Giraffes need to sleep, and dinosaurs like to eat stroganoff.

Kevin was playing with his giraffe and noticed that its eyes were closed. He concluded that it was asleep and decided to put it to bed. So the giraffe said goodnight to Heidi and goodnight to Mom, and then Kevin covered its feet and put it in bed.

Later, for some reason Kevin had his dinosaur at the dinner table and started offering him some of his stroganoff.

("Want to try it? . . . Do you like it?")

Sunday pictures

The kids looked so cute before church yesterday that I thought I'd try to take a picture. Unfortunately, there weren't any pictures where both of them had a good pose. I got a lot of comments about Heidi's dress. I believe it was made by my dad's cousin for me when I was born (Right, Mom?). Kevin's suit was a consignment sale find--three dollars!

pictures of Happy Heidi

Heidi is seven months old and she is such a sweet baby.

Heidi crawled right out of her pants. (See this post.)

Don't you love that sparkle in her eyes?

[Hmmm . . . here's another post I didn't publish for some reason, from all the way back in January!]

This has been a busy week with schoolwork and my Relief Society activity. This weekend I have finally started to get a little caught up. I started by bulldozing Mount Laundry. Tomorrow I have one load of clothes and one load of diapers to fold and then I will be caught up. I've used a lot of Spray 'n' Wash this week for some reason, which has mostly been effective except for a stubborn stain on a white onesie. I'm hoping things don't deteriorate too much this week, but I have to finish reading Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick and write a five-page paper about it, so we'll see. It's a very interesting book, by the way, about several people who lived North Korea and managed to get out of the country.

Heidi is starting to figure out how to get down without hurting herself when she has used something to stand up. She also took her first real crawl "steps" this week, but she still favors her inchworm crawl most of the time.

Kevin is doing great sleeping in his bed. He's only fallen out once (although there was another time when Ryan happened to be there to catch him before he fell out in his sleep). Bedtime and naptime actually seem to be a little better now--there's less protesting. He actually asks to go to bed some of the time! So I guess he was ready for the switch.

Ryan's plugging away at his research. On Friday he helped set up the timer for the Pinewood Derby, because when he was doing Cub Scouts he was the one that always did that part.

72-hour kit activity

I took on the daunting task of planning out a 72-hour kit activity for our Relief Society. Tonight was the activity, and I think it was very successful! I had a lot of people come to me and say how much they appreciated it.

We only did the food for the kits. Here is the food for one kit (which all fits into a gallon-sized ziploc bag):

3 oatmeal packets

3 chicken/tuna salad and crackers packets

6 granola bars

3 fruit snacks packages

3 Lipton instant soup packets (chicken noodle)

6 spoons

9 individually wrapped sanitizing wipes

The kits ended up costing about $8 each. It's pretty simple and it's not exactly gourmet living, but it would keep you alive in an emergency.

We got most of the supplies from Sam's Club. Emily, one of the committee members, found out that you can order things from Sam's Club and then pick it up the next day, so she and Chelsey, another committee member, were able to pick it up and load it into Chelsey's van without having to get six carts to buy it all. The soup packets were on Amazon.com. We were planning to do a sleeve of Ritz crackers, a can of chicken, and some mayonnaise packets, but then today Emily found out that the chicken and tuna salad with crackers packets went on sale and she decided to drive to several different stores to buy them and save some money and space. Amazing. I was so grateful for Chelsey and Emily's help with the shopping and set-up, because I certainly could not have done it alone!

At the beginning of the activity we had a short discussion about other items to put in the kits and how to prepare for emergencies. I made a handout that was largely copied from here. We put all the food onto three long tables and then people went through and put together their own kits. It was a lot of food! I feel like it went really well and was helpful for a lot of people. What a relief to have it all done--and to have our 72-hour kit again!

organizing my life

Ryan has been trying for a while to get me to make a schedule for myself. He knows I like lists and it bothers me to make a list and then not do everything on the list. So I decided to make a chore chart for myself and also outline my routines for morning, afternoon, and evening. I tried to keep my chore chart simple because I tend to get ambitious and make unrealistically long lists, and life with a toddler and a baby isn't always predictable. So my plan is to do one job every day, and also one load of laundry from start to finish--wash, dry, fold, put away. That doesn't include diapers, because that depends on how quickly we run out of clean diaper covers. (And Eliza, I'm thinking of you and your 15 loads of laundry in 4 days--I know this won't always work for me!). Most of my routines are things I already have in place, but I've put in a few things that I want to start implementing. Here's my chore chart and my routine page if you're interested in what I've come up with (click to enlarge):

Kevin's first night in a big boy bed

I took the side off the crib today to make it into a "big boy bed" for Kevin, and tonight is his first time sleeping in it. He got out of bed three times and just went and turned his light on and sat by the door. The first two times he just sat there, and the third time he fell asleep and I put him back in his bed. We'll see how he does. Once he realized it was time for bed he actually seemed a little nervous and pointed at the pantry door to tell me to get the crib side and put it back on so he could go to bed.

A few weeks ago when Heidi had a doctor appointment I mentioned that Kevin was crib jumping, and the doctor said if it were her, she would just get a bed for him. I thought about it but decided that I didn't want to deal with it until he was a little more mature and could understand the invisible boundary of the bed. Then a few days ago I was lifting Kevin into his crib and I realized he was getting really heavy for me to be lifting him into his crib. After thinking about it a little bit I decided we need to just get it over with and put him in a regular bed. Since he climbs out of his crib so easily it won't be much different anyway. So I'll give him a little while to get used to the crib side being gone and then we'll get him a twin bed. It's kind of sad to take this step since it means he's grown up so much, but it's also fun to see him learning and growing.

sensationalism--mechanically separated meat

Have you seen this image? Have you read the caption that comes with it?

"Say hello to mechanically separated chicken. It’s what all fast-food chicken is made from – things like chicken nuggets and patties. Also, the processed frozen chicken in the stores is made from it. Basically, the entire chicken is smashed and pressed through a sieve — bones, eyes, guts, and all. it comes out looking like this. There’s more: because it’s crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia, soaked in it, actually. Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially. Then, because it is weirdly pink, it will be dyed with artificial color. But, hey, at least it tastes good, right?"

Okay, before you start freaking out, I will also point you to what snopes.com says about this drivel: http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/msm.asp. Yes, I know snopes isn't a journal article, but at least they actually put sources at the end of the page instead of making stuff up, which is more than the people who are distributing this image have done.

So here's my thought. I frequently buy split chicken breasts, the kind that have the bones and skin still attached, because I can get them for half the price of the boneless skinless chicken breasts. Then at home I will detach most of the chicken breasts from the bones myself. Sometimes I chop it up into small pieces and freeze it like that to make it easy to use for stir-fries, and sometimes I just freeze the whole chicken breasts after separating them. But afterwards there is still a lot of usable meat on the bones. (I boil the bones and then the meat shreds off relatively easily, but it's still time-consuming--you can get a lot of good chicken broth this way too, by the way.) This is the meat they are talking about that they use for mechanically separated chicken. It's perfectly good chicken, it's just that it's difficult to separate from the bones, and if you're processing meat in large volumes it's not really profitable to pay someone to pry off every tiny bit of meat from the bones. But then they figured out that they can grind it all up and then press it through some kind of sieve to separate the perfectly good meat from the bones. I don't know about you, but that sounds to me like trying not to waste perfectly good chicken.

As for the "weirdly pink" color of the chicken, that's what raw chicken looks like, my friends. It's pink until you cook it, and then it's white.

And in response to the video at the end of the article on Snopes, my opinion is that the kids were disgusted by the chicken carcass because it was raw meat, not because it was the yucky part of the chicken. They would have given the same reaction if he'd waved a raw chicken leg in their faces.

I am sick and tired of sensationalism, especially when it comes to nutrition. If you want to help people be more healthy and eat more nutritious food, that's great. But when people stoop to making things up and spreading it all over the internet like it's fact, I get really annoyed, because that's dishonest.

getting to the root of the problem (confessions of a reforming procrastinator)

My new focus on working on smaller goals one at a time has given me some interesting insights about why I don't get some things done. One of those insights is that it's helpful to try to get to the root of the problem and figure out why I procrastinate certain tasks. Here are some things I've realized:

• One of the reasons I dread washing the dishes is that I am afraid of the monsters that are surely under the dish drainer. Actually, I'm scared of the dish drainer itself. It just tends to get dirty. And besides that, it's small and difficult to fit very many dishes into. So the solution I am going to try out is to just use towels on the counter, because I wash towels all the time and it gives me enough space to put all my clean pots without feeling like the pot tower is going to come crashing to the floor. A bonus is that I can see more counter space, which makes my kitchen look less cluttered.
• One of the main reasons that I don't go to the temple often enough is that I never get around to making the appointment. It's pretty simple to say to Ryan, "Do you want to go to the temple on Thursday evening?" But then I have to make the appointment, which means I need to look up the number and call when there is a temple worker at the temple to answer the call. So my solution is that I put the phone number into the phone so that when I remember to make the appointment it's already in the phone and it's easier. (Because looking up a phone number and making a call is sooooo hard . . . )
• For a while I kept finding hats and scarves and gloves all over the place. My shoes also seem to be all over the house--and I only have three pairs of shoes! (In my defense, Kevin loves to walk around the house in my shoes.) The problem was that all of those things didn't really have a place where they belonged, and there wasn't really space anywhere for a shelf or basket to hold them. So I bought a shoe rack that hangs over the door of our front closet. I never thought I would get one of those because I just didn't think it would work, but then one day I realized that it would be a good solution because it wouldn't take up extra space. It's been working pretty well! I keep my three pairs of shoes at the bottom and use the other pockets for scarves, hats, and gloves. I've also taken to putting my diaper bag and backpack in that closet on top of my six-gallon buckets, because they didn't have a home before either, and I put the Ergo in there on a hanger. When we get home from walks or church or school I can just stand in front of the closet and put everything away right there.
• Piles of clothes tend to accumulate in our hallway, across from the laundry closet, because we tend to just toss the clothes onto the floor so we can start the next load. It's strange, because I actually really enjoy folding clothes. Maybe subconsciously I'm saving them for a treat later? : ) Anyway, it's getting a little better because I've started folding the clothes straight out of the dryer and then putting them away right away. Another thing that helps is that I wash Heidi's clothes and Kevin's clothes in their own loads instead of sorting them out by color with our clothes. So with every dryer load I can usually fold the clothes and take them all to one place to put away, and I don't have a zillion piles of clothes. (No, I've never had a problem with white shirts coming out pink or blue--I just sort new clothes into colors for the first few washes until the colors don't bleed.)
• Dinner time is hard because I never know what to make and the meat is never defrosted. The solution? I need to make a menu plan, and I need to do as much preparation as I can while the kids are taking their afternoon naps and I'm not tired and hungry.
• Bread products (leftover muffins, loaves of bread, etc.) always seem to clutter my counter. I found a cute basket to put them in. Problem solved. And the basket is a nice decoration.

So working on goals has put me into a mindset where I've realized that if something isn't working for me, I can change it and try something else. It's caused me to look at things that I'm doing (or not doing) and notice what I'm thinking when I'm procrastinating a job--and if I realize why I'm procrastinating, sometimes I can figure out a solution. It's also caused me to notice things that are always lying around and decide to find a designated place for them or just get rid of them. I think I've mentioned this several times on my blog, but I love getting rid of stuff. It's so liberating.

week in review

(Read this one.)

It's been a nice and busy week! Classes started on Monday for me. I'm taking a history class about the world since 1945 and Earth Systems History, which is a course about the major events (geological and biological) in Earth's history and how we know them. In my history class we are reading seven books this semester, but they look like they're all pretty interesting books. I've already finished the first one, Hiroshima, by John Hershey. It was a really interesting read.

I'm organizing a Relief Society activity where we put together our 72-hour kits. It's taken a bit more work than I expected to plan out the food and figure out how much it would cost and where to get it. There's always the worry that some people won't like the food or they won't like my ideas or whatever else. So I've been reading a lot about it and asking for suggestions. I think sometimes people tend to over-analyze this kind of thing. Yes, it's good to be prepared, but I feel like just having something is a good starting point, even if it's not perfect. It can be kind of overwhelming to see all the ideas and all the things to consider, and for some people that is so daunting that they don't even get to the baby steps because they don't know where to start.

Ryan's brother Jared stayed with us on Tuesday through Thursday. He came to interview for an internship at Duke. We're hoping that he and his family will be moving close by soon! We didn't get to do much since it was a short stay and he mostly had things to do at Duke, but we did have a good time in the evenings and he came with us to have a potluck with our friends the Rasmussens.

On Thursday we got a babysitter and went to the Raleigh temple. It was the first time we've been back since before Heidi was born. It's hard when you have a new baby, and on top of that my temple dress doesn't fit anymore. But really that's no excuse because Heidi's been sleeping through the night for a while and I can borrow a dress from the temple. So I am determined to be better and make it to the temple once a month. I even added the phone number to our phone so I don't have to look it up anymore. Anyway, it was really nice. I felt the Spirit so strongly and gained a lot of insights about the gospel and Jesus Christ. What a blessing it is that I have been able to receive the ordinances of the gospel in the temple, especially the ordinance of being married to Ryan for all eternity. My family is such a wonderful reminder to me of the things that are most important. Knowing that we can be an eternal family helps me to get through times when I get discouraged and gives me greater determination to live righteously.

Heidi is sitting up by herself pretty well now, but I usually stay close by because if she's not concentrating on it she still falls over sometimes. She can get into the sitting position by herself sometimes too. She also surprised us this week by figuring out how to stand up by herself using a crib or chair! So now she keeps using things to stand up but then sometimes she gets stuck or loses her balance and then she's upset. Heidi has always enjoyed having us blow raspberries, and this week she figured out how to blow raspberries herself. It's a very important skill, you know.

Kevin loves this story that has a little bear who bumps his head on the ceiling while riding on his father's shoulders. He calls the story "Ouch." Sometimes he will come ask us to bump his head on the ceiling by saying, "Ouch? Ouch?" He thinks it's really funny.

He also has this thing with holding things. He'll see pictures of things in books and put his hands towards them and say, "Hold her? Hold her?"

Today he and Ryan were playing with mega blocks, and Ryan put the angel from our Little People nativity set on top of a tower. When Kevin saw it he called it a temple! And then he and Ryan built a temple together. I thought that was pretty cool, although I think I probably have to credit his nursery teachers for that one, because although Kevin knows what the temple is, I don't think I've ever pointed out the angel Moroni to him.

Kevin took some pictures

When I downloaded the picture of Heidi I also discovered these gems, taken by Kevin, apparently.

Heidi is standing for something

I can not believe this.

I put Heidi down in her crib to go to sleep, and 30 seconds later I came back to get something. Guess what I found?

I found this:

This is my 6.5 month old baby pulling herself up to stand in her crib!

Time to lower the crib mattress.

interesting library/mall trip

For one of my classes we are reading seven books this semester (we'll see how that works out . . . ). The first one, Hiroshima, by John Hershey, is in the public library, so I decided to make a trip. You may have noticed that Kevin+quiet library isn't generally a stress-free experience. I was prepared to make this a quick trip and just go in and out.

Well, we got there and there was a slight problem. It was pouring rain. The library is in the mall, and there is a children's consignment store there that has a play area in back, so I thought, "Okay, we'll make a mad dash in the rain so we don't get too wet, then Kevin can play in the play area so I have a chance to put Heidi in the Ergo." There were a couple of things I wanted to look for at the store anyway.

Kevin thought the rain was fun. It was really cute.

There was a little car in the play area that Kevin went to play in. Only problem was that it was not designed very well and Kevin ended up being painfully stuck and I couldn't get him out one-handed. A sweet little grandma held Heidi so I could free Kevin, who had somehow managed to get in the car knees-first.

After that, Kevin decided he wanted to go listen to the music that they had been playing out in the hallway thingy in the mall . . . which was fine until he started getting into all sorts of things that weren't really meant to be played with as we headed to the library. So there was a bit of a tantrum on the floor, although honestly he wasn't being too bad, just dragging his feet. Then this random guy who was sitting close by looked at Kevin and yelled at him, "Be good for your Mom!" Um, not helpful! I wasn't mad at Kevin because I knew this was a new place with interesting things, and I was just frustrated and trying to figure out how to calm him down a little bit so we could hurry and go to the library. So I wasn't sure what to think about this stranger who thought it would be okay to yell at my child.

Well, Kevin and I found a bench and had a little talk in which I explained that the most important rule in the library was to be quiet and stay by Mom. And he was really great in the library! He grabbed a couple of children's books on the way out. I didn't even look at the titles. I just figured, if this will make him happy so we can check the books out, then great.

Going out to the car, Kevin was really upset, and I finally realized he wanted to go back and look at something, so I gave in and let him lead me where he wanted to go. Turns out he wanted to go back to the play area. I was okay with that.

So it just so happened that today was the weekly La Leche League meeting that they apparently hold there at the consignment store. There were about six women with little babies there all nursing and talking about breastfeeding and new baby stuff, and the leader was spouting off every cliche thing that people say about breastfeeding. I think La Leche is a great resource for some people, but listening to their conversation I felt grateful that I have a good network of friends and family who I can talk to (realistically!) about all things parenting. It would be weird for me to regularly go to groups like this and talk to strangers about breastfeeding.

Kevin had a perfectly wonderful time. We stayed for quite a while, and when it was time to leave there were no complaints. Every once in a while I catch Kevin just at the right moment when he feels satisfied with the amount of time he's been able to play somewhere and he comes happily. I love it when that happens.

Oh, and when we got home I finally got a chance to see what books we had checked out for Kevin. One was a princess book. Go figure.

one word

Ryan: coughing. He seems to be getting better, but whenever he gets sick the coughs always drag on forever.

Marcelaine: busy. You would think that since this is Christmas break (classes start tomorrow) I would have been able to get caught up, but at the end of the day I always seem to be left with the feeling that there were so many things that I was hoping to do, but I didn't do very many of them. I think I need to prioritize my time better and get more organized. I did get rid of a few things, though, and I found a lovely basket to hold all of my bread products that used to clutter the counter. Progress!

Kevin: big. He wants everything to be big. Pronounced in italics. A big tower. A big cereal. A big jump (he wants to jump off of everything). A big book.

Heidi: clingy. If I'm not holding her she is often crawling after me on her tummy wailing. She just wants me to hold and play with her all the time. Thank you, Ergo Baby, for making it possible for me to hold my baby and make dinner too!

Heidi getting into the trash