a post about Heidi

We often marvel at some of the ways the kids are different. If we tell Kevin to go put his shoes on, he doesn't even acknowledge that we've said anything, but Heidi will go get his shoes for him. When Kevin is playing Starfall letter games, he only seems to be interested in it because he can click things and see what happens (the draw of the technology). Heidi, on the other hand, is already trying to copy the sounds (puh puh puh, uh uh uh, mmmmm, etc.).

Heidi is fifteen and a half months old. She weighs 20 pounds according to the bathroom scale.

Heidi has learned a few new words:

• She says hi and bye if she's playing with a phone.
• She copies us if we make animal sounds--mainly "Woof woof!" and the elephant sound. She also tries to copy the way we growl, but usually it sounds more like she's clearing her throat.
• Mine!
• thank you
• shoe
• yuck/yucky
• dropped it
• bike
• ball
• She signs more and please sometimes, but usually she prefers to point and screech until she gets the right thing. A lot of the time she will sign more (which she does by pointing at her palm) and say "Ma" to ask for a drink.
• I did it!

Overall she's very pleasant and happy. Unfortunately she's also decided that it's fun to run away from me at the playground so she can lick doors or go in the parking lot, and she thinks it's fun to get us to tell her no. I suspect that she would be a much easier child if she didn't have such a mischievous older brother to copy.

One afternoon she woke up from her nap in hysterics. We finally resorted to using children's pain reliever, and she calmed down pretty quickly. But ten minutes later she was in hysterics again and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I offered her all different kinds of food and it just made her more angry. I tried force feeding her frozen peas, thinking maybe it was teething. I tried ignoring her. And finally I took her out of her chair and went to carry her into the kitchen, when I remembered that when she got upset she was trying to climb into Kevin's chair, which he had pushed over by the counter to help Ryan with dinner. So I tried putting her on there. Lo and behold, all she wanted was to stand in Kevin's chair, by the counter, and eat crackers while watching dinner being cooked. Sometimes the things she wants are so specific and simple it's hard to figure them out, and the resulting drama is so odd when we're used to Kevin's kind of drama.

Heidi is also quite a climber. She lives to get on the table so she can look at me over the counter (and get to the un-disposed-of remains of meals).

A favorite game of hers these days is to chest-butt Ryan's knee when he's sitting on the couch, and then bounce off and giggle. In Ryan's words, "It's like being hit by a soft brick."

We're at an interesting phase with her hair. She lost all her hair on the front half of her head when she was tiny, which means that the back half is thicker and about an inch and a half longer than the front half. I can do a little ponytail to the side and put a bow in it, if she'll let me, but that's about it. I really only get around to fixing her hair on Sundays, if that. It's just that odd uneven stage where it's all sorts of different lengths and it looks a little scraggly. If she were a boy I would just get out the clippers, but since she's a girl I'll probably wait until it's longer and then get it all evened out.

She still likes to nurse every couple of days. I'm not sure how much longer she'll be interested, but I think we're getting close to the end. It's a little sad, but at the same time it's kind of a relief because I'm getting a little tired of it.

Stuffed animals are Heidi's favorite things to play with. If she's sad she will not be consoled until she has one to hug. When she gets up from her nap she tries to gather her two stuffed dogs, the duck, and a blanket into her arms and bring them all out of her bed. She likes to drape the blanket over her head and walk around with it like that.

Whenever she hears music playing she starts to wave her hands like she's directing the music.

a post about Kevin

Frequently used phrases:

• "Oh, by the way . . . " (He will tell long stories and start every single sentence with this phrase.)
• "So, here's an idea . . . "
• "Not cool!"
• He's trying to figure out time words, so he's experimenting with using them in sentences. I'm not sure he understands what they all mean, because sometimes he'll say something like, "I want to have a cookie . . . next week?" So he's learning how to use now, later, tomorrow, yesterday, and just a minute. He's also trying to figure out how to use somebody and something.
• Anything that seems desirable is now described as pretty. "How about we read this book? This one is pretty." "Let's play with my digger. It's pretty." "No, I want to wear this shirt [size 12 months]! It has a car on it. It's pretty."
• "What the! I JUST vacuumed!"

Cute things he has said:

• While the Sacrament was being handed to the deacons during sacrament meeting, he turned to me and whispered, "Is that the sucker-minute?"

What he's up to these days:

• Going to Kindermusik. He's having a good time and opens up a little more at each class. The first time he sucked his thumb and didn't really participate except to smile, but now he's running around more. It's kind of a different experience for him, and it seems like it is taking him out of his comfort zone, which is a good thing. He always likes to help put away the instruments and scarves and such after an activity. And he's starting to sing the songs sometimes at home. He loves listening to the CDs. It's fun to have an activity that I do with just him. Heidi stays home with Dad and takes her morning nap.
• Loving to sing Where is Thumbkin. I never know how Kevin will respond if I sing action songs to him. Sometimes he loves it, and sometimes he gets mad at me. But this is one he loves. He likes trying to lift the fingers individually. Last Sunday we went to a neighbor's house for a waffle breakfast and he triumphantly walked in showing how he can lift his pinky without lifting the other fingers.
• Taking his digger to dig in the sand at the playground every time we go out.
• Jumping off the table. He will count to five or six and then just stand there, and then finally after a while he gets the courage to jump off.
• Learning to use a computer. Kevin is learning how to use a computer mouse and he knows how to get to the youtube video of The Widow's Mite that the church recently put out. There's a button on the keyboard that Ryan has configured to go to scriptures.lds.org, and the video has been embedded on the website, so Kevin knows to push the button, then click the video to watch it. When it starts he always turns and says, "Look! It's Jesus God!" Sometimes he manages to get on youtube from there and watches all sorts of Mormon Messages, but he also knows how to just make it replay. His favorites are "swinging," "the wind" and "toaster." He also likes to play the free letter games on starfall.com and type "emails" on Microsoft Word. He's even getting pretty proficient at using the mouse on my laptop, which can be kind of tricky.
• Playing pretend with his toy animals. Most of the time it involves them eating or chasing each other, but sometimes they stand and chat.
• Calling me Marcelaine.
• Talking on his imaginary phone. It seems to be a flip phone, and he leaves it all over the place, so we have to help him find it if he wants to take it with him when we go somewhere. Usually it's a matter of him asking where his phone is, and we just have to pretend to pick it up off of the piano or table or something and hand it to him. It's fun to see him pretending to talk to people on his phone.
• Kevin has figured out that there is a gap in the piano where he can push things through. Worse, he knows how to open the panel on the bottom of the piano and get them out again. I've found toy screwdrivers and Heidi's toothbrush and pieces of paper in there. So if you're wondering what Kevin has taken apart lately, it's my piano. And opening the piano or poking things into it are now both automatic grounds for time out.

Videos (I hope somebody appreciates them, because you wouldn't believe all the issues I've had getting them to upload on Ryan's aging computer!)

http://youtu.be/mY_8YlEVsvw



http://youtu.be/ANO370hGtOc (Watch this one--it is so sweet.)



http://youtu.be/nkMFk-yYNn8

how I do laundry

Laundry is probably my favorite household chore. It's not my favorite thing to do in the world, but I don't mind it as much as other household jobs. Washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen are probably my least favorite. I don't really like touching dirty, soapy water. Ryan actually does a lot of the dish-washing around here.

I was just thinking that as time goes on it would be interesting to look back and remember how I did laundry when I only had two kids and I lived in a small apartment. So I'm going to write some things about how laundry goes right now so that someday I will have a record of it to read.

One of the interesting things about being the mom/wife has been realizing that what works for my mom doesn't always work for me, and that if I prefer to do things differently, it doesn't mean I'm doing it wrong (or that my mom is doing it wrong). This has applied to laundry. My mom washed everyone's clothes together and sorted them into darks, pastels, whites, and sometimes reds and greens if there were enough of those to wash separately. It works for her, and that's great. I tried to do that at first, but after Kevin and Heidi came around I realized I didn't like having so many people's clothes mixed together when I was folding the clothes. I also felt like it was silly to sort out everyone's clothes together by color when I was just going to be sorting them out later by person. So now here's how we sort out clothes: Ryan's clothes and my clothes are washed together, separated into colors and whites. Sometimes towels and jeans go in their own load if there are a lot of clothes. Sheets get their own load. Then Kevin and Heidi's clothes are washed in one big load, regardless of color. If we get some new clothes that I think will probably bleed their colors, I sort out the clothes by color for a few laundry batches. I've never had a problem with colors bleeding. Towels, washcloths, and bibs are usually washed with the kids' clothes, but sometimes they go with our colored clothes if needed, or they get their own load. As our family grows I will probably continue to do laundry by bedroom instead of washing everyone's clothes together. I like that all the clothes in a load go to the same room so that I'm not taking things all over the house with each load of clothes.

The diapers get washed every 2-3 days. We have 36 large prefolds, 24 infant prefolds, and a lot of covers. We also have about 50 cloth wipes that I made out of flannel (two 8 x 8 layers zigzag stitched together). I do a prewash cycle first, and then a regular cycle with detergent. We have metal wall shelving above the washer and dryer, and we hang the wet bags and the covers up there to dry. The diapers and wipes go in the dryer. No fabric softener. Before Heidi was born, we did medium loads, but now that we have two in diapers, we're doing super loads. I should note that for us, cloth diapers really aren't much more work than disposable because our dumpster is quite a ways away from our apartment building. I'm not joking when I say it probably takes an hour to take the garbage out if I bring the kids with me. I'd much rather dump some stuff in the washer every couple of days than be taking the diapers to the garbage all the time.

On socks. My mom likes socks pinned together. She learned the trick from my Grandma, who had ten children. I used to like it too. But then one day I realized that I would rather sort out socks than hunt down safety pins. (My mom would rather hunt down safety pins than sort socks.) Now I use mesh bags for socks. There is one mesh bag for Kevin and Heidi's socks, and one for my socks. This keeps everyone's socks separate from each other and they're less likely to get eaten by the sock monster at some point in the laundry cycle. Ryan's socks are all the same, except for two pairs of Sunday socks, and he doesn't care about mixing old ones with new ones, so I've never bothered with telling him to sort his socks in any way. He just gets his pile of socks, which he keeps in a pile in his drawer. The one problem with my method is that sometimes the mesh bags tend to disappear or be buried in a pile of clean laundry if I've gotten behind, and then everyone's socks just get tossed in the hamper and get all mixed up. If I can't find a match to a sock I always return it to its drawer anyway, figuring that eventually (usually the next time I do laundry) its one true love will find its way home. We'll see how well I like this method if I have six kids (right now two is plenty). But so far it's working well for me.

I don't think this is as much of a problem in the West, but here in the East it is a lot more humid, which means washcloths don't just dry on the counter if you lay them flat. The result is mildew, and the grey stains never, ever come out. I've found that the best way to avoid mildew is to hang wet things so that air flows on both sides of them. I have a metal basket in the laundry closet where I put washcloths and towels, and whenever I put washcloths in there I always hang them on the side first until they are dry. If they all just sit in a pile, they never dry and they grow mildew really quickly.

I like Shout stain remover. I used to use Resolve Spray n Wash because it was a little cheaper, but then I did laundry at my grandma's house and realized that Shout doesn't stink like Spray n Wash does, and then I was converted. We go through a lot of Shout in our house.

I always cut my dryer sheets in half all at once when I open a box. Half of a dryer sheet is enough. When we got married Ryan said that his mom always did that, and I figured it couldn't hurt and started doing it too. Not that dryer sheets are an especially significant draw on our bank account, because I think we've gone through maybe four boxes since we got married. So I guess maybe we've saved $4 on dryer sheets by cutting them in half. Yippee.

We have a very basic washer and dryer, but I've been very happy with them. I don't know if I'll ever go for anything fancier. The washer is a top loader. I know there are advantages to having a front loader, but I think the main disadvantage is that front loaders grow mold more easily, and that is a deal-breaker for me.

Ryan and I probably do about the same amount of laundry. If it piles up (which happens a lot) we sometimes have clothes-folding parties and watch a movie after the kids are in bed. I think the fact that I can watch a movie while folding clothes might be one of the reasons laundry is my favorite chore. Laundry also isn't a huge deal for us because it doesn't take that long to stick a load in the washer or transfer it to the dryer. Main floor laundry is one of my top five priorities in any place we live because having it on the main floor makes it so you can just do a step in the laundry process as you're passing by. I don't fancy the idea of hauling baskets up and down stairs. I also would love to have more of a laundry room. Right now we have a closet in a hallway, which makes things kind of a tight fit--but I'm not complaining. My great-grandparents were washing things on washboards with their hands.

seasons

Today in Sacrament Meeting I was feeling really frustrated. Kevin was wild. By the time the sacrament was passed he was launching himself over the bench in front of us and jumping up and down on the floor. He also thought it was fun to spit at the family behind us. The kids were crawling all over me and I was tired of being treated like a jungle gym. Ryan ended up taking Kevin into the hall to sit on the couch.

I was feeling pretty upset. A lot of Sundays I wonder why we even bother to come to Sacrament Meeting because it's always a wrestling match. I often contemplate just taking the kids for a drive until it's time for Sunday School so that I can hand Kevin off to his nursery leaders. (I haven't resorted to that yet, by the way.)

So while I was sitting in the chapel and thinking about how my life is falling apart, and Heidi was continuing to crawl all over me and attempting to escape into the aisle, my friend Nicole Empey went to the front and bore her testimony. She wanted to bear her testimony that there are times and seasons in our lives, and sometimes they're good seasons and sometimes they're hard seasons. (She has twin boys who are Kevin's age and a little girl who is older than Heidi, so she knows about hard seasons.) We just have to realize that sometimes we will have hard seasons because that is how life goes. I knew as soon as she started talking that this was for me. I usually only get snippets of thoughts from Sacrament Meeting talks because my attention is so divided, and it's frustrating for me because I need that spiritual nourishment too and it's hard to get it right now. And I really do often feel like my life is falling apart these days. The clothes are never folded, the sink is full of dishes, and there's a growing pile of "stuff to go through/finish" on the floor by my bed, and meanwhile I'm struggling to get school assignments done. But today I was grateful for this reminder that right now I'm in a challenging season, and even though I'm often frustrated and stressed and upset, this season is good for me and it is teaching me important things. I guess even though it's harder to get spiritual nourishment from the sources I'm used to, my life experiences are also strengthening me, so that's spiritual nourishment too. I appreciate that when God gives me challenges to help me grow, he also gives me experiences along the way that remind me that He is watching over me and is not forsaking me. Today was one of those times when He reminded me that He is aware of my spiritual needs and will provide for them if I am open to receive them.

off topic

Today in my philosophy class we were talking about Aquinas's thoughts about the goodness of God. The teacher had drawn a scale on the board that shows a range of existence. Fictional characters are a little bit above the non-existence line, next comes rocks, next plants, next animals, and then humans. Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum (an infinite distance away) is God, who exists the most and who is the most perfect. All things strive to be more like God.

So while we were talking about this, a guy raised his hand and asked, "So, if God is timeless, does that mean he is in our universe or out of it?" Then we spent several minutes answering this unrelated question, which, by the way, we had already beaten to death a week or two ago.

This kind of thing happens fairly often. It makes me wonder. I don't really know if the other students are just really lost and they don't understand what we're talking about, or they don't know how to think logically enough to know which questions aren't related to the current topic, or what.

The Code of Student Courtesy

Apparently many of my fellow students don't realize it, but manners do, in fact, apply when you are in a classroom. The following are some important, and largely forgotten, rules in the code of student courtesy:

1. Do not pack your bag until the instructor is finished with the lecture. It's incredibly offensive to the instructor, and it's very inconsiderate of the other students who actually want to hear what he has to say but can't because of the cacophony of zipping bags and rustling coats and stomping on the stairs.
2. While it may be admirable that you enjoy the subject so much that you want to ask questions that go beyond the material, it is inappropriate to frequently ask questions that go way beyond the material, especially if they are irrelevant and nit-picky and take at least ten minutes to answer. If you just can't help asking about it, the best time is outside of class. I have yet to have a professor who doesn't hold office hours or make himself available by appointment.
3. Do not sit on the edge of an empty row in an auditorium. It is incredibly uncomfortable and awkward and dangerous, if not impossible, to climb over your legs, your backpack, your umbrella, your cup of coffee, and your trombone just to get a seat. Sit in the middle of the row and let students fill in from the center. And if you sit on the edge of an empty row in one of the auditoriums of the MARB at BYU, you deserve every evil eye and black spot you receive, because in case you haven't noticed, the seats are so close together that the desks are about an inch away from the seat backs of the row in front. Nobody has knees that small.
4. I am not left-handed, but for the sake of left-handed people I feel it important to point out that those funny seats where the desk sits on the left side that are so uncomfortable for you to use are, in fact, for the people who write with their left hand.
5. I'm sure your computer is awesome, but it doesn't need it's own seat and desk if the auditorium is full.
6. Your earphones were designed to keep the sound in your ears. Nobody else wants to hear Justin Bieber. Turn down the volume.

lists (short ones)

I feel like I have a lot on my plate right now between my kids and my schoolwork. When I have a lot to do, sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I don't know where to start and I just get paralyzed. Recently, I have been learning to make a plan so that this doesn't happen. If I am starting to feel overwhelmed, I make a list of the most important things to get done that day, in order of importance. I try to only put 2-3 things on my list, and I also write down what we are having for dinner so that it's already decided, because dinnertime is one of the times when I am most prone to get overwhelmed. (I'm also getting back into writing a weekly menu.) I know that really I am accomplishing a lot more than 2-3 things per day, but this helps me focus.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that there will never be one perfect way for me to organize my life. It's kind of like chore systems for kids. Every once in a while the method stops working as well, so you have to tweak it or try something new altogether.

The other thing that helps is to tell myself, "Just do one thing." Usually if I do that one thing it's enough to give me some momentum to do more.

Yesterday's list said:
Dinner is lasagna with zucchini.
1. Read Geach article and write response.
2. Work on lab.

Today's list:
Dinner is leftover lasagna and leftover taco soup.
1. Finish handout for Women's Day class.
2. Fine-tune and turn in argument reconstruction.