by age one. He's such a big boy that it's kind of nice that his development is not accelerated, just average (Spud walked at 8.5 months--it was so easy to think of him as older than he was, and he's been like that his whole life).

He looks for things to be happy about. He is not one to cry or fuss for no reason, though he really is a mama's boy and prefers to be within eyeshot of me. He is very inquisitive about his environment and does to love to explore (perhaps I should have expected as much given his namesake!).

I'm so grateful to have him in my life. Before he was conceived, I was feeling a little fretful about disrupting our life with a new baby. I was worried about the rearranging that would be neccessary--making room for his crib and carseat and all that sort of thing. After three years, we'd gotten quite used to just being the four of us. I had a distinct impression that there was enough room in our lives for #3, and felt very calm and excited about the person who was coming to join us in time. I didn't worry about it at all after that experience. (Though there was a couple of weeks when the midwife wondered if he might be twins and I thought, "Crap, there's no way we can fit in our car!")

So, happy birthday my sweet little boy. Thank you for a wonderful year!

cruel irony

The first night all week that Sprout sleeps well, David's cell phone alarm starts going off at 5 a.m. and I can't find it in the dark to turn it off (plus it was a really weird alarm so I didn't even know it was his phone until later--I thought it was his computer or the laptop or something) and goes off every ten minutes and he's not around because he's working out downstairs (except I thought he was in the garage and I didn't want to find him to solve the problem). I finally got up at 6. I did get out of bed twice and stumble around the room trying to localize the source of the sound before it stopped.

::sigh::

At least I had time to exercise this morning.

another picture post

As the resident photographer, I don't often get on the "action" side of the camera.

little guy

This little guy is so ridiculously lovable.

Earlier this week I was feeling frustrated that he wasn't going down for naps easily anymore, as the "nurse to sleep" thing seems to not be working so well. He's also too big for him to feel comfortable enough to go to sleep when I am holding him. So after lamenting to David, we decide to try and institute an actual naptime routine. This was Tuesday, so Tuesday afternoon I took him into the room where he naps, laid down with him, nursed him while singing a couple of songs, then laid him on my chest and patted him for a few minutes while humming, and within ten minutes he was asleep. And he slept for about 1.5 hours. Wow. I was impressed. The next morning, when he seemed to be getting fussy, I did the same thing. He was out in less than 10 minutes. That afternoon, same thing. On Thursday, same thing for both naps. Every time he has napped at LEAST an hour. And prior to this, for the past week or so, he'd been napping only 15-30 minutes at best during the day, unless David was holding him. Today, the same thing, plus we got up earlier, which I hope to continue as we'd been sleeping in a bit too late. Or rather, he'd be restless and I'd keep trying to convince him to sleep a little bit longer.

So, I'm really excited about this new "routine". The other kids were not so easily persuaded to sleep. Their naptime routines took at least 30 minutes. 10 minutes or less is great, since I'm usually in the middle of doing school with Noodle & Spud.

He's also into EVERYTHING these days. I think it deserves its own post.

So, hooray for naps!

one of those times....

when you've failed to mention so much, so where do you begin?

Spud turned FIVE on Christmas Eve. Thanks to some good bargain hunting (and calling around to half a dozen Shopko stores when the item was on sale), he got some fun birthday gifts. The big one was a Hot Wheels Raceway. It's nothing super fancy, but you can race 4 cars at a time and it does tell you which car won, so that's fun.





Christmas was a lot of fun. We opened gifts here in the morning and then headed down to David's folks house. After opening gifts, hanging out and lunching there, we forewent (is that the past tense of "forego"?) the traditional Christmas movie (as we didn't want to take Leif to a theater) and went to my sister Melody's house. My brother Dave and his girlfriend showed up there a bit later, and we had a nice time playing games and just hanging out. I liked seeing my family, too. Even though there are quite a number of us around here (Dave up in Salt Lake county, and Melody and Jeff & I all around here with our families) we don't get together that frequently unless Mom & Dad are in town. I think I'll try and make more of a point of getting together with them on holidays when possible. It was fun.

With a lot of hard work, I finished all the kids' dolls before Christmas. Noodle is in love with her doll. She has been taking her everywhere. Spud likes his, too, mostly because he can play with Noodle. Sprout's doll is up on a shelf for now. He'd happily play with it, but I figure we'll save it for when he's older.






As for the New Year, I'm working on finalizing my resolutions. I'm giving myself the first 10 days to get it all sorted out. Don't want to be too hasty, you know!

mama

Sprout now reliably says "mama" and "dada" for David and me. It's SO. COMPLETELY. CUTE! This morning he even stretched it out to be "Mahhhm." He said it a couple of times. He also points to himself and said, "Doh."

He loves to point to things and have us tell him the names.

and then there were none

Otis, the last living of our four rat brothers, passed away this morning. This is the first time in nearly 7 years that we've had no pet rats living with us. We've had as many as seven before. We aren't planning on getting any more for a while, either. Probably not until the kids are a little older and able to do the cage cleanup on their own. (We have a HUGE cage.)

Otis had been alone since shortly after Thanksgiving, and I think it was mostly sadness and loneliness that hastened his passing, rather than illness. Poor guy just missed his brothers so much.

Rest in peace, little ratties.

temporary houseguest

We are tending this little guy until Christmas (he came on Saturday) for a family in the neighborhood. He is so sweet and cute! It will be kind of hard to say goodbye. He loves to be scritched and makes the cutest little chirps and other happy noises. I foresee a guinea pig in our future. (Not the immediate future, but someday!)

clutter

I am feeling overwhelmed by STUFF lately. Particularly kids' clothing. I don't know how to organize the outgrown stuff, what to save & what to give away/donate. Especially as they get older and the clothes show substantial wear, but still have a decent amount of wear left in them. For example, Noodle has outgrown her size 6 jeans, many of which we acquired secondhand (as handmedowns or from Savers), and they have knee patches, but now, with the knee patches, would be great for another girl to wear. But do I hold on to them for SEVEN YEARS? That seems a little ridiculous. So then I think, I'll just save the cutest or the ones in the best condition. Then I can't decide, and figure if I'm saving any, I might as well save them all, and I'm back to where I started. For being born a good 40+ years after the Great Depression, why the heck do I have so much angst about getting rid of stuff? Sigh.... I recently threw out some dollar store tableclothes that we'd bought for our Ichthoberfest party two years ago (and used). They were nice enough to reuse, but why did I hang on to them for so long? It would have been one thing if they'd have been in some designated spot, but they were just floating around from place to place.

I'm also the queen of repurposing. I use old containers for all sorts of things. I like the canisters from things for wrapping, we use peanut butter jars when we make freezer jam, we use empty cereal boxes for all sorts of crafts, large clear plastic containers for bug houses... It's hard for me to throw out anything that I can think of a reasonable re-use for.

But I'm tired of so much stuff around me. Papers. Projects. Books. Clothes. Toys. I feel like I really need to purge a lot of things. I don't know how to begin, or how to get over my "But what if I need it?" panics. Should I start with the stuff in the shed--the clothes and packed away toys? Then stuff that we DO want to keep that is cluttering the house can be moved out to the cleaned out shed. It seems like a good place to start. Maybe first I should try and get the office under control so I'll have a home base for sorting all this stuff out.

Obviously I'm thinking out loud here. Sometimes it'd be nice just to delete a certain trait and download an upgraded version!

cute handmade gift idea....

I helped Noodle sew one for Spud this week.

The Purl Frog

I'm itching to make more, but still have dolls & clothes to finish. I think it will be on my "post Christmas" list of sewing projects, though.

oh the boogers!

Sunday we left church after Sacrament meeting because Noodle was all sniffly. Monday, Sprout started in. Spud held off until Wednesday night and I finally succumbed last night. (Not surprisingly, since Sunday, Monday & Tuesday nights I got very little sleep tending to little Sprout.) Noodle is all better today, and was pretty good yesterday, too, so I guess I have a couple more days of this. I keep having mad crazy sneezing fits, which leave me feeling rather discombobulated. Better than painful coughing spells, but nonetheless unpleasant.

I'm amazed that we've been able to get as much done this week as we have. My folks are coming into town in the next hour or so, and while I'd like the house to be cleaner, at least the room they'll be sleeping in is presentable.

This is our first cold since starting school, so I think we are doing pretty good, healthwise. No doubt we caught it from some cousins at Thanksgiving last week. Sometimes I wish it were possible (and more fun) to adopt an isolationist strategy from November until March. Dealing with illness is such a drain. (Both literally and figuratively!)

love it!

totally called it

In this week's episode of Glee, the glee crew were going to sing a song to Quinn & Finn, and I knew it was going to be Lean on Me. (Yeah, not really such a big deal, but it made me happy to be right!)


Such a great song. I want to teach it to the kids.

And (one of) my favorite thing(s) about Glee is how unabashed it is in its own hokeyness.

Here's another fabulous song:

highlights of the week

1. Spud read FIVE early reader books. (See details here if you are so inclined.)

2. I watched all the episodes of this season's Ugly Betty. We'd kind of decided not to keep up with it, but I ended up having enough evenings alone when I was working on sewing projects that I decided to watch it.

3. Glee was hilarious. So was 30 Rock. (I'm very grateful for good TV shows during the long, cold, dark winter.)

4. I got to order FREE photo cards! I also found another promo code and made up some flier type cards for my photography business.

5. I took pictures of my friend's daughter who turns 8 next month. She (and the pictures) are both very cute.

6. I sewed the hair on one of the dolls I'm making. It looks fabulous! I'm having so much fun making them, if only I had more time. I think I'll finish the ones I need to before Christmas, but it might be close!

7. I got to go out with a good friend to have milk shakes. It was yummy and fun, but next time we'll go to a place that isn't FREEZING so we can sit and chat instead of escaping back out to her car!

8. We finished up our second term for the year, and had a Fun Friday party to celebrate. Hooray for dance parties!

ups & downs

Rough day today. Sprout was particularly fussy (as he was yesterday during the day), and I just felt really alone. Noodle and Spud were really good, which was nice, but as I tried to slog through some of the chores I had to do, all I really wanted was to have a friend come over and chat. I had a real need for some commiseration today, but it just didn't happen. I hate feeling lonely. I think one of the harder things for me about being a wife and a mother is dealing with the down moods. When what I most need is just some quiet time to think, read, pray, etc., I just have to keep my "game face" on and try to muddle through until my mood clears a bit. (And try not to bite anybody's head off.) I've opened up a dialogue with Noodle & Spud about how sometimes I just need a break, and they are remarkably good at giving me some time & space. Unfortunately, babies don't have that skill.

Such is life.