tummy time

He's not a huge fan, but he sure is cute. And drooly.

it's a dog's life

This is what the dogs were doing while I was working this afternoon.

being a mom...

means that sometimes the oddest things will make you emotional. I was cleaning off the table and I came across Noodle's drawings for the day (click to view them on her blog). For some reason, the fact that all three depict such happy scenes just got to me. I especially love the laundry one, and I'm glad that she is familiar with clotheslines as I imagine there are many kids in the world who aren't! It made me so happy to see these pictures and know that she is having a happy childhood. What a wonderful little girl.

thank heavens...

for baby slings. For some unknown reason, Sprout is refusing to nap today unless I am holding him. He usually naps just fine upstairs on the bed, but not today. So after a couple of HOURS of holding him, I decide to just grab the sling and strap him in. Since he weighs about 17 lbs now, this is a much better way to hold him.

Last night we ran a bunch of errands and stupidly left all of our slings at home (we have three plus one that is missing). That is a mistake we won't make again! He was very content just being held in our arms, but we certainly could feel it!

On a semi-related note, we got a new battery for my pedometer. It calculates calories burned, also, based on your weight. I figure I can probably add 1-200 extra every day for packing around this "little" guy. :o)

end of pity party

Yeah, I'm over it. I had a nice mother's day, complete with a homemade card (plenty of glitter) a primary teacher-assisted bookmark, and yummy food made by my husband. Also, a box of chocolates (that I specifically told him to get). I think next year for my birthday I'll just make sure he knows that I want something wrapped. :o) He's very accommodating and thoughtful, even if he isn't "into" birthdays and made up fake holidays.

i guess i skipped over...

...my birthday. Well, to be honest, there wasn't all that much to report. David's folks are always really kind to get me something nice, but we hadn't settled on anything this year. I was leaning towards chickens, but then decided that at present I'm not up to being responsible for any more living things. David tends not to get too into birthdays, preferring to do nice things and give gifts unexpectedly at other times of the year. Which is nice, but I would be lying if I didn't confess to wanting at least something to unwrap on my birthday. A very sweet friend brought me over a gift card, and I am enjoying contemplating what frivolous thing I should get with it. Another friend brought over some cookies that night, and another friend came back into town and brought me some delicious treats. Also, I went and bought myself a birdbath a couple days later for the backyard as my birthday present from David. The best part of the day was the delicious hot fudge brownie sundaes we had instead of a cake. I just wasn't in the mood for cake this year.

I think what I'd really like in the future is for him to coordinate something with the kids to give me. I know they'd like to be able to give me something, but they are too young to come up with things all on their own. And having Mother's Day the same week as my birthday (and also not having much fuss made over that) is also kind of a bummer.

Anyone want to come to my pity party? I've provide the cheese to go with my whine... :o)

happy kids

We've been having a lot less fighting around here lately. I attribute it largely to the new "consequence" I've imposed -- they each get to pull 10 weeds every time they fight.

3 months old

Can you believe it? Why does time seem to go by more quickly every year and with each new child?

April...

April was my worst blogging month ever, I think. EIGHT posts? sheesh, pathetic!

april showers

I took pictures of my sister-in-law Anita and her prom date tonight. It was fun and we got some good shots, even though we had to shoot inside and I was really looking forward to an outside session. Oh well. I felt the need to document the "beautiful weather," though, and I am glad I did (even though it was a bit of an ordeal to hold my camera, my camera bag, my step stool, my umbrella, and my collapsed photo umbrella. Maybe that's why I liked the shots so much, it was quite an effort to get them.

kids

Family

So this is my family. We are missing a niece and a nephew, but for some unknown reason there are an extra guy (about my missing nephew's age) and some random girl (about my niece's age). I'm really not sure why they joined the picture. So the number is right even if the faces aren't!

It was pretty cool, though, as it is the most of us we've had together in a LOOONG time. We had Leif's blessing at church in the morning and then my nephew Spencer's mission farewell after that. My nephew Jason just got back from his mission (to Philadelphia) in February, my brother Eric's family just moved back to Idaho from Belgium in March, and Spencer went in to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) today (he'll be going to southern France) and another nephew and possibly a niece will be heading out on missions this summer, so we won't all be together again for at least two years.

itching to blog

I've been doing lots and lots of thinking lately...the kind where you realize you've been mistaken about some things for a long time, and you kind of feel like perhaps now you are ready to see the world through a slightly less smudgy window, but you're afraid that the new found illumination isn't going to last. (Okay, maybe that's just me.) Lots of thinking. But I've also been doing lots of working. I don't think I've told you that I've worked 30 hours every week since the first of the year. Yup, that includes the week that began the day after Sprout's arrival. There has been tasks available to do, so I've done them. It's been intense. I like to think that I'm developing self-discipline, and that when I no longer have this job I'll be able to put those 30 hours to good, productive use in other ways. I hope so.

Anyways, I digress. I really feel like sharing some of my thoughts as a way to help myself sort through them, but I just haven't found the time. I hope to find it soon enough, but with my sister and her family coming up later this week (yay!) I'm not sure how soon it will actually happen.

I seem to have missed the "obligatory" Easter post, but we had a very fun day. During the preceding week we read about the last week of Christ's life every morning as part of our devotional, and that was really neat. I think the kids even got something out of it, and I know I did. If I had my druthers, I'd move all the "egg/bunny stuff" (which I think is great fun) to the Vernal Equinox and have a big ol' pagan-inspired party and then save Easter for more spiritually enlightening activities. Unfortunately, David's dad is not so keen on the idea, and they are the ones who head up the family Egg Hunt each year. Oh well.

10 weeks old

Looking like a baby Clark Kent.

doggy drama

As if three kids don't create enough drama...

So my little fluffhound, Daisy, finally got over her grudge against me this week. Details: We got Daisy at about age 2.5, and from the beginning she was SUPER playful. Always delighted to play fetch with her plush squeaky toys or tug with her rope. It was one of my favorite things about her. Due to working a lot of hours and then Sprout's arrival, she wasn't getting played with nearly enough. About 3 weeks ago I started feeling up to "things" enough again and wanted to get back in the habit of playing with her. She would have NOTHING to do with it. In fact, she just gave me these looks of "I have no idea what you are doing," when I'd squeak or toss her toys. I have to admit I was worried and disappointed. What if I'd "broken" my dog? I tried every few days with no success. Then last Friday we had some friends over and she got really excited. She kind of forgot herself in all the excitement and ran to bring me one of her toys. I thought, "YAY!" and threw the toy. Nothing. It did seem like a baby step, though, so I was hopeful. A couple of days ago she played the game of "run around like a crazy fluffy demon" and then after that she ran off to find a toy, and we played fetch again. Today we had another great game of upstairs-hall fetch, so I think she might be back to her old, playful self again. And it makes me really happy.

And now a story about Rudy. He was having his crate time today (he doesn't "chill" very well, so he spends a fair amount of time in his crate so he can have some relaxed time) and we suddenly hear some "yowp yowp yowp" sounds. He whines on occasion when he wants out, but this sounded like pain. It stopped and Spud checked on him and saw nothing wrong. Then a minute later it started up again, and didn't stop. I ran over and opened his crate and he hobbled out, dangling his left front paw and yowping like he was about to die. I couldn't figure out what he could have done to it, but I took him outside for his potty break and he was still not putting weight on it. He stopped the crying, and after a couple of minutes gingerly put some weight on his foot. I think his foot fell asleep and it freaked him out, which is kind of funny once you get past feeling sorry for the doofus. :o)

i like this

2 months old!

I think one of the craziest things about having a baby is the effect it has on your perception of time. Babies grow so quickly and learn so much that two months is pretty notable. By the time they are two, though, two months doesn't mean quite as much. And when they are five or six, any change is almost imperceptible.

funny

Lego Man Prank Call
Uploaded by gagfilms

As Pumba said...

"You've gotta put your behind in the past."

I had a very neat/odd experience a couple weeks back. I was perusing the facebook pages of some friends and saw a comment from a childhood friend of mine on another friend's page. At the time, I wasn't "FB friends" with the childhood friend, but I immediately sent her a friend request. Shortly after that, another childhood friend added me as a friend. On that day, so many memories started rushing through my mind, it was like someone had just opened the floodgates as old emotions and experiences came pouring out. So many things I hadn't thought about in 20 years. I was amazed that they were even still in my brain somewhere.

I don't know how other people remember their past, but I do know that for me, most of my experiences as a child and teenager are pretty fuzzy. I tend to remember them about the same as I remember movies that I've watched--often the emotion of the situation is not really there and I don't remember a lot of specifics. I wish I remembered a lot of the experiences more vividly, but I don't. I've wondered if part of it is that when I left for college I was really ready for a new start. I'd had a pretty great life up to that point, but hadn't really felt like I had discovered who I really was. I was ready to leave a lot of the old me (at least the me that had developed during adolescence) behind and become who I was truly meant to be. I think perhaps this conscious separation from my former self might have severed some of the connection to a lot of the memories. Plus, after leaving my hometown to come to BYU, I never returned for more than a week or so at a time, so I didn't have much chance to remind myself of the past. One time I went home, probably about 6 years after I'd left and I went to my old high school just to walk around. I felt so many old emotions and feelings come over me that it was almost frightening! It was certainly unnerving to have those thoughts and feelings come up unbidden.

Well, I've strayed from my original intent, which was to somehow address the uniqueness of experience and how we really do live in isolated realities, but this is getting somewhat lengthy so perhaps I'll save those thoughts for another day. But I am curious if anyone cares to share what memories are like for them and how vivid they are. I hope that in the next life we'll easily be able to recall our favorite experiences and get to feel the thrill again of some of the best days from various times in life.

too blue to blog

So I've not been up to blogging lately. I find that when I'm feeling down, it's hard to work up any motivation to share thoughts or connect with others (though a couple of friends have been kind enough to listing to me rant and cry). Lately I've just been feeling overwhelmed (again). Though it hasn't been the kids that have been overwhelming me, which I count as a sign of good progress in that area!

Noodle & Spud have spent much free time this week playing with the Legos that David brought back from his parents' house. Oh what fun they have! Noodle plays Legos a lot like I did when I was a kid - building houses, making little Lego critters (I made birds as we didn't have any lego animals, she is lucky enough to have two Lego horses and a shark!) and acting out scenarios with the various Lego people. Luckily I snagged the "girl hair" we had at my house way back when, as otherwise we only have helmets and hats, and Noodle doesn't like pretending that the helmet-wearers COULD be girls whose hair you just can't see. One of these days we'll do an order from the Lego store and get some more girl hair...then it will be less of a "Smurfette" situation. Anyways, it's pretty fun to watch them play, especially when they play nicely, which they have been doing most of the week!


We went to the Walter Wick exhibit at the BYU Art Museum yesterday afternoon. He's the "I Spy" guy. Pretty fun stuff. If you're local, I highly recommend it. Even Spud enjoyed it. It runs through sometime in August.

I think I'm turning the corner in my melancholy, though, so in case you are dying to see more random videos, lolcats, or pictures of my kids, you might soon be in luck!