Learning to walk

Sometimes I wonder if we aren't all still learning how to walk. It seems to me that Rachel is just adding a few steps every time she tries. First it was one, then it was two, then three, then four. Today she went eight!

She just let go of Andrew's hands and walked over to her Grandpa like she'd done it a million times.

We tried to get her to show off a little bit later, but she wouldn't take any more than three steps.

Still, eight steps is a lot of steps for a little girl. I wonder when she'll take nine.

It almost makes me want to break out my pedometer just to see how many steps I took today. Then I can brag about it to everyone I see.

"10,678!" I'd say.

"What?" they'd say.

"I took 10,678 steps today! And I didn't even fall down! Of course, I had to stop and rest a few times, and I almost lost my balance once or twice, but still, 10,678 is quite a lot of steps for a girl my age!"

"Uh, yeah," they'd say, trying to placate me, "That's nice."

"But yesterday I only went 10,503 steps. I'm getting a lot better! This walking thing is really exciting! You know, I'm so excited I feel like I could hug something. Anything will do. You...or...this couch!"

The person would walk away, a little disturbed, while I would snuggle my face into the couch, just like Rachel does when she reaches her goal.

Perhaps it would be a little old to celebrate one more step--I'm sure we'll eventually lose count of how many steps Rachel can take (like when she really takes off running, which will be any day, I'm sure)--but maybe we are all still learning to walk. You never know when you could just forget how one day.

Mystery Laundry

Last Sunday Rachel peed a great pee during stake conference, and she happened to be sitting on Andrew's lap at the time, lucky for me. Needless to say, Andrew's suit pants got a little wet in the process. However, since we had some other engagements requiring Sunday dress, he stayed in his Sunday clothes all day--hey, they air dried on the way home, okay?

Today when we were getting ready to go to the temple, Andrew couldn't find his dress pants anywhere. Finally he remembered that Rachel had peed on him last Sunday and came to the conclusion that they were probably in the dirty clothes basket. So he wore his dry-clean only suit pants, figuring he would be safe since we were leaving Rachel behind to be tended by Auntie Josie and Uncle Patrick.

When we came home this evening he put a load of laundry in, which I appreciate, even though it completely throws off my Mondays.

Monday is laundry day. I don't know why his Sunday pants didn't get washed this week. My only guess is that they were crumpled up on his side of the bed when I did laundry on Monday and I forgot to look before I did the laundry, so when we finally cleaned our room on Thursday, Andrew found his pants and upon realizing they were still dirty put them in the basket. Unfortunately, aside from diaper loads, I only do laundry one day a week so the pants just sat in the basket until now.

Not only did Andrew do one load of laundry, he also put that load in the dryer and then put a load of whites in. My husband is so amazing sometimes!

When the buzzer for the dryer went off, Andrew was working, so I went to get the clothes out. I wanted to get the whites into the dryer because I really needed to do a load of diapers. Those must be washed every other day or they just get too stinky.

I carried the biggest armful I could manage into the living room and dropped it ceremoniously on the floor, hoping that Andrew would notice. He looked up, and I smiled at him. Then I went to get the clothes that I had dropped along the way. I found two black socks of Andrews and a shirt. I folded the socks together and dropped them and the shirt on the pile of hot, clean clothes, smiling at Andrew again, partly because I wanted him to fold the clothes and partly because I wanted to see if he would notice that there was a pair of folded socks in the laundry if he happened to decide to fold the rest of the clothes for me.

He's a quick one and figured out that when I smiled it meant, "You should take a break and fold these clothes for me while I deal with the stinky, stinky diapers."

That, and he loves the feel of warm clothes fresh from the dryer. Who doesn't, really?

So, while I was moving the whites from the washer to the dryer, Andrew began folding the clothes. I had just finished moving the laundry over and had started transporting the dirty diapers, holding them out at arms distance with my nose turned away, when Andrew came into the laundry room.

"Ummmm," he began, "Did you fold a pair of socks?"

He looked really confused. My plan had worked--sometimes I just get a kick out of confusing Andrew on purpose.

"Yes," I smiled, and then laughed at him.

"Okay," he laughed, looking relieved, "I was worried that I washed a clean pair of socks!"

Like that even would have been a big deal...

Cute little feller

As per our usual, Andrew read scripture to Rachel and me while we sat in the rocking chair and nursed before bedtime. We're in 2 Nephi right now, just finishing up with the Isaiah chapters.

We got to chapter 24, verse 7-8:

The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet; they break forth into singing.

Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and also the cedars of Lebanon, saing: Since though art laid down no feller is come up against us.

"What did you say?" I laughed.

"What?" asked Andrew.

"No feller is come," I clarified.

"That's what it says," Andrew defended himself, "I didn't just pull a Matt Parks, honest."

"What are you then? Some sort of hick talking about a puppy?" I asked. Then I put on my best redneck voice and said, "Aw, ain't he just a cute little feller!"

Andrew gave me a weird look before laughing, "You thought I said fellow? I said feller! We're talking about trees here!"

It took me a minute to remember that it was, indeed, the trees who were speaking when the word feller was used. Suddenly everything starting making a whole lot more sense.

I never liked junior high

I pulled my hair into a ponytail today while Rachel was sitting on her potty. More often than not, motherhood is easier with a ponytail.

As I was wrapping the hair elastic around my fistful of hair I noticed something hard and crunchy in my hair. I stopped to feel around for a bit. In my hair I found a lollipop stick. Lovely.

Ordinarily Rachel is, by default, blamed for any foreign objects in my hair. However, I knew she was not guilty in this case because she doesn't eat lollipops yet and we have no lollipops in our house and I don't even know where she would get a lollipop, or even a lollipop stick, for that matter.

I picked the stick out of my hair, thinking back about when and where I would get an icky, sticky lollipop stick stuck in my hair.

All the reasons why I hated junior high school suddenly flooded back to me. I hated junior high school so much that I refused to go. My mom let me home school for the next two years until I started high school, which, truthfully, wasn't that much better.

Today I braved going to junior high again, along with my mom (we also brought Rachel--although it was only her first time going to junior high), so that we could watch Josie's one act play.

We sat through a few skits waiting for Josie to get on stage and midway through one of the skits I felt something hit the back of my head, followed by a chorus of boyish giggles. I learned early in life that the best way to deal with boys is to ignore them, so I did. I'm quite sure they were the cause of the lollipop stick getting stuck in my hair.

It's amazing to me how boys grow up to be men.

I'm sure those boys had good intentions though. They were probably just trying to flirt. I'm often mistaken for a teenager. How were they supposed to know I'm a full-fledged member of the grown-up society?

Forgetting about the obnoxious, hormone-crazed gentlemen sitting a few rows behind us, I settled in to watch Josie's little play.

It was called "The Babysitter" and featured a number of very naughty children. My mom was sure to tell Rachel that this performance was an excellent example of how not to behave.

Josie jumping on the couch

She did a good job! It's always fun to watch her perform. I also enjoyed watching several impersonations of Gollum and the many skits where boys pretended to fight and shoot each other, though not nearly as much as watching my sister on stage.

Rachel liked looking at the lights and trying to communicate with another baby she saw on the opposite side of the auditorium. She had a lot of fun sitting with Auntie Josie and her friends--they were giving her jewelry, cellphones, and other little gadgets left and right.

Rachel and Auntie Jo at school

I'm so glad I'm not in junior high anymore. So very, very glad. The hour I spent in junior high today was enough to last me for the next few years. My hat is off to junior high school teachers. I wonder how I ever survived the two and a half months I taught junior high. I can't believe I thought that I would actually enjoy that...

Spider Whisperer

Being married has really brought out the wimp in me. I really can't stand spiders anymore--I won't even kill them. It's just become Andrew's job to get rid of them.

I was exhausted when I finally got Rachel down for her nap yesterday. She didn't take a nap until after 4:00 in the afternoon and since she had gotten up for the day at 7:00 AM and woke up in the middle of the night to scream for a while, I was well ready for a nap by then.

So I went to go lie down in our bed. I took off my glasses and climbed into bed. My eyes saw a blurry something move on the wall. I squinted to try to bring the blob into focus, but I still couldn't see what it was so I grabbed my glasses and put them back on again.

A big, ugly spider was right above my head. I jumped out of bed and ran to the hall closet to get the fly swatter.

I went back into the bedroom and got all ready to kill it, but then I thought that if I missed it would probably fall onto our bed, and that would be gross.

So I grabbed a tissue and got ready to squish it, but then I thought about that horrible squishing feeling and the popping sound that it makes and I just couldnt' do it.

I napped on the couch in the living room instead.

When Andrew got home I told him about the spider.

"And you just left him in our room?" he asked.

I nodded.

"So he's still in there, alive?" he asked.

I nodded, "Will you get it?"

"I don't know where it is," he said, "Had you killed it when you saw it, it would be gone."

"I know...but will you at least check to see if he's in our bed? Pleeeease?"

He walked into the room with a tissue. He's not afraid of the squishing feeling and the pooping sound.

"Here, spider, spider, spider, spider. Here, spider, spider, spider, spider," he coaxed, "There you are!"

He came back with the remains of the spider.

"Not in the bed, but on the wall." Andrew said. That silly spider just crawled right into sight.

That's my husband, the brave spider whisperer!

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah

We spent Sunday afternoon at my parents' house. Auntie Josie took Rachel to the park, we had a yummy dinner, and, unfortunately, we had just started playing games when it was time to go to Emily's seminary graduation.

The game of choice was Malarky, and we had time to play one round before we had to go. Andrew had never played the game before so we explained the rules to him rather quickly and, for the sake of time, rather poorly at that.

Basically what we said was that the game is kind of like Balderdash, which we knew he could play because we played that on our second date in high school, but you have to think up an answer instead of a definition. One person has the real answer and everyone else just has something silly written on their card. You will know if you have the real answer or not.

Patrick read the question, which was something along the lines of, "How did the zipper get its name?" and then we passed around the cards, read them, and thought up our answers quickly.

I, thank goodness, was first in line and was able to give my brilliant answer that the word zipper is onomatopoeic. Zzzzzipper! Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought that was the answer because a serious of groans sounded around our circle.

"What if she said my answer?" Asked Garion.

"You have to make up something new to say," we answered.

"And what if my answer was the right one?"

"You have to make up something new to say anyway and then when we vote, you'll still put the black piece in your hand, but will also vote for the person who gave the right answer."

Andrew was next.

"Zippers make a zipping sound when they go up and down," he said.

"That's what I said," I said.

"You said 'Onomatopoeic,'" said Patrick.

"Onomatopoeic means that the word sounds like the noise it makes," I said.

"I know," said Andrew, "But you took my answer."

"Then think something else up," I said. He looked really nervous so I whispered a lie to him, "It's the initials of the inventor. Z.I.P."

"It's the, uh, initials of the inventor. Z.I.P. Zachary Ichabod Peterson."

We continued around the circle with everyone giving their made-up answers. When it came time to vote we reminded everyone how to do it. You vote for the person who you think gave the right answer, unless you had the right answer. Then you vote for yourself. If someone gave the right answer before you could you vote for yourself and that person.

On the count of three we all showed who we had voted for. Almost everyone voted for me. But no one had the right answer, apparently.

"Who had the right answer?" we asked.

Since everyone knew how to play the game except Andrew, we all turned on him. I grabbed his card. He had the right answer.

"Why didn't you vote for yourself?" we asked.

"I didn't know I had the right answer," he said.

"But your card had the answer on it," we said.

"But so did everyone else's," he defended himself.

I showed him my card that read, "Bluff your way out of this one."

"Oh," he said quietly.

He had voted for David who gave some elaborate schpeal about the zipper being a German word. He threw in a whole bunch of dates and things like that to sound official. Everyone else knew it was bogus. Except for Andrew.

He had the right answer and knew I gave the right answer and didn't vote for me, when almost everyone did.

We had a good laugh over that. Andrew was more than happy to excuse himself after that round.

He did redeem himself in my eyes, though, by fixing the bathroom sink with a Zip-it. Our sink has been irreparably clogged for quite some time. We had recently used up the last of our Liquid Plummer or Drain-o or whatever it is that we use and it did no good whatsoever. So we were complaining about it when we went to dinner at Andrew's parents' house sometime a few weeks ago.

Aunt Nicki was there and said that she had found these things in Target that you just shove down the drain and pull it up and all the icky gunk comes with it.

So on Tuesday Andrew asked us to stop by Target on our way home from the library to see if we could find one.

I walked straight to the bathroom/laundry/cleaners aisle and looked up and down every shelf. I couldn't find anything like it. I didn't want to ask a sales clerk because I didn't really know what I was looking for myself. Instead I thought back to that conversation.

"I found it in the back of the store by the..." I can hear Aunt Nicki saying and then everything goes black.

"In the back of the store by the... That's not a very helpful memory," I told myself replaying the memory over and over again, trying to dig deeper for more information. It didn't work.

Eventually we just gave up and went home.

Later, in desperation, we took a trip to Wal-Mart and walked up and down the aisles there. We found nothing.

"Where did Aunt Nicki say it was?" Andrew asked me.

"In the back of the store by the..." I said.

"The what?" he asked.

"That's all I've got."

"Maybe plumming?" he suggested, "That's at the back of the store."

So we walked back to the home improvement section, looking up and down each aisle. And there it was, in the back of the store by the plumming stuff.

Come to think of it, I think that's what Aunt Nicki had said in the first place.

We bought one and Andrew volunteered to do it. You know how guys are when they get those manly urges and they just have to kill something...fix things...cook outdoors...

Let me tell you, these Zip-it! things work. And I'm so glad Andrew was the one to use it and not me because we found something similar to what the lady found in this video in our sink.

So now our sink is draining nicely. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah!

Lions and tigers and tyrannosaurids, oh my!

We went to BYU's Earth Science Museum for playgroup today. It's not all that big so even though the kids had fun their fun lasted for about 10 minutes. We walked through the museum looking at all the rocks and the dinosaur bones and even got to touch some fossils.

'Dem bones, 'dem bones, 'dem dry bones!

Rachel was much more interested in touching the plastic palm trees than she was in touching any old fossil. She has this tree fixation recently.

My, what big teeth you have!

After that one quick walk through we were done. The museum is small and it was rather crowded. A school class was on a field trip so there were nine year olds with cell phones and iPods everywhere snapping pictures of dinosaurs and jamming away. One particular student must have thought that we had come along as chaperones because she kept coming up to ask us questions.

"Do you have a pencil?"

"Where can I find the biggest mammal?"

"I have to go to the bathroom."

Eventually the needy little girl found a real chaperone and left us alone. We were amazed though at how many kids had electronic devices connected to their ears. I was amazed at how they were pushing aside our little babies to get by us. Kids these days!

After we had finished our short time with the dinosaurs we decided to go to the Bean Museum as well. We had driven quite a ways to get to BYU and weren't ready to go home quite yet.

I think the kids were more excited about the Life Science Museum than they were about the dinosaur museum anyway.

There is an amazing display up in the main room right now of lions and wolves and things donated by Ken Behring. They are displayed in a very lively fashion. Rachel just wanted to see the moose opposite of the exibit.

What lion, mom? How about that moose?

It was fun to see how much more Rachel was interested in the animals this time around than she was the last time we went to the museum. She's getting to be such a big girl!

If you give a baby a muffin

Rachel had a muffin for breakfast this morning. She picked it up and took a big bite, smashing half of it into her right hand. Then she picked it up again and took a big bite, smashing most of the rest of it into her left hand. The rest was left all over the table.

She really wanted to eat it but she couldn't figure out how because she had already filled her "storage units" full to overflowing.

Rachel's hands often store things for her. For later. She always reserves 1 or more pieces of whatever she was eating just in case she gets hungry later. So, if she happened to be eating Trix, she'll keep 1 or 2 in each hand as she goes about her day. At first it is hard for her to play because she has to hold onto her Trix. She'll use just her index finger and thumb and can't get a whole lot done. Then 10 minutes later she'll forget and accidentally pop open her hands, exposing her hidden treats. She'll get all excited and eat them and clap her hands, hoping for more. Ten minutes later, she'll open her other hand and surprise herself with yet another handful of treats.

We try to avoid this since it makes things sticky, but she's so good at sneaking away with handfuls of food. I can wash her hands and empty her storage units and then find her with food in them a few minutes later. She scavenges. Under the high chair. On the table. The cracks in the kitchen floor. Gross, I know.

So anyway, this morning she had filled her storage units up so full that she couldn't even risk using her index finger and thumb to grab more crumbs of muffin.

Every time I took a bite of my muffin she would whimper.

"You have some muffin right there, Rachel," I said, giving her a bit of her muffin crumbs from off the table.

She looked at me like I was talking crazy. Eventually, though, she gave up trying to hoard half her breakfast and ate (most of the) rest of her muffin.

New Car Seat

Our new car seat arrived today. Getting a new car seat wasn't really part of our agenda. In fact, our original plan was for Rachel to stop growing so that she could just keep using her infant seat until we left for Egypt. After all, she can technically use that seat until she's a year old and she won't even be 13 months when we move to Cairo. We totally could have done it...

Except that she already passed the height limitation two months ago--she pulls her feet up with her hands when we put her in the car so that we don't squish them against the seat. And the buckles are increasingly difficult to do up. We have them almost as loose as they can go and I still find myself having to tug and pull and say, "Suck it in, girl! Suck it in!" Her head almost reaches the top of her seat.

It was time.

Rachel was very excited when the mailman came to the door. She clapped her hands when the doorbell rang and pointed to the door. She thought this would be a good opportunity for her to get to see the outside world. It was a rainy day today and she was feeling cooped up.

Unfortunately she was eating lunch and was strapped in her highchair so I went to the door without her. The minute she realized this she threw her cracker on the floor and started screaming.

"I didn't wake the baby, did I?" asked the poor postman.

"No," I said over her shrieking, "She's just...uh...screaming. We were just having lunch."

"Oh, good. When I heard her crying I thought it was my fault. Sign here, please."

Well, it kind of was your fault, Mr. Postman. If you hadn't have come to the door she wouldn't have remembered that she wanted to go outside and then wouldn't be thinking she was hard done by and thereby wouldn't be screaming. No matter. We soon had a big, mysterious box in the living room. Rachel stopped screaming, pointed and said, "Ooooh!"

She had suddenly lost her appetite.

After somehow convincing her to finish her cracker, now twice dropped on the floor, I washed her off and let her investigate. She walked around all four sides of the box, licked it a couple of times, picked at the tape, tried to knock it over, banged on it like a drum, and scratched at some stickers.

I got out a pair of scissors and sliced open the top of the box and revealed, surprise!, a car seat. Just like the one pictured on the box.

Rachel was still surprised, and very excited. She wanted to sit in it right away. She loves small-person chairs. Don't judge us, but sometimes we have lunch in our pyjamas; it's not that we're too lazy to get dressed it's that we're too busy to get dressed.

Let me think about this...

Yes! It will do!

What do you mean, "Don't do this in the car?"

After playing on her car seat for a few minutes Rachel remembered the box. This next series of pictures I like to call "Rachel discovers box."

Hey! I think I could fit inside this thing!

Promise you won't close me in, okay?

It seems pretty sturdy.

Hey! You trapped me!


If I blow a kiss to you, will you take me out?

That's strange. Bribery usually works. Now how do I get out of here?

We played in the box all day. And since Rachel was so content playing, that means she stayed in her pyjamas all day. Gotta love days like that, don't you? One day I'm sure she'll be happy to play without me sitting there watching her. The minute I get up to do something productive she would flip out, so mostly I sat and watched her play all day, ready to take the block or ball she was handing me. Ready to give it back two seconds later. Ready to give her a reassuring smile every five seconds she lifted her head to make sure I was still there, not doing anything but watch her. Heaven forbid I should read or sew or write or go to the bathroom. Seperation anxiety is great, but you have to think outside of the box.

I happen to like being in the box, mom!

There are times I enjoy the separation anxiety thing. Like today when I said, "Okay, I need to go," and Rachel flipped out. And on Saturday night when we left her with Grandma (Heiss) so that we could go to stake conference and she flipped out. It makes me feel like she wants to be with me...and somehow that translates in my mind as doing a good job.

The times I don't like it are when she doesn't want me to hold her or play with her but she wants me close by. She wants to play alone, but I can't do my own thing. She has me all day long, and yet will scream if I leave her perphery for a split second.

I realize that this is a perfectly normal stage for children to go through, but honestly, Rachel, just because everyone else is doing it...

Spinning around in circles

Sometimes when it's too icky to go outside we have to think up ways to turn our house into an amusement park. It isn't that we don't have downtime because we do: we read stories, we play quietly with baby dolls, we sing songs and play hand games. The thing is, though, that Rachel is very active and can only do quiet activities for so long before she has to get some energy out. That is why we like the park so much.

Yesterday evening was pretty gross, weather wise. A thick cloud of dust had settled over our valley and, although we braved the dust and went for a short pre-bedtime walk, we couldn't even have our windows open. We could taste the dust in the air. It was gross.

So we stayed inside. To help Rachel get her wiggles out, Andrew spun her on our big, black rocking chair. We do that from time to time. She loves it! She'll sometimes go over to the chair and rock it back and forth or will walk around, spinning herself. It's more fun when Daddy does it, though, because she goes faster and doesn't have to work at all.

We're starting to go fast!

Yay! That's fun!

Thanks, Daddy!

And this is my favorite picture of them all. She's just so cute!

Okay, I'm ready for more!