Christmas Pictures

All right, so please indulge me for a bit here. Since none of my own family was with me for Christmas, I'm going to post a ton of pictures of the event. Sorry if that's terribly boring for any of the rest of you.

Having said that, we had a great Christmas. It took Bentley two days to open all his presents, and we finally finished opening Kendra's presents for her on the 27th (they were becoming too big a temptation for Bentley!). Everyone was very generous and kind to us (as you'll be able to see!). Craig's parents spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with us and we had a super-fun time. I especially enjoyed kicking back and letting Craig and his mom bake all the pies AND make Christmas dinner. They are too kind to me! One of these days I'm going to need to buckle down and actually learn how
to bake... But not this year!


Kendra looks longingly at the presents.


Looks like Santa came in a big way!


We're happy because the children are nestled all snug in their beds


Kendra thinks that she is a present. (Note that she can still drool more than any other baby...!)


Bentley plays with Kendra's toys while she plays with Bentley's toys. And everyone's happy!


Bentley practices his hammering skills. He wants to help Daddy around the house...




Kendra's presents are routinely bigger than she is!






Ironically, Kendra is practicing standing up on the box of the toy that's supposed to help her stand up...


Kendra looks in awe at her new baby doll.


We proudly sport our new, matching Bay Hay & Feed t-shirts. I miss Bainbridge!

Standards

My Mom is a pro at loading the dishwasher. If there were an Olympic event for cramming every single possible dirty dish into a dishwasher, my Mom would win, no contest. They wouldn't even need judges or scores or anything, she'd just win. When we were kids and we landed “dishes” on the chore chart, we were never allowed to start the dishwasher until Mom had had a chance to inspect and add whatever dishes we’d either missed or didn’t think there was room for. Even this last time my parents visited me here, I was still impressed with how much my Mom managed to put into my tiny dishwasher (I would have just done two loads—- what a waste!).

I don't think I have any hope of ever rising to my mother's level in this department. However, I have discovered my own little quirk when it comes to doing dishes. I HAVE to have the spoons separated. I HATE it when they’re stuck together, because then I just know that they didn’t get clean and I need to wash them all over again. I have this elaborate method of putting silverware into the little silverware pockets so that the spoons are never allowed to find each other and, well, spoon. We all have to have our own standards for these things.

Pictures

I have a hard time getting pictures of Bentley these days. Getting him just to hold still is tricky, and then convincing him to remove his binky and smile is bordering on the impossible. So I was pleased with how well these two pictures turned out. (No, I don't let him watch Cars all day long-- really!) And since I'm posting pictures, I may put up one of Kendra, too. Enjoy!

Writer's Block?!?!?!

So I've been trying to write my Christmas newsletter, and I have to admit, it's not going well. I feel like it's a huge (read: REALLY LONG) list of everything we've done over the last two years (since I never got around to sending one out in 2007) and there's nothing very personal about it and it's boring. So I think I have writer's block over it or something. But every time I think of something personal or funny or whatever that might make the newsletter worth reading, I realize that I put that on the blog. So if I put it in the newsletter, too, it will just be a repeat and THAT would be totally lame. So now I'm leaning more towards just sending out a family photo and calling it good. I don't know. We still haven't managed to take a family picture, either, but at least the black eyes have vanished, so we'll look a bit healthier when we do finally get around to it!

The funny thing is that I love writing this stuff usually! So I'm not sure why it feels so difficult this time around... Anyway, I'll get something done eventually. I promise!

Patriotism (or something)

So I’ve noticed a trend in the various garbage pickup services around here. Their names are American Disposal, Patriot, and USA. What’s up with the garbage market having a monopoly on patriotism??? I don’t see anyone else trying this tactic—-realtors, clothing manufacturers, shoe stores, coffee houses… Nope, only the garbage men are proud to be Americans. What’s up with that?

Black-Eyed Smiths

We are looking very beat up these days. On Thanksgiving, Bentley managed to run into the corner of the table and now he has a big bruise just below his eye. Then on Friday, Craig was breaking sticks for our fire (I LOVE OUR FIREPLACE), and one of them snapped up and scratched him right under his eye. And then this afternoon I was supposed to be watching Kendra on the bed but she managed to fall off it anyway (I did dive across the bed trying to catch her, but to no avail) and somehow she scraped herself right under her eye! I considered asking Craig to punch me so I’d fit in, but I figure I’m klutzy enough that I probably don’t need the help. As if this all weren’t pathetic enough, I was hoping to take a family picture this week to send out for our Christmas cards! I guess we’ll have to wait a bit on that one, or else I’m sure we’ll have some social worker knocking on our door… (If they haven’t already spotted my blog. Maybe they’re on their way now!)

Kendra the Fashion Plate

One of the really fun things about having kids is getting to put them in really cute clothes. I have to especially enjoy it now while I can pretty much dress them in whatever I want and they don’t usually have opinions about it. (Or if they do, tough luck because I’m bigger and stronger!) Anyway, I’ve got a small photo collection of some of my favorite outfits on Kendra, so I’ll post a few.





It was really hard to get her to leave her hat on long enough to get a good picture.



And, no, I didn’t manage to put on make-up for this picture. Oops! But you can see my new haircut (back when it was new), so that makes up for the lack of mascara, right?

And last but not least, I have to post this picture because it is SO AWFUL. Craig and I are both chronic blinkers when it comes to having our picture taken, so our poor kids never had a chance. Add to that Bentley having a snotty nose, and, well, yeah. It’s horrible. But really funny, too, if you ask me!

My Husband, the Closet Workaholic

Craig probably spent about thirty hours last week working on the set for our Stake’s production of Savior of the World. Yes, THIRTY HOURS. And that was in addition to his full-time job! So I didn’t see much of my husband all week. And I have to admit that that kind of sucked (especially when I realized that my back was getting sore because I had to lift both our children all day long and never got any breaks!).

But the flip-side to all this manifested itself Saturday when the rest of the cast got to see the set for the first time. I have to admit, it was pretty fun hearing how impressed everyone was and knowing that it was all my husband’s doing. Betsy Heyward commented, “Craig is incredible.” I just smiled and told her that I’d always thought so. My friend Elizabeth once mentioned that when you like a guy, just about anything he can do really well becomes terribly sexy. Even construction.

Rather than try to describe the set, I’ll just put up a couple pictures; it’s not done yet, but in the last picture you can see four of the five arches, so you get a pretty good idea of what it looks like. Bear in mind that Craig designed all this, gathered all the materials, bought what wasn’t donated, organized all the labor, and just pretty much worked his tail off. Isn’t he great?

Cricket Baseball

I know what you’re thinking. “Cricket basically IS baseball, so that makes for a pretty redundant title for your post!” Would that that was what I was referring to. No, the cricket I’m talking about is those ugly insects that are basically cockroaches that hop and also seem to really like my basement. If you’re a regular reader, you know that I was rejoicing in the cold weather because it meant the end of the nasty little things, but I guess one decided to try hibernating indoors this winter. I discovered it relaxing on the love sac (ON MY LOVE SAC!!!) right in front of the heating vent, probably considering itself to be in a little grasshopper paradise. (Yes, I realize there is a difference between crickets and grasshoppers, but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t care, either. So there.)

I grabbed the fly swatter and began poking at the thing trying to get it off the love sac. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want squished cricket all over it. The stupid thing was trying to hop but couldn’t manage to get the right footing for it or something, so it was awkwardly scrambling around while I tried to give it a little direction. Finally it managed a good jump right as I swung with the fly swatter and—thwack!—you have the reason for this post’s title! The smacking sound it made as it hit the opposite wall pleased me no end. Unfortunately, the opposite wall is dark wood paneling (actually pretty much the whole room is, except for the brick fireplace; some day we’ll paint it), so after it landed over there, it was really hard to find. After glaring into the dark corners (why can’t these things ever happen during the day, or else when Craig’s home to take care of them???), I finally located the pest. Then I beat the crap out of him with the fly swatter. Not one to take any chances, I then proceeded to vacuum him up. For the record, I’m not completely insane; I’ve seen bugs that I was quite certain were dead wait a few minutes and then crawl hastily away. I’m not sure if they just recovered very quickly or were actually that crafty, but either way it’s creepy. Also, I’d been meaning to vacuum that room all week anyway, so this was as good a reason as any to finally do it.

Anyway, it’s a really long story with not much point to it, but the point I hope you do take away from all this is: crickets, beware. And Seattle Mariners, if you need someone, I’ve got a killer swing and I’m available.

Bentley-isms

I do love to hear how things sound when Bentley tries to say them. Learning toddler-ese is definitely its own skill and mothers are the closest thing to fluent that there is (although only with her own kids, of course).

So today, I was singing the Pirate theme song—“Yo ho yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!”—and Bentley joined in enthusiastically with “Ho yay ho yay!” Pretty close, I guess.

And then the other day, Bentley wanted me to sing “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree”—but what he actually said was, “Pock porn!” What are they teaching the kids in nursery these days? A few other favorites: “pookie” means “poopy” and instead of peek-a-boo, it’s now “peeky-boo!”

Relaxin

So I’ve read it in books—when you nurse your baby, your body produces a hormone called relaxin. (It could be spelled “relaxen” or some other way; I’m not entirely sure…) You can probably guess what this hormone does. Naturally, I never really gave it much thought.

Until a few nights ago when I woke up at 3:00 in the morning because Bentley was crying “Honey!” from his room. “Honey” is his version of “hungry.” And while I have occasionally heard him say that when he’s first waking up from a nap, I have never heard him yell it in the middle of the night. I didn’t really know what else to do, so I got him up, strapped him in his highchair and fed the poor hungry kid some bread and butter. Bentley thought all this was great fun, especially when cars drove by and their headlights shone into the kitchen window (still no blinds or curtains—oops). It was all I could do to encourage him to hurry up and EAT so I could go back to bed. Finally he was done, I put him back to bed and then dragged myself to bed. And then I proceeded to lie there wide awake. Finally, a half hour later, Kendra woke up, too, so I went ahead and fed her and then—poof!—I went right to sleep! At least, until Craig’s alarm went off less than an hour and he proceeded to want to discuss what he should wear that day and ask if he could turn on the lights to find it; why does my entire family conspire against me?

But I digress.

The point in all this, is that I had never really thought much about this amazing little relaxin hormone, but apparently I need to start giving it some more credit, because in all my time of middle-of-the-night feedings, I have never once had trouble falling asleep again. Until I was feeding a toddler and therefore I didn’t get my little kick of hormonal relaxers. Clearly I need to start appreciating this more! Hurray for hormones! At least, hurray for relaxin!

Pictures

So, maybe it's a week late, but I decided to have a little photo shoot in the backyard anyway. Enjoy the costumes-- I had to bribe my son with candy to get him to wear his again!

Crawling

Kendra has been working on crawling. If she’s properly motivated (i.e. if Mom’s cell phone or something else that she is NEVER supposed to touch is just out of reach), then she can scoot forward in a great little army crawl. Occasionally she’ll even manage to get her knees underneath her for a bit, but it’s nothing terribly impressive, to tell you the truth. Bentley didn’t really crawl until he was about nine months old, so I wasn’t too worried about how slow Kendra’s been. Until yesterday, when I watched a couple of my friends’ babies and saw how good they both were at crawling (one is two months older than Kendra, the other is one month younger, and the older one has been crawling for forever now). So I decided I should be better about putting her on the floor so she can improve her crawling.

And then, tonight, as I tried to do this, I realized why Kendra is so bad at crawling still. His name is Bentley. During the hour that she was on the floor, I sat with my arms flung out around her so that Bentley could not: a) take away whatever toy she was scooting towards; b) step on her; c) lay down on her (he thinks he’s sharing tummy time with her); d) head-butt her (that’s his version of a hug, so he meant well, but try explaining that to Kendra!). I also tried distracting Bentley by reading to him and giving him other toys, and finally wound up putting him in time out (lots of crying and pleas of “Saw-ee Mommy!” during those two minutes!). But the over all lesson that I got from this little venture is that Kendra may not be so hot at crawling, but by golly I keep her from being traumatized by her brother all day long. And that will just have to be good enough for now!

Food (or lack thereof)

Is it really horrible if I’m thinking about having cereal for dinner even though that’s what I ate for lunch? What if I had cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate for breakfast—does that make it better or worse?

Don’t worry, tomorrow I’ll cook actual food. Really!

Halloween

So it turns out that teaching your 2-year-old to say “Trick or treat” is really fun. But it also makes for some confusing lessons for the poor kid. I first tackled this project right after Bentley woke up from his nap, which was a bad idea because he was still a bit tired and grumpy. I asked him to say it and he began kicking and screaming, “NO TIG OH TWEET!” I took that as a good sign that he could in fact say the words, even if he didn’t want to. After that, all I had to do was explain the candy aspect of this holiday to him and then he was game.

A little later in the day, I decided it was time to review the principles of Halloween. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Okay, Bentley, now when we knock on the door, what do we say?
Bentley: Aaaaahhh… Candy!
Me: Well, no, they’re going to give you candy, but what do you say so they’ll give you candy?
Bentley (very confident this time): PLEASE!
Me: Oh, well, no, that’s normally what we say, and that’s a good answer, but this time we’re going to say “Trick or treat.” Can you say, “Trick or treat”?
Bentley: TIG OH TWEET!

The good news is that he was excited enough about the idea of getting candy that I was able to convince him to wear the hood of his cow costume and ALSO to leave his teddy and binky back at home. Candy is a great motivator, apparently. The bad news is that the camera battery was dead, so I never bothered to take any pictures. Sorry to all Grandmas…

We also forgot to ever buy one of those little pumpkin buckets, so I improvised by drawing two jack-o-lantern faces on a small paint bucket we had lying around (one face on either side). They turned out pretty good, so I was sort of proud of that. I guess that also made up for the fact that we never carved a pumpkin this year, too. That was on the ironic side—last year, we bought a pumpkin but couldn’t find our carving kit. I think we spent hours digging through closets looking for that thing, but it never turned up until a few months later when I pulled out a bin filled with winter clothes and there it was, nestled among the scarves and gloves. So this year, with the move and the unpacking, I found the carving kit just a few weeks ago, and I was good and carefully set it aside so we’d be sure to have it this time. So naturally, when we went grocery shopping, the store had no pumpkins! (This may be a good time to mention that I shop at the most ghetto grocery store EVER.) I meant to run out to another store some time, but it just never happened. So no pumpkin this year. But I have a great carving kit if you want to borrow it. I know exactly where it is. Tig oh tweet!

Absentee Blogger

So the weird thing that I’ve noticed since I started this blog and again since I’ve lost my internet connection and hardly ever actually write anything any more is how blogging changed the way I think. While I had internet, I was much more likely to view my life half-looking for things that might be interesting to write about. It’s kind of like a part of my brain was always scanning for interesting/entertaining thoughts to be shared. Now that I’m able to post so infrequently, that little scanner seems to have shut down. Does that mean that more of my brain is free to focus on other, more important things? I sort of doubt it, but that would be pretty cool, huh?

Anyway, I think I’ll try to start typing out posts on my computer which can all then be posted at the same time when I make it to a wi-fi spot. We’ll see how this goes or if it just ends up annoying me.

Tagged.

I have to admit that I never thought I’d be tagged. I have a hard time picturing people who even read this, to tell you the truth. So when I saw that my cousin Anne had tagged me, it made me laugh. And I can’t really ignore something that makes me laugh, so here I go with my own response to it all…

4 Random Things I Like About Craig
1. His shoulders. They’re just big and strong and make me feel safe.
2. Talking with him—we never seem to run out of things to say and he can always make me laugh
3. Swing dancing in the kitchen. We’re lousy at it, but it’s always fun.
4. His willingness to always pitch right in and do stuff (I usually have to whine a bit first); he’s just a really good example to me

4 Jobs I’ve Had
1. Front desk receptionist at Airborne Express, one of my favorite jobs ever (easy, but fun, great people to work with, and pretty interesting, too)
2. Teaching English 115 at BYU
3. T.A. for the Humanities department at BYU
4. Teaching humanities for NVCC this last summer

4 Movies I’ve watched More Than Once
1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
2. Moulin Rouge
3. Strictly Ballroom
4. About a Boy

4 TV Shows I Watch
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. Arrested Development
3. ER
4. Smallville

4 Favorite Foods
1. Chocolate
2. Brownies
3. Any pasta in a heavy cream sauce
4. Pizza

4 Places I’d Like to Visit
1. Anywhere in Africa
2. Jerusalem (so jealous of you, Rachael!!!)
3. Egypt (still jealous of Rachael)
4. Colmar, France (where the Isenheim Altarpiece lives)

4 Things I’m Looking Forward to in the Coming Year
1. Our first Christmas in our new home (and not traveling over the holidays for the first time)
2. Craig finishing building the set for the Stake musical so I can have him back again
3. Kendra’s first birthday
4. Summer vacation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4 People I Tag
1. Laresa
2. Carla
3. Liza
4. Anyone else who wants to bother (which I am totally stealing from Natalie)

Moved In

I’m gonna go ahead and claim that we’re unpacked.

Technically, there are two or three boxes full of old notebooks still lingering downstairs in the throwaway room that we have jokingly named The Library; the only other things in that room are two stuffed-full bookcases, a bunch of empty suitcases, and my vacuum. But those boxes can probably stay packed up for the next ten years without us missing them, so as far as I’m concerned, we are officially done unpacking. And not a moment too soon, either, since my parents arrive on Friday! I wish we would have time to paint our living room before they come, since it is still an abysmal pepto-bismol pink (including the ceiling—gross!), but I can’t see how we’ll possibly have time to do that. If it was just a matter of painting we might be able to pull it off, but the remains of the crown molding around the ceiling still need to be chipped off, parts of the pink flowered wallpaper are still clinging desperately to the wall, and then it all needs to be patched up and spackled and whatnot before we can finally start in with the actual paint. So, yeah, more work than what I have time for right now! But maybe before Thanksgiving we’ll manage to tackle that one.

The good news is that both the furnace and the oven are now working, and we didn’t need to replace either one of them! The furnace was probably the most obnoxious—a repairman told us it would be $800 to fix, but then suggested that Craig could save a lot of money by trying to tackle the job himself (which was very kind of him, and turned out to be good advice, too). Craig pulled off the main valve, which was supposed to need replacing, and then, on a whim, decided to open up the main line to see if the gas was even turned on. When no gas started pouring into our house, Craig called the gas company and managed to argue with someone until we were finally able to get them to come and turn the gas on again. (The people here before us hadn’t been paying their bills, which is why it had been turned off. The weird thing is that the gas company kept insisting it was still on, until Craig finally had this hard proof and threatened to sue them if our children got sick from sleeping in the cold!) After the gas was turned on, it turned out the furnace worked just fine. Wonder of wonders! And nice that it didn’t cost $800 after all… And it all got sorted out not a moment too soon, as the temperature dropped about twenty degrees the next night.

Now, if you know anything about me at all, you know that normally I hate it when the weather turns chilly. But even I can admit that having a working furnace made things seem a lot less horrible (at least, until we get our first bill and probably turn it back off again). And then the really good news was that it seemed to have killed off all the crickets—several of whom were sneaking into our house each night and totally creeping me out. So with the sudden chill, my normally gloomy outlook turned to cheers of, “Die, crickets, die!!!” And although normally I like the sound they make at night, when one managed to get in the hallway just outside my room and proceeded to chirp away loudly enough to wake both me and Craig at four on the morning… Yeah, that perky little chirping starts to get a bit annoying then. So I wasn’t sad to see them go. (I have to admit, hearing Craig kill the stupid thing in mid-chirp was oddly satisfying.)

So that’s it, I suppose, for now! We’re moved in, our house really feels like “home” and life is good. One of these days we’ll start tackling some more of the items on our list of projects, but for now, I’d like to just bask in the utter lack of boxes. Thank you, thank you.

...and the Bathroom.

I think the changes in the bathroom are even more significant. This room went from being horrible to being one of my favorite rooms in the house! ;) And can I just say how impressed I was with all the stuff Craig was able to do? Who just buys a new light fixture and installs it without hiring an electrician??? (Also tons of gratitude to my father-in-law who was a huge part of the entire endeavor-- I forgot to photograph it, but he actually managed to scrape all of those icky little flower decals off of the bathtub! I know I wouldn't have had that much patience-- he's amazing!)

By the way-- to all my friends, hopefully soon I can get into a groove of actually emailing people again. For now, please accept my apologies and know that if the library stayed open later, I would definitely be writing you!

The Kitchen

So, going with the idea that the pictures will say more than I can explain with words-- here's how our kitchen as morphed since we bought the house. It's not quite done yet-- I want to paint all the grooves in the cupboards blue, too, but that's low on the list of priorities... Still, hopefully you get the idea!

Moving Day

Well, just about everything has been crammed haphazardly into boxes. We've got a humongous truck parked outside. It must be moving day!

People are supposed to show up around 9:00 to help us load up the truck-- I hope they actually show up and we have enough help! Wish us tons of luck getting situated tonight!

(Bentley is totally excited about the truck, let me tell you!)

Can This Week Get Any Worse?

I have mastitis. Isn't that supposed to be something that cows get? What in the world is it doing plaguing me, especially this week when I really am just too busy for crap like this?

Anyway. I started to get worried last night when I had some pain. Then around midnight I realized that I couldn't sleep because I was shivering. My temperature was up to 99.6, so I put on my warm pajamas and tried to sleep some more. At 1:30 Kendra woke up to eat, and then my temperature was 101.5, so that's when I finally called a nurse.

Long story short, I got to drive myself to Urgent Care a half-hour away for a 3:00am appointment, where the doctor confirmed that Yes, I did have an infection, gave me some antibiotics, and sent me home to try to get some more sleep. (Yeah, right-- Kendra was up again at 6:00, and both kids were wide awake by 7:00.) I will say this, at least there's no traffic on I-66 at three in the morning. And the Urgent Care place was surprisingly efficient-- I was in and out in half an hour, so that was good, at least.

And now, I just put Kendra down for a nap, so I need to try and get Bentley to nap, too, so I can get some sleep.

Happy Birthday, Bentley!

It seems like barely yesterday I'd had what would prove to be one of the scariest and most rewarding days of my life. Steady labor and forty minutes of pushing culminated in an emergency c-section, that left me with a beautiful baby boy...

And then, I blinked and suddenly that you were a whole year old, and so happy and fun I could hardly wait to have another!



And now, here you are: two years old, and still my fun, sweet boy. It's hard to believe how much you've learned-- from discovering your hands to walking to talking-- in so little time! This coming year, I guess we'll work on how learning how to eat without smearing food all over your face... But for now, Happy birthday, Bentley! I love you!

Addendum

Well, after worrying a ton last night and finally deciding that I really needed Craig to take the day off today to help me with the kids, and various things like that, I woke up this morning to feed Kendra and discovered that... my ankle hardly hurt at all. So either I have the most mild sprain in the world, or maybe I'm just a big wimp. I'm not really sure. But I am really thankful that it feels as good as it does-- just a little stiff, and not nearly as flexible as normal. But manageable. Manageable is good. I'll keep icing, elevating, and taking ibuprofen, but things should be not too bad after all.

Anyway, I figured I should let you know before I milked this for more sympathy than it deserved!

Just When You Thought Life Couldn't Get Much Crazier...

... it throws a sprained ankle your way!

At least, that's Craig's diagnosis: swollen, hurts to put weight on it. Yeah, how ridiculous is this?

It all started with me trying to do too much. I was carrying Kendra's bumper set (which I have never unpacked and am looking forward to finally using once we move) down the stairs, along with a change of clothes for Craig, and planning to run right back up again and grab as much of the contents of Bentley's closet as I could carry to take to the house, thus saving myself a box or two of packing and unpacking. But as I was coming down the stairs, I somehow managed to trip right at the end. I'm still not entirely sure what went wrong-- I know that the diaper bag was on the bottom step and I was trying to decide if I should step to the side of it or just step over it, and somehow it got all messed up and before I knew it I was slammed against the gate kneeling haphazardly and awkwardly on top of the diaper bag. One of those horrid moments that takes your breath away AND hurts, but before I could even catch my breath again, both the kids started crying so I had to take care of them. Apparently watching mommy fall down the stairs is scary.

Anyway, No big deal, was all I thought at the time. Okay, that's not entirely true-- it hurt and I was annoyed, but I was walking around just fine, so I wasn't exactly worried or anything. I got the kids and the bumper set in the car, we headed to the house, and we got to work. I was smart enough to not try to do the heavy cleaning I'd planned to do, and instead opted for sitting in a chair screwing hinges back onto the cupboard doors (they're almost all hung again and my kitchen is starting to look very kitcheny!).

Three hours later I realized that I had a problem because the pain had gradually gotten worse and suddenly I could barely walk.

So, yeah, it looks like I've got a sprained ankle. First time, for what it's worth. (Yeah, not much. I know.) Could my timing possibly be any worse? Anyway, I'm home now, and the kids are in bed (thanks to Tom and Donna). So my job for tonight is to ice and wrap and hope this heals as fast as possible. Wish me luck.

Packing

So we have begun packing. I use the word "we" pretty loosely here, because what's actually happened is that I've packed a grand total of five boxes (six, if you count finally putting tape on the box of maternity clothes that I packed up months ago!), and Craig has probably packed about twenty. It turns out that he is WAY better at packing than I am. I have this weird need to look at everything before I put it in the box, which really slows down progress. Craig, on the other hand, manages to just throw stuff in, while simultaneously managing to carefully wrap anything breakable. It's truly an impressive sight.

The good news, though, is that our packing philosophies are basically opposites when it comes to unpacking-- that's when Craig wants to look at everything and ponder it before he decides where to put it, whereas I want to just throw it right back on the shelf it was on before just to get it out of the box. So the plan is for me to do most of the UNpacking, so I will be pulling my weight, eventually.

Meanwhile, Kendra is apparently worried that we'll leave her behind, because she managed to scootch herself into a box the other day. (And no, she doesn't count as one of the boxes that I've packed!)

Political Rant

(Disclaimer: if you don't agree with my politics, feel free to argue back! Should be fun, and we'll still be friends!)

So I have a guilty secret to confess. Ever since her article making fun of Mitt Romney as well as Mormons in general, I keep reading Maureen Dowd's op-eds in the New York Times. I don't know why I do it, because the woman is absolutely ridiculous. Even a fair number of liberals agree that she doesn't say much of anything worth considering seriously, but for some reason I keep reading her anyway. And she manages to make me angry every single time!

So now I'm responding to her most recent article, 'Barbies for War!'

It's supposed to be an attack on Sarah Palin, but mostly it comes across as an attack on Alaska. It's funny, because I know that your average New Yorker doesn't really understand that there's more to America than the Big Apple (and I of course exclude my three sisters from my huge generalization here-- they are neither average, nor average New Yorkers!). But to make fun of Palin because she was mayor of, "a town that is a soulless strip mall without sidewalks set beside a soulful mountain and lake," is just inane. Did she mock Bill Clinton for being from Arkansas, which is basically a soulless state with strip malls but minus the gorgeous scenery? Of course not. She loved Bill! And I'm sure that his experience as a governor more than qualified him to run a country, as has Obama's experience as a senator. The hypocrisy just goes on and on.

She also makes fun of Palin, as well as your average Alaskan, for enjoying hunting. Now, I make no claims to like hunting. But I cannot for the life of me understand why so many liberals feel that hunting is considered so evil/white trash/below the likes of Maureen Dowd, but killing unborn babies is every woman's right. Does anyone else think that's a little weird? Or that society's morals are insane? Because if you gave me the option of killing a moose or a baby, I would have to choose killing the moose. (And I might add that our methods for killing moose are considerably more humane than how we kill babies. I would love to see what PETA would say about sucking a moose's brains out with a vacuum.)

How do the books at Sarah Palin's Pentecostal Church make Palin any less desirable a candidate than the anti-American teachings of Jeremiah Wright? How do Dowd's mean and nasty comments about how mean and nasty Palin is prove anything? (And why is it so terrible if Palin "seems mean," but funny when Obama flips off Hilary and makes comments about lipstick on a pig?) Why is it that Troopergate is worth writing article after article about, but no one seems interested in Biden's plagiarized speech?

Ironically, for all the media's talk that McCain and Palin are avoiding the issues, the media doesn't seem to be too keen on actually talking about the issues, either. Unless by "issues" you mean Bristol Palin's baby. (But Ann Coulter already made that point, so I'm not being particularly original here.)

Anyway. I could go on and on, but those are the main points I needed to make. Next post I'll be back to talking about my kids and stuff, but this needed to be said.

Mad Skills

Bentley gets down on the floor to enjoy some playtime with Kendra.


It turns out that when I prop her up, Kendra can actually sit up for a bit! (She does better when Bentley isn't around to knock her over...)


She was almost as excited about this fact as I was!

Failure

Last Thursday I announced that I would cook dinner while Craig and his Dad continued to work on the house (Donna had to go to Enrichment; all other days she has faithfully worked on getting the house ready, too, just for the record). Since we only had three adults in Manassas, I figured it only made sense for me to take Kendra and Bentley home with me, too. No big deal, right?

Yeah, shoot me if I ever think that I can manage both kids while making enchiladas again. Maybe if I'd been cooking something that didn't require dipping my hands in a tomato-based mess of gloppiness, I could have managed, but not this meal, and not this night. In what I now realize was a major tactical error on my part, I decided to put Kendra in the highchair so that Bentley couldn't harass her. I should have put Bentley in the highchair, because then she would have been safe AND he would have been detained, but that didn't occur to me until AFTER Bentley had managed to trail cornflake crumbs from the table to the couch. And I'm not talking Hansel & Gretel breadcrumb trail. This basically looked like the yellow brick road.

Fortunately for my own sanity, once the enchiladas are put together, they need to bake for 45 minutes, so that gave me time to put Kendra to bed (the phrase "safe and sound" has a whole new meaning now that I'm always looking for places where Bentley can't reach her!), and also time for vacuuming. And Bentley loves it when I vacuum, so we had fun cleaning together. So with all that, by the time Craig and his Dad arrived for dinner, the house was no longer appalling. I won't go so far as to call it clean-- I couldn't do all that AND clean up the dishes I'd used to make dinner-- but at least it wasn't embarrassing.

Next time I'll just order a pizza.

"This one likes me!"

I believe that the quote I used for this post is what my Grandpa Hansen said when he discovered that his second grandchild, Tracy, didn't have a problem with grandfathers like Leah had had (Leah quickly got over this as soon as she saw how much attention her grandfathers suddenly lavished on Tracy!). This quote sums up how I feel about Kendra these days. I'm not sure what triggered it, but she has suddenly become a completely devoted Mama's Girl. A smile from me is all it takes to get her to beam and giggle in sheer joy, and if I should make a move towards the door or even (horrors!) walk through the door and out of her sight, she has a complete meltdown.

Separation anxiety: it isn't any thing too unusual in babies. But Bentley never had it, so it's not something I've ever experienced. Bentley never cared a bit if I suddenly walked out of the room. He cared even less if he left the room that I was in! I sort of wondered why it was that some people had babies who liked them so much, but figured I just wasn't that lucky and in the meantime, I may as well enjoy being able to hand him off to someone when needed without listening to any crying. But now that Kendra is the complete opposite, it's proving interesting. There are times where I want to yell over her tears, "I'm right here! I'll be back in eyesight in ten seconds, just deal already!" But at the same time, I have to admit that it's sort of nice feeling needed. This one likes me!

The 4th Stooge

Apparently slapstick humor is totally in when you're nearly two years old. Every so often, Bentley will randomly decide to smack my face and then burst into fits of laughter over it. Of course, I try to grab his hand and tell him in my very stern mommy voice that hitting is not funny. The last time this happened, he laughed even harder and began arguing, "Funny! Funny!" It was the first time he'd ever said that word before; how do you keep a straight face and argue against a new word?

Talent (Part 2)

I had to get Bentley up early from his nap today (which I hate), but what I saw when I got him pleased me no end: he'd managed to climb out of his bed, get all his books, and then was sleeping in the middle of them all. I'm not sure which made me happier-- the fact that he likes books (Yay, yay, yay!!!) or the fact that he got back into bed and actually napped!

Talent

So if there's one thing about being a mom that I think I'm pretty good at, it would have to be naptime. I may occasionally forget to feed my children (especially Bentley, since he is never hungry), and although I have great intentions of disciplining them and teaching them everything from the ABC's to the gospel, I'm afraid most of that hasn't exactly happened yet. But when it comes to getting my kids to nap, I'm a pro. Bentley usually takes a two hour nap (sometimes longer) and Kendra gets two of those, so at least they are well-rested!

Of course, this is also my greatest challenge, because it makes it really hard for me to ever leave the house. Like this morning-- I had great plans to go to Costco and possibly Wal-mart. I even thought about walking to Wal-mart (Costco is closer, but we need a gi-normous box of diapers, and I didn't want to try and get that home along with the two kids in the double stroller!)! But by the time I'd gotten Bentley and myself dressed, Kendra was getting fussy, which means she needs some sleep. And her naptime trumped going to the store. Maybe if the stuff I was planning to buy would have been stuff that we desperately needed, like if we were totally out of diapers, then I would have just kept her up. But when she's tired and getting cranky, there just didn't seem to be much point. So now Bentley is also napping, and I need to do the dishes and shower, and, time permitting, get a nap myself. Those are the three things that can only be done when Bentley is asleep. I suppose we'll get to Costco and Wal-mart some time later. Right.

Pics

Kendra takes advantage of Bentley napping to play with his stuff. Why is it your older sibling's toys are always so much more fun than your own?




Here you can see the gap in Bentley's teeth.



This is our primed kitchen wall (which Craig is painting cream-colored right now!). Look closely and you can see the sort of things that Craig does which prove that he knows how to make me happy.



Kendra giving me one of her "Yay, I'm healthy again" smiles.