Babyness in a Can

That's what I sometimes call Gage. I don't know why. We say weird things to babies, don't we? Ben always says, "Gage, you are the babiest baby."

Gagey is allllmost 9 months old. I cannot BELIEVE it. It makes me a little sad. He's my last, and the time is going by way, way, way too fast.

He still struggles with sitting. We have lots of sitting practice, he and I. And his therapist works with him a lot.

I wanted to take a picture of mom-less sitting practice for you. He starts out good for about one second in his boppy:

Then he falls and he can't get up:

Compounded by the fact that his big brother is laying on him:

He's been getting on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth. Today, he was striking the Downward Facing Dog Yoga pose. I tried to snap a picture of it, but he would collapse and grin at me every time I tried. I honestly wonder if he's going to crawl before he learns to sit up??? That would be really weird.

He's been jabbering a lot, saying cute baby things like, "DoT! DoT!!" And "Bwah, bwah, bwah."

He really hates cuddling. He wants to be on the move, always.

He rolls all over the living room, but he can't really roll with a purpose yet. He'll trap himself in a corner and then look around like, "How did I get here? How do I get out??"

He's obsessed with blowing raspberries. Which means that he spits his baby food on me a LOT. It's gross.

He loves grabbing on my hair and pulling on it HARD. Another reason I'm so excited to get my hair chopped off this weekend. Did I not tell you? I'm chopping off... I don't know... maybe a foot of hair? I want the Charlize Theron in Aeon Flux haircut. I'm soooo ready. Snip snip.

Back to the baby man. Sorry for the deviation.

He's cut himself down to two naps per day. His fave nap is in the morning. I usually have to wake him up so that he gets lunch at a decent time.

Peek-a-boo is hilarious to him. He could play it for hours.

Gage is such a blessing in our house. He's an Indian in a house full of chieftains. (I really, really needed another Indian. Can you guess who the chieftains are? Hahaha!)

He's just the best.

Real or not real?

One of my favorite book series is the Hunger Games series. In the last book of the series, Mockingjay, one of the characters, Peeta, is recovering from having been captured by the enemy and brainwashed to believe that his former friends are his enemies. When his friends rescue him, he has a hard time differentiating between the brainwashing and reality. So he's often asking his friend/romantic interest, Katniss, of different situations or events, "Real or not real?"

Sadie's at the age where she is always asking what is real and what is not real. My nephew, Brock, is her same age, and how he asks if something is real or not is, "Are there such-and-such things in this world?" It's so cute. I love the way he talks.

There is a constant running commentary in our house on which things are real and which things are fake. When Micah watches his favorite My Little Pony movies, it's,

"Are ponies real?"

"Yep."

"Are they pink?"

"Nope."

"But some of them are brown, right?"

"Yep."

"Ponies don't have wings."

"Nope, ponies don't have wings."

"And ponies don't really talk."

"You're right, Sade. Ponies don't really talk."

And on and on.

The other day, we were watching Cars.

"Cars don't talk, do they?"

"Nope. They're not alive."

"But are there car races?"

"Yep."

"Is Radiator Springs real?"

"No, but there are little towns like that."

"Do cars stay in hotels shaped like cones?"

"Uh, no."

"People stay in hotels, though."

"Yes, Sadie. People stay in hotels."

She's cute.

Kid Friends and Baby Friends

My friend, Megs, is a fantastic photographer. She takes my family's professional photographs, and I just love them so much. She always has a camera around her neck, snapping the cutest photos ever of her sweet little boys. She's caught some great random snapshots of my own kiddos every now and then when we have playdates. I wanted to put up some recent shots of hers.

She took my baby's pics a couple of months ago. We did some cute nakey pictures of him, which resulted in him peeing all over his crib bedding. :) So I was changing his sheets while she was upstairs taking random pics of my Sadie and her sons, Brynnan, and Tinian.

Tinners was over in Gage's bouncy seat, chewing on the soft seat edge and just generally enjoying himself in his very serious way. Bouncing is very serious business. Sadie and Brynnan were playing together - they play well together. They spent most of the time running away from Micah. :) Here they are on our little ottoman cube thingeys:

Here, Brynnan was teaching Sadie how to be a "statue" to fool Micah so that he would leave them alone. :)

This looks like they're going to smooch, but Sadie was trying to climb onto the ottomans while Brynnan was throwing a toy over her head:

They're funny.

This was maybe a couple of weeks later? Over at Megs' house. The baby friends, hanging out:

Micah just loves babies so much. He is very gentle and attentive with them:

Gage's pants are way too big for him.

It's fun to see Gage catching up to Tinian a little bit in weight and height.

Gage needs to take sitting lessons from Tinners. Tinnian is the best sitter this side of the pecos. Gage has yet to perfect the sitting thing.

Ke$ha would have felt at home.

So. The Better Homes and Gardens website is one of my favorite places to check out for holiday decor ideas. I had sooooooooo many things I wanted to try for Easter. I thought this idea would be easy and pretty cheap:

I decided to forego buying a glass egg and just use a glass vase instead. You use double-sided tape and glitter. Easy peasy. I wanted to use pastel colors for mine. I just don't feel like bright red and blue are Easterey colors.

I didn't have the right colors of glitter, so when Ben went to Wal-Mart one night, I told him to see if there was any pastel glitter there. He called me and said they had this whole canister thing of several pastel-ey colors. I was so excited! I told him to get it and bring it on home.

No. They were not pastel. They were neon. Neon colors. I was like, "Bennnnn, I don't know how I feel about this... Neon? For Easter decor??"

He was like, "It will look great. Just trust me."

I had to fold ten billion loads of laundry, so he got started on my little project. And not only did he use neon glitter, but he did checkers and polka dots instead of stripes. Checkers and polka dots are cute - don't get me wrong - but I just wanted stripes. A bit of continuity.

I was sad.

And then the next day, the kids saw what Ben had done, and they, too, reallyreallyreally wanted to decorate the eggs with glitter, so I thought, oh, what the H. Let 'em at it. I knew it would turn out ugly, but oh well. The damage was already done.

I read this book last month for my book club, called Tending Roses. This old lady is writing in her journal, and she talks about how, when she was first married, she took really good care of her roses - she was out there with those roses for hours and hours every week. They were gorgeous - her pride and joy. But when she started having kids and got really busy with them, she couldn't tend her roses as much as she wanted to, and they started looking kind of crappy. It made her sad at the time, but what can you do? Kids are the priority. Kids or roses? Kids. After her kids got older and moved away, she was able to tend her roses again. Then she says something really poignant - something like, "I miss the days when my roses grew wild." Meaning the days when she was raising and spending time with her kids. It goes by in the blink of an eye.

So that's my philosophy. For now, I'll have ugly decorations that my kids help me make. When my kids grow up, I can replace my ugly kid decorations if I want. But I'll bet I won't want to. I'll probably see those ugly decorations and wish my kids were little again.

Enough philosophy. On to the action.

First, you put the double-sided tape on. In stripes, or squares, or in polka dots. They make all types. For the stripes, don't try to use the kind that applies like white-out strips. It doesn't adhere to the egg. You have to use the kinds that you tear off and apply by hand. Even Mikey was able to do the sticky tape stuff:

He chose squares. Dylan chose polka-dots:

Sadie did stripes:

She's wearing a sticker on her forehead. Every Monday at dance class, she gets a sticker. And every Monday, she wears it on her forehead all day long, to school and everything.

We tried pouring the glitter over the egg, but we found it easier to make a little pile of glitter, then roll the egg around in it.

That's a weird face Dylan is making.

Sadie ended up decorating the majority of the eggs. Dylan and Micah got bored after just a couple. She was there at the table forever. I don't blame her. It's fun.

I only got to do a few:

See? That's what I'm talkin' about. Stripes. Pastel colors. My face is weird there because I was wearing my tooth-whitening trays and didn't want to expose the weirdness. It's like closed-mouthed smiling with braces on - hard to do. I know from experience, dude.

Oh, and the reason I said Ke$ha would have felt at home with us that day is because there was "dirt and glitter on the floor." Big time. She's always talking about glitter. She is a big fan of glitter.

Alright, so here is our crappy final product:

Um, yeah. Sad. I threw in a few neon-colored striped eggs to try to kind of pull the whole look together, but it still looks like junk. Oh well.

Harder Than it Looks

I wanted to do a bunch of Easter decorations this year involving eggs, but since I didn't feel like boiling the eggs and having my house smell like sulfur for a month, I thought it might be best to blow some eggs out.

OMG, it's sooooo hard!!! What we learned is this:

1) It's better to use a drill to create holes on both ends of your egg instead of trying to tap holes with a nail and hammer.

2) Then, you need to fashion a little...whisk.... out of wire and use your drill to insert the whisk and whip up the yolk and membrane inside. What a pain. (I didn't catch a picture of this.) Our "whisk" looked like a really curly piece of hair. Sometimes you have to whisk the inside over and over and over again to break up that stuff inside.

3) Then you blow the stuff inside out. This is really hard if your holes on either end aren't big enough. Yet you don't want them to be prominent. It's a tricky business. And a headache-inducing business:

You see the vein sticking out in my forehead? It's hard!!

4) Then you have to rinse the egg under water, cleaning any eggy stuff off the outside of the egg, and also getting some water inside the egg. Then you blow that water out the same way you blew the eggy stuff out.

5) Dry the outside of the egg off, then put it in the microwave for 30 seconds to harden the egg up:

Stay tuned to see what we did with the eggs we worked so hard to blow out!

I am basically the coolest sister-in-law ever.

My bro-in-law, Pete's, birthday was last month. I saw this shirt online and just had to get it for him:

If any of you know anything about World of Warcraft (Apes!!), this shirt will be hilarious to you. I myself don't play WoW, but Pete is obsessed with it. If you want to learn about Leeroy Jenkins, you can read about him here. If you want to see the video, go here, but be warned - there is some swearing involved. And you'll need to fast-forward about one minute into the video.

Lesson Learned:

No Easter grass in an accessible place.

Note to self: Easter grass is only okay in their baskets on Easter Sunday, but after they look through the goodies in their baskets, immediately pack it away for next year.

Look at this little stinker. He knew what he did was wrong, but he just couldn't resist. He wears this face often:

But Mom, I just HAD to do it...

Day 14...

...of the 31-Day Blog Challenge - A TV show you're currently addicted to.

Oh, this is easy - Sister Wives:

If you haven't seen it or heard of it, it's a reality show on TLC. I'm so obsessed with it!!! It's on every Sunday night at nine, and if we're not home then (which we usually are), I totally record it.

Kay. So this man, Cody Brown, has four wives. He lives/lived (they're showing previews that the family moved recently) in Lehi, Utah. When I think of polygamists, I usually think of those fundamentalists who live in Southern Utah and have those pastel-colored pioneer dresses and wear their hair really weirdly. But these guys wear normal clothes and hair. I know they're an offshoot of the LDS religion, but I'm not sure what they call themselves.

I remember seeing previews for the show and saying, "Oh, what a pervert. That makes me so mad. He's using these women. And what is wrong with these women?? Do they have no self-esteem??" But when I watched that first episode, my eyes were opened. These people were so normal! These women could be my friends. And I didn't feel like he's a pervert. I really feel like this is part of his and his wives' religion, that they are trying to live their faith. They believe that this lifestyle is correct. They're just trying to be good people.

In every other aspect, they are soooo normal. They laugh and joke and struggle to make ends meet, just like everyone else. It's just that they share a husband. I couldn't do it. No way, no how. The jealousy would kill me.

It's weird - their vernacular is the same as the vernacular in the mainstream LDS culture. They refer to God as "Heavenly Father." They pray the same way. They have a lot of the same beliefs as I do. When I'm watching the show, sometimes I feel like I'm watching a regular LDS family. And then I remember that they're all sharing one man.

The wives in this show are fantastic. I really like all of them. They're good people. I think my favorite one is Meri, the first wife (she's wearing red in the picture above). She is really funny. But I also like Christine (blue shirt), because I have a lot in common with her - she stays at home and takes care of a billion kids and does all the cooking. And she's very down-to-earth. Janelle (brown vest) is the working mom who pays bills and budgets and kind of works with Cody on how to afford everything. And she's very chill. I really like her, too.

Pooh and I were having an animated discussion about this show (she is also obsessed with it); we were trying to decide which one is Cody's "favorite." We both think that his current "favorite" is his newest wife, Robyn (in the floral print shirt). Obviously. But I think his second favorite is Meri.

A little factoid for ya - Cody used to be regular, mainstream LDS. He went on an LDS mission. Then he converted to this faith after he came home. Janelle used to be mainstream LDS, too. Cody's parents converted to this faith, and so did Janelle's mom. And then Janelle's mom married Cody's dad! Very interesting.

Anyways. Sorry I've gone on and on about this. I just really love it! I got the impression that there were going to be a couple of weeks of reruns starting tomorrow, and that makes me sad. I'm interested to see what causes them to move - I know they were under investigation from the police there in Lehi/Utah. Sad that they had to leave their home and all of their friends. I wonder where they moved to.

You can tell a lot about a person by his shoes...

Dylan's two smallest toes were really red and swollen for a few days. He said they hurt really badly, and I was alarmed. Did he have some kind of weird infection? He was having a hard time walking, even. So I took him to the doc.

The doc's prognosis - Dylan was developing blisters, because his shoes were too tight. Oops. Bad Mom Moment #765. I wasn't paying close enough attention. Plus, Ben got Dylan these socks at the store that are clearly made for men. Ben swears up and down that they are boy socks, but they easily fit Ben's feet. When Dylan pulls them on, the heel part is on his calf. So I'm sure the socks were part of the problem, too.

So off to Payless Shoe Source we went. I measured Dylie's feet, and sure enough, he was wearing shoes a size too small. I cannot believe he grew an entire size from autumn until now. I decided to get him some shoes half a size bigger than what he should be wearing right now. I had him pick from the three cheapest pairs in the selection. (And I bought him some socks in the appropriate size.)

I think Payless Shoe Source should change their name. I don't feel like I paid less. I paid dearly. Maybe it should be called Pay Dearly Shoe Source. They're probably cheaper than, like, Famous Footwear, but still. I guess I was hoping that it was like when I was young, and a pair of Payless Shoes was $13 or so. Those were the days.

Then I glanced over at Sadie's extremely worn-out shoes. She is pidgeon-toed and tends to drag her toes when she walks. The toes were worn completely through, and I could see her socks. And Micah's shoes were in really bad shape, too.

So I sighed, pulled up my imaginary bootstraps, measured those two, and got shoes for them, too. And just about had a heart attack at the register. Sixty bucks. Yikes. Bikes.

Here are our models with their new shoes:

And I think you should see their cute faces, too:

I did cornrows in Sadie's hair that day. So cute, but wayyyyy too time-consuming. Never again.

So now I have to work some extra hours to pay for those shoes. :) That's the biz. The biz of having kids. You have to pay for them.

Day 13...

...of the 31-Day Blog Challenge - your favorite musician and why.

My favorite musician changes OFTEN. Right now, I'm obsessed with Adele:

I had heard her name before, but hadn't heard any of her songs until my favorite spinning teacher started playing her music. Oh my goodness, what a voice. Very soulful. To me, she's like the British Aretha Franklin. Two of my favorite songs of hers are "Set Fire to the Rain" and, especially, "Rolling in the Deep":

Oh my goodness, when I hear that song on the radio, I have to turn it WAY up. I love those thumping piano chords, and the soul singers in the background. I have officially uploaded her onto my imaginary iPod. I so need one of those. Maybe I should buy one with my birthday money.... Nah. I'd rather have clothes. I'll just have Ben download Adele's newest album (both of these songs are on it) on his iTunes account and burn me a CD to play incessantly in my car.

Day 12...

...of the 31-Day Blog Challenge - A photograph of the town you live in.

I did a Bing search and really liked this one:

I live in Idaho Falls, and I love it here, despite the freezing winters and the windy springs. Summer and fall make it all worthwhile. You can see the Idaho Falls temple there toward the center of the picture.

Ouch.

Poor Mikey. This happened on our way home from church a few weeks ago. Sadie and Dylan decided to run home, and Mikey wanted to run, too. He tripped on the sidewalk and fell FLAT on his face. He never puts his hands out to brace himself. He falls on his face a lot.

Day 11...

...of the 31-Day Blog Challenge - What's in your makeup bag?

Oh mercy. Trust me when I say you do NOT want to see a picture of my pitiful makeup bag. I've never been good at makeup. And I have tried so many times to do the foundation/powder thing, and I just cannot do it. I feel like I'm wearing a mask. And it smudges all over Ben's collar if I hug him. If I scratch my face because it itches, it gets underneath my nails. Shudder. Is my skin tone even? Probably not. But it's just not worth it to me to have an even-looking skin tone if it's at the cost of my personal comfort.

Kay. I've got some concealer that I use for my dark circles under my eyes. I'm almost out of that. Note to self: get concealer at the store this weekend.

I've got many, many colors of eyeshadow. Beads had me for Christmas, like, five years ago, and I told her I needed some eyeshadow, and she sent me like four huge palettes of any color you could ask for. I love them. Yes, I still have them. When you have forty different colors of eyeshadow, it takes awhile to use them up.

I have brown liquid eyeliner and black liquid eyeliner. Pencil eyeliner hurts my eyelids. And I feel like I'm getting splinters or slivers in my eyelids when I apply it. Which I know isn't true, but still.

I just aquired an eyelash curler a few months ago. I highly recommend these. My eyelashes have gotten thinner and shorter as I've aged, and using this has helped to kind of breathe new life into my poor little eyelashes.

My favorite mascara is Voluminous by L'oreal. I need all the volume on my lashes that I can get.

I use an eyebrow pencil to kind of fill in the small bald spots on my eyebrows. I used to have very thick eyebrows, but no longer. I hardly ever have to pluck, even. Patty tells me this is one of the effects of thyroid disease - your eyebrows don't grow very well. Who knew? Not me.

I have these little razor thingeys that I use to shave my peach fuzz moustache. You can buy them at Sally Beauty Supply. They're the kind that nurses use to shave patients' peach fuzz before surgery. Beads first taught me about using these, and I adore mine. Sometimes, when I'm in a hurry, I use my razors to shave my stray eyebrow hairs so I don't have to pluck them. Works like a charm.

Since I don't use foundation, if I used powder blush, it wouldn't have anything to stick to, really. So I use a liquid blush. You push this spongey thing and out comes some liquid blush on my fingertips.

I keep my lip glosses in a teeny bag in my purse. I don't like lipstick lately. Lip gloss all the way. Tinted lip gloss. A bit of color.

Schwimmin'

We went swimming at the hotel where Pooh's family was staying after Bishie's game. Well, I should say, Ben and the kids went swimming. Pooh didn't feel like swimming, and I wanted to be where Pooh was, so we hung out on the side with our babies. I'm glad. That pool is miiiiiighty cold.

Bishie and Deng spent the whole time terrorizing/wrestling/dunking Pooh's friend, Kristin's, daughter and her friend. They were good sports about it:

I don't know where they get the energy. They played three basketball games that day!

Deng was borrowing Bishie's swimming trunks, and they kept slipping down. You're lucky I didn't catch a picture of his little plumber's crack:

Judgie and Dylan played really good together:

Pooh was holding Gage while I took pics:

And Kristin was holding Marlo:

Sadie Lou:

Ben and Micah were swimming buddies:

Ben kept putting Micah up on the edge of the pool, then swimming away, underwater. And Micah wanted to go in after him. I had to hurry and grab Micah a couple of times before he jumped in after an absent father. I had to give Ben a few withering stares for him to get the hint - DON'T LEAVE YOUR CHILD AT THE EDGE OF THE POOL AND IMMEDIATELY SWIM AWAY. My heck.

I forgot to pack Micah's swimming trunks. Aaaaaand his swimming diaper was a girl one that we inherited from Nat after she potty-trained Ivy. I think it had Ariel from The Little Mermaid on it. That didn't bother Micah one little bit. In fact, when I showed him his swim diaper, he gasped in ecstasy and held it to him in a hug.

Sigh.