Accidents Happen

Let me share a scene with you from tonight. It was bath night and BooBear is in the tub. I come in to wash his hair. I kneel down at the edge of the tub, and my knee gets really wet. "Were you splashing?" "No." he answers. "Then why is the rug wet?" He giggles (which is always a bad sign). "Little Miss peed when she was getting in the bathtub." "No, it wasn't Little Miss. I was holding her. If she had peed, she would have peed all over me, not the rug." He giggles again. "Yes, she did." Suddenly a light bulb goes on in my brain. "BooBear, did you pee while you were getting in to the tub." "YES." Accident happen, and these are the moments that I say, yep, I am a mommy, and isn't that a wonderful thing? But WAIT, I'm not done with this story...a few minutes later I am getting Little Miss out of the bath and getting her dressed. Just as I am about to put on her diaper, yep, accidents happen, all over my bed this time. So there I was with a wet knee and a wet bed, telling myself that it's a great thing to be a mommy, because the best thing you can do when accidents happen is just smile.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Sister E.C., my former student, soon to be missionary! Thanks for letting me know about your mission call. I am SOOO excited for you. I hope you have great companions and joy in your service. Remember that the individual days seem long and tedious, but the months fly by. I know you will be a wonderful missionary.

I am going to take this moment to reflect on an experience from my mission. As a missionary, your time is the Lord's and not your own, and sometimes it is hard to know how to best fill your time to be the most effective. I had one companion who was a good woman, but she had some physical difficulties. I think when we were together was the only time that she was placed in a bike area instead of having a car. Her previous companion had belittled her whenever she physically couldn't keep up. Growing up she had also had some destructive experiences in her childhood. I soon came to realize that this dear sister's self-esteem was depleted. But I will never forget the day that I was frustrated because we kept missing our bus connections due to how slowly my companion walked. (We rode the bus because she couldn't ride a bike). I felt we were wasting time just standing at bus stops all afternoon. She suggested we stop by the Elder's apt on our way home, since we needed to drop something off. I worried that this was not the best thing we could do with our time, as some might think of it as a "social" call, but I agreed. As we were standing on the Elder's porch, a car drove up and parked in front of us. The man got out and called to us, "Hey, you guys. Who are you?" All four of us introduced ourselves, and the man explained how he had seen my companion and I waiting at different bus stops all day long. Everywhere he went, there we were. (He drove a lot as part of his job.) He felt like God was sending him a message and telling him he needed to talk to us. We spent the next hour sitting on the porch and teaching this man about the Book of Mormon. As we were together for 6 weeks, this sister and I had other similar experiences. Because of her faith and dedication, people often came up to us, instead of us having to find them. Together we set companionship goals to help build up her self-esteem, and it was a sweet and humbling experience for me. Heavenly Father knew what he was doing putting us together in a "bike area."

January Update

So, here another month has gone by. My resolution for 2013 was not blogging more regularly, can you tell? My resolution was to have more meaningful interaction with my children everyday. So far. we have been having more fun and creativity in our house.

I started BooBear in a music class at BYU for 3 year-olds. The rest of the kids in the class have been together since the Fall semester, but I wasn't ready to add something new to our schedule last Fall. So, instead of feeling guilty about that, I am rejoicing in how much he loves music class now. He spent a lot of time trying out new instruments, like the child-sized drum kit. BooBear has asked to play the rhythm game we learned in the class every day this week.

We have also added storytime at the library to our schedule, which is another thing I am trying not to feel guilt about not doing earlier. He used to go with his Aunt BBug when I was working, but when I had a new little newborn baby, I just wasn't up for it and we got out of the habit. He remembered it well enough that he was excited to start going again.

BooBear is absolutely loving Sunbeams. He has wonderful teachers. I think the reason he was so grumpy about nursery in December was because he was bored. He has been asking all week if one of the other girls in class can come play. They were in nursery together, but never really interacted (parallel play, right?). Now that they are in Sunbeams together they get along really well. So, I guess I need to get in gear and set up a play date sometime. This particular girl has a baby brother exactly one day older than my Little Miss, so play dates would work for both kids.

BooBear doesn't like to get his hair cut. I mean, how many toddlers like to sit still and get itchy hair all over their neck, right? So, Werty has been promising all month to take him to the barbershop or the "hair-cutting store" as we explained it to BooBear. Finally, they went last week.

Before:

 

After: 

We have been having record cold temps, like most people in this part of the country. BooBear and I built a snow fort, which was pretty difficult, since it's really dry snow. We started it New Year's Eve. It's currently 2 levels high, about 8' x 4' and still hasn't melted (in the picture we were building the first level).

Little Miss is rocking on her arms, but not quite getting her tush off the floor to crawl yet. Her increased amount of movement and rocking makes me think it will be very soon.

BooBear with his cousin at play group. For several weeks, he was the only one to come to play, due to his other cousins traveling and being sick. I was sure glad he came because BooBear looks forward to play group all week.

Car is Fixed!

The old Honda is Werty's car since we bought the van last year. Old Honda's are great for tinkering, and Werty wants to learn more about fixing cars. So, he decided to tackle the wheel bearing repair himself. The wheel has made some noise since we bought the car from Soyjoy a few years back. It has been getting more warped and noisy over time. He originally thought he could finish it over Thanksgiving weekend. But, car repair is something new, and it always takes longer than you think it will when you are learning how to do something for the first time. The Honda has been up on blocks for 3-4 weeks, and he has been using my van to get to work. Good thing I had most of the Christmas shopping done, since I was without a car. (Everything is getting to the post office later than I wanted because of this...Jack-Jack's present still isn't mailed. :(  )

But on Saturday he finished it at last. He replaced the wheel bearing, the hub, the lower ball joint...um, if I forgot something else, he can let me know later...and now I have some idea of what those things actually are. He got to buy at least 3 new tools in the process, which always makes my honey happy. He did have to take a part down to a shop that was stuck to have them press it out, so that took up some of the money he was "saving" by doing it himself, but there is value in what he learned from this experience, right? With one week left before Christmas, I have a car again. So far, I have been to C0stc0 and T@rget...and mostly made up for those weeks I had no car to go shopping. Hee hee.

December Catch-Up

 Last month I promised pictures, so here they are. We were sick the last month at our house, but we are finally on the mend. Here's a review of the last month with photos:

 BooBear and Little Miss are playing together more now. He also introduced his little sister to Pikachu, while Werty introduced BooBear to the Pokemon DVDs this month.

We had our first big snow storm.

 Little Miss has improved her ability to reach for and grab what she wants.

 BooBear's favorite cousin came to play. BooBear will greatly miss him when they move in a month.

 Little Miss likes bananas, pears, and prunes. She likes sweet potatoes, applesauce and carrots most of the time. She may have had an allergic reaction to peaches, however.

We finally set up the crib for Little Miss because she is off the acid-reflux meds. Yay! Here is BooBear helping to "try it out for her."

 Unfortunately, we are still getting her used to the crib, because she got sick and was so congested that I left her in the raised rock-n sleeper to help her breathe easily. Some of the congestion was due to teething. She now has her two front teeth. She is constantly drooling, so I'm sure we will see another one soon.

 Here's the story to go along with the new few pictures. I came downstairs and noticed the empty plastic box (upper right corner of the photo). Hmm, that used to be full of pushpins. Where are they now? What did BooBear do?

 A few hours later, we find this truck with a few pushpins. confirming that BooBear was the culprit. But where are rest? Will we find them by sitting on them somewhere? More importantly, we don't want Little Miss to find them.

 The pushpins were taking a ride in the school bus. The bus was full of clear pushpins. Here's an up close view:

 It took some work getting them out because the bus was so full, but we eventually got the pushpins back into their box.

 Here is the apple pie I made for Thanksgiving. I tried a new method of crimping the edge from pinterest, and I really like it. Here are other projects I have been doing to get ready for Christmas. This is a picture from when I finished the top of my quilted tree skirt. I got to use geometry formulas to figure out the dimensions. I have heard so many students say, "I'll never use Math in real life," so I am always pleased when I prove that statement wrong.

New stockings for my kids. I used the material I had left over from Halloween and finishing the bottom side of the tree skirt.  



 We hung up our tree for FHE the Monday after Thanksgiving. BooBear wouldn't leave the ornaments alone for the first two weeks. He broke about 4-5 of them.

Werty and BooBear "fixing" his lawn mower. One of his favorite games is pretending things are broken and then he fixes them. He does this a lot on our walks. "Wait, mommy, my bike is broken. I have to stop and fix it." This is only a bad thing when it's REALLY cold outside, and I am anxious to get back home where it is WARM.

Werty's high school friend and "adopted" brother was married last Saturday at the Timpanogos temple.

Here is Little Miss dressed up for the reception in her Christmas dress. I was going to sew her a dress, but I couldn't find a pattern that I loved, and then I saw this at T@rget, and had to buy it.

In this one you can kind of see my new haircut, it's short again.

Isn't this one sweet?

 Tummy time: not crawling quite yet. But she did roll over a week and a half ago. She really prefers to sit, instead of being on the ground, so she doesn't get much practice, and that's my fault.

  These last two were taken yesterday, so now I am all caught up!

Snowy Day

(I wrote this on Saturday, hoping to post pics with it. Check back soon for pics.)

"It's a snowy day, Daddy." Yes, BooBear it is.We had our first winter snow with snow yesterday.

This year BooBear and I raked some leaves every few days instead of trying to do it all at once. So much better. We filled our green can (for yard waste) full right after it got emptied last week. So, we played a lot of games with the huge pile of leaves instead of bagging them up. However, with the storm coming, it was time. I informed Werty that he would be helping me bag  up leaves the moment he got home from work. I bagged leaves for about an hour before he arrived. By that time it was dark. Good thing we have a lamppost in our yard! We got the front yard done in time before the snow. /cheer! I am thankful that we have leaves to rake, because that means we have a house of our own, and beautiful trees to give us shade.

Election Day

Have you voted yet? I actually voted last Thursday. Waited in line for a little over an hour, without children. When we had one child, then we could both go down together and take turns waiting in line and chasing BooBear. With two children, it seems we have to take turns going to the polls. This time I decided to take my turn early, to make sure I had enough time to do it. Remember how long women had to FIGHT to get the right to vote - and they were fighting for you, so VOTE!