The hardest stage of parenting

Great day so far. It's 8:30 a.m., I haven't showered, wearing the hubby's PJs. My alarm clock this morning was the 2 yr old slipping in spilled soda and crying nonstop for 20 mins because she's a drama queen. This after a middle-of-the-night bedroom shuffle because the 5 yr old wet his bed (we were doing so well!), and right before the 7 yr old peed her pants in the hall closet.

I remember when I was pregnant with Hannah, and I felt like we were at a really good place. Both kids were potty trained, and accidents were few and far between. The kids loved each other and played really well together. I could get so much done each day, because they'd just entertain themselves. We had a great routine, I was getting enough sleep, and the stars seemed to have aligned for us.

Then one day Richard was like, "Oh man. We have to sleep train again. We have to wean. We have to potty train again. I thought those days were behind us!" And I was like, oh yeah. That's true. This has been a nice break, but we can handle anything, right?

I think there's sound justification for having all your kids before you're 30. By the time you're 30, you're just tired. And kids give you a million more things to do.

Anyway, we survived. Sleep training Hannah was an adventure, but we got through it. And a few months ago I felt like we had once again entered that magical place where things work out. Our children have finally figured out how to get themselves breakfast! I get to sleep in for an extra 20 mins every day now! It's glorious. They've also learned how to make their own sandwiches, and can handle nachos with some guidance. And now that Hannah is 2, they all get along and play together and entertain each other most of the day, so I can get a lot done around the house. It's amazing. When we go to the park, everyone can do everything pretty much by themselves and I actually get to sit. When we go to the store, everyone stays by or in the cart so it's not a total nightmare. They're to the point where they can ALL behave like functioning human beings, and it's made my life a lot less stressful, I'll tell you what.

Enter: The Next Hard Part

So. Reuben has always had bladder issues. My theory now is that the signal that his bladder is full doesn't get sent to his brain properly. A few years ago, right after potty training, he started doing this thing where he would just leak a little rather than stopping what he was doing to go potty. We treated it like a behavioral thing, getting mad at him for being negligent and whatnot. Eventually he figured it out, and that's not a problem anymore. At the time he was sleeping in the bedroom right next to the bathroom, and he would get up once or twice every night to go potty, and then either get back in bed or end up sleeping on the couch for the night. We moved him downstairs, and he started wetting the bed a bit. We figured it was because he was so far away from the bathroom, and eventually he got back into his habit of coming up to go potty and then sleeping the rest of the night on the couch. It was kind of an awkward system, but it worked. The bed stayed mostly dry.

Then, just a few months ago, he just started going full-force bedwetter. He was wetting the bed at least 4x/week. Again, we treated it like a behavioral problem and got mad at him, initiated reward systems, took away his favorite bedding because I was sick of washing it, etc. Everything we could think of. And nothing worked. The entire time we lived with my parents he slept on a mattress covered in plastic with no sheets, because he wet the bed every single night. It got really frustrating because it seemed like he just stopped caring. He knew it was wrong, he felt bad about it, and he hated getting punished for him. But he kept doing it.

My dad directed me to an interesting article that I can't find now, but basically Reuben has a fairly common condition where the signal from his bladder doesn't reach his brain to wake him up when his bladder is full. It's completely not his fault, and he can't control it. This combined with the fact that he is a VERY deep sleeper makes for lots of wet bed nights. But the important thing is that his parents' mindset has changed. Instead of being Enforcers, we are now Teammates. We have a common goal, and we work together on it.

Our method is to try to teach him to wake up from his deep sleep. We started waking him up twice a night to go potty, and he's stayed mostly dry every since. There have been a few nights where we were too late or too early getting him up, and missed the opportune moment, and he wet the bed anyway, so it's still been a process of patience. I'm not getting enough sleep. So we got him an alarm clock, and it gets set for 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. every night. We've been using it for about a week, and he's starting to wake up for the 6 a.m. alarm. There was even one night he woke up around 5:30, because HE HAD TO PEE! so that was a happy day. He still sleep straight through the 11 p.m. alarm. When I wake him up to go potty, he doesn't actually wake up. The first several weeks I had to carry him to the bathroom and pull his underwear down for him, and there were several nights where he just cried and moaned and tried to explain his dream world to me. He's improved since then, and most nights he walks to the bathroom himself and pulls down his own pants. But he's basically asleep the whole time, and when I wake him up at 6, when he's much more coherent, he always says "Mom! You only woke me up one time, not two!" He doesn't even remember it happening. So that's my concern - he is so deeply asleep that he can't feel the signals from his bladder. And that's why we're doing this - so he learns to wake up in the middle of the night when he needs to.

Things have been going really well. We finally took the plastic off his bed, and he's been dry for a couple weeks now. So maybe that's why last night upset me so much. I set his alarm, and I was up watching TV waiting for it to go off. It's pretty quiet, so it went off for a few minutes before I heard it. And when I went in to wake him up, he was soaked. It was fine, guys. It's just a thing that happens, and it's easy to deal with. But the plastic was off his bed. So it actually got in the mattress. I pulled out the plastic mattress cover we bought for Rachel and never used, put it on the floor with a sheet on top, and tucked him in there after getting him cleaned up. I figured I'd deal with the mattress in the morning. And honestly, it wasn't a bad thing, because now he was wide awake in the middle of the night for once. Also - I'm wondering if the alarm is having a subconscious conditioning effect, where when he hears it, he pees. I don't know if that's the case, or if the soda at dinner and the fact that he went potty 30 mins before bed instead of 5 mins before bed combined against him. But if the alarm is triggering it, that's a good thing, right?

I love this sweet boy so much. He woke up around 7:30 and just made a beeline right for me for snuggles. I feel like the most important thing through all of this is that he knows that we love him, and that we're on his team. We'll work through this together, even if it means waking him up twice a night until he outgrows it just so he stays dry the whole time. Whatever it takes, we'll get through it. I read another article last night that mentioned the need for consistent peeing throughout the day. Sometimes holding all that urine in throughout the day makes it come out full force at night. So the next move is to get him one of those watches that has an alarm on it so that he'll go potty consistently throughout the day. We'll see if that helps :)

So then. After dealing with middle-of-the-night mattress pee. After dealing with 7 a.m. toddler soda adventures. After breakfast and trying to figure out the plan for the day. I'm getting the baby dressed, who decided today is silly day and lay down backwards, with her head between my knees, waiting for her servant to attend to her wardrobe. Rachel comes running in, stands right in front of me, and says "Mom, I spilled water." She managed to magically "spill water" exactly between her legs.

Here's the thing. Peeing your pants is gross, but it's a thing kids do. I remember being a kid, and seeing kids who peed their pants up until like 5th grade. I remember wetting the bed when I was 7 or 8. I remember just a year ago, taking 8 and 9 yr old scouts to day camp, and there was one kid whose pants were soaked the entire day, despite countless trips to the restroom, and he didn't seem to mind. I get that it's a hard thing for kids to figure out. What I don't get is why she felt the need to lie to me about it. The other thing I don't get is that this is like the 4th time since we moved that this has happened. Is it the move? Is it the excitement of new kids in the neighborhood to play with? She hasn't had an accident for over a year, and then 4 in one month?

My problem is that I react to the wrong thing. I ALWAYS get mad at her for peeing her pants. You're way too old to be doing that, it's disgusting, why can't you drop what you're doing and run to the bathroom when you need to pee, go the first time you feel it, etc. I mean, when we're on road trips and she says she has to pee, I'll ask if she can hold it, and she'll hold it indefinitely for hours. But this morning, when she was hunting for a coat (because apparently 65 degrees is cold), she couldn't even make it down off the bucket she was standing on to run to the bathroom in time. Maybe I just don't get it. I'm not compassionate enough, or something.

But this lying thing...that's absolutely not okay. But every time I try to punish her for lying, she always thinks she's getting punished for peeing her pants because I react so poorly to that. We had a long chat about it today, and I think maybe she got the point. That's just always what I worry about - I yelled at her for two things, and she only internalized my anger for one of the things instead of both, or instead of the one I really should have been focusing on.

Anyway we got through it. She understands that she doesn't get any screen time today because she LIED, not because she peed her pants, and she agreed that that was an appropriate punishment. But THEN there was all this confusion and madness about can we play outside and can we wear our new jackets (never buying them cool clothes before school ever again) and can I go to my new friend's house and meanwhile all I wanted to do was clean up not one, but TWO pee messes, and by the way my sink smells bad because I haven't done dishes for two days.

In my conversation with Rachel I made her a promise. I told her I will never tell her a lie, and asked if she could do the same for me. But there's a lot more to it than that. I think the hardest part of being a human being is not understanding why we're feeling what we're feeling, and why we act the way we do because of those feelings. I had a good conversation with the kids just yesterday about that, because let me tell you I yelled A LOT yesterday and felt awful about it. I sat them down and told them that I was sorry, and that I shouldn't have yelled, and that I was going to try to not yell anymore. We talked about how sometimes you just get so angry that you yell. Just like sometimes you get so sad that you cry, or you get so happy that you laugh, and you just can't control it. Look, I'm 31 years old and I'm just NOW being able to recognize why I feel the way I do when I do. I have to sit for a while and consider my hormones and sleep patterns and goals for the day before I can come to a conclusion on anything. Why was I grumpy this morning? Was it because my kids were naughty? Was it because I was tired? Was I upset over how little I accomplished yesterday? The kids were running around outside, causing problems, and I was standing at the sink, rinsing out a rag to wipe up the carpet pee mess, trying to figure out why I was so grumpy.

And I figured it out, y'all. I am good at cleaning things, but I'm never confident about pee in soft materials. Please tell me I'm not alone. You spray the carpet with cleaner, you spray the mattress with cleaner, you add water to rinse it all down, and you wipe it up, but is that really successful? Did you get it all? Is your brand new house and brand new(ish) mattress just going to stink forever because you can't figure out the best method to remove urine? THAT'S why I was grumpy. I felt like I wasn't going to be able to properly clean stuff. It's not because the mess happened. It's not because kids are hard. It's just simply that I'm not good at something that absolutely has to be done.

I know that sounds totally mundane and weird. But that's why I was upset. So I sat my kids down and didn't tell them a lie. I told them I needed them to play downstairs, where they would be contained and out of my way, so that I could figure out how to clean up the messes that have been made.

And guess what? It worked. I have smart kids, and sometimes they have a smart mom. It's all about being a team, and figuring out how to work with your teammates. Sometimes I get so caught up in the moment of what needs to be done that I just push the kids aside, tell them to go do something else, and then get mad at them when they don't. If I can treat them as teammates, explain things to them properly, and ask them to help, things always work better. I've learned this like a hundred times throughout parenthood, but it still seems like I have to learn it every day.

Yesterday morning was rough. I gave the kids a job to do, and they sucked at it, so I yelled at them a lot. They got it done, but at the end of it all I felt like they would have done just as well, possibly better, if I had left out the yelling bit. I really felt awful about it (obviously, enough to bring it up twice in a somewhat unrelated blog post), and expressed that feeling to Richard when he called later. His comment was "We don't raise them, they raise us, right?" That statement never felt as true as it did right then. I learn so much more from these kids than they learn from me. And each day we work together to be a little better. And sometimes it works.

Mini Update

I've been really bad at blogging. Like terrible, really. I've been meaning to catch up for years, and it just hasn't happened. It's one of those things I keep putting off so that I can do it 100% "right", which, let's face it, I'm never going to have time for.

So prepare for several mini posts like this one in the future, because I've decided it's more important to record events when they happen before I forget than it is to record events in order or perfectly.

I just got back from dropping the kids off at tumbling. I'm so glad we decided to put them in! They are loving it, and they are improving their coordination and knowledge of/power over their bodies. I love seeing it. What I don't love is that now Rachel has the confidence to climb up onto the counter to pull dishes out of the cupboard, but not the common sense to keep herself from falling off! I cringed about 50 times in less than a minute today as she got out the plates for lunch and leaned waaaaay over the edge of the counter to hand them to Reuben. Oh children.

Every time I'm getting them ready to go, Reuben throws a fit for one reason or another. It's rarely that he doesn't want to go, but it always happens right as we're heading out the door. I don't want him to develop bad feelings towards tumbling, so I'm always concerned about this. I realized today, though, that he's always able to get over whatever it is by the time we get there, which shows how much he actually does love going, that he's happy once we're there. So again, I'm glad we made this decision. I'm also glad that now that my wild and crazy schedule is changing next month, I was able to work out things with the babysitter so I can still only take one official day off  a week but still keep the kids in tumbling!

As a final note, I just want to mention how funny Hannah's little sense of humor is. She seems very dry thus far - she doesn't smile much, but she obviously thinks certain things are funny. She just cracks me up all day long. I need to make a video of her when she's in a goofy mood, there's just no proper way to explain it otherwise. She's been grumpy for a few months, with various sicknesses and sleep training and then spontaneous binky weaning, and I think she's finally back to normal. Which thrills me :)

And now back to Christmas prep. Hopefully I'll post again soon :)

My Kids Are Awesome

I don't write as often as I should. This is not a surprise. But last night was so epic that I had to share a few stories about my incredibly entertaining children, who apparently have a promising career ahead of them in waiting on people.

Last night Richard and I hosted his department's Christmas party. We had about 15 people, mostly those he worked with and a few spouses/family members/friends. Everyone brought so many goodies it kind of hurts my eyes to look at. The best treat, however, was the Jelly Bellies.

As you may know, my daughter has a fondness for older men. When we have guests over, she will usually pick a target and sit on his lap and spend the entire evening with him. Her first target was Greg, Richard's predecessor at The Home Depot. She asked him some questions to get to know him, and then started bringing him Jelly Bellies. She asked what his favorite color was, and would run in the kitchen to find a jelly bean in that color to bring to him.

After a while of this she realized there were other people in the room. She went back to the kitchen, returning with a huge handful of Jelly Bellies. She then walked around the room asking each person what their favorite color was and giving them a jelly bean in that color. She had to make multiple trips because her hands are small.

After a few rounds of passing out jelly beans I guess she got hungry herself. I fixed her up a little bowl of goodies and she enjoyed that for about two minutes. Then her next idea was born.

We were all sitting in a circle, chatting away, when here comes Rachel with a bowl of food. She walked up to the person next to me and handed her the bowl, then left. We discussed the event for a minute, trying to decide if she meant for the guest to take the entire bowl or just a handful out of it. Before we reached a conclusion, Rachel was back, with a bowl of goodies for the next person in the circle. It was filled with a different variety than the first bowl. She then proceeded to bring an individualized bowl of snacks to every person in the circle, with one exception.

Apparently as she was handing out Jelly Bellies, Kevin declined her offering on one round. The next round when she came around, she gave him a dirty look and skipped him, without offering anything. So when it came time to pass around the bowls of goodies, she again skipped Kevin. She came back later with a bowl for him, though.

At this point in the evening I guess Rachel had had enough of Greg, and moved on to befriend Chad. She sat in the chair right next to him and asked what kind of goodies he wanted. She ran into the kitchen to get him some treats, but when she came back someone else was sitting next to Chad. She whined for a few minutes until accommodations were made so she could continue sitting next to her new friend.

After a few people headed home, we broke out The Game of Things to be played in partners. We had an odd number of people, so there was one group of three. Rachel joined this group (since Chad was in it), making it four. She sat next to Chad with a DVD wrapped in tissue paper and a pen, and asked him what his name letters are. He carefully spelled his name for her as she wrote it out on the tissue paper. He then helped her write the names of the people around her, and she called over to me to find out what her name letters are.

The bottom line is, the party was a blast. Our kids stayed up way too late, ate way too many jelly beans, spilled way too many cups of cocoa, and won the hearts of all Richard's coworkers. I just love them.

Happy Birthday to Rachie Roo!

We've kind of inadvertently started a random tradition in our family...birthdays are not 1 day long, they last the entire month. Sometimes you just can't fit everything you want to do into one day, and that's just fine :) Rachel turned 3 yesterday, but we've already had 3 celebrations and are planning a fourth.

On Sunday we had dinner and cake with my family. The cake is another story...

Richard and I decided to go to the temple on Saturday, and we planned to hit up Cold Stone and Allen's on our way back to get an ice cream cake and groceries for that night (grill party with the Drews) and for Sunday's dinner. We left the house just after two, making it in time for the 2:40 session. Or that's what we thought, anyway. I went my usual route from the locker to the name station, only to find that there was a huge long line stretching in the opposite direction. So that slowed me up just enough to where I almost didn't make it in time for that session. But it didn't even matter...apparently a ward had taken that entire session's capacity, so we waited for the session at 3. This would normally be fine, but I was nervous about Reuben wanting to be nursed around 5 and I wasn't sure we'd make it back by then. I calmed down and told myself that I was doing what I should be, and God would take care of Reuben :) Which was good, because there were more hurdles, as it turned out. While I was in the name line, I talked to a couple of sister missionaries, and found out that they were headed to Japan on Monday. They said their entire district came to the temple one last time before they headed out. Pretty cool. So when we got into the room for the session, I saw about 10-20 Japanese boys and my heart just melted. They all had their headsets on, listening to the session in Japanese, and we actually had to pause the session twice because some of them forgot some key parts and had to have them done over again. So that slowed us up a little bit too. Another event played into our lateness, that being that for some reason the sisters had left gaps when filling in the seats, and the sweet old officiator lady started filling them in with ME. So I was in seat number 2. The men's side didn't have this problem, so Richard was in the 4th or 5th row back, behind all the cute little Japanese boys. So when it came time to move into the Celestial Room, I was the second one in. I sat near the men's entrance and waited for Richard. Usually the men come in in a pretty steady stream, about one every minute or so. These guys came in one every five minutes. As it turns out, the Japanese elders didn't speak any English, and believe it or not there were not any temple workers who spoke Japanese. So getting them through took a lot longer than normal. But then Richard finally made it, and it was wonderful. I love being in the Celestial Room with my husband more than just about anything in the world. We had to cut our time short, however, as it was already 5:20 and we had our errands to run. I called Aja once we got out of the temple and found everything to be hunky dory at home, so I just quit worrying and we went about our errands. I was a little worried that Cold Stone wouldn't have the cake we were looking for, and we'd have to stop at Baskin Robbins and possibly Wal-mart to find what we wanted, but Cold Stone had the perfect cake, and it wasn't as terribly expensive as we were expecting. So off we went to home, and the rest of the evening was fantastic.

So back to Sunday. We made burgers and fries for Rachel's birthday dinner, figuring she loves fries and we had all these burgers waiting to be grilled. We also made a fruit salad, and I sliced and plated a lovely dish of tomatoes. That's what ended up in front of Rachel, and that's about all she ate for dinner lol. I love that she loves tomatoes :) After dinner we brought out the cake with candles and everything, and she knew exactly what to do. Then my parents brought in the gift they had bought for her, a tricycle with a purple helmet, and we went outside to play with that for a while until we all froze. So that was birthday celebration number 1.

On her birthday I tried to explain things to her and get her excited, but there wasn't much we could do that day because the car was in the shop and I wouldn't be able to get it because I worked that afternoon. Mornings tend to be our out-and-about time. But I tried to get her excited about being three, and we were planning to give her our gift that evening. Trying to make the day special for her turned out to be really difficult because she was soooooo naughty! I wanted to spoil her all day long, but she was so rotten that she ended up being punished most of the day. Whatever. You can't choose the day your kids behave, right? Anyway we had a yummy dinner that night as well, and then I suggested we have ice cream for dessert. Then we gave Rachel her gift from us, an easel with a white board on one side and a chalk board (which we found out doesn't work) on the other. She LOVES it. Unfortunately she drew all over her arms today with the marker and lost her privileges for a while, but she'll have another chance to enjoy it later.

So today was her real birthday celebration. The car was finished while I was working on Monday, so I planned to go for a run in the morning with the kids to pick it up and then we'd just go straight to the mall from there. It's exactly two miles from our house to the car shop, so I weaved a little to make it three. I was nervous that I wouldn't make it the whole way, because my legs had become weak sauce over the winter, but I did it! And as a bonus, Reuben slept the whole way. The poor guy has been sick, and he took about 5 naps today. I think he'll finally feel better in the morning. So we got to the car and loaded up to go to the mall. The first thing we did when we got there was head over to the train stop, but the train was out, so we played on the playground for a few minutes until it arrived. Then Rachel got to ride on the "chugga choo choo train" and she loved it. She's been obsessed with trains for a couple weeks, and since I couldn't find her a purple one like she wanted, I figured going for a ride in one would be the next best thing. Reuben liked it too :)

After the train ride we went upstairs for some lunch, and Rachel requested we get pizza. Their kids meals are huge, but she ate almost the entire slice and enjoyed her juice. She kept saying "This is a really yummy lunch!" which made me happy :) I wanted to take the kids back to the play area, but we were nearing nap time and hadn't finished our festivities of the day yet, so we we took off. I then took her to a hair salon and she had her first ever hair cut. She looks so cute! Her hair has been kind of difficult to manage lately, not only because of the scissors incident 6 months ago but because it's never EVER been cut, so she still has her stringy baby hairs and everything is different lengths. Well, not anymore. She also has a small amount of bangs, but those will grow out soon enough. She really enjoyed it. And after that I got her an ice cream cone at DQ and wow, I don't think she was expecting anything that fantastic.

I know she's only 3, but I hope this day was fun for her. I hope she remembers it for a while, and I hope she felt special. We'll be heading up to Logan this weekend to have celebration number 4 with Richard's family, and that will be extra fun for her because she'll get to see her cousins.

I sure love my girl :)

Playing Like a Child

I've never been a huge fan of snow games. I hate snowball fights, I've never been downhill skiing, and I'm usually the last person to suggest we go sledding. In addition to that, I think we as adults, and parents especially, can sometimes tend to rush on to the next activity, the next item on the to-do list, and don't always stop to enjoy the moment. Kids are good at that - enjoying everything as it's happening. Your kid will never be the first one to say "You know, I'm done. Let's go back inside." I'm always the one telling Rachel "Ok, one more time then we're going in." It's not really that we're in a rush to go anywhere or do anything, I've just had my fun. I've become a person who only has to try things one time. If we go sledding, I'm happy to go down one time and then hold the baby so everyone else can have fun. If we go snow-mobiling, I'm happy to make one lap around the field and then sit on the sidelines while everyone else takes their turn. I don't need another turn, and I don't really want one.

Rachel has been begging me for weeks to go sledding. I've been glad for the excuse of no snow to not go. I kept telling her "We'll go as soon as there's snow." So the first day we had two inches she started begging again. I started getting sad to tell her that there wasn't enough to go sledding, and I began hoping that it would snow for a few days and stick so she could go play in it. I even started trying to figure out a schedule where I'd be able to take her out while Reuben slept, or while someone else was home to hold him so we could go out and play.

On Thursday, it snowed. A lot! I was so excited. I haven't been so excited about snow for years, especially not to play in it, but I was excited that Rachel would be able to. On Friday, Richard mentioned that he wanted to come home early so he could take Rachel sledding over at the neighbor's house. That made me so happy, and I was excited for the fun time they would have. Well, that didn't end up happening, but it was already a plan in my mind. It didn't work out for Friday, since I had errands to run in the morning and work in the afternoon, but I made it a plan for Saturday.

The second I got off work in the morning, I started bundling kids up to go play outside. I made sure we were all snug and warm, myself the most. I'm always the first to get cold, and I wanted to make sure Rachel could have as much fun as possible. I moby-ed Reuben to my front and got all our gloves on, and out we went. I showed Rachel where we would make a path up the hill, and where we would sled down. I figured I could go down with her one time, then she could go by herself after that. So I and my infant lumbered onto the sled, and Rachel sat in front of us. We went down the first time and I thought, gee that was fun. But I'm done now. That's all I needed.

I carried the sled to the top of the hill and Rachel got on and went down by herself about a million times. It was fun to walk down the hill and get the sled to the top while she climbed up herself, but I started to get that itch to be done. I wasn't cold, I wasn't tired, and Rachel was having a blast, but I didn't need to do it again. But Rachel did. Every time she got to the bottom of the hill she would turn around and I would say "Look how far you went!" and she'd repeat it, then say "Let's do it again!" How can you argue with that? So I kept climbing down the hill to bring the sled back to the top.

As I walked, I watched my tiny daughter and saw how much fun she was having. I realized how cooped up she'd been all winter, and how much she has always loved being outside. I remembered that she had spent a fair amount of time in front of the TV that morning, and knew she'd want to watch something after her nap. And I knew that no one would be hungry for at least another hour. So I decided to let my little girl have her fun, and determined to stay out much longer.

After a few more times of watching Rachel zoom down the hill, making the trail a little longer each time, I realized something I didn't expect: I wanted to go down again. I saw how much fun Rachel was having, and I wanted to have that much fun too. Even though I had 18 lbs of Reuben strapped to my front, big bulky gloves, and no snow boots, I wanted to play in the snow. So I stooped down to sit on the sled and Rachel climbed on in front of me. We zoomed down the hill, even farther than she had gone, then all tumbled off to climb up the hill again. It was so fun! We went down together again and again and again, and each trip up the hill I could see and feel Rachel's excitement, and it mingled with my own.

Sometimes adults need to play like a child, to remember that life was meant to be enjoyed, not endured. Our lives are busy, and there's always so much more to get done. But it's not all going to happen today, is it? So why not take some time out to zoom down a hill for an hour.

Good Morning!

Ah....what a great morning.

Small successes are what make my days doable. Last night Richard and I were in bed before 10, which is something we've been trying to do for a few weeks now. We're getting old, which makes it easier, because our bodies are done functioning after about 9:30. The bad news is I took a 2 hr nap yesterday, so I couldn't fall asleep until after 11. At any rate, we were both up before 6:30 which means I showered AND did my hair AND ate breakfast all before the kids got up! THAT is a good morning, in my book. Now I'm not stressed, and I'll be able to get a lot done while Reuben takes his morning nap.

I discovered this morning that I am Reuben's morning coffee. He grumbles incoherently with his eyes closed, trying to get to the side of the bed where I feed him, until I do so and then he finally wakes up. I just laughed this morning. I picked him up and he leaned waaaaay over, pointing with his head where he wanted to go. He cracks me up. I swear he's ready to be older than he is. He seems to get frustrated when his body can't figure out how to do what he wants it to. But he is now creeping quite well and getting better at pulling himself up to standing. He's also been sick for a while, though, and that gets sad. He's to the mucus clearing stage, which means he'll cough A LOT and when that doesn't work he ends up throwing up :( He's started falling in love with different people, which is fun. When he sees my mom or Aja, Beau, and Eli he actually reaches for them now, which is great for me because he's been incredibly clingy for the past 3 months or so. I sure love that boy.

After getting Reuben dressed, we walked into the living room to find that Rachel's light was on. I knocked on her door and she hissed at me. She's been hissing lately, it's goofy. I knocked again and she said "Come in!" so I did. She was sitting in one of her toy boxes with her Kermit hat on, and when she saw me she jumped up and yelled "I'm poopy!!" which is perfect because we might start potty training this week. While I changed her diaper she asked me about what I was wearing, and I told her it was my boom box shirt. She said "You wear that shirt with a sweater?", which I certainly was. Then she had me switch packages of wipes, because the other one was "squishy". She saw a heart on the wipe package and began telling me about the heart chocolates she ate for Valentine's Day and how they were all gone. Then she changed the subject to that of purple granola cereal, which she ran upstairs to find. She just came back down dragging a bag of cereal, explaining that the purple granola cereal is all gone but she needs a bowl and a spoon. Oh man, I love my kids :)

Listing Memories

When I was in college I had a post-it stuck to the wall by my bed. Each night as I climbed into bed to read my scriptures, I would write on the post-it words that would remind me of funny things that had happened that day. Then later, during the summer or whenever I had time away from school to write in my journal, I would pull out the list and write out the stories. I've noticed lately that I haven't had time to sprint to the computer whenever my kids do something I want to remember, so I've been trying the post-it technique for the past couple weeks. I don't do it every day, and I'm sure I'm still missing tons of great stories, but it's a start :) So here are some stories from lately.

29 January 2012
We spent this weekend in Logan. Richard's brother Ben went through the temple in preparation to serve his mission, and we spent a wonderful morning with him at the temple while our kids wreaked havoc at Danny and Marilyn's house. Later that afternoon, EVERYONE came over and we had a yummy meal and good company and spent the evening playing games and watching movies. The entire time Richard was on a roll spouting off ridiculous jokes. He just kept GOING and I punched him every time. I wish I could remember some of them, but man I love my husband :)

Before our trip, I put an app on our iPod for Rachel that helps her learn letters. She loves it, and she is constantly coming up to me asking if she can play the "star one" because the icon has a star on it. At one point during our stay in Logan she asked for it, and I let her play for a few minutes. Her cousin Sara came in and showed a great interest in what she was doing. These two are a year apart, and for most of their lives have had a hard time getting along, but they seemed to hit a magic spot this weekend and suddenly became best friends. Sara asked nicely if she could play the letter game, and Rachel handed her the iPod. They took turns like that, each one doing one part of the game, for a good 20 minutes. It was one of the sweetest things I've seen lately. They spent the rest of the day playing together, and whenever Rachel got sad about something (which often happens when we're on a trip and she misses her nap time) Sara would come find her and ask if she wanted to go play barbies or watch a show with her. It's fun to be a mom and see my kids making friends.

Marilyn's kids sure love her. It's so fun to watch them trying to be with her all the time, and it's neat to see how lovingly she treats them. Right now she's still nursing her youngest, and he is SUPER clingy. He always wants her to hold him, and now that he can walk that means he's constantly running up to her and hugging her legs, begging to be picked up. Well, when we get together there's usually a lot of women in the kitchen preparing food or feeding babies, and this was the case this weekend. So when Ammon came running in to find his mommy to pick him up, he ended up just grabbing the first legs he saw, which were mine. I looked down and said "Hey, buddy!" He looked up, gave me a weird look, then ran across the room to find his real mommy. Funny kid :)

Sometimes adults stay up way too late and eat way too much eclair cake, and then lots of stupid things become really funny at 10:30 pm. I was browsing facebook while Richard set up the game we were going to play and came across this awesome picture and could not stop laughing:


My poor sweet Rachel really has a hard time when we get together with family. She's finally to the age where she can play with the other kids, but she's still young enough and so tiny that they don't always want to play with her. She also gets cranky in the evening if she doesn't get her nap, so everything is a big deal and she ends up crying over little offenses. I heard her downstairs crying and went to see what I could do to help her feel better. I don't remember what the problem was, but while we were down there we found some Hulk hands Jake got for Christmas a few years ago. I picked them up along with my daughter and we went upstairs to play with them where I could see her. She put the hands on and started knocking people over, and she loved it. It made me so happy to see her having fun after such a rough day :)

My boy is needy. This is not a secret. He doesn't always do well when we travel, so nights are usually hard. Sometimes naptimes are equally hard. This was one of those trips. We spent the morning at the temple, which meant leaving him with a sitter, and he did better than expected but still wouldn't let me put him down once we got back. When it was time for his afternoon nap he actually went down okay, but he was sleeping in Emilee's room and she didn't know that. So she went in to grab something and he woke up. I figured he was up for the day, but he was so groggy and grumpy that I thought I'd try putting him back down. Didn't work. So I figured I'd just hold him for a while and see how he would do. Well...he fell asleep! In a crowded, noisy living room filled with kids, babies, and a movie playing. I ended up falling asleep with him on my chest, which we haven't done since he was brand new. It was a lovely afternoon :)

One more funny story and then I think I'll wrap up for the night. We left for the temple a little later than expected, and it ended up being a day that everyone in Cache Valley was there. We parked on the street and then scurried up the hill to the entrance. Danny was coming from the parking lot and started running when he saw us. This made his pants hike up, and we could see that he was doing the sneaky white socks move. Richard commented on it, and Danny lifted his pants even higher so we could see the entirety of both socks.

Sometimes after I write down these memories it seems like they were only funny to me. But you know what? It's my blog, so if they aren't funny to you, you don't have to read them :)

So...good night!

New phrases from Miss Smartypants

I love my daughter and the things she says :) New this week:

I don't know! (when asked what a picture is)
Breakstast
Mom, I'm poopy please! (as I'm changing her and asking why she didn't tell me she was poopy)
Mommy, what's wrong? (as I'm rubbing my tired eyes)
Yeah, that's funny!
Mom, you spat? (after I brushed my teeth. I don't think I've said the word spat ever in her earshot)
Mom, I picked my nose!
Where IS everybody?
Daddy, I need breakstast. I want granola cereal. It's not all gone, mommy buyed some at the store!
Mom, I need to work (translation: I want to play on the computer)

Funny stories from today:
Richard dropped Rachel off in nursery, where she immediately stole a toy from Emmalyn. Richard told her she needed to ask Emmalyn for the toy instead of just taking it. Meanwhile, Emmalyn had moved on to another activity and had forgotten the stolen toy. So for a while we had Rachel chasing Emmalyn around saying "Nemmyn! I have toy? Nemmyn! I have toy?" while Emmalyn ignored her.
After church I was pulled aside by an RS sister to talk about a possibly tutoring gig (yay!), and Richard needed to go find a Bishopric member to talk about a Temple recommend. He got stopped by someone else, and in the confusion and all the people Rachel kind of disappeared. Richard leaned over to tell me his plans, and to ask where Rachel went. I kind of pointed, and he said "I'll find her." After we met up later, he told me she had been determined to get to the cultural hall, and feeling incredibly comfortable in her surroundings just started squeezing between people, pushing them apart with her tiny hands saying "Skooz me! Skooz me!"

What I love about my kids

Rachel
She says "hi" to EVERYONE
She loves to learn
She actually likes vegetables
She is routined to the point that I told her for two days in a row she could have a chocolate after she took a nap that now she thinks that is an everyday thing
She comes up with the awesomest games
She loves to dance
She loves to sing
She will play by herself with her toys in her room for four hours uninterrupted, and when we go to get her she has created a WORLD in there
She gives the best hugs
She tells me EVERYTHING
She learns quickly, and remembers for a long time
Her laugh
Her smile
Her pretty little face
Her cute little hands
Her HUGE belly
Her long hair
How she has to take off her clothes and put on her jammies before she can take a nap
How she says "I got it got it got it" when she wants to do something herself
How she knows the role of each person in the house. Mommy says no, daddy gives her candy, Grandma lets her play "birds", Aja does everything Rachel tells her to, Camary paints her toes...
How she obeys certain rules
How much she loves her brother
The stories she tells
The songs she loves to sing
The names she gives to movies and books, like "The penguin one (Happy Feet)" and "The butterfly one (Fern Gulley)"
The way she brushes her teeth
The way she climbs into the car
The way she says "Love you!" on her way out of the room

Reuben
His bright, beautiful blue eyes
His soft, fuzzy hair
His tiny soft hands
His smooth pink belly :)
His little boy laugh
His high-pitched squeal
His cute little teeth
His happy sounds
How solid and strong he is
How he's already trying to walk and hasn't yet learned to roll over from his back to his tummy, not to mention crawling
How he lights up, smiles, and starts flapping his arms when he sees me
How he sticks out his tongue when he smiles
How happy he is in the tub
How he loves to smile
How he knows what to do when I pat his mouth so he'll make "ba-ba-ba-ba-ba" noises
How well he eats at mealtime
How incredibly distractedly he nurses
How much he loves Rachel and is entertained by her
The way he holds on so tight and snuggles me
The way he leans over to look around me while I'm holding him
The way he puts his feet together when he's on his back
The way he snuggles when I rock him to sleep
The way he smells
The way he loves to stand up rather than sit
The way he pats my face while he nurses
The way he balls up his hands when he's STARVING
The sounds he makes when he's soooo tired but doesn't quite want to go to sleep yet
The smile he gives right after he's done eating
How happy he is with the simplest of toys
How he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth (including Brussels sprouts, as it turns out)
How he loves being warm

Back Blogging

Ok. I have decided my blog is really confusing. I want to make it more user friendly for myself and anyone else who might frequent it, especially as I'm hoping to post more helpful tips for everything in the near future. So I'm going through all my old posts to move them to my two NEW blogs (which are linked at the top of this one) so that this will be the JILL AND FAMILY blog and the others will be for things others might actually be interested in reading :)

Anyway while reading through old posts from 3 years ago I found this and thought it would be fun to do again:

20 years ago I was...
1. In first grade, experiencing all the drama that goes with that. My teacher was Ms. Fitkau.

10 years ago I was...
1. In high school
2. Part of marching band, orchestra, and color guard
3. Reading a TON

5 years ago I was...
1. A newlywed
2. Working on my last semester of college in Rexburg
3. Learning how to be married and getting ready to move to Portland with my husband

3 years ago I was...
1. In limbo, kind of working while my husband was waiting to get into BYU
2. Substitute teaching and learning German
3. In pain, either before or after I got my wisdom teeth out

1 year ago I was...
1. Pregnant with #2
2. Living here, with my parents, in our newly finished basement apartment
3. Making new friends and enjoying life in our ward

So far this year...
1. Started and am continuing a great workout 3-4 times a week
2. Found several new hairstyles to replace the boring ponytail
3. Started (and continued) more projects than any sane person should attempt

Yesterday I...
1. Made delicious crock pot stroganoff that EVERYONE liked
2. Watched me some "How I Met Your Mother"
3. Made headway on some of the above-mentioned crazy-person projects and now my house looks better

Today I...
1. Cuddled with my babies and sang Christmas songs
2. Watched my husband play with our kids
3. Ate a good breakfast

Tomorrow I will...
1. Maybe go on a double date?
2. Finish another project (the messy pile sitting next to me on my desk)
3. Snuggle with my family :)

Sweet Potatoes with Avocado Yumminess

Today was epic win for a number of reasons. I'm just going to put it all in this post.

Epic win #1: Keeping the kids happy while I cook.
I have a hard time at lunch most days. I really want to cook something amazing for myself, but my 7 month old screams whenever I put him down. It's hard to cook with one hand. Anyway today I combined an old project I never really finished with one I saw on Pinterest a few weeks ago and came up with something awesome!



This worked great until Rachel yanked a puzzle piece out of Reuben's hand and then the board fell over onto him. But it should be golden tomorrow!

Epic win #2: Lunch.
I mentioned earlier the book I've been reading about nature foods. In the sweet potato chapter it mentioned an idea I'd never thought of before: instead of adding butter or sour cream to mashed sweet potatoes, throw in an avocado. Genius! I love avocado. The author of the book talks about using avocados a lot in place of butter or other fats. Such a yummy fruit, and good for you (fats aside hehe). So here's what I did:
1. Wash potato. I decided not to peel it today after reading about all the good stuff in the skins, so I washed it really well.
2. Cut into 1 inch pieces and boil. I cut off some gross parts as well.
3. Drain and mash.
4. Add avocado and mash into potato.
That's it! It was so yummy! I did two small/medium sweet potatoes and one avocado.



I gave some to Rachel as well. She's been doing really well with fruits at lunch lately, but I'd love it if she would eat more veggies so I thought we'd try this out. She wasn't a huge fan, but she ate a good amount of it.



The best part of it was that it was all natural with no milk products, so Reuben got to share it with me. He loved it!



Keep in mind, if you're planning to feed this to a baby, that this is straight potato. When you feed a baby from a jar of baby food, it's diluted with water so he can eat a lot more. Reuben only ate about 5 or 6 bites of this before his tummy was all full.

Christmas

Alright, back blogging. Here are some stories.

Christmas was a new experience this year. What's happened in the past is Richard and I have fretted over what to get each other, set a budget, and then had a really nice day together. Richard started the tradition a few years back of making hot cocoa that morning and putting it under the tree, then waking me up for presents. We usually get each other just two or three gifts each, and it's just a nice day. The last three Christmases have been a little different because of Rachel, but all it's meant is that we buy more presents and a baby sits on our lap while we open them for her. It really hasn't been too different. Last year was more fun, because Rachel was almost two and really enjoyed ripping up wrapping paper so we wrapped each movie individually and let her open those and had to make sure to let her open what would be her favorite gift last so she could get a chance to open all of them. She also had her own cup of cocoa last year, and she loved that. She became quite addicted to it during the week of Christmas :)

This year was different, as Rachel is now almost three and old enough to really understand the fun things about Christmas. She helped with the tree a little bit, she helped us build a gingerbread house, she got to look at Christmas cards that we got, and she saw the presents under the tree for weeks before hand. We tried to take her to see Santa but that was a fail of epic proportions. Just so you all know, Santa's lunch break is from 1-2 pm at both the Provo and Orem malls. We got there at 1:05 lol. Anyway in preparation for the visit, we asked her questions about Santa and got her to understand that he would bring her a gift, and ended up getting her to believe that it would be a coat that she wanted. Hey, you gotta start 'em young, right? So she was excited for her coat and asked about it all the time.

This year we were mostly unemployed for Christmas. I kept trying to get Richard to talk about a budget for each other, like we had done in the past, but he would never say anything about it. So we went mostly budget-less :) I had ideas of what I wanted to get for each of the kids, and took care of their shopping mostly by Thanksgiving. I also sneakily bought Richard's gift on one of my trips, so I was mostly done. But then we had to buy Pixi gifts for Richard's family, and Richard went a little crazy at the Lebkuchen sale at BYU bookstore. Then we decided to get my dad a super nice knife, and instead of me just making one book about our first year of marriage to give to our family we ended up buying the story of how we met for all of our parents. The books are close to $20 each. To sum up, we spent a LOT of money on Christmas. But you know what? The money didn't matter to me. At all. I'm probably one to not spend much money on other people, and Richard will spend everything he owns to make someone else happy. This year I think I finally caught up to his giving spirit of Christmas, and it was wonderful :)

In addition to all that specialness, this was the year Rachel would finally get that rocking/bouncing horse that had been sitting in the garage for two years. I was SO excited to finally put it to use, and to be done trying to avoid her questions every time she saw it in the garage.

Anyway the strange part of Christmas came Christmas Eve, when we got everything ready together. We've always done our own thing in the past, because it was always for the other person. But this was really the first year that we, as parents, were giving Christmas to our kids. So we worked on cleaning up that dang horse, wrapping last-minute gifts, cleaning the room and packing for our trip to Logan the next morning, and getting everything set up just right. Then we went to bed, just before midnight. We planned out how the next morning would go: Richard would go upstairs and work on the cocoa, while I went in to sit with Rachel. Richard grew up with the tradition of singing Christmas song on Christmas day until his parents came to get all the kids, and it's one we'd like our kids to carry on. So I went in and woke up our sweet little girl and tried to get her to sing a couple Christmas songs. She was super sleepy, so it didn't work to well...Richard sat out in the living room waiting for us to start singing so he could come get us. It took a while for him to realize we were practically whispering in her room :) He came in, and we went out to the living room. The first thing Rachel saw was, of course, that huge horse, and she went right for it. Exactly the reaction we were hoping for :) Then we all had our hot cocoa and dug into our stockings for some morning goodies while we unwrapped our presents.

Spoils:
I got the kids both a Sunday outfit, which I was super excited about because Christmas was ON Sunday, so they would get to try them out on day 1. I also got them each a pair of PJs, and Rachel's came with a bathrobe that she has been sleeping in ever since :) Rachel also got a coat, and Reuben got a pillow to snuggle with once he gets big enough for that.
Richard went a little crazy at the game store, and honestly we still have to try out the games he bought. I got him 7 Wonders, which is amazing. We've played it dozens of times since then. And he got me jammies and socks, which is all I asked for :)

After Christmas morning downstairs we trekked upstairs to join my family's festivities. My mom got just one gift for each of her grandkids (well, Reuben got two because his were cheap). Rachel got a huge keyboard pad that you walk on, and she loves it. My mom also got a "grandma" present, which stays at her house for when the grandkids come over, which was a teeter-totter. Trevor and I put it together when he was here on Sunday, and Rachel and Charlotte LOVED it. They played on it for about 20 minutes before we pried them off to go to bed.

My dad LOVED his knife :)

So after all the presents it was off to church. I played my violin with the ward choir. Oh that's a story in and of itself...

Every Christmas Richard's sister Julia asks me to participate in her ward's Christmas program. She and her husband run the choir in a Spanish ward in Provo, and it's kind of small as you would imagine, so choir pickings aren't as great as in a normal ward. I'm very glad to help out every year. This year, like two years ago, they sang a version of The First Noel that was set to Pachelbel's Canon in D. I love the song, it's very pretty, but I HATE the melodies from the Canon that the arranger threw in. It's as though he took his favorite three melodies from the piece and stuck them in, in no order, wherever they would fit. I guess it worked fine for a choral piece, but you have to understand - I am a violinist. Pachelbel's Canon was WRITTEN for the violin. It has been ingrained in my musician's heart ever since I was a small child, and I love it. I've played it many many times, and I could not stand to play what this man had written. I'm sorry, I just couldn't. So I spend one evening re-arranging it. I took the original piece and found a recording of the choral version on Youtube, and I spliced. It took me three hours, but by about 11:30 I had a working violin "obligato", if you will. Then I had to cut and past individual measures out of the piece and put it together into two pages. Oh don't worry, it was a project :) Anyway it turned out pretty good, and it sounded great with the choir.

My dad walked through the room as I was putting the finishing touches on and said "We're singing that in our ward, did you know?" I did not. I asked him if they had a violinist to play with them, and he said he didn't know. I resolved to talk to the choir director at church the next day and see if I could put my 3 hours of arranging to use in more than one performance. Turned out they did NOT have a violinist, but the director was willing to listen to my arrangement and see if she thought it would work out. We met up after Sacrament meeting the next week and played through it with the piano as she sang to herself, and afterwards she said "Yes. I think that will be very nice." So I went to rehearsal on Christmas Eve, and it sounded amazing with the choir. I was very excited. And a little nervous...I hadn't ever played for my own ward before. Playing for Julia's ward was easy because no one knew me. LOTS of people know me in my own ward.

The performance was great, and the entire Christmas program was very special. I enjoyed sitting with my sweet Rachel while Richard walked around with Reuben. After church we had a quick lunch (that mostly involved Lebkuchen and soda), then took off for Logan. We left a HUGE mess in the living room, but Reuben really needed to go to sleep so we had to get driving. It was an uneventful drive, and we arrived in Logan as the first guests at Dave's house, not the last as we had anticipated. So we had lots of relax time before dinner.

Dinner was fabulous. Richard's family knows how to put together good meals. Except that there was an entire counter filled with goodies that taunted us all for the rest of the week. After dinner we had Christmas again with Richard's mom and Aunt Debbie. They got us a LOT of books! I was so excited to see all the new board books for Rachel and Reuben. They also got a few new outfits, and lots of candy that Rachel has hopefully forgotten about. We decided to postpone the program we had planned until tomorrow, as dinner had started late and presents were consequently quite a bit later and kids needed to go to bed. But when we had it, it was great. I played O Holy Night on my violin amidst several stirring performances from Richard's nieces and nephews, and followed lastly by a great rendition of Were You There? sung bu his niece Janessa in Spanish. It was all very beautiful. There's so much talent in that family, and they love to share it. That's something I hope we can cultivate a love for in our children.

For the rest of the week we basically stayed up way too late, ate way too much sugar and crap, and had a TON of fun with Richard's family. Richard and his brothers were up until the wee hours of morning most nights playing WoW, but we did get a couple good games of 7 Wonders in. It was a great week, and we loved spending time with the Logan Gwilliams :)

New Year's "Resolutions"

So I guess it's that time of year again...the time when we look back over the past year or so and decide what parts of our life need changing. Some mock this tradition, and others embrace it for just a few days or weeks before letting the goals they set fall by the wayside and become forgotten. To me, goals are an important part of my life. Changing who I am every day, striving to be better in order to deserve the blessings I have and reach for the blessings I one day hope to deserve, and coming closer to Christ through my actions have become central to my being over the past ten years. So when I made my resolution list last year, it was filled with things I really wanted and needed to change about myself, which helped me to keep them in mind and try harder to work on them. I'd like to start this year's resolutions by looking back and seeing how I did last year.

Recap: New Year's Resolutions, 2011!
1) Keep my car clean (on the inside)
2) Finish at least one of my family history projects
3) Have a baby
4) Clean my bathroom more often (lol)
5) Do the following more often than watching TV or playing computer games: Reading, Writing, German, Violin.

Ok honestly number three shouldn't even count, but I definitely did it! And he is fabulous. I love that boy :)
But as for the rest of the list...

I think having a second baby helped a lot with number one. I actually kept it pretty organized as well. I added a perma-diaper bag, with my moby, a few diapers/wipes, and some toys right where Rachel can reach them once her arms get a little longer. Basically everything I want to stay in the car all in one place and off the floor. It's nice :) Then when the car needs to be cleaned out it's easy to just grab stuff and chuck it in the trash. So for the most part I have done well on that goal. It's one I need to continue to keep up, though. It's a small car, so any mess is a huge mess, and if I toss something in the backseat to take out later it ends up getting trampled by my siblings when I play taxi. So while not a resolution, this is still a goal I'm keeping in mind.

I did AWESOME on number two! We had a lesson in RS a while back where a lady down the street showed some of the family history binders she's been working on. She challenged us to make time at least once a week to work on our family history, and her lesson really motivated me. I went to Walmart and bought a bunch of binders and found some sheet protectors and started collecting stuff to fill them with. The job I had last year had a lot of down time, so I worked on a manner of scrapbooking between calls and got some nice covers typed up for each binder and put it all in a big box and pulled it out every now and then to work on organizing a bit better. Then I came up with a better idea...I remembered I had made Rachel a book for her first birthday with pictures and little stories from her first year of life, and thought it would be cool to make books about our life together as a little family. I figured I could get some done by Christmas, and I was already working on one for Richard for our anniversary. I ended up finishing the first one, about how we met, and we gave copies to all our parents for Christmas. I also finished the second, about our first year of marriage. I need to get going on the third, but from here on out they will be easy. I had to organize every picture on my computer for the second book, so everything is where it should be so that the next books will be easier. This also helped me organize the computer a little bit and keep it that way, so now when I upload pics they go in their designated spots all organized and pretty :) In addition to the books, I decided we needed a home video. You remember growing up your parents made all kinds of home videos and then would pull them out on birthdays and first dates and the like? We don't do that anymore because all our videos go straight onto the computer, and from there to either Youtube or Facebook to be viewed once and forgotten. So I wanted to make a DVD of our home videos so the kids can watch them, and so that we can as well. I put together a video of our first "documented" year, which is 2009 (the computer blew up early that year and we lost all our videos. Which makes me sad, cuz there was an excellent one on there of me beating Richard at chess on our honeymoon), and made up a DVD for Christmas. It made me happy to watch :) I'm planning to continue this habit, and maybe I can get two more put together for next Christmas, along with a couple more books. Once I get caught up it will be easy to pump out books and movies at the rate of one per year, which is my goal, and then I can start going back to high school for me and for Richard and then get some projects going for my parents and just see how far I get.

I didn't keep up with number four to my satisfaction, so it's going back on this year's list. I did try. A couple weeks ago I even pulled out the cleaner and set it on the counter so that I'd see it every time I went in there and hopefully would be reminded of what it should be used for...it's still sitting there and I haven't used it. So yeah, back on the list with this one.

Number five...I think I did okay up to a point. I downloaded an app to help me learn French and I had all these German projects I was working on, I played the piano quite a bit actually, and I finished a couple novels. But then came Reuben, and he is seriously so needy. Lately he's been very interested in toys, so I can sometimes set him down next to me while I play the piano for a few minutes. The app isn't really working out because I need the sound, and the only time I play on the iPod is when I'm putting Reuben to sleep. Once he's sleep trained I can play on it at other times, and then I'll get back to the French on there.

And now on to this year's goals!

Here's the thing. Resolutions are bad because they are huge, and NEW. My life is crazy enough without trying to add new things to do each day, each week, or even each month. I've been thinking about it for the past few weeks, and I think what I need to do is just rotate activities out. There are several things I do each day that I absolutely don't need to do. When people ask me what my hobbies are, I always say things like "Oh, I like to read, make music, and spend time with my family" but I always feel guilty saying that. I have always loved to read far more than watching TV or playing computer games, but that doesn't mean that's what I always do in my free time anymore. What I actually do is really far less likely to be admitted to publicly. I spend a lot of my time playing Tetris on Facebook. Who wants to admit that their hobby is Tetris? I also do watch a few shows on TV, and when I get behind on them I tend to watch several episodes a day. I justify this by crocheting or knitting at the same time, but sometimes I choose to watch a show and crocheting is a secondary activity, not the other way around as I would prefer it. I used to devour books in the bathroom, too, but lately I always bring the iPod in with me. And that's not so I can study French, it's so I can play Bejeweled Blitz or Solitaire or Nertz or something equally stupid. I honestly blame my lack of reading on my children, but that is something I'm happy to do. I'd much rather say I spend all day chasing kids instead of reading than to say I read all day and ignore my kids. I can't read in bed like I used to because the light will wake Reuben up, but we'll get there. He just really doesn't sleep well and I don't want to mess up what is currently working.

Anyway I don't mean that to sound like a list of excuses for why I don't do good things with my time, because a) I hate excuses and b) the only valid excuse is that I'm spending time with my kids instead, and that's a better thing than anything I put on my to-do list each day.

The point I'm trying to make is this: I have a lot of things I do each day that I don't need to do, and I have a long list of things I wish I had time to do each day. So instead of making resolutions this year, I am conducting a habit swapping activity. I will be looking at several bad habits I have and will come up with an activity to replace them this year. So. One at a time, here are my bad habits.

I've developed some pretty bad habits since Reuben was born. I know that having a baby changes your life, and I agree that you have to let some things go in order to give 150% of yourself to your new little one, but sometimes I think it is really easy to take that too far. For example: My child is the neediest I have met. He will not let me put him down or even give him to his dad for more than 10 minutes before he starts wailing for me. Don't get me wrong, I love this :) but it makes for some unproductive days. I love to hold my boy and snuggle him and play with him, but I am a multi-tasker to the core and have a hard time sometimes JUST holding him. So I'll have this thought: I should try to do something on the computer. I'll sit down and prop him on my left knee and see what I can do one-handed on the computer. I'll tell you one thing you can do one handed - count the number of things you can do on a computer on one hand. The list usually gets narrowed down to browsing pictures, watching youtube videos (which my kids LOVE, btw), looking at stuff on Pinterest, or playing some sort of game. I've listed these in some semblance of the order they should go in priority wise, but I'll bet you can guess which one usually tops my list of things-I-actually-do...I end up playing Tetris. It's terrible, I know, and it doesn't usually last very long because unless there's pictures Reuben gets bored just sitting on my lap at the computer. This leads me to the worst thing I do lately: I get stuck wanting to play Tetris but being unable to do so at my chosen time, which leaves Tetris at the top of my Nap-Time Activities List. So once both kids are asleep I tell myself "Oh I'll just play two games. Or for ten minutes. Just a little. Then I'll go get something done." Without fail, Reuben will wake up within the hour, and I will still be playing Tetris. Nothing gets done that day, trust me. Anyway that was a long way of me saying I take the excuse of "I can't clean with one hand" a little too far sometimes. So that's bad habit number one: Tetris. Way too much Tetris.

Bad habit number two is along the same lines as number one. I've been meaning to clean and organize my house for...about 7 months lol. We made some good progress on Christmas Eve with the computer desk, but I still feel like our home is really cluttered and I can't keep up with laundry and I haven't deep cleaned my bathroom for several weeks and my rolltop keeps collecting stuff that goes somewhere else...Basically when I have some free time I choose to do that which is not productive rather than cleaning. At one point last year I made a chart for cleaning each day, but then Reuben was born and I didn't have time to do everything on the chart (it had other goals on it, like exercising and playing with kids and making music and learning French that were to be done each day) so I just moved it and figured I would do what needed to be done each day and someday when life calmed down and Reuben would let me put him down for a while I'd get back to it. Well, I think we're about there, and my shower really needs to be scrubbed. So that's bad habit number two: Clutter and my house not being as clean as it should be.

Bad habit number three. I have been a sugar-a-holic since about Halloween. Really bad. Like, Rachel didn't get the kind of candy I wanted for Halloween so I bought the kind I wanted so I could have some yummy Halloween candy. Hello? Yuck. At that point I had had a goal to lose all my Reuben weight by Christmas, and I think I had about 5 more lbs to go. I decided to just give up until after the holidays and enjoy all the sugar I wanted to in the meantime. It turned out okay for the most part, because I was still eating really healthy and I had started running in the summer and only having sugar when we ended up getting ice cream for someone's birthday or went to parties and things like that. By Christmas I had actually lost three lbs, so I came pretty close to meeting my goal :) But then we went to Logan for Christmas and there were literally MOUNTAINS of goodies. This is when my habit really showed how bad it was. I would wake up and think "Hmmm. I could go for some chocolate right now. Just straight chocolate. Let's see what we have." I'd head into the kitchen and see all the straight chocolate was gone, but we did have mint flavored chocolate oranges and chocolate covered pretzels. I don't like mint, so that wasn't a temptation, and I didn't want a pretzel, so that shouldn't have been. Oh well, it's sugar, right? So I'd eat a few. Then I'd find the Lebkuchen and eat a few of those. Oh and there's some bubbly left from last night, I'll have that as well. Gah! Really? I've been really good at controlling myself for the past year or so and my sweet tooth has actually died out quite a bit, and then last week happened. I can't really blame anyone but myself. But I gained 6 lbs. There, I said it! I'm a terrible person! Now I'm not 2 lbs away, I'm 8. And my end goal is not just pre-Reuben weight, it's 16 lbs beyond that! That means I have to lose 24 lbs to be where I want to be. How gross! And it's all just because I would look at a slice of cheesecake and say "Man. That's gonna make me gain a pound. But it will be yummy, so I'll eat it anyway." What kind of logic is that? So that's bad habit number three: Sugar.

And while we're on the topic...number four is sloth. Oh that sounds bad. It's really not that I sit on the couch all day, because I don't. I run around plenty, and if you don't have kids just trust me - chasing, clothing, feeding, snuggling, sleeping, and just generally enjoying kids all day is quite a full day's work. And it's not that I don't enjoy working out, because I love it. One of my favorite events from this past week in Logan was the chance we had to play Richard's family's deck-of-cards-workout game. You draw a card from a regular deck and are then required to do the amount shown in pushups or situps, and usually you alternate each time it's your turn. We had five people playing, so we didn't do an entire deck ourselves, but we sure did plenty. That was on Thursday I believe, and now on Sunday my abs are still killing me from all the situps I did. It's a great group workout, and his family does it every time they get together. But it's not something I do on a regular basis myself. When we were first married we did pushups and situps every day, and we've kind of done them off and on since then, taking breaks for babies and hectic schedules and the like. But lately we've both been eating pretty poorly and not exercising enough, so we'd like to kick it in gear. So bad habit number four is: Not exercising enough.

Bad habit number five is going to have to go in a separate post, because this one is already getting too long and it will be at least twice as long. Basically...there are many things about the internet that make me angrier than I like to be. One of them is Facebook. I have found that spending too much time on there is bad for my well-being, so bad habit number five in a nutshell is: Too much Facebook.

Bad habit number six pains me to admit, but here it is. I haven't read my scriptures on a daily basis since before Rachel was born. This is something I need to be doing, and I just haven't been. It's not that it's difficult, it's just that when I get a minute it is not something that comes to mind as needing to be done. I will sit down and spend an hour trying to get a show going on my laptop connected to the TV so I can laugh for twenty minutes amidst all the buffering and dirty jokes rather than sit down and open that marvelous book for twenty minutes before going to bed. I have tried several times in the past few months to start the habit, only to have it backfire in many ways. That's not to say I shouldn't keep trying, however. I want to read the Book of Mormon every day, and I need to start now.

And bad habit number seven. I have always loved learning and being a nerdy linguist. I love that my jobs have had so much to do with language, and I love that I somehow managed to convince my husband to turn into a nerdy linguist as well. I have been learning German for the past ten years, and I started picking up French a couple years ago (I really can't say much yet). I also got interested in Old English a few months back, and I have a couple Latin textbooks waiting to be opened on my language book shelf. I decided today that I should learn Spanish soon, and I want to learn Italian, Icelandic, Russian, and some random dead languages before this life is over. Thing is, you have to start somewhere. And just having four post it notes on my computer listing vocab words in various languages isn't really much of a start. I loved the education I received in college, and I loved being able to continue that education on my own afterwards. I just haven't taken advantage of that opportunity much lately, and I need to. So bad habit number seven: Not enough learning, or L2French, dummy.

Alright. So that's my list of bad habits. What am I going to do about it? I am going to re-routine my days, that's what.

All but one of these habits have one thing in common: They have to do with things I do while my kids are sleeping. We're talking early morning, afternoons, and late evenings after bedtime. The time in between is pretty much consumed by kids, errands, meals, and snuggles. Let's start with early mornings.

Today was great. Reuben usually wakes up around 6 and then sleeps until 8. Today he woke up at 5:30 and 7, so I rocked him back to sleep at 7 and then stayed up. I've been really bad lately about waking up at a decent hour, so 7 is really good for me :) I was able to shower and eat before Rachel woke up, which is always lovely. I was able to shave my legs, even! Ok sorry, TMI. Anyway. I want to get back to waking up at 6, even though my lovely excuse for doing so is no longer (the company I worked for kind of dissolved...). If I were to wake up at 6, I could shower and eat and still have an hour to myself. This is the time I want to spend with God. I should be reading my scriptures and writing in my journal every day, and waking up even 20 minutes earlier would give me a good opportunity to do that. So that takes care of 1 1/2 bad habits. 1) Read scriptures daily. 1/2) I want to replace Facebooking with blogging, and this is one way I can do that.

And on to naptime. Rachel "sleeps" for a good three hours most days. She goes in her room around 2 and doesn't usually want to come out until about 5. This is marvelous. Now if I could only get Reuben to do the same thing...He sleeps from 2 to 3, and then sometimes I can rock him back to sleep and he'll be out until 5, but sometimes not so much and he's awake from 3-5 and then takes a little nap. He will usually sleep for at least an hour, though, so that gives me an hour to be productive. I need to use this time to do things I absolutely cannot do when both kids are awake, which limits my list to folding laundry, cleaning the bathroom, doing hardcore work on the computer like planning meals and shopping lists or budgeting, or playing my violin. What I'm going to do is pull out the schedule thing I made last year and revamp it for two kids and their current schedules. I'll have a cleaning project and a project project for each day (I have a list of project projects on my wall, don't you worry about me running out of those), so when naptime comes around I can just look at my list and say "Oh, it's Thursday. That means I'll be working on photos on the computer." The nice thing about this is that I'm completely routine oriented. I only followed this schedule for a couple weeks when I made it (I think I made it in May, and Reuben was born at the end of May) but I still remember which projects were supposed to happen on which days. So it should be easy to get back into that habit. The challenge will come with the cleaning aspect...I never really got the hang of that. So this long explanation is going to take care of replacing 2 1/2 of my bad habits. Instead of playing Tetris and spending time on Facebook during naptime, I will instead be cleaning my house and working on a variety of projects in the hopes that someday I'll finish one :)

Which brings us to post-bedtime, and two bad habits to replace. Evenings are the times when my bad habits come out in full force. I usually spend the evening (which lasts from 8 to midnight sometimes) playing Tetris or Rummikub online, or just watching a movie or TV show for a while before bed. That's it. That's what I do all evening. This is usually accompanied by snacking, which contributes to my sugar habit. So...lots to replace here. First of all, I want to be in bed by ten so that I can feasibly get up at six. So that cuts me down to two hours. Richard and I have both committed to working out right after bedtime, and we're off to a good start! Today is Monday, and we worked out. Richard put an interval timer app on the iPod and set it for two minutes. He picks an activity (pushups, situps, bicycle kicks, crunches, etc) and does a certain number of them, then jogs in place for the remainder of the two minutes. I found a link on Pinterest for some thigh workouts, so I picked two of those. I did the first for the entire two minutes, then tried to do jumping jacks for my second set. Didn't quite make it to two minutes, but I got really close. Then I did my second thigh workout on just one leg, which took two minutes, so I did the other leg for the next set as well. I finished off with 100 crunches, which also took the entire two minutes. So mine was mostly strength with not much cardio, but come on, I did an hour of Zumba this morning! Anyway we're going to do this every night, eventually working up to 15 sets. Tonight we only did 5, but that's a good start for how out of shape we are :) So that will usually last about half an hour, leaving me an hour and a half to read or study. Richard starts school on Wednesday, and he might want to get back to translating the Hebrew bible in the evenings with me. When he does that I translate from the German bible, so that would be a good German study. Or I could get back on Rosetta Stone and learn me some French! which is probably what I'll do. Along with reading before bed, I'm going to work on finishing my German novel that's been in the bathroom for a couple years instead of using the iPod in there. I'm not going to set a tangible reading goal, like finishing one book per month or anything like that, because I don't want to feel like I have to frantically read to finish a goal. I just want to read, and it's a better thing to do at night than watching movies.

And last but not least, I have to replace my sugar habit. This one isn't hard, even though it sounds like it is. Once I set my mind to no sugar, I can stay on it pretty well. Especially once the pounds start sliding off! I'm going to replace my sugary yums with some fruit/veggie yums. Basically what this means is I will be finding more ways to prepare veggies, because eventually spinach omelets get boring, and I need more veggies than just spinach. I also have a few fun ideas to replace sweets that I'm interested in trying, but that will be a bonus. I just want to find more recipes for more veggies and start enjoying them :) On Wednesday I'm going to make alfredo pasta for dinner, to be served over spinach burgers :) My family doesn't know this yet. The nice thing is that if they don't like them, it's more for me! I sure love spinach!

Ok I think this is just about sufficiently long-winded. I'll be posting my rant about Facebook later on, but for now just be expecting to see me on there less and to be seeing links to my blog more often.

Rachel-isms of the day

Today we went shopping. On the way out I gave Rachel a box of animal crackers, and as she ate them she kept saying "yummy yummy". So I said "Rachel, is that yummy yummy in your tummy?" and she said "No, yummy yummy in my mouth."

Later, I turned on one of my mix CDs from college, one which included Rammstein's "Du Hast". Rachel has started picking up lyrics on a few songs, and this is my favorite. During the chorus as the singer yells "Nein!" Rachel yells right along with him "Be Nice!"

Rachel Speaks

I just wanted to jot down a couple funny things Rachel has said lately before I forget.

Yesterday: She was having macaroni and cheese for lunch. My mom asked "Rachel, are you have macaroni and cheese?" She responded "Yep!" My mom: "Is your brother having macaroni and cheese?" Rachel, running over to talk to Reuben: "Brother, you having makeeroni and cheese?"

Today: We were driving around before play group and Rachel said her bum hurt. I asked if she was poopy. "No mom, me just wet." I said "You are?" and she came back with "Yeah, me are."

Happy Halloween!

Reuben has conked out in his carseat for what looks to be a semi-successful nap, so I'm going to take that opportunity to blog a bit.

My kids are both sick. This sucks. Rachel is a little better today, but Reuben is having a really hard time. To top it off, the night before this all went down I couldn't get to sleep for some reason so I only got about 4 broken hours of sleep. Babies getting sick basically just means they don't do anything like they normally do. So on Sunday at 11, when Reuben would usually take a nap, I went to nurse him down and he wouldn't go. Or, he did, but only for 9 minutes. It was like that all day. I would either nurse him or rock him to sleep but he would wake up 9 minutes later. I finally got him down around 2 and decided just to hold him as long as I could, so he slept really well for about an hour. It's amazing what that hour did. He was actually in almost a good mood for the rest of the day. But I was fretting the night...I nursed him down at 8:30, which is normal, and he woke up 9 minutes later. So I just stayed up with him for an hour and a half talking to Richard and trying to keep my little guy happy. At 10 we gave him some Tylenol and I nursed him again, but he didn't go to sleep. I rocked him for about half an hour and he was finally out for a while. If my groggy mind remembers correctly, he woke up just about every hour in the night. He would eat, then wake up an hour later just wanting to be held a little, then wake up an hour after that to eat again. I was worried I'd have to rock him back to sleep every time he woke up, but luckily that wasn't the case. So he slept all right, and I guess I did too, but man morning came way too quickly with Rachel wandering in looking for breakfast. Richard basically told her to go back to bed and instantly fell back asleep. When we finally got up we had no idea where she was lol. She had just been playing with her toys like the wonderful baby she is :)

So this morning went kind of similar to yesterday. I kept trying to get Reuben to nurse to sleep and he just wouldn't. He finally did, but woke up the second I set him down. I had no idea where Rachel was at that point, but luckily she hadn't gotten into any trouble while I was dealing with Reuben for like an hour. She really is a great girl who isn't too terribly naughty most of the time, so I wasn't too worried. Reuben finally fell asleep for about half an hour, so I was able to get some stuff done. It's funny how stressful a day can be when you have to get work done but you just can't do it. Yesterday I gave up before it even started and just planned to hold Reuben all day, and that's what I did. But when I woke up today and saw dead tissues and clean socks strewn all over the living room, I just couldn't handle it. So first chance I got I started picking stuff up. Now I'm on my second load of laundry, but there's still crap all over the living room.

I was feeling pretty good about this afternoon's prospects at lunchtime, until my dad called and asked if I could take Beau to the foot doctor. No problem there, except it took twice as long as I expected. Seriously, when you're appointment is at 1:20 why does it take until 1:45 for the doctor to show up? What is he doing that whole time? Anyway we got back from that and Rachel was actually ASKING for a nap! She's been kind of feisty about that lately, so I was rejoicing. Maybe I'll get a nap after all. Maybe I should be taking one now...

I wanted to share some cute stories about my kids or just some fun facts about where they're at right now, so here goes.

Rachel
2 1/2
Hysterical
Spending time with my daughter makes me realize why people have kids. She cracks me up all day long. The littlest things she does are not only amazing but tender to me. Right now she's coming up with a million different ways to ride her rocking dog, including putting my flip flops on the handles and watching them fall off as she rocks.

The other day I took her to Reams to return a movie to Redbox. On the way she said she wanted to sing, so we went through all the songs she knows. Let me restate that: My 2 year old KNOWS over 5 songs! Most of the words, even! I love it :) After we sang all our songs she wanted to say prayers. That's when I realized she was doing her bedtime routine in the car. Makes sense, she hadn't slept much so she was probably tired. So she said a little prayer (again, she's 2) and then said "Mom, I go sleep now." On the way home from the movie dropping off she pointed out the moon. It always amazes me what she's able to see. She'll spot an airplane before I'll even hear it. Her game lately has been to ask what everything is and then what it says. So when she pointed out the moon she then wanted to know what the moon says. I've been trying to be as creative as she is when coming up with what inanimate objects say, so when she asked that I responded by howling at the moon. So now I guess that's what the moon says :)

Most recently Rachel has been learning to say "please" when asking for something. This is great, except when the answer is no. Then she'll try to convince me to give her whatever she wants by saying "pweeeze??" over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. This is annoying.

Today was fun...I was trying to keep Reuben happy until naptime (I'm trying to regulate his naps so that he'll sleep through most of my work shift) and Rachel pulled out an empty diaper box. She sat in it and asked me to push her to her room. So I stuck Reuben in there with her and pushed them both around the living room. I love these kids :)

Anyway Rachel is awesome. She now picks out her own clothes and can put some of them on by herself. Sometimes they even look okay :) She loves to wear skirts, but not socks. I think she got Richard's circulation, because whenever I'm freezing she is happiest in a skirt, t-shirt, and no socks. But she loves to try on her coats and have me zip them up and put the hood on. She has always loved doing this. She's getting so smart. She can recognize a few letters, even pointing them out in the credits of movies we're watching. She's learning to "read" one of her books, and we'll see if that ends up helping her learn to read for reals. The book only has about 4 words repeated over and over, and she's almost memorized them and the order. One of her favorite things to do is sit by the bookshelf and look through ALL of the books, one at a time, very slowly and carefully. When she sees something she recognizes, she runs over to show it to me (and to ask what it says). She is also big enough now that we've moved her to a booster seat at the table rather than her high chair. She eats with a big person fork, and today Richard taught her to eat over her bowl instead of spilling cereal all over the floor, so we'll see how that goes. Lately I've been trying to get her to eat more fruits and veggies, and she loves peas. Not as big a fan of butternut squash, though :) Rachel sleeps in a regular twin bid (she actually has two beds right next to each other, so each night she picks her favorite) and puts herself to bed. We read scriptures, sing, say prayers and give hugs, then she walks herself into her room, shuts the door, turns off the light, and goes to sleep. She's started to do the same thing at naptime, which is phenomenal. Sometimes she doesn't take a nap, but she still goes in her room for at least 3 hours so I can work. I'd love to let her run around while I'm working, but she's just so loud. Rachel also climbs into her carseat by herself, and does really well at walking with me so I can carry Reuben when we go places. All in all, my daughter is amazing :)

Reuben
5 months
Super cute
I love this boy. He is such a happy baby! He wakes up smiling and stays that way for a while, until he gets tired or hungry. I was watching videos of Rachel when she was this age, and she liked being on her tummy more than he does, but I'm ok just holding him so that's no big deal. I wonder when he'll start crawling, though. Right now we're working on sitting, and he's doing pretty well at that. He likes the new perspective it gives of the world. He loves toys, but gets bored with them pretty quickly. One of his favorite things is to sit on my lap and smack the desk while I'm working, or to bang on the piano. He also likes to look over my shoulder while we're sitting on the couch and look at the bright colors of my afghan. He hates the stroller. He does pretty well in the car, especially with Rachel right there to keep him entertained. We're still figuring out the whole eating thing. I think he has a sensitive tummy. When I put him down for the night he always wakes up about an hour later just screaming. When I pick him up and rock him he lets out a good huge burp or three and maybe a fart, and then falls instantly back to sleep. He's been having a hard time at naptime lately for the same reason, and I think it's because I've been giving him solids at lunch instead of dinner. So I'm going to stop doing that. It's more important for him to sleep well at naptime when I work than it is at night, because I'm happy to rock him all night but it's kind of impossible to do when I'm working. But he does like those solids...last night he ate a ton of applesauce even though he was in a bad mood. He also loves taking baths and splashing around A TON. He wiggles all the time, and his new thing is to kick me rhythmically while I'm feeding him. I anticipate music to be part of his life :) Reuben loves it when I hum to him, and being wrapped up tight and rocked is his favorite thing in the world.

I love my kids :)

A Day in the Life

I have a lot to do every day. Who doesn't? But I've been using that as an excuse to not document a lot of really special moments with my kids. Today has been especially nice, so I wanted to record it. This is how our days usually go, and whether I get something good accomplished or not, I have a good time doing it. I've been doing a lot of realizing lately that being a mom is really about BEING, not about doing. Enjoying each moment with your child and indulging in THEIR desires quite often is where you find the most peace and happiness in this calling. It's true, it's kind of thankless and you spend most of your life changing diapers, being a cow, and doing laundry during not only your kids' naptime but yours as well, and by the time your kids are old enough to appreciate everything you do for them they're not really kids anymore, but come on. It's totally worth it, and you know it.

I've been super tired lately. Probably because Reuben has never been the best sleeper and has been waking up every 2 hours at night after taking 3 hours to go to sleep for the past couple weeks. But we're going on day 2 of him only waking up once before I do, and I'm getting as much enjoyment out of that sleep as possible. So today when my alarm went off, I let it. I don't know where my subconscious was, but it was not registering the idea that the alarm might wake up the baby. At least, not until that awesome Boston song was almost over. I don't know what happened nine minutes later, but we listened to most of that song too. I didn't even notice it was going off until Richard walked in to shut off the alarm so I'd just go to sleep and stay that way. That was at about 6:45. I figured I'd enjoy a little nap while he showered and then get up before the kids. My goal lately has been to get up earlier, but I think it's been later every day. Oh well :)

I woke up to my silly baby talking in his crib. He wakes up so peacefully and happy that sometimes it takes a while for me to register it. It took long enough that Richard heard him upstairs and was running down the stairs to hand him to me in bed by the time I got up to get him. I situated him to nurse him back to sleep in bed, and Richard came behind me and cuddled us both for a while before he had to go to school. Once Reuben was finally asleep I got that nice warm shower I dream about every night. It's always a mystery as to how long Reuben will sleep after that 7 am feeding, but today he slept very well. I was able to shower and get breakfast for Rachel and myself and then enjoy an extra hour of whatever before he woke up for the day.

Rachel is so funny. When I go to get her in the morning she either YELLS "Mom! All done sleeping! Me want breakfast!" or pulls me into whatever she's been doing in her room for the past half hour or so while I've been showering. Today was the latter. She was blowing spit all over a foam football trying to inflate it, and when I walked in the room she handed me an inflatable basketball and asked me to help her blow it up. Which was gross, because she'd been blowing spit all over that one as well. Once business was taken care of and the ball was inflated, we went up to get breakfast. Rachel always says "Good morning!!!" to whoever we see. Usually it's Aja or one of my parents, and I just never get over hearing her very loud exclamation of "Good morning, Grandma!!" Then she digs through the drawer where her dishes are kept and chooses a bowl and a cup (or water bottle). She hands me what she finds and I hand her "Charlotte's spoon". She has this weird fixation on her cousin Charlotte, who left a couple spoons here when she moved out. Anyway then I pour cereal and milk and stick her in her high chair, where she makes a huge mess. I eat my breakfast while catching up on Facebook, and then we both go downstairs to get her dressed and brush our teeth and all that fun stuff. Then it's play time until Reuben wakes up.

I'm never sure if Reuben sleeps as long as he wants or if Rachel's LOUD voice ends up waking him up before he's ready. Either way, he's always super happy when he wakes up. I usually send Rachel in to "get" him, which usually involves her coming up with some game on my bed with Reuben and the blankets. He's a good sport. Then we get him dressed and fed, and then it's off to run errands, go to the park, visit friends, or just hang out around the house. On the way out the door today, Rachel had to make sure she had her beanie and her purse. I wish I could remember what she was calling her purse, it was so funny. Anyway, today was park day, and the kids loved it. We go to a park in Springville with tons of toys where Rachel never gets bored. Today there was another mom there with her 3 yr old son and beautiful boxer. I commented on how pretty her dog was, and she commented on how nice it was that we didn't leave when we saw him, as some people do who have a prejudice against boxers and pitt bulls and the like. But that's another can of worms...

Rachel always has fun at the park. Today she went down the slide that I've always thought looked a little too scary for her, and she loved it. Then she climbed back up to go down the twisty slide, but first she had to throw her purse down. Then she decided she needed to throw her hat down as well, and waited for both to go to the bottom of the slide and for me to pick them up. That's about when I got tired of holding my 16 lb tub of a Reuben and decided to try him out in the swing. He loved it. Sat in it talking for about 20 minutes while I helped Rachel go down whichever slide she felt like. Then she wanted to get in the swing. They were way too cute in their matching hats, so I ran off to find my camera (phone) to get some pictures. When I came back, Rachel had once again tossed her purse and hat to the ground and was working on taking off her shoes. Whatever, child. You can be barefoot I guess. And she was, for the rest of the day.

Driving in the car is always fun with Rachel. She likes to point out everything she sees and either ask what it is or let you know what it is. She's constantly going "Mom! Moon!" or "Mom! Tree!" Every now and then she'll ask for tunes, so we'll pull out a CD of children's songs or one of my mixes from college. Sometimes she just wants me to sing, so she'll ask for songs by name. "Mom, sing spider one." "Mom, sing Jesus one." "Mom. Child of God." Yesterday she sat on my lap after lunch asking me to sing "star one" (twinkle twinkle) over and over and over again, until she could join in with me. I'm amazed at how quickly she picks these up. I think I've only sung Give Said the Little Stream three or four times, and she already knows the gist of the words. I love to sing, so this is a trend I'm ok with developing in my 2 yr old :)

When we got home it was time for Reuben to take a nap. I'm trying to train Rachel to be a good, quiet child during this time and to stay in our apartment rather than escape to the upstairs world. So I tell her "Rachel, I have to put Reuben to sleep. Can you be my good, quiet girl and stay down here? Play with your toys, okay?" which she interprets as "Mommy will be gone for a looooong time. That means I can get into stuff I'm not supposed to and she can't stop me!" I was almost finished with Reuben and debating joining him for a little nap when I heard a bell ding out in the living room. I had to think for a few minutes what would be making that sound that Rachel could get to. And then it dawned on me: Pit. She had gotten into the game closet, had probably spread the Pit cards all over the place, and was playing with the bell. That means the dominoes are next, and I HATE cleaning those up. So I decided Reuben was done. Luckily he actually was. Her damage was a bit more extensive than I anticipated. She had not only found the games, but had started digging through my random box of crap that's in there, which really isn't full of crap it's full of old art supplies. She found my baggie of charcoal sticks and had spread those around, and she had spilled all the Pit carts INTO the box. They fell down underneath a bunch of blankets and stuffed animals to land near my clay sculptures from high school. Kind of an adventure digging those out, let me tell you.

So then it was lunch time. "Lunch" and "Burrito" are synonymous to Rachel, but I was determined to get something good into her today. I sliced up an apple, and she ate almost the whole thing! That's along with the entire burrito! I was so proud. If only I could get her to eat some veggies, though. Lately we've been working on putting our dishes in the sink after lunch. Usually what happens is I set Rachel up to eat at the big person table rather than in her high chair, and then I head over to the computer with my lunch. She tells me she's done, and I ask her to put her dishes in the sink. The other day I didn't even ask her, she just said "Mom, me done" and then I heard her dishes fall into the sink! What a sweetie :) Then she sits on my lap while I finish on the computer and then we go downstairs to play a bit more. Usually Reuben wakes up from his morning nap right about then, and so we all play for a while until Rachel's naptime.

Today's play was kind of an adventure. Reuben likes to sit on my lap while I play primary songs on the piano, but today I thought I'd try him out in the spaceship walker, which he sometimes likes. So Rachel sat on my lap while I played the piano. This doesn't work as well, because she likes to bang on the keys. That's kind of why I got her her own keyboard. So I pointed her in that direction. Unfortunately, that meant listening to the demo song REALLY LOUD while I'm trying to continue my repertoire. Oh well, Reuben got upset about then anyway. I picked him up and continued through the Christmas section in the primary song book and figured Rachel was doing her thing and would be fine for a while. But then I heard "Mom, me wanna get out" and knew it was bad news bears. She had climbed into the spaceship. I HATE it when she does that. She's adventurous enough to climb in by herself, but too big to be able to climb out on her own. I'm trying to get her to stop climbing in just because I can't always get her out when she wants me to and I really hate games that involve me doing all the work (especially now that I have a newborn). Anyway, I had told her a billion times today not to climb into the spaceship and since she had clearly ignored those instructions I felt slightly justified in ignoring her pleas for help. I just let her sit in the spaceship for a while. She cried, she moped, she tried to get out, but I didn't get her out until I was good and ready to, and I told her so. We'll see if it worked the next time play time comes around.

And then it's naptime for Rachel! It's funny how I look forward to this time, because Rachel is the easy baby. Plus she doesn't usually sleep so it's more stress than it's worth, but it's a necessity right now. I work from 2-6 EVERY DAY this week, which is insane, but it's also $300. That means I NEED Rachel to sleep from 2-5 at least. Which she did NOT do yesterday, but I'm not really here to complain about how much yesterday sucked. Rachel actually did pretty well at naptime today. I think she may have slept, even.

I'm trying to get Reuben into a good nap schedule, which really means that I'm trying to figure out what HE wants his nap schedule to be. I've been trying to mold him into my schedule and it just hasn't worked, so I'm going with what he wants to do from here on out. Or, I'm trying to. Despite popular belief, moms really have no clue what they're doing most of the time. Anyway I figured he would get hungry around 3:30 but would probably get tired closer to 2. I wanted to see if he could make it to 3. I had my arsenal ready by my computer. A swing, the spaceship, his gym, two rattle toys, a binky, and a determination to keep the kid happy and get my work done at the same time. It worked pretty well, once I realized that I really don't need to be sitting to do my work. He lasted until about 2:45, which was great, and then he went straight to sleep. Work is SO much easier when both kids are asleep. I really need it to be pretty quiet, and Rachel is super loud. So is Reuben, actually. It's just better when they sleep. Which they both did, until Reuben woke up at 3:30. Seriously? I brought him back out and fed him and he went back to sleep until 5. Hallelujah!

Rachel also woke up at 5, which is fantastic. I can put on a movie for her and she stays very occupied until I get done with work. Today she wanted to watch "flying one" (Fern Gully). This was great until about 5:30 when the bad guy showed up. Apparently he's really scary, and she kept freaking out every time he came on the screen. It took me a while to figure out why she was crying, because she wouldn't say anything. Clearly very little sleep actually happened in that room of hers. Once I figured out the problem I asked what movie she wanted to watch instead, and she held up the Muppets. I asked her to hand it to me, and she threw it instead. She REFUSED to pick it up, and I refused to indulge my spoiled child. Sorry. She kept crying and wouldn't get the movie, so I gave up and went back to work. She kept crying and eventually I got "flying one" out of what she was crying about, so I turned Fern Gully back on. Which was fine, until Hexxus showed up again. At that point I just turned it off. And Rachel flipped out. You know when kids get to that point where they can't even breathe because they're crying so loud and so frantically? Yeah, that's what she was doing. She only does this when she doesn't get a nap. After warning her, I set Reuben down and walked her to her room, where I explained that she was out of control and needed to calm down. She let me sit her on her bed and I told her she could come out once she was calmed down. I still had a few minutes left to work, but I left the door open for her. Once I was done, I changed Reuben then went in to talk to Rachel. I went to change her and discovered she was poopy. Also that she had pulled out ALL of her wipes. I felt bad that she was poopy, which was probably a big factor in why she was so upset. I always hate it when she's poopy and I don't know it. Anyway once she got cleaned up and ointmented and re-dressed, she felt a lot better. She just takes a while to wake up all the way and feel ready to face the world again after naptime. Especially when she didn't sleep long enough.

Then it's time to make dinner. Reuben was so funny today. I set him in his little chair facing me but across the room while I cut up fruit for a salad. He would squawk really loud and I'd look up at him, and he'd stop. Then I'd look back down at the kiwi I was cutting and he'd immediately start squawking again until I would look at him. That kept him pretty entertained most of the dinner-prep time. Meanwhile my amazing siblings run through and help with one or the other of my kids while I cook. Today Camary took Rachel outside to play with her new camera for a while, and they came back right when Reuben was DONE sitting in he chair, so she held him while I finished up with dinner. Meanwhile Rachel was playing hide and seek, sitting somewhere and counting to 6 while Cam would hide and then switching roles. She's such a nut.

Reuben is currently experimenting with pears. Sometimes he likes them, and sometimes he doesn't. Today he didn't. But Rachel ate all of her fruit! She also said "Good morning" to my brothers as they emerged for dinner, which got everyone laughing. After dinner we play some more before bedtime. Richard reads to us from the Bible while Rachel finds a book to look at and I keep Reuben happy. Then we sing, say prayers, and go to bed. Rachel is the easiest baby to put to bed. We do our routine then tuck her in and say good night and she's gone. I hope and pray that Reuben will be the same, but he's definitely not yet. He goes to bed sometime between 8:30 and 10 pm. I try to wait until he's ultra tired and then nurse him to sleep. Inevitably he's up an hour later to burp. Last night he got back to sleep on his own, but not tonight. I ended up feeding him again, which I hate doing because now he'll be up in another hour to burp again. Maybe. I never know with this kid. Is it bad that I'm eagerly anticipating weaning him? Nursing has never been easy, and I just want him to learn to sleep.

All in all it's been a pretty fun day, one filled with really great moments with my babies. I just wish I could capture each moment on film to save for later. I'm going to try to write in here more often to preserve these precious memories, but no promises :)