my dirty little secret

Because of Joy School (and Abigail's ensuing two-hour absence), Wednesday is always my crazily productive day. I jump-started it this morning when I came home from the gym and realized that nobody was awake yet, so I started cleaning.

I mopped my bathroom floor today.

For the first time since we bought the house.

A year ago.

I think Neil mopped the floor after we bought the house and right before we moved in, but I definitely haven't touched it since then.

Ew, you say! Yes, I agree. And in my defense, I always vacuum it at least once a week. I clean both bathrooms at least once (often twice) a week. I just really hate mopping the floor.

It's not just the bathroom--it's mopping, period. I hate mopping so much. I don't know why, but I really do. My mom suggested it might be because I didn't have a mop (I always felt like it got more clean with a scrub brush), so last time she was here she bought me one, and it's great. I've been using it on the kitchen every couple of days (in fact, I mopped it this morning). But it doesn't solve the bathroom problem, because there's all those angles and cabinets and things getting in the way. So I just sort of...close my eyes to the bathroom floor and vacuum away.

The irony here is that I am a super neat freak. I love organizing things, and I love cleaning (it's kind of therapeutic). So I'm a woman who has laminated daily, weekly, and monthly lists of chores, religiously cleans out the drip pans on her stove every week, but hides from her bathroom floor for an entire year.

There's my confession...now let's hear yours! What's your paradox? Are you a skydiver who's afraid of airplanes? A General Mills employee who only eats Kellogg cereals? A nonfiction writer who's got a secret hankering after iambic pentameter?

Open up and share!

They both took naps today. At the same time. I so don't know what to do with myself. Which is why I'm online. Staring at the monitors waiting for someone to wake up. Help! I'm afraid to start any productive activity because maybe opening the laundry room door would wake one up...or making bread would wake one up.

I'm not sure whether it's worse to have them asleep when they're normally awake or awake when they should be asleep.

This is very unsettling! I can't relax and enjoy my quiet time because I'm just waiting for it to end!!

My children have wreaked some very evil Pavlovian conditioning on me.

my split personalities

Most days I have the following conversation inside my head:

Me: Is this really my life?

Other Me: Yes, you lucky son[daughter]-of-a-gun. Pretty nifty, eh?

or

Another Me: Yes. I feel sorry for you. Haha! You're stuck! Nah-nah-nah!


Today both Other Me and Another Me reared their little heads.

I think they're both gone now, so I'm going to sleep.

After three weeks of Abigail winning the "I refuse to nap battle," I give you the following...

It's a little-known fact that even the most recalcitrant of children will finally give in and nap after you:
a) remove every single book, toy, and stuffed animal from their room
b) tie the door shut.

Victory is mine!

i love my little folks.

my husband is awesome

a quick note:

we found out on Friday that Neil has officially passed all his qualifying exams for the ph.d. program. so he is officially in! (they don't give the exams until they've completed about a year and a half of work).

YAY, NEIL!!! CONGRATULATIONS!

what is really cool about this is that Neil is doing a direct Ph.D., which means he didn't have a master's coming in. so he spent most of the last year studying constantly to compensate for not having an additional two years of classes. this meant that while i was lounging around reading or watching movies after abigail was in bed, Neil was hitting the books. every night. for a year. in addition to all his classes and research and work.

i've said it once and i'll say it again...the man is amazing. i sure love you, honey!

our weekend plans

See these people? They are waaaayy more fun to hang out with than Mommy and Daddy. Even at the age of two and a half, Abigail's wised up to this fact.

We told her yesterday that the next day (today) we were going to her grandparents' house. Ever since then, she's been a bubbling pot of excitement. This morning she came running out of her room yelling "GO PAPA HOUSE NOW!"

While we ate breakfast, I explained to her that we wouldn't be leaving for quite some time, since we had to wait until Daddy was done with class (at 2:30) before we could start the three hour drive to my parents' house.

She thought about that for a minute while she chewed her pancake, then said calmly "Ok, Mom. We go Papa house now, Daddy walk by self later. Ok? Hey Neil! You walk by self, ok? We go in car now!"

(Oh, and MB and Ruth, you're not going to be there because "Bere Bef and Woof in cah-widge, wike Steve on Boo's Coos!" translation: the character "Steve" on Blue's Clues "went to college" when he quit the show. I don't know how she remembered that, but her little mind made the connection and now it makes sense that you're in "cah-widge" because hey, guess what? "Dey dere in cah-widge wif Steve! All friends together!")

Instead of going to book club tonight, I'm sitting here reading over my thesis and planning how best to chop it up for publication. (I can't go to book club because Neil is at work and somebody has to stay home and listen to the girls cry themselves to sleep.)

I miss being in school.

I feel like I've become less intelligent (at least verbally so) over the last year. I used to have some pretty dang good ideas and an impressive vocabulary.

for neil

This is the kind of daddy we have around here:

any time Abigail hears any baby crying (Juliet included) she says lovingly, "Oh baby...it's ok. You crying? You need a daddy, huh? Your daddy make you feel better?"

He's good at comforting* like that.

(although it was a little embarassing when she said that very loudly in church when the couple in front of us were letting their baby fuss himself to sleep..."Hey baby! You need your daddy? Hey (child's name) daddy! Your baby need you!")

*but i still have to "kiss-it-better-yeah." apparently it doesn't work when daddies do that.

Toys

What's up with toys these days? Or at least Target's stock of toys, which, while decidely better than Walmart, still left something to be desired?! I took the girls out today (we were all cranky and they were sick) just to get out, so we went to Target to look for pants for Abigail and I decided to check out Christmas toys while we were there.

I wanted to get Abigail one of those toy hammering sets--you know, the kind where you can pound pegs through holes, but I saw none there. I didn't even see any little tool belts, which I was also thinking about getting her (she's obsessed with following Neil around carrying my tools, which I would like to have back for my own use). And the dump trucks, which I also wanted to get her (for her little dirt and rock mountains) looked like they wouldn't hold up to anything actually being put in them. All the little girl toys seemed to be mostly those obnoxious Bratz dolls. I couldn't find any Legos, and the Lincoln Logs were sold in packages so small that I'd have to buy about ten before she could do anything with them. And speaking of Legos, I wish they would just sell the blocks rather than all the specialty sets. We have lots of the specialty things, because Neil had a huge collection of fighter-plane-type-Legos, and Abigail and I have sorted out all the regular blocks from the special technical (swallowable) pieces, but there's not too many, and it seems like they just don't make the regular kind anymore that I remember from my childhood. They're all Star Wars or Pirates of the Caribbean or things like that.

I didn't see any of the toys for Jules that I wanted either ( I was looking for really bright colors, crinkly fabrics, or cool noises, like this or this). Everything was boring and dopey-looking. (Although I was really tempted to buy an air hockey/foosball table.)

So yeah! What's up with that? Boy, am I glad Neil built that swingset (although I did buy Abigail a soccer ball).

Do you know of any cool little kid toys that encourage creativity and spontaneous play? Tell me about them! (We have some great kitchen stuff and a little toy kitchen that she absolutely loves, and a few Fisher Price Little People things that she also really loves.) And she likes dress-up clothes, but we only have five or six things, and she's just barely getting to the age now where she really has fun with them.

I will say this--Ikea has some really great stuff. I especially like their easels (although I don't know how practical they are, which is why I haven't gotten one), train sets (which I'm thinking about getting her this year), and blocks (which Abigail has and totally loves, and I love because they have a printed tracing of each block on the wagon so you can fit it back together with a minimum of effort--HIGHLY recommend!)...so cool! Someday I will actually make it up there and go berserk in the wooden toy aisles. (And buy these, which aren't available online.) And plus, instead of a rocking horse, you can buy a rocking moose. Now that's cool.

Your turn--what toys do your kids like? Or what toys do you like, since I don't buy anything that I wouldn't want to play with too? :-) What were your favorites as a kid?

blissful sleep

Did anyone ever tell you to sleep when your kids sleep?

Did you ever laugh hysterically in their face and then start to cry?

If this doesn't sound like you, let me clue you in.

Here is Juliet. See the pig in the lower right-hand corner? She's in love with it.

Here is Abigail. She has a hundred gazillion toys, but the only one she really wants right now is Juliet's pink pig.

Here is Juliet after her pink pig was kidnapped.

Here is me, saying "NO!" to Abigail, that little sneak.

Here is Abigail. She put herself in timeout, which means she probably isn't suffering enough. When she puts herself in timeout, she also thinks she can get herself out. So I put her back in. This gets her good and mad, which is somehow strangely satisfying to me. It makes me feel like I'm doing my job as a mom. Getting kids mad. Oh yeah.

Juliet, meanwhile, is still yelling her little head off.

Cue the phone. It's someone I visit teach who just had a baby who I really meant to call.

My girls rev up. Boy, do they have good lungs.

I ask brightly over the yelling "HI! HOW ARE YOU? I MEANT TO CALL YOU TODAY! CAN I DO ANYTHING?

She says "Um...are your kids sick?"

"NO! THEY'RE JUST FINE."

"Oh...um...ok. Um...I'm good."

"ARE YOU SURE? WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?"

"Um...nothing. Really. I'm fine. Um...can you call me back?"

"SURE! BYE!"

Juliet's hit a good steady pitch and is holding strong. She's got power vocal cords. Abigail, meanwhile, has taken a jar of jam out of the fridge and is occupied with rolling it back and forth over the carpet. This isn't providing enough entertainment, so just as I round the corner she begins to throw it against the wall.

I make this face and Abigail abandons the jam and runs for it.

Juliet yells some more.

I get Abigail settled with a PBJ, and try to feed Juliet. She's enraged, and refuses. Utterly.

Abigail, finished with her sandwich, asks for me to read her some scripture stories. So I do, and then she tells me she wants to nap now. She proceeds to her room, where she dismembers every toy and empties the contents of her bookcase.

Juliet, meanwhile, is still refusing to eat.

Two hours later, Juliet still won't eat and Abigail, despite ferocious warnings from me, refuses to nap. After telling her to stay in bed, I come back in fifteen minutes later to find her with every single toy and book in her room piled on her bed as she sits victorious in the midst of it. She smiles sweetly at me and says "I still in bed, Mommy!"

I put all her toys and books up on a closet shelf.

They fall down as soon as I leave the room.

Abigail develops an irrational fear of her books and insists that I hide them from her sight in case they take it into their heads to "sneak out and fall again!"

I put Juliet in her swing, hoping to knock her out and stop the yelling.

The poor exhausted little kid (still no food!) complies.

I come in here to write this post in an effort to laugh it off.

Abigail comes running out of her room, stops in front of the swing, and yells loudly "HEY BABY JULIET? WHAT YOU DOING? SLEEPING, HUH?"

And that's how we occupy our time from 12:30 to 3 pm. Good ol' naptime.

**Despite all evidence to the contrary, Abigail does still sorely need a nap and usually ends up taking one after a few hours...we tried going without it, but it was a wretched experience for all concerned.

But don't worry! I'm still smiling.

The Crack-Up

Today while I was using my precious, precious, precious measured-in-gold two free hours (while Abigail is in Joy School) to take Juliet to the pediatrician to assuage Neil's fears that she is not skeletally deformed as a result of liking to sleep on one side, I was trying to get something slightly self-enriching out of the drive. So I started reciting poetry to myself, but that didn't take very long, because the poems I have memorized are in the category of a) depressing WWI poetry, b) depressing Civil War poetry, c) something from Hamlet, d) something from Robert Frost, or e) a part of the Canterbury Tales (as a result of five classes which each required aforesaid memorization. But hey, I can recite the first 40 lines of CT in the appropriate Middle English accent, for what that's worth).

Anyway, I started thinking about how I wish I had more time to read these days (and then I read an article at the doctor's office on exercising your mind, just as you'd exercise your body, by doing things like listening to opera and reading Henry James, who was the subject of my master's thesis, thank you very much, not that I've cracked a Jamesian spine since) and then I had this idea: chapter titles for a book on parenting that are famous quotes.



Work with me here.

Maybe we'll go for Shakespeare.

Like...

"'The glass of fashion and the mold of form': Learning To Dress Herself" (Hamlet)

'Though this be madness, yet there is method in't': Reasoning With Your Toddler" (Hamlet)

'"He hath eaten me out of house and home': Culinary Woes" (King Henry IV)

"'I'll not budge an inch': The Terrible Twos" (Taming of the Shrew)

"'What's done is done': On the Making of Messes" (Macbeth)

"'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child': The Teenage Years" (King Lear)

"'I have not slept one wink': Life With Your Infant" (Cymbeline)

"'For the rain it raineth every day': Playground Woes" (Taming of the Shrew)

Oh, that was fun, in a weird sort of way. I'll have to work on refining these for my own amusement. Any suggestions yourselves? Any quotes, Shakespearean or not, are fair play (as a matter of fact, it was Fitzgerald's The Crack-Up that came to mind when I found myself wiping off a peanut-butter covered knife on the jam jar this afternoon. Hence the post title). Oh well. Back to the laundry.

my blog is officially a year old today. this is the very best I've ever done at keeping a journal, seeing as how this is post #363.

In any event, I just wanted to note, as I was sitting here tonight thinking about my blessings, that one of my very favorite things about having children is the wonder and excitement that comes with exploring and discovering the world with them.

That sounds a little confusing, but it's refreshing to just watch abigail sometimes...when she spills her water, she doesn't just grab a towel and clean it up. instead, she stops and says "Mommy! Look! My spill is in the shape of animals! A cow, a horse...what's this one, Mommy?" When the wind blows her goldfish crackers out of her bowl, instead of being irritated she is merely fascinated by the fact that "the wind made my crackers fly like birdies!" And the sunset is greeted with cries of "Oh Mommy look! A big pretty fire in the sky!"

When I walk with Abigail, we stop to look at leaves or interestingly shaped rocks. We say hi to mailboxes and greet everyone we pass. When we see a plane, we speculate on where it's going. She knows exactly which houses in our neighborhood have pumpkins, and the concept of trick-or-treating is just about the most glorious thing ever in her small world. She gives hugs and kisses freely, never hesitates to break out into song, and tends her family of stuffed animals with the same outflowing of love that results in gentle pats as she softly croons "it's ok, baby Juliet...be happy now?" every time Juliet cries. She's taught me again the value of enjoying the little things and paying attention to the daily miracles that comprise my reality.

It's nice to be a mommy and experience that wide-eyed awe with her every day.

My friends, I give you "Poke-ah-hannas, dotter of dah chief!" enjoying the library Halloween festivities.

...which name one must call her in order to get an response other than "no, not abigail, poke-ah-hannas, dotter of chief!"

yesterday she only answered to "Mommy," and referred to me as "Abigail," Jules as "Daddy," and Neil as "Baby Juliet." She kept it up all evening and started it again this morning until she donned her Pocahontas garb in preparation for our library outing.

Monday

My lengthy two hours of sleep last night left me really craving a nap today, but since Abigail has gotten out of bed seven times in six minutes (button my dolly's dress, button my dolly's dress again, tie this dressup around my head, i need to go potty, i want more lunch, i want to go outside) I decided to blog for a few minutes until she's asleep so I'm not waking up enraged and sleep-fogged every thirty seconds. On the Abigail-out-of-bed note, we've started doing night potty training, which is going well in terms of dryness but horrendously in terms of out-of-bed every five minutes until 10:30 last night. Gah.





But on the Abigail-is-funny note, she insists on being sung to sleep with the Mysterious Ticking Noise song from Potter Puppet Pals (look it up on youtube if you haven't seen it!), so we always have to sing the "Harry Potter, I'm Harry Potter, I'm Harry Potter, Harry Harry Potter" bit repeatedly. Anyway, today we were reading Harry the Very Dirty Dog, and we got to a page with lots of little dogs running around, and I said "Look at Harry! He's so dirty!" and she said "Yeah, Mommy! And look at all the Potters doggies! Harry and Potters!"



I laughed for a reallllly long time.


This weekend was really fun. On Friday night Neil and I had a date (although it wasn't too glamorous...we went on a walk with Jules and then talked about some future planning things and ate a frozen pizza, but it was really nice to just talk). Then we put the girls to bed and I went over to a friend's house for a "Spa Night" party, which was really fun. She does these every couple of months and they are just so fabulously fun, especially since she's trained as a beautician so she can teach us all the tricks! I came home at 1 am with a pedicure, freshly waxed eyebrows, and most importantly, a good four hours of time with my friends, which I really, really, really needed. I haven't been able to go on any of the "girls night" things since Juliet has been born, and I've really missed out on that time to just relax with other women and talk and laugh and become better friends. Lucky Neil got to stay home and do homework (but he had a LAN (computer gaming) party at our house a few weeks ago, so it evens out).


On Saturday we spent most of the morning doing keep-up-with-the-house kind of things (although I did sneak out for a quick run while Neil fed the girls) and Neil finished the swingset. Then after the girls woke up from their naps, we headed over to Clegg Botanical Gardens, which was a really fun park built around a ravine and overlooking a wide sparkling mini river/large creek. The fall colors were beautiful and it was fun to just be able to hike around as a family. Unfortunately, our camera died about five minutes in.

We should find out the results of Neil's last exam soon, we hope. It will be really nice to know...it's not as much a source of stress as I think it would be otherwise, since I keep telling myself that we prayed about coming here, we prayed about the direct Ph.D. program, and we prayed about buying our house and somehow it will all work out, but it would be good to know if we're going to be graduating and moving in a couple of months, or if we're here for another three years. Either option has its pros and cons, although I will say that I'm going to be really sad to leave here in terms of the friends I've made. I've been really blessed here in that there's a lot of little girls Abigail's age who have moms that I really enjoy spending time with, and there's so many young families here that it feels like a slightly fast-forwarded version of our ward at BYU. I have all my little support networks and our routines and activities--our Joy School group, our playgroup, our date night group, my book club, our ward Moms and Tots group, storytime friends at the library, and a circle of women that I can call to go to the park or go on a walk or things like that. I have fabulous visiting teachers who have really become friends, and I've been working with the same VT companion ever since we came here and we've become good friends too. It's hard to think about starting all over again in an area that likely won't have many LDS families, or at least many young families. The summer we spent in St. Joseph was really hard in terms of that--I felt so lonely and isolated a lot of the time that I confess I'm dreading somewhat that aspect of moving.

Anyway, we'll see! And it seems that Abigail is now asleep and Juliet has woken up, so I bid both my blog and my napping prospects adios.

pictures

First of all...if you, like me, crave spaghetti that's actually a meal, go here!

And since this little fat and happy person is content chillin' on my lap while I upload pictures, here you go! Ooh...she just made a cooey-laugh thing. So cute.

This morning at breakfast I told Abigail to smile for the camera. This is what I got. Incidentally, I spent the next ten minutes laughing like crazy while I watched her eat her toast sticks (she likes her toast cut into strips like carrot or celery sticks). First, she said "Good morning, toast stick, how are you?" "Good!" "Good, I good too." "Ok, I eat you now. Bye! Love you!" Then the next two toast sticks became cars: "Hi, where you going?" "Oh, I go hospdal. I visit And-ree-ah see her baby." (I told Abigail that her friend Elise wouldn't be at date night tonight because her mommy is having a baby tomorrow. Abigail was quite taken with this idea and insisted that she would "go see And-ree-ah new baby at hospdal." Somehow I don't think that would be the most restful thing for Andrea! :-) Anyway, the toast sticks then bumped into each other, said "scuze me, toast stick" and went on their merry way to her mouth. Poor short-lived little toast sticks. They got "eaten like monsters!"

And who needs Zorro when you've got Zorbigal?

I heard some rustling yesterday when I was cooking dinner. I turned around and saw this little imp trying to sneak Goldfish crackers out of the cupboard. ("No want dinner later, Mommy, want Goldfishie crackers now!")

So like any good mother would do, I took her off the counter, told her that was a no-no, went and got my camera, lifted her back up again and told her to smile, then gave her some Goldfish. No wonder she's confused about rules.

All the girls had a blast finger-painting with chocolate pudding during Joy School on Wednesday--here's Abigail and her friend Elise.

A few nights ago after dinner Abigail looked at Neil and I doing dishes, calmly pulled a cookie out of the waiting-to-be-frosted-for-FHE stack, opened the sliding door, picked up her books, and went out onto the patio to wait until all the work was done. Sneaky.

Sizes. Pretty cool.

I just love how much Abigail adores "my yiddle baby Jul-yet."

They're a lively bunch, eh? This is the post-nap face.

Our daily quality time...just the three of us and 956567323 books.

I really want to see this movie!!!!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/enchanted/large.html

make sure you watch all the way to the end.

sisters, let's go see this over thanksgiving, okay? deal? deal.

guess what?

despite the tornado sirens, lightening storm, and huge rolling blasts of thunder, miss juliet (after crying for 45 minutes) slept from 8:30 until 2, ate, then slept from 2-7. such a precious little sweetie.

and miss abigail slept soundly from 9 to 8. super precious.

"Hey, lookie me, Mom! Nails in my mouf like Daddy!"


Last night at dinner Abigail serenaded all of us with a rousing rendition of "Where is Thumbkin?"...but with a few alterations:

"Where is Fumpkin? Where is Fumpkin?"

(extremely high-pitched voice) "Here me am! Here me am!"

How rr you day, sir? How rrr you day sir?

(high-pitched voice again) "Derry well, fank you. Derry well, fank you!"

"Wun away...wun away."

She went all the way through, doing voices for all the fingers until she got to the ring finger, which the song calls "Lazy Man..." but she sang it as "Crazy Man." Neither Neil nor I could stop laughing. It was great. We tried to get her to sing "Here I am," but she was insistent that "No, no, here me am."

And she tunefully serenaded all the other shoppers in the store this morning with some song about ducks getting eaten in a stream by an alligator. I don't know where it came from, since I've never heard it before, but man, she was singing her heart out.

philosophicalness

Last night around 1:30 a.m. as Juliet was screaming her head off, as she'd been doing since she woke up from "bedtime" at 8:45 p.m. and Abigail was rocking back and forth on the toilet crying (she was really upset about having soiled her diaper in her sleep for the 5th time--diarrhea is nobody's friend) and I was scrubbing up the bathroom floor from what hadn't made it into the toilet, I thought...oh goody. Everyone's going to sleep in tomorrow and we have an excuse to lie around and read books and play games rather than clean the house and run errands.

And I kept forcing myself to look on the bright side throughout the morning as I climbed out of bed with only 5 hours of sleep for the 8th night in a row, went in and mopped the bathroom floor again after Abigail didn't make it to the toilet...again...started more laundry, bribed sick children to eat breakfast, and realized that we absolutely had to go to the grocery store this morning.

It's sort of a laissez-faire approach to parenting, I suppose, but it's keepin' things happy 'round here today. This same school of thought is responsible for the fact that Abigail is currently taking her nap quite happily on her bedroom floor. I figured that moving everything to the floor, if that's where she wants it, sure beats the 2-hour nap battles we've had the last three days.

I think if this day had hit last week I would have curled up sobbing, but for some reason I'm okay with it now. Maybe it's the calm acceptance of despair, but we're trucking right along. When we got home from the store, I popped the last frozen dinner from my baby shower into the crockpot, ignored the mess that is our sick-little-people house, and sat down on the couch to read stories to my kids.

I have a million pictures to upload but Blogger isn't working right now, so some other day. And I have to go now because a certain smiling someone in my lap just filled her diaper and then grinned up at me. Which reminds me...after last night's episodes, we're completely out of diaper wipes. And Abigail just came running in from her nap to hand me a single hair and then inform me that she needs to go potty...again...so I think I'm done blogging now.

where my heart is

solitude opens in less than a month.

http://www.skisolitude.com/

my very favorite place. ever.

i'll be looking at my sweet parabolic skis hanging unused in my garage. beauties that they are.

ski it for me, if you can.

just don't tell me about it.

of ducks and bugs

One of Abigail's favorite books is called The Little Duck and follows the life cycle of a baby duck named Henry as it hatches from the egg, grows bigger, swims around, finds a "special friend" (as the book calls it) and has eggs of its own. We love to read this book because it has actual photographs instead of animated-type drawings, and Abigail always likes to see how the duck goes from "a weelly yittle egg" to "a big duckie!"

So this morning as she helped me to stir up our scrambled eggs, she coolly watched each broken egg fall into the bowl, then announced triumphantly "No Henrys in dere, Mommy! No Henrys in dese eggs! Eat dah Henry eggs, yeah Mom? Eat dah Henries all up?"

While I was still ruminating over her apparent willingness to devour the "Henry eggs," she turned away towards the sliding glass door in the kitchen and said "Hey Mom! Lookie all dah bugs on dah door! Dey climb it like monkeys! Hello, monkey bugs!"

Oh, that kid. She makes me laugh.

my firstborn

today's post is two down. keep a-scrolling.

guess what?

five years ago today Neil proposed.

five years ago tomorrow I accepted.

i shall have to get back on my story-writing bandwagon one of these days.

in the meantime, i think i'm going to start a food blog. remember that pesto sandwich you wanted the recipe for? you can find it there!

i keep posting today waiting for my children to stop crying and fall asleep. in case you're wondering about all the posts.

scroll down!

photo update

I took a lot of pictures last week, but I never posted any of them, so here's some selections all at once.

It's taken me a really long time to get this post up, since Abigail has discovered that going potty is the naptime equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card. She is standing here next me asking to go potty for the third time in half an hour.

A sort of odd shot of Juliet, but she's so happy that I just had to post it.

Abigail and her friend Elise spent a good while this morning playing some very complicated game that I never fully understood. It did involve calling their dads and telling them a long and involved story about horses and being glad to see them (the dads, not the horses).

Juliet at the ward carnival on Saturday. She was quite blasé about the whole thing.

Abigail fishing for a prize

Juliet and I watching Abigail do something or other

Neil and Jules

Abigail and Elise petting a goat

Abigail just loves, loves, loves to snuggle with Juliet

Abigail's Joy School friends: Sophie, Mia, and Elise (Anna was sick)

the girls playing on the swings

Abigail won this "hat" at the ward carnival and is pretty much obsessed with it. We decided that it will live in the car and act as a get-in-the-carseat bribe.

irony

On Friday, our pediatrician suggested that we keep Jules from napping at all as a way to break her of her go-to-bed-at-1-am habit.

We decided that might be a bit much, but we would try to limit her to two hours of napping a day.

So today (since I've come down with a ferocious cold), Neil valiantly took one for the team and got up early to keep her awake, bounced her all through church to prevent her tiny eyes from closing, and similarly held her upright for another three hours when we got home to keep her awake.

At this point he was getting a bit tired himself.

I left our room this afternoon to check on Abigail, who was napping, and came back to find this...



So much for that. Poor lovies.

simple pleasures and a reader query

I've been curious for some time about just who is reading my blog, mostly because I myself freely admit to reading blogs of friends-of-friends-of-friends who I've never met. (And also because I read an article on MSNBC stating that the average number of readers for any given blog is below five, and I'm curious about just how many people read this regularly.)

So here's what I'm asking you to do, even if you've been reading for awhile and commented before, or if you've never commented: just leave a comment on this post, because I want to know who's out there! And if you don't have a blogger account, you don't need one to leave a comment. :-) You can just be anonymous (although you can sign your name if you want to).

Anyway, here's my post for today, and here's what you can talk about in your comments, if you so choose, because it's fun knowing more things that make people happy and could potentially make me happy.

Last night I was thinking about the little things that make me happy, and I came up with some of the following:

• opening a new bottle of scented shampoo or shower gel
• coming back to bed in the middle of the night (after feeding Juliet) and realizing I still have four more hours left to sleep
• the advent of cool enough weather so that I can wear my very favorite item of clothing: my red Banana Republic trench coat
• the smell of clean laundry
• going for an early morning run and watching the world wake up
• having a piece of warm-from-the-oven whole-wheat bread with honey
• a bowl full of chili at the end of a crispy fall day
• wiping off the counters and turning on the dishwasher--it's an audible cue that I'm done cleaning up
• getting into bed an hour or two before I need to turn the lights out and having plenty of time to indulge in a good book
• giving someone else a compliment
• relaxing under a fleece blanket (even if I have to have a fan on to make it "blanket weather")

So now it's your turn. What are the little things that make YOU happy?

cure for a bad day:

1) go for a run then...

2)... assemble three happy two/three year-olds who all get along very well and watch the ensuing funniness for three hours. my favorite moments included the following:

Elise: Guys! Guys! Come ride my rocket ship to the market!

Quincy: Abigail and Elise, just watch. It is so so easy to eat cantaloupe. Just put it on your fork and then put it in your mouth and you eat it! Just try a little bit, ok? Just put it on your fork, guys!

Me: Who wants to eat dinner? (no response) Ok, who wants to eat Quincy?
Quincy: Oh, my dad eats me for dinner all the time.

Abigail: Oh no! My motorcycle is RUNNING AWAY! (watching her trike roll down the hill towards the fence!) Help help! It will crash Elise's car!

Me: Elise, you need to sit down on your chair so you don't fall off.
Elise: But I'm just making music. (funny because she was absolutely silent)

Elise: Look, there's a plane! Guys, come over here to see! (Abigail and Quincy run the entire four feet over to Elise to get a "better" vantage point and agree that yes, they "can see it now").

I guess you really had to be there, but they were so funny at dinner that I finally just turned on a tape recorder (and then we listened to it afterwards and they all thought they were absolutely hilarious). My favorite part of the evening was watching them play "soccer"--I think the longest any of them ran without falling flat was about five seconds, since they were all SOOO into it, and just about fell over from surprise when they actually kicked the ball. They are such cute kids, and I love how they all get along so well. Anyway, it really was funny if you were there, which you weren't, but I'm just saying...it was a good pick-me-up-kids-are-wonderful night.

I've been feeling pretty down-in-the-dumps lately, hence the lack of posts. It's hard to come up with anything funny or amusing out of a catalogue of how many hours I spent crying that day, how messy my house was, hearing things from Abigail like "Be quiet, Mommy! No talking! This is yucky food. No eat it!", endless loads of laundry, or sleepless nights (from both kids). It's been the kind of week (ok, two weeks) where I pull the covers over my head in the morning and pray desperately for the willpower to get out of bed and start another day.

So rather than elaborating further, I'll just say that it's been a bit wretched and I'm praying that it gets better. One of my friends wrote on her blog that she noticed a fairly new pair of jeans was already developing holes at the knees, both from playing with her kids and spending a lot of time praying, and I think that's just a pretty good description of motherhood. Last night when we were praying Neil asked that I would be able to "understand [my] priorities and recognize [my] achievements as a mother," and that's what I'm going to try to do. It seems like a pretty good motto.

Sorry, folks!

I was going to try to sneak in a quick post while Abigail was busy, but she just came in and diffidently said "Hey, Mommy. Dere you are. I miss you."

So...sorry, my friends, but the prospect of blogging is just suddenly not so alluring anymore. Maybe I'll put some pictures up later or something. For now, I'm off to cuddle my cutie (who, incidentally, is on her fourth day of no potty accidents! Hurrah!!!!!)

weekend numbers

3 number of mosquito bites that made abigail's eye swell grotesquely



1 number of "pretty pretty pincess" (as abigail says) sleeping babies




$5 cost of this garage sale steal-of-a-deal desk and chair



$3 cost of garage sale "princess motorcycle"

14 number of popsicles abigail ate while we built the swingset

4 incredibly deliciously fattening pesto-mozzarella-tomato-on-rye grilled sandwiches consumed

14 feet original length of the swingset poles

4 feet height of our fence

6'5" height of the Neil (to put things into perspective...)

3 children sent over by mothers to ascertain what the heck those crazy people were building in their yard

4 feet sawed off each pole to reduce swingset to a "reasonable and safe" height (Rachael), or to a "boring but I guess it's more safe" height (Neil)

0 potty training accidents

6 showers taken during course of swingset-building on Saturday

32 number of pictures taken by ecstatic "look she's smiling!" mother