Snapshot in Time - January 2009

Time seems to be flying by me so quickly that I wanted to take a minute and remember what they boys are up to, and into these days.

Beefy:

• Is 2 yrs 8 1/2 months old
• Loves to run around and around the dinner table after he's done eating giving everyone "5's"
• Will frequently demand, "give me a hug!" when he is upset about something.
• Has the best smile, and loves to laugh.
• Is really into "sympathy" band-aids. If he sees anyone with a band-aid, he has to have one too. When I bleed a little after one of my injections, he always needs a band-aid - and today, one kid came to pre-school with a band-aid on his forehead, yup - Beefy needed one on his forehead too.

Buggy

• Age: 4 years, nearly 7 months
• Loves, Loves, Loves his doodler (magna doodle pad) and can spend hours - literally - of each day drawing elaborate characters on it. Most of them come from wii games, and because he has a pretty strict limit on actual playing time, he will draw his characters playing the games on the doodler, and then tell me how the game turns out.
• Very interested in Star Wars, and Wii games.
• Will probably eat me out of house and home by the time he's 6. He can easily eat 4-5 bowls of cereal (and we're talking the healthy stuff, they don't get sugar cereal) for breakfast each morning. And yet, he is still skinny as a rail - I don't know where he puts it.
• Gives the best hugs, and still likes to snuggle when he's sad.

Before I know it (or like to think about) Buggy will be off to kindergarten and Beefy will be in preschool, and Baby Sister will be here. I wish it were easier to hold on to the cute things they do that I want to remember forever.

I love you, my kiddos.

Jump Planet

One of our favorite places to go, especially in winter, is called "Jump Planet". It is one of those inflatable party places, only they have walk-in hours for little kids, and adults are free. It's cheap entertainment, and I am almost assured that at least one of the kiddos will nap on the days we go there. Awesome!


Anyway, on Monday the boys and I and their friend "S" (and his nanny "A" and her daughter "E-Bell") all went to Jump Planet. We haven't been for a while for the obvious reason of me being 7 1/2 months pregnant makes climbing the slides difficult-to say the least. Buggy does fine on his own there, but Beefy still needs some help climbing up in a few places.


That's where "E-Bell" came in handy - she was a lifesaver. She's young, and more than willing and able to keep up with my two-year-old. It was the most relaxing time I've ever had there. I even got to take a few pictures.


Sure enough, within two hours of being home, Beefy passed out, mid-tantrum on the floor (just because he needed a nap, doesn't mean he didn't fight it).

The downside of taking pictures there is that the lighting kind of stinks, and my camera is definitely not anywhere close to being an award winner (thus the reason that all of the pictures are taken at the same slide). Oh well. They enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, and I got a few good pictures (I had to delete at least half of them) to help me remember how much fun we have here (yeah, when I'm not pregnant, I enjoy it too).

Does Anyone Know How To?....

Does anyone know how to get a kid to stop pooping every time he gets in the bathtub? We have a three time repeat offender at our house, and as much as I like cleaning the tub that often (not at all) I am so ready for it to stop.

Baby Update

So we are at 29 wks 4 days. Almost there! I had an ultrasound today, everything looks good, it is still a girl, and she is big- 3lbs 8oz. We got a pretty good face shot today. The photo doesn't do it justice, it is kind of smudged and obviously there is a huge shadow over her eye. It was a much better shot on the actual ultrasound. It is sideways because I think it is easier to see that way.




On another couple of positive notes, the "peri" (specialist) doesn't think I need to start NST's until 34 weeks, so I have a little break there, and after my 3hr test yesterday, my glucose levels came back normal (yay!). I was relieved, mostly because I spent most of yesterday afternoon incredibly sick after fasting for 12 hours and then drinking that super sugar drink, and not having anything for another 3 1/2 hours. Awful!

I have an appointment with my OB next Friday, and hopefuly we will be able to set a tentative delivery date by then. I know it is a ways off still, but I am kind of getting excited for her to be here, and definitely to not be pregnant anymore.

Where Have We Been?

Posts have been scarce lately here in my world. Not because nothing has been going on, but because nothing noteworthy has happened I guess, and I just haven't found time.

We just finished up a fun weekend with Grandma and Grandpa, and some Meredith cousins. They were only here for a few days, but we always love having visitors (even 9 at once), and the boys had a great time with all those cousins around.

I've spent the last week and a half in digging mode. I dug out all of the junk in my closet, so that I could move my craft table and all of my stuff in there, so that I could dig out my craft room in order to get it converted into a baby's room soon. Its amazing the difference a little organizing and junk tossing can make. I think I have twice the space I had before.

I've also been sorting through a mountain of hand-me-downs from my sister. She is having a boy, and I'm having a girl, so we are switching clothes. Unfortunately since girls are scarce around my family, they tend to get over-bought for, and now I have to go through and find what will work for my baby from the time she is born until she grows out of a 2T. I can't really see the floor right now of my recently cleaned future nursery.

I am also gearing up for a nice heavy push of Dr.'s appointments from now to the end of March. I have a (or another) glucose test, and an ultrasound this week, an appointment with my OB next week, and then weekly NST's mixed in with more ultrasounds/appointments until I deliver. (Yay for high risk pregnancy) Really though I would rather be on the cautious side than risk complications. Even so-the thought of all of those appointments and trips to the hospital makes me tired.

Needless to say, with all of this going on, I have been crashing at night and keeping well busy during the day. I like it that way, it makes time fly, but I want be better at more frequent posts. I've missed it.

Now I Remember

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that we have had very stinky weather for about the last month. Tons of snow, followed by tons of rain, followed by crappy thick, ugly inversion fog. Well, today we finally got some good.

We had sunny blue skies, no snow or rain, and it was a wonderful 55 degrees outside (in January).

Yep, that's my Buggy, riding his bike outside today without a jacket. He insisted that we wasn't cold at all.

I love that we got to play outside. Western Washington is one of those places that you have to take advantage of the sunny days, or else you feel guilty about it later.

At my parents house in Utah, the high today was 37, and in the wonderful town where we went to college, they had a balmy high of 25.

Yep, we may have insane weather sometimes-but days like today make me remember why I like living here.

Some Thoughts on Common Sense

My friend Kellie recently had an anonymous commenter leave some very rude comments on her blog. She won brownie points in my book by letting Ms. Anonymous know (in no uncertain terms) how incredibly tactless she was. (Yay for you Kellie) In the spirit of that post, I've decided to have some fun (ie: vent a little bit) by giving responses to some of the tactless people that I have encountered in my life recently.

Please note that I would never say these things to these people in real life, but as I am not yet perfect, I do still think them on occasion.

First, to the man in the restaurant who saw me - very pregnant - with my two kids and said, "It looks like you have your hands full": Well, duh! I know that it isn't common in this geographical area, or in this day and age to see someone with more than one little child, and even more unusual to see someone pregnant and with little ones. I know I'm an anomaly, you don't need to point it out to me. And in my defense, they were being relatively well behaved that day. He should have seen them on a bad day, then he can tell me I have my hands full. As if I didn't already know that.

To the guy who works at the cell phone booth, or the girl at the make-up booth, or any of those other vultures that work at the mall: I am a rather crabby, nearly full term, pregnant lady. If I have dared venture into the mall, it is with a purpose, and if I am not stopping to look, then I am definitely not interested. Please don't try to deter me from my mission to ask me about my cell phone plan/skin care regime/desire for straighter hair. I have a limited amount of time before the kids start begging for the play area and/or the Disney store. If I don't get my errands done before that time, then I can kiss them goodbye.

And Finally, to the ladies who followed me out of the aforementioned restaurant the other day: If my kids are in my arms crying, and huddled against the building, and if I have told you 3 times (as politely as possible) that they are very, very afraid of ducks, please do not pull out your leftover bread stick and start feeding the ducks to make them come closer. I don't really care that your granddaughter (who isn't with you) loves to feed ducks. It is (in most people's eyes) pretty obvious that my kids do not like feeding the ducks, and my full hands would appreciate it if you didn't make this harder on them (or me) than it has to be.

Okay, that felt kind of good. I guess that's why I have this venting platform, right. It's not even that I am terribly upset by these situations. I'm not at all actually. Mostly, I just wonder what happened to the common sense of these people. Oh, well. I just hope that if I'm ever guilty, either the offendee will let me know (hopefully in a nice way) or forgive me and chalk it up to lost brain cells from having kids.

Have a great day everyone, and may you be able to laugh at something today.

What I've Been Making

My sister is the Young Women's president in her ward. A while back she asked me if I could make her some birthday cards that she could use throughout the year for her girls. Well, the other day we were talking, and she reminded me of that - so I got some cards done for her, and I am actually really liking the results.

At this time I would like to add my disclaimer that most of these are either direct copies, or slight variations of cards that I, or others, have made (I have to do what I know when I am making things in bulk quantities). Sorry, no original work here today.

Also, as usual - the scans are crooked, the cards in real life, are not.

Even so, they're pretty cute. Enjoy!






And, since I didn't post cards in December, I'm going to add my December projects here as well:

Christmas Card (the off-white in the middle pulls out, and becomes the center of the card. My original intent was to print my Christmas letter on the insert but the Christmas letter concept got scrapped when I ran out of time and energy, and needed to get the cards out. I'll do a letter again next year.)

Cute Treat Bags (the photo really doesn't do them justice - Oh, well they were still really fun to make)

Remember that baby shower invite I did in November? This is the corresponding Treat box. It was filled with M&M's. Once again, its a horrible photo, but the boxes themselves turned out really cute. You get the idea.

There will be more cards, etc. coming later in the month, but I wanted to post these before I mailed them off, and they were gone.

One of the Many Reasons I Love Him

Tonight was one of those nights. You know the ones, I'm sure you've all had them too. I just needed some alone time that I could be productive (ie: fold laundry and finish my card projects uninterrupted).

Even though my husband had a long day at work too, and probably would have gladly spent the evening vegging on the couch, he offered-without me having to ask-to let the boys jump on him for an hour so that I could finish what I didn't get done earlier.

It wasn't much, but it made a big impression on me at the moment. Thanks Babe!

I Know What it Won't Be.

I'm to the point in my pregnancy where I am getting asked a lot about names we have chosen. We have discussed the topic at length, and while we have it mostly narrowed down, we aren't 100% yet.

Anyway, a while back as we were discussing names, my husband and I were going back and forth on names we liked. I have always had a list of girl names I liked and I was shooting some of them off to my husband, and he was pairing them with our last name to see how they worked.

We came to the name Hannah, one I have always loved. Unfortunately our last name is Montano. It took me a minute when I heard it together, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. That is just too MEAN. I could never do that to our daughter.

I guess I really should have thought about that more way back in the day when I was deciding what names I thought were cute.

So, good-bye cute name. I guess it was never meant to be.

Was it Inspiration?

Way back in October we decided that we weren't going to go home for Christmas. All of our family live 1000 miles away, and for all of our lives we have always spent Christmas (or in last year's case, the week after Christmas) with our families.

With the impending threat of a strike, plus a tough year financially - we made the decision that a Christmas trip was just not going to be feasible. When the strike didn't happen we started thinking that a post-Christmas trip just might be possible.

Somewhere in the midst of all of that planning, my husband and I both got the feeling that we shouldn't go. It was a little tough; we only get home once or twice a year, and it seemed like an opportune time - given that my husband had this whole week as paid holiday time. Something wasn't right with us though, whether it be a gut feeling of impending doom or just a lack of desire to drive 1000 miles with two "under 5's" and a pregnant lady; and we just kept going back to the fact that we shouldn't go, so we didn't.

Skip forward to December in Washington with record snowfalls the week leading up to Christmas - and now I am reading articles and seeing news reports that all of the mountain passes connecting western Washington to the rest of the state are closed (some indefinitely) due to more snowfall.

As I was hearing these things, my mind started working (as it is prone to do) and I realized that had we gone on our trip, we would be driving back from Utah in this weather (not to mention what we probably would have had to go through to get there). I can't even imagine what we would have done had we got stuck on the other side of one of those passes late at night, on a non-existent travel budget and knowing nobody. I can only think that maybe we were being looked out for when we got the feeling not to go.

So was it inspiration? I think so.

Is It New Year's Already?

Wow, time flies. Happy 2009 everyone, may it be wonderful!

Today I am Thankful For.... The "Finish Up" Edition

• 12/31 - My Family.
• 12/30 - A good Temple trip.
• 12/29 - Being able to accomplish goals.
• 12/28 - Quiet time. It's my favorite part of Sunday afternoons, and we got lots of it today.

Thanks for letting me share a few things that I am thankful for.