Two in One Week!

And I've got one more for ya! I've got a lot of annoying doctor quotes up my sleeves, actually... But these are the only two I submitted, so will be the last of it (until my next kid, I guess!). <--- Um, that's not an announcement, don't worry!

Inconsistencies

Generally speaking, Craig is one of the most supportive husbands ever. On those days when I do nothing but read Dear Abby all day, his response runs towards, "Thanks for keeping the kids fed!" And when Ryder is sick and I'm exhausted from dealing with a grumpy baby all day, Craig just asks, "Little Caesar's tonight?" (These examples may or may not have both happened this week...) Craig is wonderful.

So the one thing that he is almost never supportive of surprises me: baked pumpkin seeds.

I'm not sure what about them he doesn't like. I do all the work, sorting them from the pumpkin goop, rinsing and drying, salting and baking. But every year as he carves our pumpkin and I begin picking out the seeds, his response is the same: "Don't bother doing that! Who cares about eating pumpkin seeds? They aren't even that good! We should just throw them away this year!"

And every year I ignore him and continue going about my work. And as I smell the warm saltiness of baking seeds in the oven, I'm always glad I did. But it's funny, don't you think? I can't say that I really mind, though.

More pumpkin seeds for me!

11 months!

Ryder is 11 months old today! I don't usually get around to blogging about stuff like this, but today is doubly momentous because he also just cut his first tooth, too! It's about time-- all the younger babies have had teeth for ages now! Not that I've been worried-- that's just how we do things in my family. But still, it was time.

The sad news is that in addition to the new tooth, Ryder also has a cold. The same one Bentley had last week, actually. So he's coughing like a seal and running a fever (102.8!). Usually I'm a fan of letting fevers run their course, but with the new tooth, too, I figured this little baby was miserable enough and needed some Tylenol. We'll see if that puts him in a better mood!

And now, for your enjoyment, here's a video I took of Ryder the other day doing his famous singing act:




I love my little singing Ryder!

Published!

That's right, folks, someone has finally recognized my writing talent and agreed to publish me! Except, unlike those other times, where I had to write whole essays of thoughtfulness, this time I just had to submit one sentence of obnoxiousness quoted to me by a doctor while I was in labor. It's for the website My OB Said What?!? and it will be posted on Saturday, the 29th.

Don't just stand there, go check it out! Now!


Oh, and on a more serious note. This article by Malcolm Gladwell about late bloomers gives me tremendous hope that some day I will write that novel. Maybe when the kids are all in school...

Lazy Day Picture Post

It's a gloomy, rainy day, I have nothing planned, and my house is a mess. So naturally I'm choosing to post pictures on the ol' blog. Because anything sounds more fun than cleaning, right now! Besides, Craig and I both just uploaded lots of pictures from his phone and my camera, so I have a lot to show you. Hope it's not too overwhelming!

Sorry, the whole "take a picture of the baby sleeping during church" still hasn't gotten old for me, yet!

And this time I managed to catch Daddy sleeping, too!

I love this cousin picture so much.

This one is pretty fun, too, actually. I especially love all the red!

Remember how I mentioned that Bentley turned 5 (um, a month ago)? Well, look-- we actually did celebrate that milestone! We even documented it, too:

His first model rocket. He was beyond excited about this...


This is what Bentley looks like when he's concentrating

This looked better before the gel oozed a bit. Oh, well, I try. Nice bat, huh?

Goofing around with Daddy. This is another picture I love.

One of the (many) favorite toys from Grandma & Grandpa

Time to blow out the candles!

We actually celebrated Bentley's birthday a day early. Because on his big day, our ward had a Day of Service. Any service we did for the community was probably negated by the amount of destruction committed against our own personal property during the process. But we tried. (Note to self: NEVER let Daddy put shoes on the kids before they go painting. He will undermine all your efforts to dress them in grungy clothes by letting Kendra wear (and destroy) her brand new shoes. Gr.)

.Kendra shows off the lovely stripe of paint in her hair. Turns out paint is really hard to wash out of hair. I'd rank it up there with gum, actually.

I put one of the "Mormon Helping Hands" vests on Ryder. He didn't like it, but I thought it was fun!

My kids hard at work

It's turned into warm pajama weather around here. I do love buying a new set of PJs for the kids!

Getting ready to launch his rocket

Finger on the trigger...

Very artsy picture by Craig. I love the lighting. This one is worth clicking on so you get the full sized image.

Ryder is excited to see his siblings through the glass

Whenever Craig mows the lawn, Bentley will get out his toy lawn mower (which blows bubbles!) and follow right behind Daddy. Craig suddenly worried that by next summer he won't be doing this any more, and asked me to come out and document it:


Pretty soon, they'll be ready for Dave Barry's Lawn Rangers!


Ryder is continuing to enjoy standing against things. He's also been climbing the stairs when I'm not looking (or, like yesterday, when I'm in the shower). He hasn't fallen down yet, but I'm already afraid for when it will happen... I knew we should have carpeted those stairs!


And the kids have been playing dress up a lot:

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa, for some Batman clothes that actually fit him! And which will keep him warm!

Buzz Lightyear and Arial. Thanks for the costumes, Mom!

And now. I should probably tackle this disaster of a house that is mine! Or possibly check facebook. Again...

And the Winner Is...

... um, it's my Mom, actually.

Craig helped me with the drawing and I did it totally fair, no looking or anything! I promise! No nepotism here! So for you, Mom, I'm going to make Magical Layered Brownies the next time you visit. Sharing is completely optional, and Dad isn't allowed to make you feel guilty for eating these because you won them. (Craig says they can be served with a side of Metformin!)



But because we felt bad drawing a family member, we decided to draw one more name, too. Craig picked this one and the other winner is:

)en! She's one of my few readers who I've actually never met but whose blog I adore, and-- actually-- it was her wonderful blog that inspired me to begin blogging in the first place. So I guess it's appropriate that she get something out of this! So Jen, if you're not completely freaked out by this, email me your address (alannachan at gmail dot com) and you will be the lucky recipient of... Wooden Stacking Clowns!

I'm not going to mail this actual set, because they belong to my daughter. But you get the idea...

I could be way off on this, but I have a feeling that you'd like these. And if you don't, maybe your son would. And if he doesn't either, I bet your husband could still figure out something cool to do with them! And they wouldn't even take up too much space in your apartment-- everyone wins!

Congratulations Mom and Jen!

And thanks to everyone else for your lovely gushing comments-- you all made my week!

Celebrate!

I don't usually keep track of this sort of thing, but I happened to notice that...

This is my 500th blog post!!!

I'm pretty sure the proper etiquette here is to host some sort of a giveaway, but I couldn't decide what you would even want. So I'm going to be completely lame and just say this: leave a comment (before next Sunday) and I'll enter you in the drawing and once I know who's won, I'll give the winner something I think that person will like, whether it be a gift card or a movie or something I bake... Something... I promise. If you leave a gushing comment telling me how much you love my blog, I'll enter your name in twice. No, just kidding. I'm not that desperate for compliments! Really.

Anyway, Yay for 500 blog posts. I guess anyone who knows me shouldn't be too surprised that I have so much to say, but if this would have been a homework assignment, I know I would have felt a bit daunted by it. So I'm choosing to be proud of this accomplishment, even if it has mostly just been a whole lot of fun for me!

Thanks for reading, commenting, and giving me an outlet for all those thoughts!

Autumn Thoughts

So in between the tons of rain we've been experiencing this fall, I've been enjoying watching the leaves change color and breeze down off the trees. And for the first time, it hit me: I think autumn leaves might actually be prettier than spring flowers.

This is a completely weird attitude for me, since I am the quintessential lover of summer and all things leading to it and I usually spend autumn hating and fearing the approaching cold, dark winter months. But as much as I love spring flowers and the hope they give me, they don't manage to recreate all the delicate colors of an enormous peach in one huge tree, or make another tree look like it's engulfed in flames. And when you match that with a perfect blue sky and the lovely shadows cast by an autumn sun, it really is a most impressive sight.

Especially when the sun is shining.

First Talk

Bentley (who-- did I mention?-- turned 5 a few weeks ago! One of these days I'll put up pictures from his birthday, I promise!!!) finally got to give his first talk in primary! True to form, we wrote it out the morning that he gave it. With only a little bit of prompting from me, he dictated what he wanted to say to me, and I wrote (most of) it down. Here is what we ended up with:

"Missionaries can teach the gospel where Jesus tells them to. I hope that I can be a missionary in Africa some day, but I'll go to where Heavenly Father wants me to go. It will be beautiful teaching the gospel some day. I will even try to teach bad guys. I know that our Savior is Jesus. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

I thought he came up with a pretty dang good talk! And I didn't even tell him to say the bit about Africa or the bit about bad guys (which made me want to cry with laughter, I loved it so much). If we would have had more time to practice, I'm sure he could have memorized it, but with everything else going on that morning (and doing it on my own, because Craig almost always has meetings before church), it just wasn't feasible. Primary met in the chapel, getting ready for the primary program, so Bentley delivered his talk from the podium, and even managed to speak clearly into the microphone. I was very proud of my little boy!

Now we have to get cracking memorizing his one line for the primary program. I have high hopes that maybe this year he'll actually say it!

Dieting Dos and Don'ts: A Quick Review

Here's what you should do when dieting:

-Set goals
-Exercise
-Think positive
-Make yourself accountable to someone
-Eat really healthy food
-Exercise portion control


Here's what you should not do:

-Volunteer to make cookies for the Young Women in Excellence program (on Tuesday)
-Let your husband volunteer you to make cookies for the Elder's Quorum Pizza Party (on Friday)
-Let your husband decide that-- just in case-- you should triple the recipe
-Then, decide that it's too boring to make three of the same thing, so decide to double the first one and try out this recipe. Just for the heck of it.

This is also a really bad way to stick to a grocery budget (especially when it was a week to buy diapers!). But I guess I should just be glad, since last year Craig decided we should provide all the meat for the Elder's Quorum activity. Why does he think we have the money for stuff like this?


And that's just one of the reasons I'm having such a hard time losing those last ten pounds...

I'm not the only one struggling with this, am I?



*Special thanks to my friend Jen for letting me weasel out of making soup for this week's Soup-er Saturday! I hadn't realized how much baking I was going to be doing this week when I signed up for that! If she would have held me to that one, I think I might have had a nervous breakdown...

Odds and Ends

As is often the case these days, I find myself with a plethora of different blog topics on my mind, but none of them quite merit their own post. So you get the hodgepodge mess instead. Here goes nothing!

-Tuesday morning I went in to Ryder's room to find him standing up in his crib! I was very excited for him to have figured this out, and quite relieved that he hadn't managed to fall out of his crib, since we hadn't put it on the lowest level yet. We remedied that situation the same day. He's a regular stander-upper now!

-Scary news: six houses in our neighborhood have been broken into in the last few weeks. So much for our lovely safe neighborhood. Not only did the kids doing it steal a bunch of stuff, they also ransacked each place, destroying everything in sight just for the fun of it. We really don't have anything particularly valuable, but if someone messes up my beloved only-one-year-old carpet, heads will roll. I'm sort of afraid to leave the house for any length of time or have any sort of schedule any more. And I hate feeling like that. The good news is that-- thanks to the kids and their early bedtime-- we're pretty much never all away from the house at night. I've never been more thankful for that fact!

-I've been continuing to run and work out. This morning, my friend and I ran 3.1 miles! There were some fairly significant walking breaks, but that was more because we were talking too much and it made me out of breath (and thus unable to converse-- which meant of course that I chose talking over running. I may be going completely against my nature to start running, but come on!). When we run during the week at 5:45am, my brain is too sleepy to talk much and I run a lot better.

-Bentley is continuing to be my own little version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One second we're having a shouting match and I'm wondering if I can have him shipped to China. The next second he'll be completely sweet and-- for example-- offer to let his cousin borrow one of his favorite toys, since he knows his cousin likes it so well. What am I going to do with this kid?

-I finally got to see the latest X-Men movie-- X-Men First Class. Dang, I love these movies! Yes, they're absolutely ridiculous in so many ways, but they're just so darn fun and interesting! I love all the different mutants and I love the soap opera story line of love and betrayal and loners who get pulled into a cause... And when your cast includes greats like Hugh Jackman and James McAvoy, plus the kid from About a Boy (who is so super tall now that it took me a second to recognize him), how could you go wrong??? I'm glad Craig indulges me.

-Ryder is suddenly very attached to his mommy. I think my trip to San Fransisco started it all, but now he gets very angry with me if I get more than about ten feet away from him. It can be annoying. He's happiest when I just sit on the couch and read and let him play on the floor by me. I don't actually mind that, but it does make it hard to fold laundry or (heaven forbid!) take a bathroom break...

-I just realized recently that Kendra (and I think Bentley, too) likes to call Ryder, "Gago." I have absolutely NO idea where this nickname came from. I think it's pretty weird.

-Now that Bentley is in school, Kendra has finally accepted her role of "Older Sister" with remarkable aplomb. She is wonderful at playing with Ryder and keeping him happy. This, in turn, makes me really happy. I have very peaceful afternoons these days, even if my evenings-- when Bentley is tired, hungry, and at his grumpiest-- are hectic and full of drama.

-I have a new favorite, guilt-free recipe, much thanks to my friend Erin for sharing it. Peanut-Broccoli Stir Fry. It was so good, I didn't even notice that I was eating brown rice. That's the legacy of my mission: tofu doesn't scare me, but brown rice does. This was so flavorful and yummy-- go make it! Don't put it off for two months like I did!

-And speaking of recipes, here's another one I just made: Vegetarian "Meatloaf." It was pretty good. It didn't particularly taste like meatloaf, but it was still yummy. Craig thought to put barbecue sauce on his, and then you could even pretend that it was meat! The funny thing is that I enjoy these recipes, but in the back of my mind, there's this voice that keeps screaming, But you're not even a vegetarian!!!!! Why are you doing this?!?!?! The answer has to do with those stubborn last ten pounds. And the cupcakes we made this weekend.

-Our ward's Super Saturday is next week. It's a sign of how far I've come that I'm actually looking forward to it, and even hit the Habitat for Humanity store yesterday in order to get cheap supplies for myself. It's amazing how fun something can seem when you no longer have to plan it!

-And last but not least: Ryder suddenly loves loves loves splashing in the tub. He'll get you completely soaked, but he's just so happy kicking those little legs it's impossible not to laugh while he does it. Plus, I'm sort of impressed that he can kick so long and hard-- flailing his legs up in the air over and over again-- against the bathtub without bruising his heels or something. This is the kind of move we do in my aerobics class, but with more control and a lot more sweat! How does he manage it? Anyway, we took video of it, and it's hilarious. But it involves a lot of frontal nudity, so I'm not going to be posting this one. If you're really curious (and not just some sicko-- you know who you are!), ask me and I'll show it to ya!


All righty. That's all I can think of for now. Hope your weekend is rocking! Pray that our house isn't broken into!

Mature. Real Mature.

This week in kindergarten, Bentley has been studying the letter "F." This, quite naturally, led to Craig asking him, "What f-words did you learn today?" And then we looked at each other and tried really hard to not burst out laughing. I think trying not to laugh made us do the really grown-up thing of making that "pfpfpfpf!" noise through your lips. More of the same followed when Bentley named "tree" as one of the f-words, and Craig corrected him by saying something that sounded an awful lot like, "There's no eff-ing tree!'"

It's good to know that Craig and I have the maturity of a couple of fifth-graders.

Life Made

There are certain things that I hardly even let myself hope for. Things that I would never actually pray for-- because who would bother God with such a strange request?-- but if you asked me if I wanted it, I would be so tongue-tied with joy I could probably only nod emphatically and grin like an idiot. When they actually happen, I feel like I'm leading the most charmed existence ever. Cafe Rio being built here was one of those things. Our upcoming trip to Hawaii is one of those things.

And this morning. I found out about yet another one: Arrested Development, Season 4, to be followed by the movie.

The infamous chicken dance: A classic example of one of their gags that got funnier each time!

What did I do to be so lucky?

Christmas Prep

Craig LOVES Christmas. Everyone loves Christmas, really, but Craig can get excited about Christmas at any time of the year. He loves Christmas the way little kids love Christmas. It's one of the many things that I love about him. We're a good team, since he likes to do the Christmas shopping, and decorating. I love having it all done, but I'm too lazy to do a very good job with any of it. We may not decorate much for Halloween or Thanksgiving, but at Christmas time our house looks very festive. And this year, we're already planning on putting our red sheets on the bed, so with our new green wall even our bedroom will be Christmasy!

This year we've invited my family to come and celebrate in Virginia with us. We still don't know exactly who will be able to make it, but we're remaining optimistic. And, in our excitement, we've been planning little bits and pieces of the holiday as thoughts occur to us, like who will sleep where and what activities we'll be doing ahead of time. (Like the Messiah Sing-along at the Kennedy Center!!!!)

Today, we tried out these cinnamon rolls. And they were amazing. These are what we will make Christmas morning. The combination of allspice and cloves smelled just like Christmas morning should smell! So the plan is to make one batch of these rolls, another batch without nuts for my sister Rachael, one batch of the orange rolls we tried yesterday. And if enough people come, maybe one more batch of the original recipe, too.

The next thing we need to do is figure out if they'll still taste good if we make them the day before and reheat them.

I love that Craig is so excited for Christmas. I love that he gets me all excited for it, too. It's the only thing that lets me tolerate the suddenly cold weather we're experiencing.



Just for the record, even though we keep making sweet rolls, we've been eating really healthy dinners...!

Anyone else getting excited for the holidays?

Wasting Time

So I made it a goal this week to not waste quite so much time reading blogs. I love reading people's blogs, but I tend to get obsessive about it. I'll check Google Reader multiple time throughout the day to see if there's anything new. And if I find a new blog that I like, I'll begin reading it backwards like some reverse chronological autobiography. Or if-- heaven forbid!-- someone includes a link in their blog post, I'll have to read that, which usually will have other interesting-looking links, too, and suddenly I've spent an hour just reading blogs and random articles.

So my goal was to read all blogs before I took Bentley to school, and then be done with them for the day. That seemed pretty reasonable to me. And I mostly stuck with it (except Friday, when there were a LOT of new blog posts and not nearly enough time to get through them all).

But instead, I ended up sitting around reading backlogs of Dear Abby.

Seriously, what is wrong with me? Does that say something really bad about you if you enjoy reading about other people's problems so much? There's nothing quite like reading about a really nasty boss/husband/parent/in-law/child/neighbor/random stranger/sibling to make you appreciate the people in your life a whole lot more! And I have to admit, I almost always respect Dear Abby's responses. It's not easy to take some of these nut jobs and give them really good advice in just four or five sentences! I wish someone would do an exit survey and find out how many people actually listen to her (my guess is that 90% of the people she tells to walk away from their horrid relationships never do. But maybe I'm too pessimistic).

So that's what I've been doing this week. Reading Dear Abby a lot. And also exercising-- I hit my aerobics class both days, and managed to run two miles three other days. I went to Young Women's on Tuesday and Book Club on Thursday. I made orange rolls this morning before Conference. I kept my house reasonably clean. I got Bentley to and from school every day. I didn't strangle him any of the times when he began yelling at me over stupid things like whether or not he needed to wear a sweatshirt to school. We celebrated my father-in-law's birthday with him. I heard incredibly happy news about two different friends on Thursday and got to be really excited for them (one adopted a baby, the other is this close to being cancer free!)... A lot's been going on. And in between all that, much Dear Abby was read!

Next week I'll make it my goal to find something interesting to blog about!