She likes folding things...

For months now, Miriam has been balling up her artwork and calling it "folding." She finds it very offensive if anyone suggests that she is "crinkling it up" or "ruining it." It's just folding—she likes folding things. Her words, I believe, were, "It's just yat I like folding fings!" (Yat and fings being that and things, respectively.)

Brilliant sunset one minute, wadded up purple paper the next

House Tour, Part III

So, here's our kitchen—where everything finally has a place (more or less). It's galley-style, so it opens up from our dining room and then pops out by our front door.

Here's the view from the dining area:

Conference, day one

We're coming into midterms here and Andrew is incredibly busy. By extension I am also incredibly busy, pull 12-14 hour shifts of full-time parenting during the day and always on call at night. This week was awfully tiring so I was looking forward to having Andrew home this weekend but, alas, he had a big study group thing and was gone all afternoon. At least we had him home for the morning.

He left shortly after President Monson announced the new ages for missionaries, which was a pretty exciting announcement. He then set up his phone to play conference while he drove to campus (since General Conference isn't on any local radio channels here), leaving me with the girls and the baby and a huge pile of clean laundry to fold.



I saved the laundry specifically for the morning session of General Conference because I can simultaneously listen and fold superbly well.

Relief Society vs. Priesthood

On Thursday night I had Homemaking Family, Home and Personal Enrichment Night a Relief Society activity (I love the simplicity of that, I really do). Andrew was hoping to keep the girls at home and send me to the church by myself but that would mean driving in the dark and, well, I'm still not very fond of driving. I might be the only person in the world who relishes every red light they hit. I'm finally able to let the steering wheel slide through my hands to correct my trajectory after a turn, but it squeaks as it does because my hands are so sweaty from being so nervous. I've driven by myself before but that was during the day and I didn't think I was up for a twenty minute drive, alone, at night.

There's one other Mormon in our neighbourhood so I sent her a message to see if I could just catch a ride with her, but she didn't get back to me in time so I ended up driving to the church...but I made Andrew and the girls come with me so that Andrew could drive home afterwards, or at least coach me while I drove home.

The girls went to the nursery to play with the babysitters. Andrew went into a classroom to read this book he's supposed to have read by tomorrow. I went into the cultural hall with Benjamin.

We had a lovely dinner—Hawaiian haystacks with pumpkin rolls for dessert—and then our first class of the evening was a crock pot cooking class and the instructor had four different dishes for us to try. We were all laughing about that at our table.

My friend Magi said, "My husband's going to be like, 'So, how was your evening? Did you have a good time?' and I'm going to be like, 'Yeah, it was really...fulfilling.'"

Laundry and Lawn Mowing

For the first time in our married lives we have a lawn to mow—granted it's about 50% wild onion, 25% clover, 15% other stuff, and 10% grass, but that's just kind of how it grows out here—and until today Andrew'd been the only one to mow it. He was rather excited to mow it at first, declaring he'd do it Saturday, which I'm sure he fully intended to do.

Two weekendss, ago, however, I was sick so he spent his Saturday painting the shed and watching the kids and he ran out of time to mow the lawn. He'd do it the following weekend, he promised.

Last weekend, Andrew was sick and I was still coughing so neither of us mowed the lawn.

This weekend isn't quite here yet but it's going to be a busy one. Want to know how I know?

It's General Conference weekend—that's a four hour commitment on Saturday (six for Andrew) and four more hours on Sunday; throw in homework and the weekend is pretty much booked—that's how I know. And because I want Andrew to be able to enjoy conference as much as the rest of us, without sacrificing too much of his homework time, I mowed the lawn for him.

After all, when my little brother-in-law had a laundry mishap (he washed a pen with his clothes; bad mistake) and a friend on Facebook quipped, "Good thing you're getting married so you won't have to do laundry ever again!" my mom pointed out that Andrew helps me do laundry all the time so Jacob will likely end up helping Shayla with the laundry, too—because my mother-in-law raises good men. Andrew will start a load (like he did tonight (sometime I think he starts the laundry simply to light a fire under me so that I'll finish it)) or he'll switch it over or help fold. He's even been known to do the whole process from start to finish without me ever lifting a finger.

Happy October!

"I can't believe it's a new year!" Rachel proclaimed excitedly after getting home from school.

Since beginning kindergarten she's been acutely aware of the calendar. She was wondering aloud all weekend what the calendar board was going to look like when she arrived at school on Monday morning. And she was not disappointed—"Even the cafeteria looked different!" she squealed.

"We should start some new year traditions," Rachel suggested at dinner. "Like, Miriam and I can always wear the same shirt on the new year and we can make tuna fish sandwiches for dinner and then maybe we can carve pumpkins. Do people always have pumpkins for the new year?"

I explained the difference between a new month and a new year but it didn't deaden her excitement about the day at all. Mostly she was simply excited about the things she was already doing (like wearing the same shirt as her sister and eating tuna fish sandwiches) but threw in a couple of hopeful ideas (like getting pumpkins) in case I got caught up in her excitement. I didn't.

Instead of carving the pumpkins that we didn't have we went for a walk. It wasn't a big excursion—just up and down our street—but the girls were jumping with joy the whole way. It's a new year month after all. What could be more exciting than that?

I'll tell you—pumpkins have started slowly springing up in our neighbours' yards.

It began a few days ago (Thursday, I think it was). We were loading the kids up in the van when Miriam bailed out of her car seat, jumped out of the van, and began bouncing up and down while screaming for joy: "Yay! Yay! Yay! It's my birthday! I can't believe it—I'm three now!"

Benjamin is not excited about this as his sisters are

She was confused and disappointed when we informed her that it was not, in fact, her birthday.

She pointed to a pile of pumpkins in the yard next door as if they explained everything and said, "But Mom...pumpkins!"

She knows her birthdate; she'll tell people, "My birthday's name is October 25th" (she says the same thing about our house, "My address's name is 36 Buzzing Bee Drive" (disclaimer: not our actual address)) but she doesn't have any concept of time or dates, aside from that her birthday happens when there are pumpkins and on Sundays she gets to wear a pretty dress and go to church.

Story time for Benjamin

Benjamin is easily overstimulated. He loves books, for example, but if he sits on my lap while I read picture books he gets hyper (jerky movements/fast breathing) and spitty. He's fine for longer books when he can look at the same page for a minute but if we're reading a little board book and I'm flipping the page every few seconds he wigs out and starts throwing up everywhere.

We read The Bear Went Over the Mountain today, for example, and that was far too much for him since I was singing the words and had to turn the pages to keep in time with the music. He was fussing and puking by the time we finished.

So usually he gets to lie in my lap and look up at the cover of the book while we read and he seems to enjoy that quite a bit.

We read a book called Colors (by Charles Harper) next. I'm a little torn over his illustrations. Some of them I like a lot. Others I don't. Others I like but wonder why he included them in a board book for babies (the tan page, for instance). Benjamin was completely transfixed by the cover so when Miriam and I had finished reading it and looking at the pictures we decided to let Benjamin have a turn.

We put him on the floor for tummy time and propped the book up in front of him (something both my girls enjoyed as babies as well).

We let him soak up each picture...spending as much time on each page as he needed. This part was difficult for Miriam because she felt he should "read" faster. He's just a slow reader, what can I say?

He was really quite enamoured with this book, though.

House Tour, Part II

Today I'll show off our bedroom/office/nursery, where we keep our bed, our books, and our baby. I went to an interior design class last weekend and picked up a few tips (it was only an hour long) and have been trying to apply them around the house. I'm still not very good at it but I think I like this wall a whole lot:

Don't worry; the baby's fine—Miriam's just playing doctor

Monkey Business

When we first found out we was going to have a boy we were gifted a monkey outfit. It was the first outfit we got for him and it changed my mind about boy clothes—you mean, they make cute stuff for boys?!

And then Benjamin, the silly guy, came far too early to fit in that 0-3 month monkey outfit, so the same person who had given us the original outfit ran to the store and found a preemie monkey outfit for Benjamin to wear.

June 24, 2012 (3 weeks old)

Now that Benjamin's wearing cloth diapers he's big enough to fill out at 0-3 month onesie (cloth diapers make your bum look big) so I put him in his monkey outfit for church today but before we left I took some pictures of Benjamin with his old monkey outfit.

Getting ready for church

This Sunday we weren't nearly as popular on Skype as last Sunday so I thought I'd try something new with my "spare" time and actually do my hair before going to church. A novel idea, I know.

I broke out the curling iron Andrew gave me for my birthday over a year ago (and that I've used on my own hair only once or twice before) and got three curls in before Miriam entered the bathroom.

"Mom! You're curling your hair! Will you curl my hair, too?" she exclaimed, plopping herself in front of me expectantly.

So I began curling her hair, leaving my three curls dangling limp and lonely on one side of my head.

No sooner had I put three or four curls in her hair when Rachel wandered into the bathroom. "Oh, wow! Miriam—you look beautiful! And, Mom, one side of your head looks nice, but the other side...well, I'm sorry to say this but you forgot to curl it."

"I didn't forget," I told her. "I was just interrupted."

"Oh. Will you curl my hair, too?"

So I finished curling Miriam's hair and then started on Rachel's. Both of these girls have rather long hair. Miriam's is relatively easy to curl because its still baby fine. Rachel's on the other hand took quite a bit of work and then the curls started falling out right away because I didn't have any product on hand to spray them stiff—so we threw her hair in a ponytail and let the curls play with the tips of her hair. She was pleased with the look (even if you can't see her curls in the picture).