Apr 18, 2011

The Crayonbot

The other day we made crayons.  Or rather, remade some crayons, by taking old broken crayons and melting them into new shapes.  It was pretty darn fun.

We colored with them for a while, but then Harrison used them to make a robot (of course), which is he was pretty proud of.


See?

Apr 16, 2011

Some April Stuff

Oh boy howdy, Colin loves playing the organ


Sitting next to Harrison and banging on the keyboard is about the most fun he can have.

The other day Colin and I were getting ready to take a shower.  I turned on the water and then went to get some towels and I guess Colin got tired of waiting.


Just crawled right in there in his jim jams.  And he loved it.
The next day Harrison decided he wanted to take a bath in the sink.


It was pretty crowdy but he loved it anyway.

Apr 13, 2011

Colin: 10 Months

It is hard to believe he'll be a year old in just a couple of months.  A year sounds old.  And he is just so little.  And gosh, could he be any cuter?


At 10 months, Colin's favorite thing to do is help me load the dishwasher.  His preferred method of helping is to pull all the plates and silverware onto the floor.  He is the fastest crawler in the whole wide world and he is terrified of the vacuum.  He doesn't want to crawl past it, be left alone in a room with it or see it out of the corner of his eye.  It is filled with the capacity to give him a little fright, and he finds that unbearable.

And he gets sweeter everyday.  I just think everything is does is totally adorable.  Except when he spit up all over me earlier tonight.  That wasn't that awesome.  But still!  He is so cute!

Apr 10, 2011

There is no Intro

Ok, so here is the thing.  My husband just got put in the Bishopric.  Just a couple weeks ago.  My first thought when they called him was "We are not OLD enough for that!"  But, the truth is, we are.  I just turned 33.  And Richard is almost 40.  Did you catch that?  FORTY.  Yeah.  In your thirties you can say you are "getting old" but once you are 40 you are officially there.  Oldness.  You have arrived and there is no use fooling yourself.  And my baby-faced husband is almost there.  So, yeah, despite the fact that age has nothing to do with the calling, he is still, definitely, old enough.

My second thought was "I'm going to be watching my kids alone in sacrament meeting."  And that is about as far as my thinking went.  My brain is pretty small, so I try not to work it too hard.  Besides, I knew Richard would be fine, but me?  ME?  Would I actually be able to survive this?

Today was our big chance to find out.  Today was my first chance to sit through sacrament meeting alone with my two little boys.  So how did I do? I think I would have to give myself 1 & 1/2 thumbs down.  And maybe a sad, slow, shake of the head.  

I didn't totally fail.  Harrison did not run screaming up and down the aisle (though he did scream "Go Away!" when I tried to wipe his nose).  And they didn't rub Vaseline into the carpet (because I am smart enough not to take Vaseline to church.  They get plenty of Vaseline time rubbing into the bathroom floor at home).  So it wasn't a total loss.   And we did just great for about the first 3 minutes, which I think is something I can really be proud of.   But Colin is ready to start exploring with gusto as soon as we walk into the building, and after the first 3 minutes he had our 2 feet of pew pretty much figured out.  So the rest of the meeting was basically a wrestling match while I tried to keep him from escaping.

Meanwhile I did what I could to keep Harrison occupied enough that he wasn't smacking his brother or throwing things around the chapel.  After he started grinding cheerios into the seat I picked them all up and took them away but I couldn't find the lid and I almost started crying after I dumped them over twice in a row.  I went digging around in my giant diaper bag for the lid to the stupid cheerios bowl with one hand while trying  to keep Colin from throwing himself off the seat with the other hand.  I found about 7 pairs of underwear.  No lid.   At least in an emergency I can sew the underwear together to make clothes or a blanket or tent or something.  I finally gave up and dumped the cheerios straight into the diaper bag.  I'm sure they'll come in handy when someone is starving one of these days.

The rest of the meeting is a blur.  Probably a bunch more stuff happened, but I don't want to tell you about it because I would like you to think that I am only saying that I am a bad mom.  Apparently we survived it.  Me and my children are all alive which is sometimes all you can ask for.  And I would like my husband to think that I totally have this thing under control, so don't tell him about the cheerios, OK?

Apr 5, 2011

I'm Happy Where I'm At

Prepositional phrase be hanged. (or is it a dangling participle?)

As you can probably tell, I give my blog posts lots of thought before publishing them.  I don't just pound out some drivel, hit publish, and move on.  I think it out.  I plan.  I write draft after draft after draft, scrap the whole thing and start over again and then write several more drafts before each post is ready for publication.  Each post is, by anyone's standards, a short masterpiece and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Today though, I am just going to write it.  I've already typed in my title, which means I have a general idea of what I want to say, and so I am just going to start saying it, and see what comes out.  It should be a pretty exciting exercise.  Sort of like Jazzercise.

I am 33 now.  I am officially "Getting Old", there is no denying it.  The other day  I was thinking about guys that I used to date.  I totally do that all the time.  I was always into very active, outdoorsy guys, who like hiking and rock climbing and snow boarding, sitting in frozen lakes, or running directly up the side of a cliff or jumping out of a helicopter into a swimming pool.  Stuff like that.   Which is fine.  Whatever.  The problem was I just wasn't so much into that stuff.  I mean, it is fun to do sometimes.  Who doesn't love a good run up a cliff now and then?  They just aren't my passion.  But I felt like they should be.  So I always had to pretend like I actually cared about hiking boots and bike tires and stuff that I don't even want to type because it bores me so much.

Take What's-His-Name, that I dated in college.  He always acted like the day was a total waste if he wasn't out living it to death, by driving around in the mud in his truck, or riding his bike down the side of a building.  He had even arranged his schedule specifically so he could go skiing twice a week.  Which really doesn't sound bad in writing.  Richard, on the other hand, was working so hard in school that he barely had time to look at me.  What's-His-Name was trying to find a major that required the least amount of work, and always said he hoped his wife would want to be the bread winner so that he could stay home all day.  Gosh am I glad I didn't marry him.  That guy was a ding-a-ling.  And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

I should probably be completely honest at this point and say that me and What's-His-Name never actually dated.  He never kissed me or even held my hand or anything.  I think he might have been just a little bit gay, cuz look at me, I was gorgeous.


I guess the point is that I didn't really know what I was looking for, so I am so glad I just happened to find it.  I would have been miserable married to one of the guys I was usually interested in.  All of our money would have been spent on expensive crap from R.E.I and I would have had to spend every weekend carrying a 97 pound backpack through a river filled with alligators.  I admit these people do some very exciting things, but it exhausts me just thinking about it.   And yes, Richard would love to spend a lot of money at R.E.I too, but what he loves is camping, which for me means sitting around a campfire eating the food that HE cooked.  Nothing wrong with that.

While it is true that sometimes I wish I weren't quite so lazy, mostly I am just so glad that I get to be.  I like my husband and I'm glad he's mine and even though my house is messy I'm happy where I'm at.    And that is a nice place to be.

Apr 2, 2011

Tricks of the Trade

To get Harrison to look at me so I can take his picture, I will sometimes say things like, "Look at me, Harrison!  My hair is on fire!."  or "Look! There's a spider on my head!"  

So of course he'll look up, 

March 29, 2011

with a happy and excited look on his face, (cuz what could be cooler than to see a spider on Mom's head?) and I snap the picture as quick as I can.  But then he says "Where that spider?  I wanna see that spider.  Where that spider on yours head?"  Until I finally have to tell him that I was only teasing him.  So the next time the spider line doesn't work and I have to keep thinking up more and shocking things to just try to get him to look at me for a second.  He likes to keep me on my toes.