Bat Eyebrows, Good Helpers, and Good Food

What, you don't wear bat stickers as eyebrows and mustache? 

You can't see her eyebrows, so we thought we'd make them a little more pronounced.

Best helper ever. She's not in the picture, but Genevieve pulls the stuff out of the dishwasher, gives it to Bill, who gives it to Spencer to put away.

He loves it.

See? Told you. He's seriously in heaven putting things away. It tickles his order need.

Look of pure joy.

Now time for the glasses. Not only is he helping, but he's precariously standing on the sink, which the little crazy kid in him adores.

I'll have a little french fry with my ketchup.

First time trying ketchup was a rousing success. She literally used the french fries as a spoon and only bit into them every third or so bite. lol

A vacation day in pictures

Watching the Lorax first thing in the morning. Bill discovered the secret to getting Genevieve to stay. Just put a pillow on top of her and she'll chill for a good 20 minutes watching the movie. :)

Jumping on the newly assembled bed.

A little bit of wrestling thrown in the mix. 

I love these stockings so much. I have another one finished besides other than the name that is a tin solider, so I guess that means this next baby needs to be a boy. :) 

We don't have that many Christmas decorations yet, but I have a few I brought home from Russia and I love this matrioshka nativity.

I like to collect one of these santas each year if I can swing it. They're not cheap outside of Russia, so I've actually only bought one since we got married. The two on the left I bought while I was there. But I plan to keep that collection growing over the years.

The kids love that bell tree. I showed them how to shake it to get it to ring and they both think that's the best thing they can do. It's so loud and hilarious.

Advent calendar just waiting for the Andes mints to fill up all those ribbons.

Someday I'll get the willow tree nativity set that I just love, but this is a cute little one we got a couple years ago that does just fine.

That started out on a table and swiftly went higher when the kids nearly tore it apart on first touch.

The whole front room.

Bathtime! Finally a good smile from Spencer. Nothing from Genevieve.

Crazy eyes.

Oh, smile from Genevieve!

OMG, is it possible? Yes! Both kids are smiling in the same photo! That may be the first photo I have ever gotten of both of them smiling. lol

I never thought we'd finish, but the bed is done!

This project has dragged on longer than any other building project I've done. That might be because it's also the biggest one I've ever done, but then there was morning sickness and two kids under foot and let's just say it took a really long time to finish all the details. Today was the day though and we did it! I ended up doing most of the work on the bed, and I built the headboard, but Bill took over doing the finish on the headboard and it turned out beautiful.  It's a little darker than the frame because I didn't mix the stain well enough when I first did my staining, but it all looks great put together.

We made lots of modifications on this thing. When I originally built the base I discovered after it was completely done that it was a few inches too long, which was horrifying, but turned out to be no big deal. Bill did a good bit of reassuring me that it would be fine, and indeed it was. I just modified the base of the headboard so it sat on top of the frame instead of connecting to the front, which worked out fine. It is a bit away from the wall, but nothing that is a problem.

I wanted to make sure I could have a bedside table, so instead of having two big drawers on the sides, I did a little cabinet and then two drawers. That should leave enough space if I build some in the future. We used to have some, but they're in the living room now.

 And here it is all put together and made up. We got new bedding for Christmas, but it won't come for a few days and we'll probably wrap it up to open on Christmas. We went with almost the opposite of the black cover we have. It's white with black flowery things and little green accents. It's going to look great.

So my building itch has been completely filled for the moment. This was a crazy project to do without a garage or workshop, but hey, we did it and it was awesome and it is going to last for years and years. Woot!

Enough about me, let's talk about my kids

I kind of hate when I have one of those weeks where I can't even come up with anything noteworthy to talk about here. Nothing was bad about it. There just wasn't anything of note. Probably a big part of that is that I have an awesome combination of off and on, more often on, headache that combines with a touch of nausea that I wouldn't even be bothered with on its own, but together it packs a pretty mean punch. I'm only seven weeks along, so I foresee it lasting until, oh I don't know, New Year's? Yup, that sounds about right, which is a tad depressing during the times of day when I don't feel so hot. Currently I feel fine so it's not so such a big deal, but let's just say I don't feel my normal chipper self for now.

But hey, I still have two cute kids that do lots of fun things, so let's talk about them instead! Genevieve is getting more and more mischievous the older she gets. She is such a chip off of her dad's block. :) It's hilarious and at the same time makes me want to pull my hair out. She will get this look in her eyes that we all recognize now and then be off to cause trouble or pester someone or get into somewhere she ought not to be. Like this morning she started crying and I came in to find her sitting on top of my four-drawer dresser in my bedroom pulling out all the jewelry she could get to in my jewelry box. It was scattered all around her on the floor, but she was stuck without a way to get back down. That's due to our new bed giving her access to that particular dresser, but her not being quite capable of getting back off. It was pretty much the last place we've been able to hide non-baby-friendly items.

If left to it she will pour gallons of water onto the bathroom floor while she's in the bathtub and then laugh and laugh and laugh.

She likes to steal Spencer's things just to get a rise out of him, but then she'll usually give them right back. She'll chuck her food at him too just to get him to laugh, then they both start laughing and she keeps throwing food and they have a grand old time, but my dining room is trashed. :)

She loves all her dolls and switches among which one she wants to play with. Today she was pretending to feed her doll bites of food before she ate them herself.

She loves to play in the toilet. The toilet paper is officially off limits to both her and Spencer because unplugging toilets is just not something I care to do on a regular basis. Hahaha!

She has very definite ideas of what books she wants to read and she always wants to be sitting on top of us while we read them to her. I say it like that because if we're laying on the floor she will bring a book to us and then promptly sit on our head. But she prefers laps if they're available. Haha!

She loves her stuffed dog more than life itself, as I've mentioned many times, and she now will give us hugs with it, consisting of smashing it in our face for a few seconds and than grunting like you do when you squeeze someone hard in a real hug. Again, it's utterly hilarious and Spencer absolutely loves it. He's even started grunting sometimes when he gives hugs.

Speaking of Spencer, he has turned into such an awesome helper lately. He's getting more and more imaginative in his play, and the other day he brought all his blocks plus cloth letters into the kitchen and dumped them in my kitchenaid mixer because he was making bread and cookies at the same time. He went through the list of all the things he needed to make them, and tossed the "food" in. "Gluten! Dry milk! White coconut oil! Oatmeal! Flour!" He's got such an amazing memory. I never get over how fast he can learn new words and ideas and retain them.

He is finally hitting the I-want-to-do-it-myself stage. I always wondered when he would get there. His development has been completely different than all the classic steps that people talk about. It's actually been really nice once I realized it wasn't a problem, but that he was just going to do things in a different order than I might otherwise expect. This particular stage is lovely because he's completely capable of doing just about everything he wants to do on his own now, as opposed to Genevieve, who is already partly in the same stage, who just isn't physically capable of a lot of the things she wants to do. So I'm going with the trend and letting him do what he wants for the most part. Heck, if he'll pull a chair over to the counter and get down his own food to eat, who am I to complain, particularly since eating has been such a struggle? He pulled out some pudding from the fridge today and got some graham crackers and made his own snack of dipping them in and chowing down. I thought it was awesome. Because seriously, I get so tired of making food over and over and over and over and over again day in and day out for the kids and then cleaning up after them all the time. I'm teaching them to help, but it's still mostly my show for now. I never realized how taxing that one little task would be when you do it five or six times a day what with snacks and meals. It's no wonder so many people have trouble getting decent dinners on the table. The food from the rest of the day wore them out!

Spencer is super big on order and he always has been, but now it's working to our benefit as he wants to help put the dishes away or make sure things are in their place. Genevieve is a chip off Bill's block, but Spencer is far and away so much like me in many, many ways. The older he gets the more he looks like me too, which is gratifying since he didn't start out that way and Genevieve doesn't resemble me in the slightest. I swear I added to her gene pool, but so far no one would know it. Who knows, maybe this next child will actually look like me when he or she is born, but our first two looked nearly identical and just like Bill at birth, so I'm not crossing my fingers. :)

Okay, well that's about all I can think of to document about my kids at the moment, so the end.

Maybe this week will be the week

One step closer. The bed is back inside. The staining is done. One coat of polyurethane is on. My house is a heck of a lot less fumey, but hopefully after a few more coats it will be all gone. Fingers crossed! Pregnancy nausea hit this week so it's a bit of a battle of wills to get up and work on this, but having my entire living space in my house full of bed is pretty good motivation. I'm getting pretty bad headaches to go with the nausea and the smell is certainly not helping, so that's excellent motivation as well. Here's to having this project done ASAP!

Bed Update

So this bed, it's built now. Well mostly. We did a trial run Friday night of having it put together. We brought our mattress out into the living room and set it up on the frame and slept there. It was awesome and so strange to be three feet closer to the ceiling after sleeping for nearly a year on the floor.

I made one awful discovery when it was all assembled. Somehow, and I have no idea how this managed to happen, but somehow the bed frame is actually four inches longer than it needs to be. I was so appalled when we put the mattress on and there was extra at the top. The width is perfect, but somehow the measurements are for the length of a cal king, not a regular. Yeah, cue thoughts of how I could possibly fix it, realizing there's no possible way without redoing two-thirds of the bed, and Bill repeatedly telling me it's an awesome thing because adding a headboard will work perfectly and make it awesome. The jury is still out for me, but that and the fact that I had a tool borrowed from a friend that I needed to return yesterday, prompted us to buy the wood and go ahead and build the headboard Saturday night. It's a good two inches wide or so, so it will definitely help and I think we'll be able to make it all work out pretty well, but holy cow, I couldn't believe that had happened when I made the discovery. I haven't actually put the bed together with the headboard yet, so we'll have to see how it all works out. We modified it to sit on top of the bed frame instead of being screwed to the end, so that should make a big difference. So yeah, that whole DIY thing sometimes ends up with comedic mistakes that leave me shaking my head.  This thing cost too much money to redo, here's to making it work and being happy about it! :)

This week is going to include building some drawers, which is tricky making sure they are exactly the right size to fit in the tracks, and then staining the whole thing. It's certainly going to take a good amount of time and I hope we'll be sleeping on the finished product by this next weekend. Fingers crossed!

The headboard. I love this thing. It turned out beautiful and I can't wait to stain it and see the finished product. I need to sand it a bit first, but that's it!

All the pieces of the bed, cluttering up our living room. One thing I will really appreciate in the future is to have a garage or even better, a workroom. 

The end section, finished save for hardware, which I'll put on after it gets stained. Those drawers are big enough for my children to comfortably fit in. They're awesome!

11 Months in the making

I have five sheets of plywood in my living room and a whole bunch of miscellaneous small boards on the back porch. I built some super simple sawhorses last night. Three boxes of screws are sitting on my computer desk as I type this. What for, you ask? For our new bed frame!!! That's right, our mattress has been on the floor of our bedroom for 11 months, ever since we moved to South Carolina. We sold our old bed before we moved here and the new one needs a platform bed frame instead of a metal one like we had.

I've been planning to build a bed for so long, however it's taken this many months for it to come up in the rotation of most important things to save for. But the time is now and don't be surprised if I have pictures to share in just a few days. I'm so beyond ready to have a normal height bed again. It turns out building a king-sized bed frame, while it might be cheaper than buying one, is still pretty pricey, so it's taken a bit to save up the funds. I'm building this bed and this headboard. Building furniture has become my creative outlet, so I can't help but modify these a bit to make them just what I want. We'll see how it all turns out, but I'm pretty excited. The storages bed style was picked particularly because we can use the extra storage space without taking up more footprint in the bedroom. I'll build nightstands eventually to go with the bed. Right now we have dressers serving that purpose, but I'll give them to the kids when I have nightstands built. Can't wait!

Running

Spencer likes to run! I had no idea. Like not just around the house, but for a pretty decent distance. We went out exploring this weekend to a place our friend told us about and started walking down a road to see what we could find. We didn't find much, but we ran the whole way because Spence started it and we had an awesome time! I love that little guy. It was so fun.

Halloween

I've always liked the concept of Halloween and the thought of dressing up in an awesome costume, but I can't say that I've had a lot of success over the years with stellar costumes. I've rarely managed the type of costume where everyone knows what I am and are sufficiently amused/impressed so it feels like I've been successful in whatever it means to be successful at Halloween. However, now that we have a couple of kids, this is the second year running where our costumes have been awesome. Well, the kids at least. This year they stole the show and Bill and I just rode their coat flaps of awesomeness in our no costume laziness, but their costumes were fantastic.

Both kids absolutely adore the movie The Lorax. I know, it has a totally in your face message to share about conservation that you may or may not like, but the dialog is fun, it's got depth, the music is fantastic, and Bill and I still get a kick out of it even after Spencer watched it every day for a good chunk of this last year. I can't say that about many movies. It was a no-brainer a few months back when we decided to dress Spencer as the Lorax for Halloween. Genevieve was a tad trickier to think what to do on that theme, but we decided to dress her as a truffula tree and oh it worked out so well. I'm so proud of these costumes because I made them and the kids rocked them. They both absolutely adore the hats, and cried whenever I tried to take them off. That's my kind of positive response from a kid. :) You can't ask for much more than having them be bothered when you try to take away what you gave them. Lol!

So behold, the Lorax and his truffula tree:

Parenthood is such a roller coaster

I've been thinking a lot lately about how there are some really rough patches in parenting. I'm in a huge one right now. Spencer is stretching my abilities to the limit right now with his needs. I sincerely hope that my abilities are expanding with all of it, but since I'm not finding a lot of solutions for how to help the poor kid out, that is up for debate. We've been going through quite the rough patch, with what feels like the same old problems with eating and his ability to try new things and deal with change.

Ever since July when our pediatrician identified that he was indeed having beyond normal struggles with some of the details of living, we've been on a journey to try to help him develop better. We've been doing speech therapy to help with his problematic eating for several months now. It seemed like we were really making progress, but in the last couple weeks he's totally regressed and I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall at every single meal trying to help him eat healthy and happy, or just even eat at all. It's exhausting. We're back to a very limited selection of foods he'll eat and everything feels like a huge power struggle. I would rather not have it be that way, so I'm constantly trying to find new ways to interact with him so we can work together rather than at odds. But every time I reach out looking for solutions, the information I find is just depressing because it doesn't seem to apply to our particular situation and nothing I try really seems to bring improvement. I have no idea what will help him out to get through this struggle and it consumes my thoughts and time far more than I would like. The worst part is I see no end in sight and it's just rough. This is the biggest parenting hurdle I've experienced yet and it's a doozy.

This week he was screened for a 3K program, basically an early preschool program through the school that is particularly for kids with speech or occupational therapy needs. He pretty much knocked it out of the park. He was so far advanced on everything they screened him on that they were falling over themselves to compliment his abilities. They had such good things to say about how he did things the very most advanced way he could for their tests and that he was so impressive. That was pretty awesome, especially since it's so easy to look at the couple areas he really struggles and forget that he's an incredibly smart little boy who is far advanced in so many other areas. He definitely didn't qualify for the program, which is fine. It's nice to know that he doesn't even register on their charts for having any problems. But it also means that I don't have a ready made program to put him in that is free and will help him out. That would definitely have been the easy route, though I'm relieved that it's not necessary. Now it's back to the drawing board to probably find a preschool or Moms Day Out kind of program that will get him in a more structured environment where hopefully being around other kids more will help with the couple areas that really are hard for him.

It's hard to keep my head above the water right now. I love my little guy to pieces. He is so fun, creative, inquisitive, and loving. He learns things so fast. For heaven's sake, he's not quite three and he can count essentially as high as he wants to. He regularly barters for everything he wants. He started doing that on his own. He knows the entire alphabet and is learning the lowercase letters too, since most kid ABC stuff is in uppercase. He knows all the shapes and has a huge vocabulary and a pretty decent attention span and is just fantastic in so many ways. Probably because of all this, it's really hard to understand why he has such a mental block on eating. When he's cranky beyond cranky because he hasn't eaten anything of substance for hours, but refuses everything offered, I just wish we could explain it to him and have it actually register. Believe me, I've tried and I keep trying, but it just hasn't clicked yet.

One of these days he and I will figure out how to work together on this. I really hope that the time comes sooner than later when this issue will be a thing of memory only. Just like sleep seems like such an obvious skill but babies have to be taught how to do it successfully, apparently eating is much the same. My little boy just seems to be a little more resistant to learning than some others. Heck, maybe my expectations are out of proportion. That's another thing that is hard to know since he's my first child. Maybe it's okay to eat graham crackers and toast and pancakes all day every day and he'll just figure it out on his own. I'd like to think that's the case, but I'm afraid it's not. But who knows? In two years maybe I'll look back and wonder why I freaked out so much about it. But for now the next meal is such a hurdle that I can't even imagine getting to that point.

So anyway, like I said, this has been a rough patch. I hope we get through it soon and we're all still in one piece. We started potty training at the beginning of the month and it seemed like an all encompassing issue that took all my thought. Now, three weeks later, it's a minor detail in the daily schedule. Some things still need to develop there still, but it's not top of mind. I just keep praying that somehow eating will turn out that way too sooner than later. I keep feeling like all the frustration he shows in other areas and the freakouts will calm down once he eats a reasonably healthy diet. Only time will tell. Whoever is reading this, just keep rooting for us. We could use it.                                        

Nothing special, but good times

I don't have a single picture from this week. We went apple picking. We watched some great football. We went to parks. Spencer is potty trained for the most part. I built a second higher chair for Genevieve like one I did for Spencer already. It's been a good week. So good I apparently couldn't document it with pictures.

We did have something funny happen today. I wanted to go on a walk, so we brought the bike trailer in to setup so we could use it. As expected there were a bunch of bugs in it since it was on the porch. A few spiders, including some jumping ones, a cockroach, some Japanese beetles, and a cocoon greeted us. That was plenty exciting, but as we were taking care of those Bill saw something scurry across a book on the floor and turned to find a lizard had been on it too and now decided to run behind our bookcase!  Dang! Thankfully he was able to coax the thing out and transfer it back out to its natural environment. Needless to say I found some room in one of our closets to store the bike trailer from now on. I'd like to be able to use it without a bug infestation the next time I want to pull it out. Hello South Carolina and all your bugs!

Tomorrow and Tuesday are Fall Break for Bill. Hurray! Having never had one of those at BYU, it is delightful to be able to have him around for a few more hours. He's still got plenty to do, but I'll take what I can get!

Oh, and knock on wood, I think we have had our last 80+ degree day for the year. I thought that was the case two weeks ago, so my fingers are crossed. That's right, it's snowing out west in a bunch of places, but we still have swimming weather. Good times! I find I'm missing the cold fall weather like crazy, but a temperate winter is nothing to sneeze at, so I'm trying to be patient. The weather here really is fantastic. It just goes to show it's hard to be content with what you've got even if it's fantastic.

It's been a big weekend

So many things have been crammed into the last few days. Not so much events, but just stuff happening that took my attention and wow, I am worn out, but generally happy about it all.

First, Genevieve has been teething lots, which brought on a cold, which she passed onto Spencer, which they must be passing back and forth to each other because their noses are both just pouring. Neither one seems to mind that much anymore, though the first day or two they were miserable. The cold is not so great, but having teeth is.

Second, the timing felt right, despite colds, so we started potty training Spencer again on Thursday. I somewhat changed methods Friday morning and we are on day two of that and seeing lots of success. Spencer is way more excited about it and apparently gummy bears and fruit snacks are potent motivations for him. It could be because he never gets to eat those things on normal days. :) He only had one accident today after I don't even know how many yesterday. He climbs like a monkey onto the toilet himself and is totally on top of the peeing part. Still working on number two and also going of his own accord, but I upped the reward from three gummy bears to a pack of fruit snacks for success and he seems pretty motivated. lol. I have high hopes that in a few days he'll be done and by the end of October he really will be.

Speaking of the end of October, since it's only the 5th and all, I'm really excited for it to come because I feel like in that many weeks several things that are causing me either stress or excitement will be resolved for good or bad, though I'm hoping good. We've had some crazy things happen with grad school funding as well as my job being slow. That's been stressful. We've had this potty training excitement/awfulness to experience. I feel like there are about eight other things, but maybe it is just that and they just loom in my mind, covering up everything else or just seeming really big. Oh, the end of October also means Halloween and I made the cutest dang costumes I've ever done for the kids and I can't wait for them to wear them. That's of utmost importance too. Hahaha!

For now though, the kids are cuter than ever, and so fun together. Genevieve doesn't seem like a baby at all anymore. She's into everything and nothing seems to be out of her reach. She thinks she can do anything Spencer can, and it's amazing how much she really can do. They are the best little buddies, even though sometimes they know just how to drive each other crazy. It really is such a fun time playing with them. And now for the picture explosion from this week, in no particular time order.

They were watching a movie together. Personal space is of no consequence. They love cuddling up.

This was my project this weekend to keep my sanity. I don't have any money at the moment for the big pieces of furniture I want to build, but Spencer could use a step stool at the toilet and I had the scraps. In between rushing to the bathroom all day the last two days I managed to throw this little thing together. The legs are totally skewampus because I used my jig saw so I didn't have to get the big saw out and I wasn't terribly accurate, but it's flat, it works and even looks decent, it saved my sanity on day one of potty training, it didn't cost me a penny!

There weren't any baby swings. She was totally okay with that.

Turns out she doesn't care which parent. Just keeping swinging guys!

She will bite anything that looks like food. I had to swipe the jalapenos from the garden before she got a hot surprise. The bell pepper didn't bother her at all. 

He doesn't just pound on the keys. He really tries to play. Now he likes having music up because that's how he sees me play. I'm so excited to put him in piano lessons in a few years. :)

She fell out of this chair onto her head literally three times but was so mad when I finally had enough and took it down. 

Bill scored these relics at the wind tunnel when they were cleaning it out and all four of us love them. So comfy. Newer chairs have no contest on these.

She climbs up on the little chair and just sits contentedly. It helps that she has a hard time getting down. Hahaha!