Computing & Sewing

No real words needed.

I made a new carseat cover in a girl version.  Just finished.  It's adorable.  Bill picked the fabric. He has fantastic taste.

Newest Spencer-isms

Spencer has finally discovered that holding our hands is a good thing.  I think it clicked when he realized he could direct us places if he was holding our hand. Now he grabs them all the time and pulls us where he wants to go.  It's adorable.

Grandma Suzanne got Spencer a crazy straw cup when we were in Henderson a few weeks ago.  It has become Spencer's go to cup for smoothies.  It has a little loop in the straw on the top that he sticks his finger through and then sips the straw that wraps around the cup and comes up the side.  I'm going to get a picture of it. It makes me laugh every time I see him do it.

Spencer thinks diapers are called poopy.  He knows what being poopy is too, but he absolutely refuses to say diaper.  The first thing he says when I go into get him from his nap or in the morning is "poopy!" and then proceeds to point to his diaper.  Except usually he's not poopy.  It's amusing.

The only animal sound he knows right now is for a dog.  Dogs say "rawr rawr." Every other animal does too apparently.  And every other animal is a dog.  We're working on that.

He's finally able to climb up on chairs and he absolutely loves it.  Sometimes he climbs up on my computer chair and fiddles around with the computer as long as I'll let him.

He loves Bill's bell kit we brought back from Henderson.  I'm really impressed with his precision in playing it too.  This kid definitely has music in his genes.

Spencer thinks eating with silverware is by and far the best and only way to eat these days, which is totally fine with me.  Sometimes he'll let me feed him still, but he seriously loves to eat on his own.  Here he's enjoying some peanut butter sitting on the kitchen floor.  That's another favorite of his, eating while sitting on the floor.

Finished!

I'm quite proud of this little project I just finished.  I've never thought I was all that creative, particularly in comparison to several of my siblings, but over time I've discovered it's more that my creativity just comes out in different ways than theirs.  I'm not so good at original thoughts, but I can copy and modify like a champ. :)  The middle stocking is what I had to start with.  My mom made it for Spencer last year and I love it.  She made similar ones for me and all my siblings when we were kids, and it's one of those memories I love and wanted to pass on.  I decided to make matching stockings for Bill and I and our new little girl, but I came up with one additional idea too and just decided to go for it.  If we have a girl for our third child instead of a boy I guess I'll just have to make another. :)

I crocheted the snowflakes and did the rest out of felt.  I also added a snowflake to Spencer's stocking to help it go more with the general theme.  These things seriously cost me like $10 to make including everything.  Okay, maybe $15 because I had to buy the liner I used twice since I cut it out too small to begin with.  Oops.  You can see the red polka dots just peeking out of the stocking on the far left.  The lining isn't sewed in on that one because I don't have a name on it yet.

I wanted to get our names embroidered on them, but it is seriously expensive to do that, like $10 a piece or something crazy, so I ventured into the world of hand embroidering.  I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing to do.  Well, that's an understatement.  I really didn't like doing it and it took forever, but it turned out so well.  I'm quite pleased with the finished product and am just super happy I'm done embroidering. The penguin one is for our new little girl, but I'm not ready to post her name on my blog, so you'll just have to wait a couple months if you don't know it already. :)

So I really like how they turned out.  We haven't had stockings since we got married, so I'm glad we do now and I just love them.  Hopefully the kids will appreciate them when they're older.

Funny Sleep Story

I woke up one of many times last night apparently acting upon a dream that I was having.  I don't remember what the dream was about, but I pulled my pillow off my bed, took the pillowcase off, and put the pillow outside our bedroom door, then got back in bed. At this point I woke up sufficiently to decide I needed to use the bathroom and then wondered what had happened to my pillow and vaguely remembered doing something with it.  I found it at the door, sans pillowcase, and was so confused as to why I had done that.  I still have no idea, but I just put the pillowcase back on and went back to bed.  It was so random and really funny when I told Bill about it this afternoon. :)

10 weeks left!

So I only have 10 weeks left of this pregnancy as of today.  Seeing that I am nearly as big as I'm going to get already, that makes me very happy.  I definitely don't love that I get big so fast, as it makes for so many aches and pains for a long time, but Spencer's pregnancy was exactly the same, so I guess that's just how it's going to be for me every time I get pregnant.  The end result is worth it. :)  I took a picture a week or two ago of what I looked like starting my third trimester and compared it to last pregnancy.  I think I'm a tad bigger this time, but honestly, I can't really tell.  I was big then, I'm big now, so who really cares?  I just look at pictures of myself after I had Spencer to feel better about that. Ha ha! So for comparison's sake, here we go.

Pregnancy #1:

 Pregnancy #2:

Last visit to H-Town

I've been meaning to blog about our trip to Henderson since we got home a week ago, but just haven't seemed to get to it.  I see why my friends with more kids blog less and less. Just getting closer to having my second makes me feel less able to spend much time on my computer doing personal stuff like blogging.

Anyway, we haven't been down to Bill's house since probably last summer.  I can't even remember when we last went.  With his parents in transit moving up here, we just haven't had a reason.  But last week we got to go down to celebrate Hillary's mission homecoming, Miriam's graduation, and also help a little with packing to move, i.e. Bill got up in the attic to get his drumset down. :)  It was an awesome trip!  Sleeping wasn't so great with no crib for Spencer, but otherwise we had a really great time.  We're pretty sure it's our last time going there since they move up here next month, so it was nice to go for one last hurrah.

Hillary's homecoming was lovely.  She gave a great talk at church and we had a fun family party.  Miriam's graduation was also awesome.  I don't know it is about graduation ceremonies, but they always make me get all emotional.  I can't imagine what it will be like when it's my own kids.

Spencer had the time of his life.  He didn't have a slow moment the entire weekend with so many aunts and grandmas fawning over him.  That kid knows how to work it already. :)

All I can say about our sleeping arrangements are that Bill and I slept much better once we got home.  We were in Miriam's room, which has a full-size bed and we rolled a foam mat in there too.  One of us would share the bed with Spencer and the other take the mat. We traded each night.  Spencer is definitely still a crib lover.  He needs his boundaries still.  I wasn't a huge fan of being used as a boundary.  He seemed to do a bit better when I shared with him, but both of us had a rough night at least once over the four days. It was pretty hilarious the last morning when I woke up to find Spencer sleeping in Bill's pillow space and Bill taking up approximately 1/8th of the same side of the bed, trying to keep Spencer from falling off, but mostly just falling off himself.  I would have gotten a picture, but the lens on our camera at the time didn't allow it.  It was a long distance lens.  Oh well. It's an adventure every day, right?

Anyway, so that's not the most exciting post ever, but I wanted to get it recorded.  I can't wait for everyone to get moved up here.  It'll be so nice to to have Bill's side up here for the rest of the time we are in Utah. 

Camping at Great Basin National Park

We went on a camping trip this weekend to Great Basin National Park with Bill's dad and another friend.  It's been on our bucket list for years and we figured since there's a very good chance this is our last summer in Utah, we better get the heck out there and see it or it wasn't going to happen.  We had such a great time!

Highlights include:

-The instant we set up the chairs, Spencer started filling them with dirt and rocks.  We never even got to use them.  I tried to clean them off, but every time I put them back up he just started filling them again. We eventually got him diverted to filling up the wood box, but he still got sidetracked putting dirt on top of the gas tanks.  Silly kid.  I guess it kept him away from the fire though, so no real complaints.

-Spencer's nose was seriously booger cement the entire time.  He had a cold last week, so he's developed a pretty incredible avoidance reflex the instant I go near his nose.  Therefore, he didn't truly get clean until Sunday afternoon when we gave him his first bath since Thursday.  And since his nose is still running even today, he still has it a bit. :)

-Spencer was covered with dirt from head to toe the entire time.  He loved it.  We swabbed him off at night, but that's about it.

-We were pretty unsure of how sleeping arrangements would go.  We have a new tent that we were excited to try out, and we brought the pack'n'play even though Spencer has hated it for months.  Well, turns out he still hates it but now he can climb out.  After using it as a pseudo boxing ring for a while, bouncing off all four sides, he decided he'd had enough the first night and climbed out, falling onto Bill's legs.  So there went the pack'n'play, probably not to be opened again for at least several months until we need it for child numero dos. He instead slept in an improvised little box with Bill and I on either side and some bags on the other two sides.  Apparently he still likes the boundaries because he spent half the night wedged against Bill's legs and the other half with his head in my knee.  I wouldn't say anyone but Spencer got a good night's sleep.  There were also gale force winds coming down off the mountain, which didn't help our sleep, but did show us that we indeed purchased an awesome tent and if any of you are ever in the market for a high end backpacking tent, Nemo is a good brand to look at.

-We toured Lehman Caves Saturday morning.  That place is cool!  Spencer wasn't the biggest fan since he was tired and got really frustrated that we wouldn't put him down and let him go break off the stalagmites, but we had a great time.

-After Lehman Caves we headed off towards Ely, NV to visit Garnet Hill.  It's exactly what it sounds like, a place where you can prospect for garnets.  They just happen to be both Spencer's and my birthstone, so that made it even cooler.  Basically it's a big mountainside of rocks that you go in with hammers, pick axes, etc and hammer away to see if you can uncover garnets in the rocks.  We came away with a tidy little bundle after a couple hours there, plus Spencer having finally learned that we're trying to help him when we hold his hand to keep him from falling down.  That may be worth way more than the garnets!  They're all rough cut and still stuck somewhat in the rocks, but Bill is super excited to see what he can do with them.

-Food in general was amazing the whole trip.  It always is when Doug is involved.  We had some delightful tinfoil dinners the first time on a one-match fire I started even in the gale force winds.  Not that I'm bragging.  Oh wait, yes I am.  That never happens to me.  The fire pit helped a lot, but I was pretty proud of myself. :)  We had some a pancake/breakfast meats breakfast that somehow tasted about a million times better because we ate it outside.  The evening stew Saturday night was great and I haven't had a better cobbler in a long time.  Sunday morning we finished it off with breakfast burritos that were so stinkin' good, especially since it was about 33 degrees outside.  Who knew it was going to be that cold?!?!

-The second night I got perhaps the best night's sleep I have ever gotten camping.  Bill got the worst.  The temperature completely dropped out from under us, and his sleeping bag was not up to the task, poor guy.  It got to below freezing, which is just about perfect for my bag, and conditions that I rarely see when I'm sleeping in it.  I have no idea why I slept so well, since I'm so very, very pregnant, but it made for a fantastic surprise to wake up wel rested in the morning.  Takeaway from the night?  Bill and Spencer both need new sleeping bags.  The pile of blankets for Spencer worked, but were not ideal.  He's finally getting to the point where I think he might actually sleep in one, which is fantastic.

-We took a drive up Wheeler Peak, which is in the park and has a road up to 10,000 feet where the trailhead is.  It's the tallest peak that is fully in Nevada.  Boundary Peak is on the other side of the state, but it straddles the Nevada/California border, so there's disagreement as to whether it can be considered the tallest peak or not.  Anyway, there's a campsite at the end of the road that I would totally stay at.  It's at 10,000 feet, so I guess you wouldn't be doing a lot of running around, but dang, they were some of the prettiest campsites I've ever seen if you're going to be car camping.

-And one last thing.  Spencer LOVES his grandpa.  He's been a little standoffish of both Bill's dad and mine in recent months, but he has changed his tune.  He calls Doug "Pampa" and it's the cutest thing to see them together.  We'll have to get some face time with my dad so he can enjoy him as well, but the campout was so fun in that respect.

Our little Mozart

Spencer has always loved our piano.  I keep it open all the time even though it gets kind of dusty because he'll randomly wander by and start playing.  If we are sitting in the living room, he'll even give us a concert.  It's adorable.

So my sister has a keyboard all the way back from Christmas 1989 that has floated around the family for years.  One of my young women needed one and I let her borrow it for a month or so.  They brought it back the other day and we set it up on the coffee table, which is at the perfect level for Spencer.  He LOVES the thing.  I can't say I am surprised.  It has tons of cool sound effects and beats and he loves to jam out on it.  This morning he felt he needed to drink his smoothie while playing.  That was amusing to watch too.

Occasionally he will do something that scares the snot out of him and he'll come running to find me.  The other day that happened when he found the volume switch and turned it all the way up and then proceeded to start a drumbeat going.  It was so loud and he came running to find me scared out of his mind.  I laughed for a while about that. :)

Bike Ride to Timpanogas Park

We purchased a bike trailer a couple of months ago and Spencer absolutely loves it.  Handily it fits two kids and has a conversion kit to use it as a stroller, so we're at least set eventually to carry both kids.  We won't be able to put our next one in for months since she'll have to be able to hold her head up, but at least it's an option. :)

For Memorial Day Bill and I decided we wanted to take a family bike ride.  We learned several things from this trip.  One, we are not in as good of shape as we assumed.  Okay, maybe we didn't assume and we just went anyway, but both of us were so sore afterwards. Ha ha!  We still had a fantastic time.  Also, we stopped by a toy store in the Shops at Riverwoods on the way back and Spencer had the most epic meltdown when we left.  He LOVED that store!  He found a pint-sized shopping cart and pushed it around the entire time we were there.  Apparently we totally ruined his life by leaving.

So back to the bike ride.  We live maybe two blocks from the Provo River Trail, so we hopped on it and rode north planning to go to Bridal Veil Falls. Turns out that was way farther than we wanted to ride in our current physical condition, so we stopped at Mt. Timpanogas Park instead.  It's the first park up Provo Canyon and absolutely gorgeous.  The ride there was fantastic.  Aside from a few near misses in the tunnels along the way, we had a great time.  A double bike trailer takes up a lot of trail, in case you were wondering. :)

It turns out it's about 7 miles up there.  So you know, we haven't been biking save once this year, I'm 6 months pregnant, Bill works outdoors all day long every day, and we decided that was a great first ride.  Which, in fact, it was!  We were so beyond beat by the time we got to the park, but handily there was a shady tree we could sit under and Spencer romped around in the grass and up and down the staircases while we ate and recovered.  It's downhill most of the way home, so that ended up being way easier. Here's a few of the pictures we took while we were there.  Has anyone noticed that Spencer suddenly looks like a little kid, not a baby anymore?  When did that happen?

Spencer talks!

In the last week Spencer has suddenly decided talking is a good thing.  It's fantastic.  He says a bunch of words now and is so interested when we tell him the name of things.  I want to try to video him going through his list of words, especially how he says banana.  It's hilarious.  I don't know if it will work though because the minute I get the camera out, all he wants to do is play with it.  Efforts shall me made though. :)

So my dad has asked Spencer every time he sees him for probably the last year if he has said grandpa yet that day.  It's so funny and we all laugh about it.  I had to give him a special call a week or so ago to let him know that Spencer had indeed said Grandpa that day.  It sounds more like "Pampa" but he knows exactly what he's saying.

Spencer will also say such things as duck, banana, smoothie, shoes, milk, mama, dada, Tasha, baby, grandma, and probably more, but that's all I can think of at the moment.  He knows what outside is and is very insistent we head that direction whenever we mention it.

He's also really gotten into helping get himself dressed and undressed.  He'll help pull his shirts off and step in and out of his pants.  He's very particular about his shoes.  He wants to be wearing some most all the time now and he has definite opinions about which ones he wants to wear at any given time.  We give him a bath every night and then lotion him up before we get him in his pajamas.  Sometimes when he's still buck naked he'll run to get some shoes and be so insistent that they need to go on RIGHT NOW.  It's hilarious.  Generally I'll put them on.  Who doesn't like a naked kid running around in shoes?

Back on the subject of words, my sister Natasha had her baby last week.  Shae is the cutest little thing, and I really mean little.  She started out 6 lbs 9 oz and lost a bunch of weight at first like most babies do, so she's just tiny.  Spencer was never that small.  But anyway, the instant she was born it seemed Spencer knew for sure that she was baby.  He has called her that ever since and suddenly it's like he knows what a baby is.  He'll refer to other babies as baby as well.  I have no idea why that just suddenly clicked, but it's pretty much the cutest thing when he climbs up to see her and keeps calling her baby.

The great garden experiment of 2012

My sister Natasha was kind enough to move into a place right up the road from us a few miles.  The house happens to have a very well cared for garden plot that we decided would be fun to try out.  It's a first for both of us, and since both of us are pregnant, we figured we better both work on it or it wouldn't happen.  The plot didn't look like much before we started working on it, but when we started weeding it, it was totally full of dark earth with worms all over the place and totally perfect for gardening.  A couple Saturdays ago Bill and my grandma were kind enough to help us prep and plant the garden.  Natasha was on bed rest so she couldn't do anything but sit and watch and I'm pregnant enough that I got tired faster than those two.  We were able to get it all done that Saturday, which is fantastic.  It's been growing for a couple weeks now and tons of plants are coming up.  It looks like it's going to be a great summer.  We'll see what we actually end up with, but for a first try it is sure looking promising.  

Spencer spent the whole time wondering around the yard, which turned out to be a paradise of sorts for him, and digging in the dirt whenever he felt like it.  He was caked from head to toe when we were done and happy as could be.  

Hey guys, this dirt feels nice to sit on. :)

Digging out the swiss chard that took over half the garden.  Sorry for all you swiss chard lovers.  We are not part of your group.  Grandma took a couple of plants, but we tore out the rest.

Natasha said this was the best way to garden.

Mixing the compost into the soil. My grandma is 70.  Can you even tell?  She's amazing!

Planting the tomatoes and a full view of the garden after we'd planted. 

And a cameo appearance from Kyler, Spencer's little friend we watched for a few hours.  He was really happy to get all dirty too while his parents were away. :)

Random Tidbits

In the last few days Spencer has learned to fold his arms when we say a prayer.  I was making him french toast this morning and he was hanging out in his high chair nearby, impatiently waiting for them to get done.  He kept folding his arms and I suddenly realized that's what I was doing and he was mimicking me.  The kid is just so cute.  He's pretty proud of himself whenever he folds them while we say a prayer on a meal.  He's not so good at night because he just wants to play, but it's like it suddenly clicked.  Up to this point he's just tried to pull away.

He has been climbing up on couches for months, but ours is just a bit higher than others and so he hasn't been able to get up on it.  Yesterday he finally figured out how to get up on it.  He proceeded to get up and down at least five times just because he was so tickled with his accomplishment.

Whenever Spencer is trying to do something that is frustrating him, he starts to do this squeaky crying thing.  I've finally started to realize it's just his way to express frustration, so I've been letting him keep trying instead of helping him out and I'm so impressed with what he gets done.  It's far too easy to just make stuff work for him, but he loves it when he figures something out, so I'm trying to step back and let him try, even when he's super frustrated about it.

At least once a day he goes and finds his shoes and demands that I put them on so we can go outside.  We have two girls that live in the basement apartment of our house, and whenever he hears them outside playing, all he wants to do is go play with them.  He gets so mad if we don't go outside or we bring him in early before he's done playing.  Though conceivably he'd never be done playing, so he's kind of out of luck on that count.

Our sprinklers are really bad in our lawn so Bill puts out a sprinkler every night to try to help the worst couple spots.  He had done this before I got home from somewhere the other night.  We had probably 5 neighborhood girls playing in our yard and not a one of them was going anywhere near the sprinkler.  I set Spencer down so I could take something inside and he beelined it for the sprinkler, which I was totally okay with.  It was like he suddenly started a party and all the girls flocked to the sprinkler and started playing in it.  Trust him to get everyone going.  He's totally going to be the life of the party when he gets older. :)

Bill introduced Spencer to this whistle a few weeks ago.  If given the option, Spencer will run around blowing on that thing for hours.  Good thing he doesn't blow that hard.  It could get really annoying. :)

 We had a pair of sunglasses that got lost on a walk, so I picked up these snazzy shades the other day for 93 cents at Wal-Mart.  They pretty much don't help at all with the sun, but Spencer still loves to play with them.  He'll wear them around and loves to hang them around his neck or put them up on his head.  Unfortunately, he also likes to put them on our face, which has triggered him to start playing with Bill's glasses again, which is super annoying for Bill.  We got him to stop months ago, but he thinks it's so funny now.  Ah well.  He'll get over it soon enough.

Bill's aunt Debbie sent us up the cutest little Chinese outfit like a year ago.  It's been hanging in our closet waiting for the time when Spencer is actually big enough to fit into it.  I came home from ward council on Sunday to pick the boys up to go back to church and found Spencer decked out in it.  I'm not sure he understood when I totally cracked up upon seeing him, but he is the cutest blonde chinese kid I've ever seen. :)

My sister Natasha has been on bed rest for the last two weeks or so, trying to stave off preeclampsia before she delivers her baby hopefully in the next few days.  My mom, grandma, and I have been trading off spending lots of time at her house taking care of her meals and her laundry and keeping her house up and that kind of thing.  Okay, let's be honest.  I make her meals sometimes and keep her company.  Mom and Grandma are the ones that do everything else. :)  She and I just talk and play with Spencer.  Well Spencer already loved Natasha, but he loves her even more now.  I tell him we are going to Tasha's house and he almost always says 'Tata!', his version of her name.  Since he only says about five words, that being one fo them, you can see how much he loves her.  When we're there she's usually chilling in her recliner.  The bookshelf is right next to it and he always goes and finds books for her to read while he sits in her lap.  It's pretty endearing.

Speaking of talking, Spencer says mama, dada, duck, Tasha, occasionally milk, and he'll mimic us on lots of other things when he's in the mood.  He knows where our noses are and will frequently come over and hold mine.  He's even more happy if he can hold mine and Bill's at the same time.  It's hilarious.  Sometimes he actually says nose, but mostly he just squeezes ours with his chubby little fingers.  Actually, he doesn't really have chubby fingers, unfortunately.  He's a skinny kid, but his fingers are cute anyway!

Spencer loves balls.  Any kind.  He figured out a week or two ago that he could throw them and he's pretty much in heaven. Bill and I are pretty sure he is left-handed.  He has started eating with a spoon and he only uses his left hand.  He throws balls almost always with his left, though if he's holding something in his left hand then he will throw with his right.

Walking

Apparently I have underestimated Spencer's abilities to walk long distances.  It wasn't that hard to do.  He is only 15 months old.  But it turns out he can in fact walk all the way home from the church three blocks away as long as I am patient enough to let him pick up a handful of dirt at every place he finds some, get sidetracked by dandelions, weeds, gardens, people talking, and horns honking, and generally just go his own pace.  He did however walk essentially straight home with no diversions onto all the lawns along the way.  I was impressed. :) And sometimes he walked faster than me.  Oh, and he fell down about six times.  That comes from walking so fast. Ha ha! He didn't seem to mind though.  Maybe we'll try it again tonight on the way to the ward party and see how it goes.

New Favorite Bread Recipe

My sister-in-law sent me a bread recipe the other day that turned out to be absolutely delightful.  So here it is in case any of you want to try it.  I used normal white flour not bread flour and no dough enhancer, since I don't have any, and I got three huge, gorgeous loaves.  It's the fastest bread recipe I've ever made as it doesn't have to rise. Enjoy!

Whole Wheat Bread

Nothing like fresh baked bread. I like a little white flour to my bread. But if you like it you can do 100% whole wheat.

3 cups warm water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup agave nectar
1 T salt
2 T dough enhancer
3 T instant yeast
7 cups fresh ground hard white wheat flour
2 cups unbleached white bread flour

Directions

In mixer with a dough hook, start by adding the water, oil, agave, salt, and dough enhancer. Add in half of the amount of flour, which is 4 ½ cups. Add the yeast last on top of everything. Begin mixing and continue to add in the rest of the flour until it pulls away from the sides. When it does, let it knead for 6 more minutes to develop the gluten.
Place in a bowl rubbed with a little oil, and let it rise/rest for a few minutes.

Cut the dough into three pieces and form into smooth loaves. Place in 2lb loaf pans or form free standing loaves and place on cookie sheets. Brush loaves with an egg wash and score the tops with a sharp knife.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put loaves in oven, and then reduce the heat to 325 degrees. Cook for 30 minutes or until the internal temperature of the bread comes to 180 degrees.

New Tricks

This last week Spencer figured out how to actually get off the ground when he jumps.  You know, like 1/4-inch.  I'm still impressed since I've seen lots of kids jump and jump and jump and never actually leave the ground.  He also started throwing balls this week.  As Bill and were cheering him on and totally impressed by his accuracy and distance, we suddenly looked at each other and said, "Should we be encouraging this?"  It was funny.  I get the feeling this kid is going to be athletic.  Not surprising, but it still makes me happy.  It's really important to me to be healthy, and being active is a huge part of that.  I think it would be hard if my kids had no desire to run around and I had to figure out how to motivate them.  So check that one off for this kid. :) No extra motivation needed.