There and back again

My last post was 50 days ago. How do I even begin to talk about how the last month went? It was amazing. Stressful. Wonderful. Intense. Relaxing. Taxing. And so, so many other things. We had the time of our lives playing with siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents. We went to two family reunions, stayed overnight at a dear friend's house I haven't seen in person for 14 years, drove roundabout 5000 miles, swam, hiked, played at playgrounds and splash pads, spent as much time as possible with cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and siblings, and spent no less than $2100 on van repairs. Whew! It was an intense month. I'm so glad I did it. I probably will do a bit shorter trips in the future. Six weeks is a LONG time to be away from home, but if I had never done this I always would have wondered how it went.

The kids adore every single member of the family they spent time with. Genevieve sometimes pretends to be standoffish at first, but there were very few, if any, people she didn't eventually warm up to.

Aaron turned one in Utah. We had a couple little parties for him. He got covered in chocolate frosting and loved it. He ate that cupcake like a boss. There was no food wasted. He just went to town. That kid knows how to eat.

I had a different experience at my family reunions than in the past. Chasing three kids all over, perpetually wondering which one I couldn't see and who was going to have a problem next made for less relaxation than expected, but times change, life moves on, and eventually it won't be like this anymore. It was so good to be with all of my siblings together for the first time in 12 years.

But anyway, enough typing, let's just get to some pictures, because that's all that really matters, right?

We found these stickers all over the van, but it was worth it for a bit of fun on the way out to Utah.

First personal ice cream cones at Little America.

First night sleeping together. I couldn't help but snap a picture while they were peacefully asleep.

Cousin "nap time"

 These two played hard and fought hard. They're already great friends.

Ziegler Family Reunion. My siblings and I haven't been all together at the same time since 2003. It was great to see everyone.

 

She got a bit tired at the reunion and found herself a cozy little spot to nap.

 Trampoline fun.

 These two loved each other two. They're only five weeks apart and look so much alike it's uncanny.

 Uncle Josh was much loved.

 This "sand box" (horseshoe pit) entertained them for hours.

 He was pro at getting in. Not so much at getting out.

 Genevieve gave herself a goose egg and big cut one night falling out of bed and hitting the exercise machine. I contemplated whether I needed to take her to the ER at 11PM, but we settled for a trip to the store for butterfly bandaids while a very nice neighbor sat with the boys, who were asleep. My in-laws were gone, so it was more complicated than normal to run to the store.

 Park time.

 Pure joy at the splash pad.

 Silver Lake. We nearly ran out of gas on this trip and barely made it back out of the canyon to fill up the tank. I was able to immediately pay forward that blessing when I guy came up and asked for help filling a gas can to go take care of his stranded car, literally five minutes after we got out and were filling up our gas tank. It was very surreal and I felt very blessed.

More Uncle Josh love.

 Park City with our favorite new friends Rix and Grace and Uncle Josh!

 Trying out the play food.

 Aunt Tori and cousin Daniel were also instantly loved on as well.

 A quick moment to try for a photo shoot at the American Fork Amphitheatre.

 This girl loves her new life vest.

 And Grandma's necklaces.

 Swim time with the cousins! Turns out three Diono car seats do fit in the row in our van!

 Provo Freedom Parade. The kids were enthralled.

 Swimming at Grandpa Doug's and Grandma Suzanne's.

 Fourth of July Fireworks!

 Hanging out with Grandpa, eating some fruit snacks, waiting for sacrament meeting to start.

 Just playing with a zippered hedgehog while sitting under an umbrella wearing a fire hat. No biggie.

 Temple Square take one. I took the three kids by myself for a speedy trip one morning before heading off somewhere else.

 I worked on this quilt the entire time I was there in the evenings after the kids were asleep or when they were watching movies, etc. My lovely MIL is going to do the quilting for it on her awesome new machine and I'm so excited tos ee how it all turns out in the end. It probably won't be finished for a few months, but I really love how it turned out. It's so colorful, just perfect for Genevieve. It's going to go on her bed.

 Spencer rocking the little climb at the park with Ashman cousins.

The sandbox at Grandma Suzanne's house was a huge hit. 

 Another park trip to an old school park with a tower and awesome swings and generally way cooler than more modern parks.

 We took the train to Temple Square. The kids were in heaven!

Aaron's Birthday.

 My niece helped him open presents.

 My brother the baker got Aaron his first set of rolling pins. So far they're a big hit, emphasis on the hitting. :) I guess Aaron figures it's time to jump into the fray with his older siblings.

On the way home, Aaron, who is now one, apparently thinks he's big enough to stand while he eats. What a little card!

Garden Update

We've lived in South Carolina for two and a half years. Time has just flown by. It really doesn't seem like that long ago that we got here, but so much has happened that it has to be true. Genevieve will be three at the end of the summer and she was only four months old when we moved. Aaron turns one in just a bit over a month. This last year especially has just flown. It was like each day was slow but then suddenly weeks and months had just disappeared.

We haven't done that much traveling since we moved here. I site grad school income limitations for that travesty as both Bill and I love to travel, but that's as it is. Let's just say I've gotten very settled in and very used to the weather as it happens to be around here. And let me tell you, that weather is glorious. The winters aren't that cold. The summers aren't that hot, at least not compared to other places. It's humid as can be in the summers, but calms down late fall through early spring. I find I actually like the way the humidity makes me feel and I've been here long enough that the fact that I'm always about ten seconds from breaking out in a sweat regardless of my body temperature has just become normal. That probably sounds awful to everyone out west but you'd be surprised how fast that becomes normal and okay. It happens to everyone, so we're all in the same boat. People are more understanding of it.

Anyway, the beautiful weather means we have maximum opportunity for awesome gardening. I'm a total novice in that area, but it's hard not to grow things here. They just flourish. My garden is out of control at the moment. I saw a picture of my SIL's container garden today, and she is a rather skilled and knowledgeable gardener, and all the plants are just a few inches tall. The difference in weather makes such a huge difference. Her garden will be incredible in a few months too, but mine just got a two-month start already. My tomatoes are literally three to four feet tall and so heavy with tomatoes I'm having to prop them up beyond the cages they're in. I had to tie them all together so the end one stopped falling over from the weight. The strawberries that I expected to not grow that many berries this year are doing surprisingly well. We have a critter of some kind swiping the ripe berries unfortunately, but hopefully soon we'll get a few for us. Today I discovered one of our pickling cucumbers looks to be ready to pick. There are gobs of tiny ones on the plants too, but this one is fully grown.

 I did make a few mistakes with my garden. I initially planted the cucs in the same box as the strawberries and sugar snap peas. That was just way too much in there. I ended up moving them and they're much happier now. Next year I'll build more boxes and let the strawberries have their box to themselves. I planted the carrots and onions and lettuce in the shadow of the tomato plants. It didn't occur to me when I put them in that the tomatoes would get so huge and block the sun. So those will probably not do so well. They're still alive but virtually not growing. We'll see what happens throughout the summer. Apparently I also planted some cooler weather plants that won't do well when it gets hot, but it's already hot and they're okay, so the mistake isn't too bad for now.

But regardless, we are going to have more tomatoes than we know what to do with, and tons of them are going to be ripe when I am in Utah, so I need to figure out what Bill can use them for and the best ways to process them. The cucumbers show tons of promise. The sugar snap peas are already prolific. Hopefully we'll be eating off those all summer.

Spencer dumped a whole pile of onion seeds in one spot by accident when we were planting, so we have a little forest of onions and he and Genevieve snack on them when we go water the garden. That may be my favorite part of my garden this year. Spencer, my poor little stressed out food son, is snacking on onions and mint leaves and talking about when the tomatoes get ripe and contemplating whether he'll try the peas. They're just little steps here and there, but for me, who has struggled through with him since he was 18 months old with the food troubles, these are huge forward steps. Things are getting easier for him with food in the most incremental way. I don't know how many times I've wished for a magic button to just make it all work for him, but the small steps feel good.

My little side hobby

I build furniture. It's a hobby that evolved out of a necessity five years ago that is just starting to grow into something bigger.

A little background. When Bill and I got married our first apartment was furnished so we used our excess wedding money to buy random other things we needed to setup a house, but no furniture. When we moved from there we had a bed and two saddle stools to our name. That summer I was not working full time due to a series of events surrounding Bill and my search for internships. We would be moving back to a normal, unfurnished apartment after that time and the lack of furniture was weighing on my mind. Around that time I happened upon a new blog, ana-white.com, that had knockoff wood plans of Pottery Barn furniture. That blog has evolved over the years to include a huge readership and thousands of plans, but I've followed it from just months after its founding. I still love it.

I had done some wood and metal working in middle school and my freshman year of high school, so I wasn't unfamiliar with building things, but just little boxes and pens and wind chimes and things like that.

Anyway, I decided at the time that building furniture sounded like a fun challenge, so I took it on. I guess I could have just shopped at DI and Walmart and other places I could afford to find some furniture for our place, but I chose to learn to build stuff myself instead and that has actually become a trademark decision for lots of aspects of my life.

Five years later I am much more skilled at this hobby. I can design my own plans now. I use other's ideas as a base, but rarely make exactly the same thing as others. Instead I fit furniture to the needs we have and the style I like. It's an awesome hobby. I've built loads of different things: tables, chairs, a pantry, several beds including our current one, a porch swing, a kitchen table, and many other things. Some we still have, some didn't make it through all the heavy use. My biggest limitations are access to some expensive tools I don't currently own as well as the cost of quality wood. Oh, and fitting my efforts around my three kids, though they love to help, so that's not as hard as I would have thought. I've also built all the easy things now for the most part and I'd rather build things that will last for years now instead of just to fill a need that will probably not last. My expectations for the quality of the final product have gone way up over the years, so I don't build things as cheaply anymore.

Building is a deeply ingrained part of my life and something I miss when the break between builds gets too big. Lately that hole has been filled in a way I never expected. People have started to commission me for projects they need built. It's only happened a couple times but I'm thoroughly enjoying it and it's totally filling my need to build when I can't do it for me.

Earlier this year I looked very closely into expanding the work I do for my job into some other areas and possibly walking away from my current job that has filled a need for the last decade. I nearly jumped head first into it, but I had some trouble committing to going down that path because I just don't love editing or designing for other people as much as I like some other things. If people would pay me to go hiking or play sports or read books or run, or play with my kids, heck, I'd be all over that. But editing or designing PowerPoints and teaching people how to make better decisions? Yep, I'm skilled in those areas and I find a decent level of fulfillment there, but sometimes it just seems like entirely too much work and not enough enjoyment. And it feels like I do entirely too many things that feel like work and not enough that feel like fun. And since I spend my days with three little buddies that focus entirely on how to best have fun, I feel like I'd like some of that too. Haha! Well it turns out that there is something that I consider fun, building furniture, that others will pay me for. So hey, I'm trying it out a bit. No plans to quit my day job, but you never know what might happen. Though I can pretty much guarantee that if I do more of this that some new tools will make their way into our possessions. Hahahaha!

So who knows, maybe I will pull the trigger on those other work ideas sometime and maybe I won't. Maybe I will start doing a lot of building for friends, maybe I won't. For now the few projects I've done so far are fulfilling and we'll see what happens. Suffice it to say I'm open to requests.

The benefits of grad school

Being in a PhD program is a mixed bag. Your time isn't really your own. If Bill's advisor tells him he needs something right away, Bill leaves and goes in to take care of it. He has spent numerous nights and weekends at the lab doing extra projects. We survive on a pittance of an income. We dream about someday actually building a savings and saving for a house and not qualifying for government programs and little things like that. :)

However, in our particular instance there are some really good things about being in grad school. Clemson is a lovely place to live. There are mountains nearby with great hiking, several lakes if we want to do water sports, a fantastic ward at church. On a regular basis Bill actually works pretty awesome hours, which I know is totally different from some grad programs. He has a ton of flexibility, so if I need his help during the day, he can switch things around to help me out. He works a pretty normal schedule each day, in his case going in pretty early and coming home at about 4PM. I keep reminding myself this is a total oddity so enjoy it to the fullest as it will probably never happen again.

One of the best perks we get for being here is that Bill's lab is a wind tunnel that has just about every tool you could imagine. We have borrowed a number of tools to improve our yard and work on woodworking projects, etc. Most recently Bill told me that they have a burn pile full of perfectly usable wood that they've discarded after various research was done with them. So in the last few weeks Bill and I have gone scavenging and been able to salvage a bunch of it and put it to good use.

We found a rickety old swingset in our backyard when we moved here and put up a couple swings, but it was really not very usable, so I used some of the scrap wood I got to build a new one. For the price of a bunch of hex bolts we have a working swing set that is much sturdier. I'm actually going to build a second one with a longer top beam so I can fit three swings on it and use the one I already built for something else.

After I built the first swing set a friend asked me to build some stuff for her, including a porch swing, which got my gears turning and I was able to find a plan for a porch swing that I could build with more of my scavenged wood, so I've been slowly building that of late. All I have left to get for that is the chain to hang it, and I need to put a few more coats of oil on it. So it is very close to done. I love how it is turning out. The stain is my favorite color. I've tried other colors but always gravitate back towards this one, red mahogany. I will hang it on the first swing set as soon as it is done.

So it had been a while since I had built anything because I didn't have the funds to get enough wood to build any of the projects I have in my queue. It was a huge blessing to find out about that wood at Bill's lab. I figured out what I spent and I had to get $20 worth of bolts for the swingset. I'm $32 into the porch swing hardware and will need probably about $15 more for the chains. I need to purchase one piece of wood for the second swing set I'm building plus another $20 worth of bolts. So for less than $100 I will have a swing set for my kids, a porch swing, and a stand to hang it on. I can't buy even one of those things for that price. If I were interested in building to sell to people, I could make tons of money on these. I do a bit of that here and there, but not as my job because fitting it in around the three kids is a bit complicated.

Folks, this is why I got into building in the first place. It is so stinkin' affordable. I can have some of the things I want on the budget I have. I've taken to picking up a few pieces at a time for these projects so it doesn't feel like $100 dropped on them either. $10 here, $10 there, awesome new usable pieces. Seriously, this brings me so much contentment. I'm doing the same thing for a console table I intend to build out of nicer wood once I accumulate all the parts I need. There's a slowly growing pile of wood next to Bill's side of the bed in our room. I get a strange sort of satisfaction seeing it grow. lol.

And it's things like this that make the grad school slog a little less of a slog. Someday we'll be done and hopefully finances will be a bit better. But for now it's okay. We're happy. We have what we need and some of what we want. It's a good place to be.

It's all gone again

I think I'm a fraud. I've always wanted to be a long-haired girl, and in theory I have been one for a goodly number of years now, but when it comes down to it, I'm really just faking. I have so much hair and it gets so hot and heavy, that no matter how much I love the long ringlets and bouncy curls for the first few minutes after I do my hair, really most days it just ends up in a ponytail, especially here in the south in the summer.

After pulling my hair up into a ponytail and braid for weeks on end, I finally decided I was done. It was time to go back to short, and it has to be short enough that it's not just weighing down on my neck making me hot. So behold, the new haircut. I don't' really love selfies of just me, and haircut pictures always seem to be the worst, but hey, who cares. The cut is cuter in person, but whatevs. Here it is. I kind of wondered if the curls would go away with it as short as it is in the back, but no worries. They're all still there. I have to remember that despite having straight hair until I hit puberty, my hair is definitely curly and not changing anytime soon.

And for the sake of matching and all, actually not for that reason at all, but it just happens to coincide this week, Genevieve got a cute new bob as well. It was my first effort at cutting girl's hair and I'm quite pleased with the result. It is the first time her hair has been cut since she was born, no joke. She had these adorable wispy curls down to the middle of her back, but she really needed them trimmed up so the thickness higher up was more uniform. She could rock any hairstyle, but hey, I didn't ruin it and that's just lovely. :)

Getting stronger

I ran my first five-mile run since before I got pregnant with Aaron this evening. I figure that was somewhere around 18 months ago. It felt amazing. I ran an 8:34 pace, which is a whole lot better than where I started back in January, but with room to go towards where I was speedwise back in my running hey day. I'm very pleased.

It got me thinking, because there was a time in my life, not too many years ago, though it's beginning to feel further away than I would like, where five miles was a standard length run I did several nights a week without thinking anything of it, not a huge accomplishment that has taken me several months to achieve. I started counting and I've run four marathons, one half marathon, one ten-mile race, a bunch of 10k races, and tons of 5Ks. When I was doing all that racing I regularly ran from a 7:30 to 8-minute mile. Thing is, a lot of that kind of went away close to five years ago now when I was about halfway through Spencer's pregnancy. I've been head down pregnant, nursing, with little kids for a good long while now and somewhere in that time running became something I used to do or that I just dabbled in as opposed to something I actively do now and is one of the things that defines me. 

At the beginning of this year I decided that needed to stop and I wanted to find this part of myself again. I started running as a sport in and of itself back in 2001 when I started at BYU and realized that eating brownies and cookies and other amazing delectables that my roommates and I concocted at 3AM every night wasn't doing any favors for my fitness and weight. As I ran to get back in shape I discovered that running made me feel amazing. I'm only 5'2" tall and I've played a lot of sports growing up where my height was a pretty big disadvantage. That's just not the case for running. I found a lot of success, placed in quite a few races, and really reveled in the success I found there. 

So here I am, nearly 15 years later and I've had a few years now where running hasn't played a big part of my life. I would never have thought that would happen after I discovered how much I love it, but it's all good. I like my babies and while having them has done quite a number on my fitness and my body, I wouldn't trade it. It takes a lot of effort to get back in top shape, but that can be an enjoyable process too, at least to see the changes happen. Aaron's pregnancy particularly really did me in. There was this amazing combination of nausea and migraines that just laid me out and I never quite recovered the whole pregnancy. So I really started from ground zero at the beginning of this year trying to build strength and endurance. It has felt like a really long time, but it's only been four months and I've seen amazing changes and results. 

And you know what the best part of all this process is? I had a very full day. Bill and I did a bunch of different things. We were outside a good portion of the day, working hard. Yet when we got the kids in bed, I was only too pleased to go and hop in my running clothes and head out the door. Previously I would have flopped down on the couch exhausted after a full day. The energy levels I'm developing feel so much better than before. For heaven's sake, Aaron, lovely child that he is, woke me up three times last night. That's not normal, but it also isn't that unusual. Someday he will sleep again. Someday he will have all his teeth. I think the two may well go together. But even if he doesn't, I still have the energy to do five miles at the end of a day and not even feel that fatigued. And when all is said and done, that is incredible, because it means that there is more of me to share with my littles, and that makes me very happy. So cheers to getting back in shape, for all the good endorphins I get, for the energy, for the positive effects on my body. It's a good thing all around. 

Colors Run

I've fallen out of the habit of running races in recent years. I was having kids and that kind of took all my energy, lol. But this year has been the year of getting back into running and it is getting slowly and steadily better. Yesterday I ran my first race, a fun, laid back colors run. They didn't even have a clock on the course, which was just fine.

The race was great. I ran it with some friends from church. It was pouring rain the entire time, which made it all the more fun. They threw chalk colors at us every half mile or so and then the rain washed it off/really got it stuck deep in our skin and clothes. Good times. It was a really casual run, not fast, but lots of fun because I stuck with a friend and her kids and we had great fun. I don't run often with others, so it was a treat.

I stuck my car key in my cell phone armband, but apparently got it in the main pouch, not the key pocket, and it fell out somewhere along the way. So I had to call Bill to come save me. It just so happened that the USA Triathlon was having a finals event in Clemson on the same day and the road to my house was literally blocked from turning left for ten miles. So it took Bill a full hour round trip to come get me, though it was only maybe four miles away.  Good times. Thankfully it won't be a big deal to get that key replaced because it's definitely lost somewhere in a muddy field or trail.

I'm still planning on running a half marathon this October, so it was nice to get a short race under my belt, albeit a casual one. The shirt is nice too and we all know that's the real reason to run races, to collect shirts. Hahaha!

A little of this, a little of that

I started a quilt for Genevieve. I decided I was ready to move on from squares to triangles and see how that went. So far it's fantastic, though definitely more finicky. This was the first block I did, just to practice. Don't worry, I just grabbed whatever scraps I could find that were big enough.

This crazy one, though, this is part of the quilt. The paper in the above picture is what the whole quilt design looks like. There is going to be some solid fabric in it, plus a whole lot of these crazy squares. Should be fun. I'm hoping it will take a bit longer than Spencer's, because I thoroughly enjoy this hobby and I don't have enough money to make gazillions of quilts right now, whether I want to or not. :)

The azaleas in my yard and the whole area are blooming like crazy and it's just beautiful. This is a picture of them a few days ago before they really got full of blooms. Right now you can hardly see the bush for the blooms.

I found this when I came in the house one afternoon. I laughed.

We pulled out the wormies, as Genevieve calls it, the other day before the last week of rain and thunderstorms started. The kids loved it. I forecast a lot more use of that as it gets warm again.

It has been raining for what feels like a week. It might be a bit less than that, but it has been a long time. We're getting a bit stir crazy. It's still forecasted until Tuesday. I like rain, but I also like a bit of a break occasionally. I would do awful in the Pacific Northwest. I love me some sunshine. :)

Aaron decided yesterday out of the blue that he could pull himself up. He only army crawls right now, so this is kind of huge. In fact, it's exactly the way Spencer did it, just a few months older than Spencer was when he did it. That kid was a baby on a mission to get moving. Aaron, not so much. But he was super pleased when he pulled himself to standing.

Also, we can finally see the beginnings of teeth coming through Aaron's gums. They're not in yet, but this poor 9+ month old really could use some teeth. He is not enjoying this final push. Nor am I as he didn't go to sleep until 11PM last night and then woke up twice before getting up for good at 7ish. Wooh! Not enough sleep for either of us!

Nine Months

This kid. He is such a joy in all of our lives. He is nine months old today and just so, so fun. I mean, look at that grin. It is huge. That epitomizes Aaron. He is just so happy most all the time. 

He wants to be in the middle of everything. His biggest frustration right now is he just can't keep up with his siblings and it drives him crazy. He hasn't figured out how to fully crawl yet. He army crawls all over the place, which is pretty fast on our wood floors, but his siblings run way faster. He gets up on all fours, or all the way up into pushup or down dog positions, but then he lays back down to move. He'll figure it out one of these days.

I remember when Spencer was this age, he was further along in his movement than Aaron, but he also army crawled for months and months and only normal crawled for one month before he started walking. I wouldn't be surprised if Aaron does something similar. He's really strong. He hasn't started pulling himself up yet, but he loves to be stood up, so I don't see it taking that long before he figures that part out.

The best news about Aaron is that his very misshapen head has finally started to round itself back out. You can't see it from the front, but he had a horribly flat whole side of his head from about two months old all the way until a month or two ago when he finally started moving more and got off laying on his back all the time. We had a follow up visit with his neurosurgeon this week and determined he will not need a helmet to reshape his head, that it has progressed enough that it will take care of itself. I'm SO, SO, SO happy about that. It was flat for so many months that I basically gave up hope that it would change on its own. Then I was nervous to hope that it would improve, but over the last two months it has and I was so pleased to have the neurosurgeon confirm what I thought I had seen.

So we've been taking pictures with his Gund stuffed animal since birth, and there is a story that goes with why we picked that particular stuffed animal. Bill had a similar stuffed animal, same brand, when he was a little kid and he loved it dearly. He carried it around by the string that made up it's mouth. It had come unattached and formed a little loop. The nose is totally rubbed off and it is very well loved. We still have that stuffed animal and Genevieve has actually decided she loves it too. So when Spencer was born Bill's mom got him the Gund in these pictures. Spencer could have cared less about it. He latched onto other loveys. Genevieve couldn't care about it either. At least not compared to her beloved dog stuffed animal she carried until we lost it six months ago at Thanksgiving. So Aaron came along and Bill was determined that he would love it. And guess what? He does love it. It's his favorite toy. He sleeps with it and cuddles it up to his face and just loves on it. It's absolutely adorable and Bill is so tickled about it.

So let's see, things about Aaron at nine months. He loves to eat. I haven't found a food he doesn't like. He has no teeth yet but that doesn't seem to stop him from eating whatever he can find. He hasn't really mastered drinking from a sippy cup yet, though he can handle a bottle on his own. The sippy cup still mostly pours out all over him.

He is quite partial to me, but really he loves everybody. He'll let anyone hold him. When he is tired or hungry he has started to show a preference for me, which drives his Grammy Becky (our adopted southern grandma) totally crazy because she wants to cuddle him to bits. Lately Spencer and Genevieve have gone in when they hear him wake up and they'll play with him until I come in. He adores them and they return the sentiment. It took Genevieve a good six months to get past the fact that he had shaken up her world and she wasn't the baby anymore, but she dearly loves him now. They have developed quite the relationship.

These pictures are from last weekend before I cut his hair. He was pretty pleased to be in this bucket and he loved it when Spencer hopped in too.

He is hit and miss on sleeping through the night. He is growing like crazy and I think he's just genuinely hungry some nights. He started sleeping through the night at probably two months old, but then stopped a while later and he still doesn't do it all the time. He does seem to do better if he eats solid meals during the day. That will be much easier when he gets some teeth and I feel better about giving him more crunchy food. We stick to a bit softer stuff for now, though he does eat just the same things as we do. He weighed 24.5 pounds at the doctor this week, which blows me away since Genevieve only weighs about 30 pounds and Spencer 35. Though my scale said he weighed 19, so maybe my big kids weigh more than it says they do too. But still, Aaron is big. One of the nicest things he has learned lately is to cling to me with his legs, which really helps since he weighs so much and I often end up holding him since he just scoots around.

I've run out of pictures, so I'll call that a wrap. Happy nine months little guy!

Gardening

One of the things I've been really excited about for years is to have a bigger place to garden than just a little balcony container spot. We've never really had a place to do any real gardening until this most recent move a few months ago. There's not really a gardening spot here, but what I did was build a couple raised garden boxes on top of garden paper just in our side yard. We can leave them there, or if need be in the future they can be dismantled and I think the grass will grow back just fine.

I figured I would start small and do two 4x4 beds. That's not a ton of space, but it's a good place to start. Depending on how long we are here, maybe we'll build more in the future, but it works great for now.

I did all my planting today. We had started some seeds indoors but for whatever reason they grew really well and then totally went south and started dying off. Maybe we had them in there for too long? I don't know, but I salvaged what plants I could from that, planted the tomatoes and strawberries and cucumbers I picked up today at the store, and also planted some seeds.

The plants we got from our local garden store. I had some seeds already, but we bought some tomatoes and strawberries and pickling cucumbers here.

This is the finished garden. I did add a little trellis thing for the peas and I'll get some cages for the tomatoes still sometime as they start to grow. I really haven't a clue if I planted too much stuff in there. It was less space than I expected, but I figured I'd go for it and see how it turns out. Gardening is an experiment half the time for me anyway. It should be fun. Hopefully the next time I take a picture of it, the whole thing will be covered in green. :)

Oh, and I have one funny story about planting this afternoon. When we got home from the garden store Aaron and Genevieve had both fallen asleep and I successfully transferred both of them to their beds, where they took naps. So it was just Spencer and I outside for an hour or so. When Genevieve woke up, I headed in to get her, leaving Spencer alone with all the seeds and a pair of scissors. I tried to be as fast as I could, but getting a kid up from a nap isn't always simple. By the time I got back outside, Spencer had "planted" nearly all the seeds. As in he cut open the packets and poured the seeds all out into piles in the garden. Thankfully he didn't mix them. I think I salvaged and/or scooped out most all of the seeds and was able to plant them with their correct spacing. Though I think there are about 100 carrot seeds under one of the tomatoes that are just too small to do anything with, so that should be exciting in a few weeks. The kids totally loved "helping" me plant, but it certainly made the experience more complicated. Haha! Here's hoping everything grows well and we have some fantastic plants come up very soon. I can't wait.

Who decided health insurance was a good idea?

I have spent hours on the phone today and last week and the week before and the week before, seriously for over a month, trying to get the insurance worked out for a helmet Aaron will likely need next month. It's not over exaggerating to say the whole process fills me with rage. I've probably talked to 20 people along the way to no avail.

The ridiculous part of this whole thing is I'm good at this kind of thing. I know how to talk to people to get help. I work in the healthcare industry, so I can talk the talk and share the details I need to so reps will help me. I took a negotiations class in my grad program that helped me even more learn how to work better with people.

Yet it doesn't seem to matter. The insurance industry drives me bonkers. I already know that my current insurance will not cover the helmet, as per my specialist. Yet can I get a straight answer from them? No. Can I get help to switch insurance? Not really. I've talked to scores of nice people, but the industry is so siloed it takes weeks and months to process everything and that is too long. This process has to go faster. So I keep calling people. I keep trying new ways of making my requests, hoping I will get the answers I need. But in the back of my mind I keep thinking this isn't going to work. Their ineptitude is going to result in me getting billed several thousands of dollars. And let me tell you how well our grad school income accommodates those kinds of bills. Yeah, it doesn't. Not without stealing it from other necessary areas. Ugh.

So maybe send a few prayers our way that either this insurance thing will be worked out, or even better, Aaron's head will reshape itself on its own and we can drop this whole process. Oh, and pray that I can keep my sanity because it makes me want to break things every time I get off another phone call that hasn't resolved my issue. We've got 11 days.

What a week

Hello, this week has been rough! The sickness of all sicknesses descended upon us last Saturday and it hasn't completely left even today. I stayed healthy until about Tuesday, but then it nailed me hard: fever, chills, horrible sinus pressure, runny everything, headache, omg, I wanted to die. I thought it had pretty much passed by Thursday but then it ramped back up again and today is really the first day I've been able to do anything besides survive.

In desperation partway through it I took a couple doses of benadryl/sudafed at night to help me sleep and that, plus the recent changes in how Aaron has been eating, plus I believe a growth spurt and my body not catching onto it yet, left me with milk that almost entirely dried up on him. That was alarming and stressful. I got some great advice from my sister and a bunch of friends and have been taking steps to help bring it back. It's back, but not to optimal levels yet. I think another day or two and we'll be fine, but it's awful to wonder if your baby is hungry and only have a few bags of milk saved and be stressed about how that's going to work out. I know I could have gone and gotten some formula if push came to shove, but I'm not ready to stop nursing, and I didn't want to do that if I didn't have to, so it was just stressful. We're making it through now though, thankfully. I still have a part of the cold left, but I've been able to have a normal day today and feel good. That's a blessed thing after such a rough week.

In fact we had a fantastic day. It was glorious outside, in the 60s in the morning, warming up to the 70s later on. We spent as much of the day as we could outside. Bill raked the yard and trimmed out a few unruly plants. The kids played with all their toys, and I got to work on a project for a friend that I've been slowly doing bits of for a few weeks. We also got to run a few errands, including getting ice cream at our favorite Mennonite store, which the kids always love.

So speaking of my project, my friend asked me to make a display box for her set of flutes. I had done the box a few weeks ago but hadn't figured out the best way to cut out the pieces for the flutes to rest against. I was thinking through all my different tools and just couldn't think which one would have the precision on curves that I needed on a thin piece of wood. Earlier this week Bill and I helped one of my Cub Scouts do his Pinewood Derby car and Bill used a coping saw to do the cuts. It struck me that of course, that was the right tool!

Sure enough it worked perfectly and wasn't even that hard. I was so pleased. Then I was able to use a little multi-tool my dad sent home with me at Christmas to sand the curves and it seriously turned out better than I could have hoped. The coping saw came from him too, so this is only the second time I've used it and it was wonderful.

So here's a picture of the box and the inside pieces that still need to be oiled and then glued in place. It's going to look so amazing. The box is done except a final buff with steel wool. The inside pieces are done staining but need a few coats of tung oil to be done. I'm so glad I discovered that stuff recently. It is far and away the best finish I've ever used and I've tried a bunch of different options. This stuff will give you the smooth, satiny feel you want every time and with such a small amount of effort to apply it.

All right, I'm done geeking out about my project. It's the first time I've ever had someone commission me to make something for them and I'm so excited that it's turning out so well. Huzzah!!!

We capped the night off with a little campfire. We regularly battle with Genevieve to keep her clothed. She just prefers to run around in underwear only. I'm not hugely worried about it except that it has been cold for a long time, so that didn't really work if she ever wanted to go outside. She'll run up to me in her puddle jumpers and underwear and be like, I'm ready to go outside! Yeah, no. So this outfit is pretty impressive. She picked it out herself and was particularly excited to have her skirt on over her pants. She has a few skirts and it's been so cold that we've been telling her for months that she has to wear leggings under her skirts. She fights it every time, so it's funny that now she's all excited about having that very thing.

Spencer's mouth is completely stuffed full of marshmallow. They polished them off before the campfire had even been lit. Haha!

It was a smokey fire, but we still had fun. I could wax poetic about how much I love the yard in our house. I don't know what the bugs will be like this summer, but for now sitting out in the evening is pristine.

Eight months

Wow this kid is growing up fast. This has been the month of independence. Aaron has figured out he can scoot around and it has opened a whole new world of exploration. I hear much less frustrated crying now that he can move. He looks kind of like he's trying to swim on dry land when he scoots, which is hilarious, but he is getting places and that's all he cares about. I guess you could call it an army crawl, but really it isn't even that yet. He looks like he's doing the butterfly kick, pushing both feet and both hands at the same time. Whereas before he would get so frustrated when I left his sight, now he is more prone to just follow, albeit slowly. He has started exploring our house on his own too, which leads to the bathroom door being closed and lots of sibling freak outs as he comes and wants to play with their stuff.

In good news Aaron's strangely shaped head is finally starting to improve a bit now that he isn't perpetually laying on it. Time will tell if it will reshape itself on its own or if it will need intervention by way of a helmet, but we have a month before that decision happens. I hadn't seen any improvement on that since he was probably two months old, so it's great to finally see some change.

Aaron is sitting up these days. He is eating everything in sight. He still doesn't have any teeth, but I'm ever impressed with his ability to eat regardless of that.

He loves his siblings and they return the affection. Genevieve is currently sitting next to him cheering him on as he plays with a little laptop toy they have. She just said to him, "I like you, Aaron." Seriously, they are so precious together. Spencer and Aaron seem to have a special bond. They already roughhouse with each other, which is entertaining for all parties.

Aaron will still go to just about anybody. He just makes friends with whoever is holding him. He is back to sleeping through the night most nights. He's not a deep sleeper, so naptimes are sometimes shorter than I would like because the walls are thin in our house and his older siblings are loud, but we do the best we can. Give him his goon toy and a blanket and he's happy as can be in his crib. I do love a baby that enjoys sleeping. :)

And so another month goes by with this little sweetheart. I really don't know what we did without him. His sweet little spirit brings so much joy to everyone and smooths out the rough patches in so many ways. Bless him for that.

The group photo didn't work out so well when Aaron fell over mid photo. Whoops!

Things that have made me smile lately

There have been a lot of challenges lately in my little family, but at the same time there are so many precious moments and I want to think about those as opposed to the rough patches. So here are a few things that my kids do that make me happy lately.

A friend gave us all their old playdough toys right before Christmas. I hadn't brought them out yet because I didn't want the kids to be overwhelmed with new things at Christmas and I was waiting for the right time. They asked me to make new play dough today and I figured now was a great time to get the new toys down too. No joke, Spencer played with the little form making snakes and dinosaurs and whatever else he could imagine for two hours. He has never, ever, ever in his entire life played with a toy that long. He took a break in the middle to vacuum up all the dropped pieces, then decided he wanted to play some more and played for another few minutes.

Speaking of vacuuming, we bought a shop vac when we moved into this house two months ago. Spencer refers to it as Daddy's vacuum and repeatedly tells me my vacuum is up in the attic and he likes the shop vac better so don't bring the other one down. He can operate it on his own and he will of his own initiative pull it out and vacuum the house. It's amazing.

Since I'm talking about cleaning, he has also started helping me clean the bathroom. He asks me several times a week if he can clean it. I stick to once a week, but he actually does a pretty good job helping. He'll clean the toilet and hop up and clean the mirror and the bathtub too. This kid is doing all sorts of things to bring smiles to my face these days. :)

Genevieve has started calling me Mama instead of Mommy lately. I don't know where she picked that up, but it's precious.

Aaron freaks out every time I leave his line of sight. While I wish he wouldn't do that, it's rather endearing to be missed so vehemently.

Aaron will be eight months old in a few days and he has never experienced a moment of stranger danger. Maybe he will in coming months but for now he will go to anyone and just figures they're all his friends. He flirts with anyone who will make eye contact with him. He ducks his head against my shoulder and bats his long eyelashes. What a card!

Aaron has a special love for me. He is happy to see anyone, but when he sees me his face lights up to a whole new level. I swear the Lord knew what he was doing sending Aaron along third in line. He is like balm to my soul when the other kids are throwing challenges at me right and left. I hope he forever keeps his sunshiny outlook on life. It really is wonderful to experience.

Genevieve is a classic second child, knowing all the ways to drive Spencer crazy without seeming to even try. It just comes natural. However, she is also the most giving little girl. She's so willing to share toys to make others feel better and she is forever trying to help out to make someone feel good. It's really sweet to watch, and utterly hilarious when she does things like whack one of her brothers with some item and then hurry over to give them a kiss to make it "all better".

Aaron is officially moving these days. He does this worm crawl thing that looks like it takes so much energy, but he's getting pretty fast at it. I'm sure he'll quickly progress to easier methods of motion, but for now he's getting around pretty well. It's adorable to watch him make his way laboriously toward whatever he wants and then his look of victory when he arrives.