Arrow of Light, safety fair, and other stuff

This was Ryan's third year of being a den leader in cub scouts. He's been working with the same group of boys since he first got that calling (back when I was also a den leader), and this year all of them received their Arrow of Light awards. Ryan has been working hard with them and was very excited that they all were able to get their Arrow of Light.

Last week the town had a safety fair. I heard about it because I called the fire department about getting our car seats' installation inspected, and they said there would be car seat inspections at this safety fair. Most of the activities looked too old for Kevin, but I thought he might enjoy a couple of things, so we went for a little while. There was a puppet show with songs about how to be safe in fires, which Kevin watched a little bit, and there were several booths and a bounce house. Kevin mostly wanted to play with the big balloons that were all around  the safety fair.

Here was one of the demonstrations they had. They were trying to show how hot a car can get in the summer and why you shouldn't leave your kids out in the car. So they made smores on the dashboard of the car and then served them to people who stopped to look. It worked quite well--the marshmallows were nice and melted. They said the temperature in the car was 150 degrees.

We did get some free bubbles out of all this, and Kevin begs for bubbles all the time. The only trouble is that what he really wants is to hold the bottle and blow the bubbles himself. He has no interest in me blowing bubbles for him. He's pretty good at it and has even mastered the art of catching bubbles on the wand, but he loses track and spills the bubbles, which drives me nuts because it's messy and a waste. I hear they've made these bubble bottles that can be turned completely upside down without spilling, so we may have to invest in one of those.

It turns out they were just talking about car seat safety, not actually doing inspections, so later that day we went to the fire station to have them look at our car seats. I was so thrilled with how tight they got the car seats! I've never been able to get them as tight as I want them to be even though I follow the instructions in the manual, but the firefighters showed me some tricks for getting them tighter.

Ryan likes to do the Sudoku in the Daily Tar Heel, and Kevin likes to help.

And here is a video of Kevin "helping" with the laundry.

Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area

At the end of May, our ward had planned a party at the Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area, but the day before there was some concern about the weather, so it got cancelled. Pretty unfortunate, considering that it ended up being a beautiful day, and not even very hot--but after all the tornadoes and other natural disasters that have been happening lately, I think we're all a little more cautious.

Well, I was seriously considering spending the day in bed feeling sorry for myself, so Ryan dragged me out of bed and we went to the mountain as a family and walked on some of the trails.

Believe it or not, they claim to have mountains here. Like the Occoneechee Mountain, the highest point in the county at an awe-inspiring 867 feet. But it is a very nice park and the trail was quite pleasant. And yes, I had a really nice time, and I informed Ryan that sometimes I hate it when he's right.

As is usually the case, Ryan gets credit for all the pictures, except the mushroom, which is my work of art.

Kevin is so cute with his new baseball cap. He loves wearing it.
And this is what I looked like at about 38 weeks pregnant.

Wow, the horizon! It does exist out here!

Below are some pictures of an old quarry.

The horizon again!

nice family home evening

On Monday we had a really nice family home evening. I used some of the pictures from the gospel art book to tell the story of when Christ came to the Americas. Kevin was very quiet and still and paid attention to the pictures. He was especially interested in the picture of Christ with the children surrounded by angels. I looked at his face and knew that he could feel the Spirit telling him this was true. It was a very special moment for Ryan and me. Kevin doesn't generally show much interest in family home evening, scripture study, prayer, and such, but he does recognize that we do it consistently, and every once in a while he really pays attention and gets a lot out of it. Those times make it all worthwhile.

I bought "fat free half and half" the other day. I'm not kidding, even though it sounds like an oxymoron. I looked it up and apparently they add other stuff to it to make it thicker even though it's actually skim milk. The only reason I bought it was because I had a coupon that made it very cheap.

It's hot. It doesn't seem fair. It seems like just about everywhere you have long winters, long summers, and then at the most two weeks of spring and two weeks of fall. And I don't even get to enjoy those weeks because they happen during school. I love being outside, but I hate coming home so sweaty and smelly that I can barely move.

I'm pretty sure I've become an oven. A couple of days ago I was feeling quite hot, and I asked Ryan if he thought it was hot and he said, "I'm freezing." He's added an extra blanket to his side of the bed (besides the extra one folded in half that was already there--he has that one all the time).

I had to laugh when I was reading through Baby Girl's car seat manual and it talked about using the cup holders. The instructions say to only use paper or styrofoam cups, because hard cups can cause injuries if they go flying and hit someone in a crash. Now, I never give Kevin food or drinks in the car because I'm pretty sure he can go without food for the fifteen minutes it takes to get to the grocery store, so it doesn't really matter to me. But I don't think there are many parents who would let their child have a paper or styrofoam cup in the car--that's just asking for a huge mess. So if you can't use a sippy cup because it's too hard and could hit someone, and you can't use paper or styrofoam because they're messy, why bother having cupholders on a car seat? (Apparently Kevin agreed because he found the removable cupholder and threw it behind the piano--I haven't bothered to fish it out.)

I think Breyer's is getting the right idea with their Mint Fudge Brownie ice cream, although the brownie pieces could use some work. But it's better than most brands of mint ice cream that have bits of black plastic that are supposed to be chocolate chips.

A couple of days ago at my appointment with a midwife, she was feeling for the position of the baby and said, "Here's her face." When I expressed my surprise that she could tell it was her face, she said, "Yep, I accidentally bonked her nose." Pretty cool.

"Drink responsibly."

Boy, I'm off to a great start as a mother. Yesterday at lunch Kevin asked me to take the lid off of his sippy cup of milk so he could drink out of an open cup. So I said to him, "That's fine, but you need to promise me you'll drink responsibly." And then it occurred to me what I had just said. Kevin's not even two years old, and I'm already telling him to drink responsibly!

Oh, and this is what he thinks it means to drink responsibly:

Kevin also had his first ice cream sandwich a couple of days ago. I know, he's deprived, but I just don't ever buy them. They're expensive. We got a whole box that was leftover from the Arrow of Light ceremony on Wednesday (more on that later). I'm sure you're very disappointed that he's not very messy. I was rather surprised, actually.

In other news, he recently started pointing at pictures of sheep and saying, "Baa." Until now he has been calling them dogs and saying "Uh! Uh!" Yesterday he was also copying me as I was reading Big Red Barn, when I said "Moooo," and "Meow," and "Bok, bok, bok." That was a first--he's not normally one to repeat words back to us like that.

Baby Girl's in utero video debut

Yes, this is my belly, with a living baby girl inside. Pretty miraculous, huh? Forget going into labor, I think this child might just rip her way right through. (Sorry if the video makes you squeamish.)

childhood amnesia

Yesterday I read an article talking about infantile/childhood amnesia, which got me thinking about what my earliest memories are. Here's one:

My mom used to have a couple of wooden rods about one inch in diameter as well as a metal pipe, which were used for making rhythms with little kids. I used to like to play with them. One day I was sitting on the floor playing with this set, when my sister came into the room. And here's where memories disagree with each other. My parents say I hit her with the metal pipe, so the hospital records say, "Sister hit." I, on the other hand, distinctly remember her hitting her head on my dad's stereo cabinet (through no fault of mine). I have no recollection of hitting her. I don't remember my parents being there to witness it, so my opinion is that my memory is right and they just concluded that I hit her when they came in to find out what happened. We were pretty little, so maybe I wasn't old enough to communicate what happened. After that I remember EMTs coming to our house and giving my sister oxygen (I thought she was going to die), and then she got some stitches on her eyebrow where she got cut.

Several years later, the chickenpox visited our family. My sister got the worst case, including a pretty nasty bump on her eyebrow. A few years after that, we were having lunch as a family, and my sister mentioned the small white scar on her eyebrow and how it had come from when she had the chickenpox. I had concluded the scar was from the chickenpox as well. Then my parents clarified that the scar was from when she hit her head on the stereo or I hit her with the metal pipe, whichever story you want to believe. I was really confused by their account because that wasn't what I remembered.