Jeff and Rachel (and Forrest)

Boys are gross.

2011-11-29T16:19:00.000-06:00

I have this theory about baby boys and their inherent grossness. I'm sure a mother of a young daughter would be happy to set me straight, but I can't help but imagine that a little girl couldn't possibly be gross in the way that a little boy is. Every time Forrest lets out a huge fart in the middle of dinner (then claps for himself), or licks the drippies from his runny nose (and goes back in for more), or burps and laughs uproariously like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard, I just think, "A baby girl wouldn't do this. There's no way. Only a boy." I was a little girl once. I remember a lot of tea parties, hair brushing, and twirling. I do not remember clapping for farts.

Although this is nowhere close to the grossest thing Forrest has accomplished, I can't picture a little girl walking around for 5 minutes with the world's most resilient snot bubble pulsing at the end of her little nostril:

Do you see it? Should we get closer?

Ah, there it is, in all its snotty, boyish glory. It was an impressive sight . . . especially in profile:

No wonder these two are so close. Daddy gets it. Mommy doesn't understand.

Fall!

2011-11-05T10:51:00.000-05:00

(Everything in this post has already been on facebook, so if we're friends on facebook, you may have seen all this before. I just wanted a new post in case any of our ward members stumble across this blog--nobody has mentioned it yet, but I figured they should have something besides my little "what a jerk!" rant from my last post to read if they should find me here. On the other hand, maybe if the person in question somehow finds it and recognizes himself, he'll be a better visitor in the future!)

My mom, Bekah and I took Forrest and my two nieces, Abby and Megan, to a pumpkin patch a few days before Halloween. It was a lot of fun.

The kids especially loved the little corn maze and insisted on going through it a few times. Abby was our fearless navigator.

There was also a pretty cool little antique tractor display, which made me feel a little nostalgic for Iowa. How sad that the first picture of me and Forrest with a tractor was taken in Utah, not Iowa!

It was right about at this time that I realized my camera's settings were at an ISO of 1600 and set to dim indoor lighting, despite it being an incredibly bright, cloudless day . . . whoops! This was also the moment that Forrest realized THERE WERE WHEELBARROWS IN THE PUMPKIN PATCH.

He thought that little wheelbarrow was pretty nifty, until he abandoned it for this one:

A MAN'S wheelbarrow! He was getting so angry that he couldn't push this one, so we tried giving him a ride in it, instead:

Surprisingly enough, this did not go over well . . . I think he was just mad that Bekah could get it to move when he couldn't. He got shown up by a weakling, 80-pound girl with the upper body strength of a newborn kitten. He was also not happy with Bekah when she plunked him in the middle of this row of pumpkins and he couldn't get out. I wish you could see his face better--it was priceless. PUMPKIN FURY!

I'm sorry to report that he really did not have a great time at the pumpkin patch--he had fun for the first 20 minutes or so, but one frustration after another piled up (I CAN'T LIFT THESE PUMPKINS! THE GROUND IS UNEVEN AND I KEEP FALLING! THAT D@%* WHEELBARROW IS FREAKING HEAVY!) until he had a total meltdown. Poor Goobs. But you wouldn't ever know it, because look at the cute picture we got together!

I was so happy to see that this picture turned out well--I really don't have many pictures of the two of us, and I'm glad he could bottle up his tears for a moment to pull out a smile for this shot.

I also got a cute picture with Bekah, and realized that we look, in Bekah's words, "kind of exactly the same."

People have always told us we look alike, and we've never really seen it. But every once in a while, in a photo, I have to admit that we do look really similar. I think that's bad news for Bekah, and good news for me, since I'm okay with admitting that she is the cuter sister.

Forrest was Batman for Halloween, and Jeff was Robin. Classic! I didn't get a picture of the two of them together, so we'll need to have a re-do this week. Forrest's costume was completely last minute--I had been planning all along to do a Firefly theme (Jeff as Jayne, I'd be Kaylee, and Forrest as Mal of course), but that fell apart when I couldn't find myself a jumpsuit. It was a tragedy. Maybe next year. But since Jeff already had a Robin costume for work, we pulled together a teeny Batman costume for Forrest. He was pretty darling.

And, last but not least, a few shots of Forrest playing in the autumn leaves (which are now covered in two inches of snow--I'm playing Christmas music right now. I'll be cursing the snow in a month or two, but I do love the first one!)

(This blog sure has gotten lame lately, hasn't it? Sorry. All my blogging energies go into this one.)

In non-baby-related news:

Jeff graduated from Palmer about a month ago! A few days later, he found out he had passed all of his boards, which was a HUUUUUUUUGE relief, because you can carry around your chiropractic school diploma and feel like a fancypants and still never work as a doctor if you don't pass your boards. And those boards are hard stuff. I'm very proud of him--it was a lot of hard work, and he did such a great job and loves what he does.

I didn't fly to Iowa for graduation with him--it would have cost well over $1000 for both of us to go (do you know how many pairs of shoes I could buy with that money?!), so I'm very grateful to Janel for taking plenty of pictures for me! That picture is Jeff and his 3 best friends from school--Jane, Will, and Josh. We sure miss all of them already.

After considering a few offers in the area, he took an associateship at Peterson Chiropractic, the office he worked at during his internship, and he loves it so far. He'd love to open his own practice in the future, and working with such a successful practice now will help him learn how to do it on his own someday.

I've been very busy between Forrest's shenanigans and keeping up with orders at my etsy shop . . . I actually had to take down all my non-pattern listings for a week because it was getting so busy I didn't think I'd be able to keep up. I've briefly entertained the notion of hiring a crochet assistant, but I just don't think I could send out something made by someone else. Although Bekah has pointed out that the name is MAYBE Matilda . . . like, hey, maaaaaybe I made it, you never know. Not misleading at all!

Even though the number of orders I was receiving was getting a little insane, I am incredibly grateful and happy that my shop has been doing so well--it really is important to me to have something purely my own to stay busy with. I hate to say that I don't think I'd be happy just playing with Forrest and doing housework all day, but, well . . . I don't think I would. I do love being home with my little guy, and I feel so lucky that circumstances so far have made it possible for me to stay home and focus on him, but I'm so glad that I have my own thing, you know? Something apart from mothering and diapers and homemaking that makes me feel fulfilled and rewarded. And it sure doesn't hurt that I'm making money off it, too. Holla!

Yep, thanks for stopping by.

2011-10-26T15:16:00.001-05:00

You know what's really friendly and welcoming? (Not this!)

Some of the members of our bishopric stopped by our house a few nights ago, because they "like to get to know and welcome new members of the ward." We've been in this ward for 4 months now . . . nice try, though. But I can forgive them for that--I'm sure they're busy, and it's a pretty new bishopric.

But then they stayed for almost an hour, which might make it sound like it was a really fun visit, and we all had a great time. False. The hour was filled with nothing but one counselor bragging about his vacations to exotic countries, his 5 big screen TVs (not exaggerating--"I don't even know what to do with so many big screens! Why should one family have 5 big screens?!" I dunno, buddy, but I"d be happy to take one off your hands, if they're really such a big problem for you), and his brand new 3000 square foot office he's having built. Whoop-de-doo for you.

And ready for the kicker? During the entire hour, neither one of them directed a single comment or question to me. I briefly entertained the idea that maybe I had gone invisible. Literally, not one word spoken to me the entire evening. They asked Jeff about his schooling, mission, job, plans, hobbies . . . and did not say a single word to me the entire hour. When I asked them questions, they responded . . . to Jeff. Ummm, hello?

Extremely welcoming. We really love this ward.

(This picture has nothing to do with this post, but I feel like a post has to have a picture. This was taken when Forrest was a sickypants a few weeks ago. Poor little fella.)

Simple pleasures

2011-10-20T18:07:00.000-05:00

Can you even imagine finding this much happiness in something so ordinary? Kind of makes me rethink the way I look at things.

Good news and bad news

2011-10-09T17:30:00.000-05:00

Good news:

I'm growing out my pixie cut! After Bekah and Jeff whining their dang pants off about how weird they find it that I look exactly like my mom now that we have the same hair, I've decided to give long hair another shot, and I hope that this time around I'll miraculously be blessed with hair-styling abilities. So I guess that's the end of this for now:

It was good while it lasted.

Bad news:

I'm growing out my pixie cut. There's a reason this is happening over the winter . . . it will not be pretty, people. Hats will be my friends. I have a pretty impressive half mullet, half rat tail thing happening right now. In fact, with a little gel and a curling iron, I think I could style it into this:

Good news:

We made friends in our new ward! Two of them!

Bad news:

They are both moving this month. That brings the friends tally back to zero.

Good news:

Jeff and his sister ran the Dirty Dash a few weekends ago.

Bad news:

Jeff and his sister ran the Dirty Dash a few weekends ago.

Next on his list: Night of the Running Dead. I don't know how he finds such weird events.

Good news:

Forrest is walking!

Okay, I don't have a picture of him walking, but I just find the look on his face amusing in that picture. He looks kind of guilty for eating a brownie. It's okay, Forrest, chubby looks good on you.

Bad news:

He now thinks he must walk everywhere. Jeff's office had a booth at the home show this weekend, and when we dropped by to visit, Forrest felt that he needed to push the stroller through the whole place instead of riding in it. I was tempted to take a seat myself, but I didn't want any weird looks.

Good news:
I saw The Help this weekend with my old friend Audrey, who I haven't seen in 3+ years!

It was so good, and so much fun to hang out with Audrey.

Bad news:

The movie ended and we had to go home.

(But only after a detour to Red Robin, where our waitress brought us checks and boxes after we had literally taken about 3 bites from our dinners. I think she wanted us to leave.)

All you come here for is baby pictures, right?

2011-09-21T15:50:00.000-05:00

I hope so, because that's all you ever get anymore.

Right after Forrest's birthday, we took him out for a little photo shoot. I wanted some cute one-year old photos, which I didn't think was too much to ask. This undertaking was made rather difficult when you consider that I have no money to pay a professional to do it for me, minimal photography talent, and an absurdly wiggly child who refused to sit still even. for. two. seconds. Even with Jeff filling the role of Baby Wrangler, I only got like 4 decent pictures where Forrest wasn't writhing on the ground, crawling at top speed away from me (if there's a crawling version of sprinting, that's what he does), or stuffing his mouth with pebbles and sticks. As you'll see, we finally gave up on keeping the sticks out of his mouth. And once you toss in the fact that we were trespassing to get these pictures in the first place and that Jeff spent the whole time whispering, "Hurry up! We're going to get arrested!" it was quite a stressful day.

So this is the best I got. I took these pictures almost a month ago and just now opened them up for the first time, which should tell you something about how frustrating this experience was. Although I know almost nothing about photography or editing, I think they came out pretty cute.

I think this one is my favorite:

(By the way, he learned how to walk over the weekend! He and I flew to New Mexico to visit my parents for the weekend and Forrest decided that the few days when his dad wasn't there to witness the biggest accomplishment of his life was the ideal time to start walking. Poor Jeff.)

Far too many birthday pictures

2011-08-26T14:54:00.000-05:00

Someone turned one! Prepare yourself for way more birthday pictures than you ever cared to see.

(Are you prepared? Really? Okay then.)

We started the fun with some jumping--Forrest is obsessed with the trampoline. He and Bekah are getting their jump on:

Megan is a very ladylike bouncer--she had to hold her dress down:

Check out those legs!

Of course, the cousins had to read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs during the party--it's his very favorite movie, after all.

I'm absurdly proud of Forrest's birthday cake--I'm sorry to say that pretty desserts are not a talent of mine. They usually taste fine, but I just can't seem to master the art of making them look adorable. This may be the first time anything I've baked has looked cool. Since Forrest's favorite movie is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I made a spaghetti and meatballs cake:

Ha! Cake success! It's a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. The spaghetti noodles are just an ridiculous amount of buttercream frosting, tinted yellow and squeezed out in a loopy pattern all over the top of the cake. The meatballs are Ferrero Rocher chocolates, the sauce is strawberry ice cream topping, and it has grated white chocolate on top (parmesan cheese). I think I may have taken more pictures of the cake than of Forrest on his birthday.

Jeff was very insistent that Forrest get his own miniature cake (not just a cupcake--a miniature cake) to eat, so I made him a little version in a teeny cake pan:

Cake glamour shot:

Three cheers for cake!

Forrest was a little unsure about it--he daintily poked at his cake for probably a good 5 minutes when we put it on his high chair tray:

I'm not sure that he realized it was food. The boy eats pebbles and grass clippings, for goodness' sake, and wouldn't eat the cake I made him. But once I cut it open and he could see the inside, I think he decided it was worth a taste:

I guess it was pretty tasty after all.

Too much of a good thing?

The water in his bath afterward looked like mud--he was coated in chocolate cake, and had rubbed it everywhere . . . it was in his ears, the back of his knees, his neck rolls, all over his hair . . .

I edited one of my favorite cake pictures:

Happy birthday to my stinky boy!

We're alive!

2011-08-18T09:41:00.000-05:00

Is it time for an update? Okay! Wordy stuff first . . .

Well, we're out in Utah now! We left Iowa mid-June, stayed with my parents for a week or so while we searched for an apartment (which was terrifying--most of the places we found really made me fear for my life, even when we were just driving by . . . the photos they put on KSL can be highly deceptive), and finally found a little place in Draper that we've been really happy with.

Jeff is doing an internship at Peterson Chiropractic in West Valley City (maybe you noticed West Valley on the news when there were 2 or 3 people murdered there the week he started . . . fantastic), and has really been enjoying it. Up until a week or so ago, he was the only Spanish speaker in the office, which meant all the Spanish patients no longer had to bring a translator to their appointments, and their Spanish-speaking patient base suddenly started growing like crazy, so he's really enjoyed brushing up on his Spanish (and learning new words when the patients laugh at him for saying things like "we need to take a . . . picture of your bones," and graciously teach him the word for "x-ray") as well as helping the office grow.

We're trying to adjust to our new ward, which is really making me miss our ward in Iowa (a lot!), and I was just called as the (brace yourself) assistant Wolf den leader. As in boy scouts. Not sure what about me would set off a boy scout trigger in anyone's head, but I guess I'll figure it out as I go along. I just hope they're not expecting me to buy myself a uniform, because that's definitely not going to happen.

Forrest has become quite the little helper (although his helping usually makes chores take twice as long as they usually do) . . . he's especially good at reading the warnings and instructions before starting tasks:

As well as performing safety inspections and maintenance checks:

He also loves to play hide and seek, although he needs to work on not leaving a trail leading up to his hiding spot:

He'll be one next week, which is completely crazy since I feel like he was just born a few weeks ago. And speaking of birthdays, my sister Bekah just turned 20 and celebrated with (what else?) a Harry Potter party. My mom made this delectable cake, which I don't know if I'll be able to top for Forrest's birthday:

In case you need a close-up . . .

Yum! We also had chocolate frogs, Bertie Bott's every flavor beans (aka jelly bellys), cockroach clusters, and butterbeer (which I made; it was a bit of a disappointment).

Forrest dressed as Professor Flitwick for the party:

(For comparison purposes, here's the professor:)

I think this picture represents his feelings about wearing such a silly outfit pretty well:

It's been so great to be close to family again--I'm pretty sure Forrest loves Bekah more than he loves me (I'm not even joking about that), and after spending 20 straight hours driving out here with my mom sitting next to him in the back seat, I think he thinks Grandma is his new mom. Although I'd like to remind him of the one who gave birth to him (which was not exactly a walk in the park, Forrest!) and changes his diapers every day. Especially the disgusting lumpy orange lava diaper that resulted from his precious aunt Bekah feeding him half a box of Goldfish the other night.

For Michelle-y Smelly

2011-06-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

You requested a new post, so here you go.

Picture it: me and my gangly sister, fueled by a cupcake overdose, trying to do the Bernie.

If you'll come visit me, maybe you'll get a re-enactment! Eh? EH?

Look at him grow!

2011-06-12T22:13:00.000-05:00

We finally got around to uploading all the pictures from our cell phones to the computer, and I can't decide if I'm excited or heartbroken to see all these pictures of Forrest growing up way too fast (that's the cue that this post is going to have way too many pictures):

How enriching!

2011-06-08T20:56:00.000-05:00

I'm the sucker who has to plan the Relief Society enrichments in our ward, and a sister let me borrow a book full of very interesting ideas for enrichment (a subtle hint that she thinks my activities suck?).

Here are some of my favorite ideas from the book (coming to a Relief Society near you!):

Martyrs to a Cause?: Why There Are Suicide Bombers

My Child the Nerd: Socializing Brilliant Children

Pythons on Parade!: Snakes and Constrictors as Pets

Russian ABCs: Identifying Letters in the Cyrillic Alphabet

Spinsters Unite!: Learning to use a Spinning Wheel

"Squoze" is Not a Word: Dictionaries and Our Evolving Language

Sturm and Drang: 18th Century German Literature

Warp, Woof, and Wool: Setting up a Navajo Loom

Spud Spectacular: Potato Print Gift Wrap and Greeting Cards

Who is Dow Jones and Should I Like Him?: Basic Investing Info

"Do Not Resuscitate": Choosing Hospital Preferences While You're Healthy

Sisters' Slumber Party: A "You Snooze, You Lose" Relief Society Overnighter (winner!!!)

Not carbs?!

2011-06-01T21:39:00.000-05:00

Try bread.

Think about bread.

Love bread.

Squeal of Delight

2011-05-25T14:16:00.000-05:00

I just saw a video on my friend Megan's blog of her 2 little boys laughing at each other, and it was adorable. It reminded me that I never posted this video that Jeff's sister Jeannette took of Forrest when she came out over Easter to visit us.

Forrest occasionally laughs, but he usually does this instead:

I figure he's going to outgrow that at some point, but I'll really miss it!

See ya, Iowa.

2011-05-24T16:10:00.000-05:00

(You know how blog posts without pictures are really boring? I'm just going to sprinkle unrelated pictures in to keep you interested.)

I'm feeling a little bit sad to be leaving Iowa in 3-ish weeks. Bear with me while I get nostalgic. Feel free to read the rest of this post in a kinda weepy voice, preferably with cheesy "good times" music playing in the background.

Jeff and I had barely been married a year when we moved to Davenport, and we just celebrated our 4th anniversary last month. The bulk of our marriage has been in this town, in this house. We've made all of our plans here, and talked about our dreams for our family and what we wanted in our future.

We've made such great friends here that I hate to leave behind. There are so many women here in our ward and town who have been so inspiring to me and have really shaped the image I have of the wife and mother I want to become. I'll always be grateful to them for making me want to improve and change, and helping me through my own struggles.

And of course, this is where our family grew. It breaks my heart a little to leave the house that we brought our sweet baby home to--it's full of so many happy memories with Forrest . . . like the day we found out we were expecting him right before Christmas (talk about a great Christmas present!), setting up his crib, sewing his baby quilt, deciding on the perfect name for him, giving him a tour of the house when he came home from the hospital with us, ~~listening to him scream for 20 hours a day for 3 months straight, never mind, let's leave those memories behind,~~ peeking into his bedroom to see him sleeping at night, listening to those early squeaky giggles, teaching him to wave at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

I know we'll make great memories wherever we go and I'm excited to start the next (big!) chapter of our lives, but I sure will miss walks on the bike path that's right outside our front door, trips to the Mississippi to watch the eagles, meeting Jeff on campus, the sun setting behind the trees in our backyard, sitting outside in the sunshine and chatting with our neighbors, seeing all of the friendly faces at church on Sunday, the ungodly Arctic winters (ha! not so), pigging out at Culver's (oh, how I'll miss you, Culver's!), watching all our little friends grow up, and driving past miles of cornfields in the summer.

Oh, Iowa. Somehow you weaseled your way into my heart.

(But! I'm so excited for mountains in the background, family dinners, hugs from my nieces, baking with my mom, watching Forrest play with his cousins, pretending to enjoy skeet shooting with my dad, laughing with my sister, eating at Brick Oven and Zuppa's [please tell me Zuppa's is still open], Plato's Closet, street names/directions that make sense, a temple on every corner, hopefully receiving a made-up-Utah-ward-only calling like hymnbook coordinator, and trips back to BYU. Go cougs.)

Remember when he was barely crawling? Good times.

2011-05-13T16:12:00.000-05:00

Someone discovered the stairs this week.

I have a feeling there are a lot of naughty antics, boo-boos in need of kisses, and frantic "where's the baby?" moments headed our way.

Holla to the mommas

2011-05-08T16:54:00.000-05:00

The decision to become a mother was not an easy one for me--I was really, really scared of the thought of having kids, and it was a decision that I struggled with for a very long time. I knew it was something I should do and should want, but I was just plain afraid of it for a while. It took me a long time to even want to have kids, much less work up the courage to actually decide to have one. As it turns out, I love being a mother, but it wasn't an easy decision for me to make.

So this post is a shout out to the wonderful moms who made me actually look forward to this whole parenting thing instead of tremble in fear at the thought of it. In no particular order (except for the first one . . . she'll always be #1), here are some of my favorite mamas. Thanks for making me excited to be a mother.

Beauty school dropout

2011-05-03T08:27:00.000-05:00

Forrest has started styling his own hair every day. This is his favorite look:

Quite dashing!

Seriously, this is how it looks every morning these days when we get him out of bed, and it will not smooth out flat! He pulls his hair when he's sleepy, so I think he pulls it into a spike as he's falling asleep right after his bath while his hair is still wet, and we end up with a doofy little curl like that.

Although I like the curl better than this do:

Woohoo! Free pictures!

2011-04-27T19:45:00.001-05:00

Forrest and I were at Walmart today when a lady started gushing over Forrest and asking when I last had his pictures taken . . . she worked in the photo studio and wouldn't you know it, you can get a free session and 10x13 print. Who am I to turn down free photos of my beautiful child?! A 5-minute shopping trip turned into a 2-hour photo session, but whatever. He's adorable. Here are some of the shots that didn't make the cut for the free print, but are awesome anyway.

I'm usually not a fan of the whole staged photo with props, but I love these two in the tub:

The photographer said she couldn't understand why babies were always so cheerful right up until she started taking the pictures, when they all inexplicably burst into tears. I thought to myself, Forrest won't do that, but look!

And I think I figured out why she has that problem . . . she didn't speak, she shouted. And she didn't laugh, she cackled. Like a witch. I almost cried myself.

Easter!

2011-04-26T09:32:00.000-05:00

Did everybody have a nice Easter? Ours was extra-special because we had a visitor this year! Jeff's sister Jeannette came out to visit us and we had so much fun with her.

First we went to Flav's Fried Chicken in Clinton. You can't live an hour away from a fried chicken joint owned by Flavor Flav himself and not make a visit, and I'm glad we did, because it closed down the day after we went. For shame!

Jeff, Forrest, and Jeannette with Mr. Flav (by the way, that girl has lost 75 pounds since November! Amazing!). I thought the chicken was incredible with a capital I, but it may have been because I was so freaking hungry by the time we got there that I almost pulled a Forrest and chowed down on the napkins before our chicken was ready.

He ate about half of that napkin before I realized what was happening. And I could hardly believe my eyes when Forrest (aka "The Boy Who Will Only Sleep In His Crib And Nowhere Else No Matter What") took a nap in the car on the way home. That napkin binge really wore him out!

We went downtown to the Mississippi river to check out the flooding:

Pretty crazy, huh?

Let's see, I'll toss in another cute picture of Forrest while I'm at it:

Jeannette and I got pedicures:

And we had dinner with some friends:

And Forrest went on a not-very-thrilling Easter egg hunt:

I became slightly concerned about Forrest's intelligence because it took him a good 10 minutes to find that blue egg.

Forrest was quite taken with his aunt:

And we all had a very nice Easter. Thanks for coming, Jeannette!

You know what you are, Flint Lockwood? A shenaneganizer!

2011-04-19T10:07:00.000-05:00

Have you seen the movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs?

I have, probably something like 200 times. Is it because I love it so much? Not quite. But someone does:

(sorry about the awful mess. Our TV is in the basement, and out of every space in our house, this is the one that I could not possibly care any less about how it looks. Who ever sees it? Except for us and now anyone looking at this blog . . . )

Forrest loves this movie--loooooves it. A few months back I was busy doing something and Forrest was fussy and upset and nothing I was doing was helping, so I flicked through Netflix and picked the most colorful title I could find, plopped him in front of it, and pressed play. He was hooked--I don't know why he loves it so much, but he will watch that movie from start to finish. That's quite the attention span for an 8-month old! And he won't really watch anything else for more than a few minutes, but as soon as he hears even just the music to Meatballs, he starts getting excited.

I know some moms will be judging me for letting my baby watch movies, but here's the thing: I don't really care. He likes it, he giggles and laughs and talks to the screen, and if it creates an hour or so every day when I can get something done on my own or just sit around and relax, I'll take it! And there's the added bonus of having a surefire way to make him happy if he's cranky. I don't think we've hit a grumpy spell yet that Meatballs hasn't cured. And if you're the supermom who loves to spend every moment of your day singing and dancing and tickling toes and reading books and teaching your child to compose symphonies, more power to you! In fact, come over to my house and do it with Forrest! But I'm more than happy to let Meatballs take over my parenting duties for a little while each day.

And another added bonus of Forrest loving this movie? I could probably quote the entire movie from start to finish. Talk about a great party trick.

Like a baby

2011-04-17T18:11:00.000-05:00

I checked on Forrest during one of his naps today and found him sleeping like this:

I think he fell asleep mid-crawl (good thing he stopped there . . . one more scoot and he'd be head-butting the crib rails). I couldn't believe he could sleep like that--propped up on his knees and elbows with his butt in the air. And also, I'm never going to tiptoe around the house while he sleeps again . . . he just kept snoozing through all these pictures, even after I turned the flash on.

(He always sucks on his fingers as he's falling asleep. It's so sweet!)

Just an evening on the porch

2011-04-13T20:46:00.000-05:00

(Like the blanket? I just finished it!)

Seriously? Come on.

2011-04-12T10:41:00.001-05:00

To add to the list of things I would never do as a mother:

Going out in public without makeup on.

That's not such a big deal, if you did it on purpose, but you know what's worse?

Going out in public without even realizing you don't have makeup on.

Check and check.

Parenting challenge #438 . . .

2011-04-09T22:20:00.000-05:00

Photographing a speedy baby who wants to play with mommy's fun toy:

I sure love this little face!

2011-04-07T20:39:00.000-05:00

Want to hear tonight's bathtime conversation?

Forrest: Dadadadadadadababababadadadadada (etc.)

Jeff: Do you hear him?! He's saying dada!

Me: No! Forrest! Mama! MAMA!

Forrest: Dadadadadadada!

Jeff: HA! He loves me more!

Me: FORREST! MAMAMAMAMAMAMA!

Forrest: DADADADABABABADADADADABABABAGAGAGADADADADADA!!!!

I lose :-(

Eep!

2011-04-06T12:54:00.000-05:00

(apropos of nothing, this really made me laugh)

We're going on 3 years that we've lived in Iowa, and somehow it's almost time to leave. How on earth did that happen? I thought we just got here . . . but Jeff is now in his 9th trimester at Palmer (there are only 10 of them! Whaaat?!) and his 10th is going to be an internship with a doctor in West Valley City, Utah, so it's back out to Utah for us! I'm so excited to be closer to family and friends, but I'll admit, I'm a little nervous.

I've gotten really comfortable here . . . I know my way around, I have friends here that I'll be so sad to leave, I love our ward, I love where we live. This is where the majority of our marriage has been, and this is the house we brought our sweet baby home to. As hard as it has been over the past 3 years to know that my nieces and nephew have no idea who I am when I come out to Utah to visit them, it's equally sad to think that my little friends that feel like family out here will have completely forgotten us after we've parted ways--like our awesome friends the Muffetts . . . I adore their two little girls (and I am not generally a baby/kid person, so loving kids I didn't give birth to is a pretty big deal for me), and their oldest was only a few weeks old when they moved here at the same time we did. She'll be 3 years old next month, and I've loved watching her grow up and getting to know her spunky personality . . . it breaks my heart to think that in a few months, she'll be in the same boat as my nieces who know my name and can point me out in a picture but are kind of afraid of me when I see them.

In a lot of ways, the student life is a pretty sweet one . . . money mysteriously appears in our bank account every few months (thank you, student loans!), Jeff can just skip class and come hang out at home with us if he feels like it (which he would never, ever do . . . ), and we don't have to worry about actually being responsible adults yet. I'm a little afraid to give that up and do real life. We'll have to pay our own bills? What? And work for our money? And pay back the money we've borrowed? Um, that's a lot of money. A LOT.

And then there's the actual move itself. I just don't want to do it. Every time I start to search for apartments, I somehow end up searching for cute little houses I want to buy, and next thing I know I'm on interior design sites planning color schemes, and then I'm on Pottery Barn's website thinking about how I could make knockoffs of their furniture, and all of a sudden I've forgotten what I started out looking for and I still have no idea where we'll live. And do you know how expensive it is to move? For the price of renting a moving truck, I could almost just buy my own truck, and have enough left over to start up my own moving company.

Anyway. I'm starting to lose control of this post so I'd better wrap it up. After 3 years of being excited to finish up here and move on, I'm pretty scared to actually do so. And also, if anyone has any moving tips, do tell.

Like father, like son.

2011-04-02T22:07:00.001-05:00

I was looking through some pictures of Forrest today and came across one that looked really familiar . . . and not just because he's, you know, my kid . . . Forrest looked just like my brother Jake as a baby:

That was pretty exciting for me since no one has ever--ever--told me that he looks like me, but always (alwaaaaaaaays) say how much he looks like Jeff. So if looking like my brother is as close as I'm going to get to having him look like me, I'll take it!

But as far as the Jeff-resemblance, I think they're probably right:

Welcome to motherhood

2011-03-31T10:02:00.001-05:00

I always swore I would never . . .

- baby-talk in public

- wear clothes with spit-up stains on them

- wipe boogers, drool, or spit-up off my baby's face with my bare hands

- use my own saliva to clean my child

- let my blog turn into a baby photo gallery

- sing to my baby in public

- add captions of what the baby is saying/thinking in pictures

- babble to strangers about my child's behavior or habits

- change a diaper in public, or on the ground

- let a Disney movie babysit my child

- take my baby out in public in dirty clothes

- talk about my baby's poop . . . ever

I have now done all of these things.

(Unrelated: is this not the dopiest, cheesiest face you've ever seen? He's even doing the corny JCPenney-studio-style pose, all on his own.)

Zoo day!

2011-03-21T14:46:00.000-05:00

We took Forrest out to the zoo today to celebrate Jeff finishing his third round of boards (and more importantly, to celebrate free admission day at the zoo!)--I think Forrest was a little overwhelmed . . . going from never leaving the house, all winter long to suddenly being tossed outside in the sunshine into a crowd of hundreds of people and weird animals you've never seen and yucky zoo stink takes a bit of adjustment. But we all had a good time.

Walking around with dad:

Checking out the monkeys:

Not being allowed to pet the goats in the petting section:

Riding a pig statue:

The fun started to wear off by the time we got to the camels:

. . . and then he made it pretty clear it was time to head back home (thank goodness for that buzzy bee toy, he loves it. A big thanks to whoever gave me that bee at my baby shower!):

Oh no!

2011-03-13T18:25:00.000-05:00

I'm not really sure we should be encouraging this; I really liked having an immobile baby:

Whoops.

2011-03-09T18:33:00.001-06:00

An unintended resemblance here . . .

Don't worry, it actually turned out all right: the proof.

I really do!

2011-03-03T21:43:00.003-06:00

Love.

2011-02-24T14:07:00.012-06:00

Forrest is 6 months old today--that seems unbelievable.

I swear, we were just headed to the hospital, like, ten minutes ago, and now he's 6 months old? Is it still going to feel this bizarre when he's turning 18?

He has completely transformed since we met . . . I'm normally not one to be all ooey-gooey, but here we go. We had a rough start. To say that I transitioned poorly into motherhood would be the understatement of a lifetime. Forrest did not go easy on us. He started right up with the crying when he was born and just kept going for another 2 1/2 months. That was hard. I think I probably made that abundantly clear in the desperate posts I wrote during those months, and I doubt anybody wants to hear about that again.

If I had known then what he'd be like now, I never would have believed it. He is such a sweet and happy boy, and I truly feel lucky to be his mother.

Some of my favorite things about Forrest at 6 months:

- How crazy excited he is to see us every time he wakes up. At the end of every nap and first thing every morning, you'd think from his reaction when we enter the room that he really thought he'd never see us again. Squealing with excitement, kicking his legs and laughing . . . talk about a self-esteem boost.
- He loves to snuggle. We got into the habit of bringing him into bed with us when he wakes up in the morning . . . he'll lie and cuddle with us, and it is precious.

- He's starting to develop a sense of humor, which is awesome . . . well, I don't know if you can call it a sense of humor at this point, but he's at least starting to think the things we do to try and get him to laugh are funny. For the longest time, we would act ridiculous and he would just stare at us, or smile kind of patronizingly, like he knew how stupid we were being, but now he'll give his cute little squeaky toy laugh.
- I love how he's changed our view of things. I have never really considered myself to be a kid person . . . I like some children (mostly children I'm related to, and a handful of other really, really, cute children), but having a baby has changed that quite a bit. Even the most obnoxious little snotface is someone's sweet, precious baby who they love more than anything in the world, and I know what that means now. I always knew my parents loved me, but to really understand for the first time just how much that is? Wow.

Happy 6 month birthday, little guy. We love you.

Next!

2011-02-22T10:17:00.005-06:00

So, this is going to be kind of a lame post, but I was pretty excited when I read about this the other day (and have since forgotten where . . . it was on somebody's blog . . . that should narrow down the possibilities). Maybe everybody knows about this already, but it was news to me and I really like it, so here you go.

I love Google reader, and rarely go to actual blogs to read them--which is a little sad because 1) sometimes the blogs are cute, which I never see, 2) they might have links/ads in their sidebar I might be interested in but never notice, 3) I never leave comments because it's way too much effort to open up their page from Google reader (clicking on the post name in reader? are you kidding me? like I have the time for that!), 4) sometimes pictures don't show up in my reader . . . bummer!

Okay, apparently google reader has had a handy dandy solution this whole time and we (or just I) never knew. You can add a little "Next" button to your toolbar, and instead of going to google reader and reading all your blogs there, you just click next on your toolbar and it'll take you straight to the actual blog post on the blog itself! And when you're done with that one, you click next, and it goes to the next one on your list! Woohoo! It is cool, I have loved it, and you can now expect comments from me on your blogs. Here's a link about it from the google reader blog.

Actually, that link isn't very useful. To get the "Next" bookmarklet . . .
1) Open your google reader
2) Go to your Settings
3) Click on the Goodies tab
4) Under "Put Reader in a bookmark," grab the "next" button and just drag it on up

And since this post was boring and lame, here's a picture:

Hey, why not?

2011-02-10T12:55:00.002-06:00

(Two posts in one day? What the what?)

Because I woke up in a superb mood this morning, I decided to do a giveaway. Win one of my headwraps over here!

Good evening, sports fans.

2011-02-10T09:53:00.004-06:00

Jeff is the captain of an intramural basketball team at Palmer, and I normally don't attend his games (partly because I'm usually busy the night of his games, and partly because he told me if I was just going to bring a book and read I might as well stay home) but Forrest and I went last night. I was a little nervous about bringing Forrest because Jeff's game was around 6 and that's generally right in the middle of Forrest's pre-bedtime Cranky Hour, but I figured if he was going to be fussing at home, why not just fuss in the gym instead?

So we headed out to Jeff's game, and Forrest sat pretty happily in his car seat for a good 15 minutes or so during the game before starting to grump out, so I unstrapped him, preparing myself for an hour of bouncing, singing, waving toys in his face, and tossing him in the air to try and keep him from crying.

But it was magic. I pulled him out of his seat and as soon as he could see the game, he was riveted. He stood (yes, stood. Like a true sports fan, he wouldn't sit down) on my lap for the rest of the game, smiling and laughing while he watched them play. I've never seen anything hold his attention for that long before.

Anyway, if you can't tell by now, Jeff requested I post about it to prove that he's not going to be a girly boy despite me doing this sort of thing to him all the time:

BUT I CAN'T HELP IT WHEN HE LOOKS SO DANG CUTE!

Go make some popcorn, this one will take a while.

2011-01-31T09:23:00.004-06:00

I waited probably an hour for this video to upload to my blog last night, then finally gave up and put it on facebook instead . . . so you may have already seen this, but here's a video of Forrest laughing. I will not blame anyone for not watching it based on length alone--I will openly admit that I never ever watch videos of other people's children if they are more than about 20 seconds long . . . and this little gem is 2 1/2 minutes of the same 5 seconds repeated over and over and over. And I always wondered before why parents would post ridiculously long videos of their kids when it was, for instance, a few minutes of nothing before 10 seconds of the kid doing something cute, or, like mine, something that could be edited down to a nice little 10 second video that people might actually watch, but I get it now. You think your child is so absurdly cute that as you're taping, you're saying, "Everyone is going to LOVE watching this 20 minute video of my child struggling to remember the words to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star! My kid is awesome!" And also, you don't know how to edit videos to make them shorter, and certainly aren't going to spend the time to learn how.

Same deal with posting 30 pictures in a row of your baby that are almost identical to each other . . . I always thought, for goodness' sakes, just pick one picture, they all look the same! But no . . . as you click through your thousands upon thousands of photos of your child on your computer, you really are being selective in only posting those 30 that have teeny tiny differences from each other. And of course you think your child is so ridiculously adorable that everyone will love seeing the 30 slight variations in their smile.

So, without further ado, here is my documentary-length video of Forrest laughing. Forgive my sniffles--I have a cold--and the camera shaking . . . part of what was so dang funny was a head shake, so I did my best. Oh! And I almost forgot! If you, like me, are only going to watch 10 seconds of this (if any), at least make it the last 10 seconds, when all that laughter gets the better of him and he poops his pants. Don't worry, Forrest, it happens to the best of us.

And my next post will feature my 200 favorite photos of Forrest in the tub.

Look for me in that dress on all the best-dressed lists!

2011-01-25T10:09:00.002-06:00

My post for today is here . . . a crochet trend I'll never understand, but kind of love anyway.

So they also give medals to the losers?

2011-01-22T18:18:00.002-06:00

I realized I never wrote about Jeff's marathon.

He did it, he survived, he couldn't walk in a straight line for days after, and this video kind of sums up the experience.

Score!

2011-01-18T09:26:00.002-06:00

So you know the gift card I was getting for complaining? It arrived in the mail the other day--and it was for $25. Not bad! I was expecting, I don't know, $10 or maybe $15, if I was lucky. Nice!

I bought myself some new pants (really cute pants!) that will hereafter be known as my Whiner Pants.

And so everyone knows I'm not a gigantic jerk . . . I have, in the past, also written to businesses to let them know when I have received awesome service. But I never got $25 for doing that. I'm just sayin'.

Gonna git me some college learnin.

2011-01-16T07:37:00.005-06:00

The community college here in Davenport sends out a continuing education packet every few months with the schedule for adult ed classes, and I'm very tempted by some of the Home and Family courses.

Like this one, for instance--"An Evening to Remember." That sounds classy! Course description: "Learn how to prepare some of the dishes from the ill-fated Titanic voyage." Oh. Never mind.

Or the intriguing "Chickens in Your Backyard" class--"Ever want really fresh eggs? We will be discussing raising chickens in your backyard." Well, I don't know what I expected; this is Iowa, after all.

My favorite is the aptly-named "I Like Cuppy Cakes." I'm not sure an explanation is necessary for that one.

Or "House of the Rising Buns" (I did not make that up--a roll and bread-making class).

Someone in the continuing ed department at Scott Community College deserves a bonus for creativity. And I think I might enroll in I Like Cuppy Cakes. But I'm not sure if it will be the right fit for me . . . I wonder if they offer an I Love Cuppy Cakes?

I got my hairs cut.

2011-01-14T13:48:00.007-06:00

Getting a short little pixie cut has always seemed to me like one of those things that everybody should do at some point in their life . . . and now I can cross it off my list.

Like it? I sure do! It is, hands down, the lowest-maintenance haircut I've ever had--wash, scrunch with gel, done. Well, that was my styling method with my long hair, too, but it didn't ever look good when I only did those two steps. This one does.

(Cowl here)

So this post is my encouragement to everyone out there who has always secretly coveted really short haircuts but thought they weren't brave enough to try it out themselves . . . stop being a weiner and cut your hair! You'll like it. And if you don't, it'll grow back, I promise.

And no matter what happens, you can't look worse than I have.

YES!

2011-01-13T16:02:00.002-06:00

After writing my last post about my terrible customer service, I sent a rather scathing email to the company and (sing aloud, with jazz hands) guess who's getting a gift card?!

It's me. Complaining is the best!

Someone's manager is going to be receiving an angry email!

2011-01-10T12:09:00.006-06:00

I have mentioned before that I have a problem with being assertive. I am far too nice to people who don't deserve it. I saw online somewhere a while ago a "nice initiative" calling for people to sign up and pledge to be nicer in 2011 [update: I found it!]. This got me thinking that I should probably be a little ruder in 2011. I am all for kindness--holding open doors, smiling at strangers, being polite to receptionists (when will people learn that although they get blamed for everything, nothing is ever the receptionist's fault?), etc.--but I do believe it's time for me to learn to be a little bit nasty when the situation calls for nastiness. I have made only mild progress in the past but I believe that this might be my year. I am going to be less nice in 2011.

I had my first opportunity a few days ago when Jeff and I were out shopping. I made it to the front of the checkout line, the lady rung up my purchase, and I swiped Jeff's credit card. Did you know that doing this makes you a terrible, horrible, no good very bad person? Apparently it does. Just to really paint the picture for you of what happened here, I'll give you the play-by-play. Saleslady states total purchase amount. Jeff (standing next to me) hands me credit card, since I'm closer to the machine (and also since I'm buying bras. Very unmanly). I swipe credit card and scribble name on pad. Okay. Did you get the part where Jeff was standing right next to me? Because that's key.

The lady looks at her computer screen. Looks at me. Back at the computer screen. Back at me. And then says, rather unkindly, "I really doubt you're Jeff Brown." (I don't think she signed up for the nice initiative.)

Me: (Pointing to Jeff) No, he is.

Her: You can't use someone else's credit card.

Me: (confused that this should be a problem) . . . we're married . . .

Her: That's credit card fraud.

Me: (still confused) . . . but he's standing right here . . .

Her: You are committing credit card fraud!

She then demanded to see Jeff's ID, which he showed her, and I thought that would be enough since he was obviously the cardholder, but she continued to (quite loudly, I might add) berate me for committing credit card fraud. It was getting a little ridiculous, especially since Jeff offered to swipe the card himself and she continued to act like this was all an enormous problem, and then a thought hit me: Stop being nice to her. She's not being nice to you. You don't have to be nice to people who are mean and stupid.

So I said, in what I thought was a voice that would convey exactly how doltish and half-witted she was acting, "Why don't you go ahead and cart me off to jail for using my husband's credit card while he stands right next to me?"

Epic fail. She was not offended in the slightest and actually laughed kindheartedly and said, in a friendly voice, "We could, you know!"

I was frustrated. My first blatant attempt at public rudeness to an idiot was a complete flop. She thought I was kidding, and made nice. I wanted her to realize that I thought she was a moron and act like she'd really been put in her place, but instead she thought I was making a nice joke. (Jeff later informed me that my tone wasn't nearly rude enough. I'll have to work on that.) So that was that. This is obviously going to take some work.

Note: Maybe it really was fraud, I have no idea. But she was being stupid anyways and deserved to be offended. Which she wasn't. I'm still annoyed.

Spooky . . .

2011-01-05T09:13:00.006-06:00

So I think there's either a ghost in my house who picks Forrest up and moves him around, or that kid knows how to move a lot more than he is letting on.

Yesterday, I laid Forrest down on his back in the bathroom doorway while I got ready, and the next time I looked at him, he was on his stomach and had somehow traveled 6 feet, backwards, around the corner into my bedroom (good thing he decided to aim for the bedroom instead of the other option: the stairs). What the heck? Last I knew, he could barely get from his back to his belly, and now he's somehow army-crawling backwards?

And just now I went to check on him while he napped and he was facing the wrong direction . . . I put him in the crib with his head facing the door, and I go in there to find his feet facing the door. He rotated a full 180 degrees in his crib, without waking up?
I think I need to call the ghostbusters. Silly Horace.

Professor Slughorn it is.

2010-12-21T18:04:00.002-06:00

My mom, sister, Forrest and I went out shopping today (I'm with my mom and sister! Yay!) and a saleslady came up and was oohing and aahing over the baby, who was very obliging and grinned and giggled at her the whole time. She asked how old he was, and then asked his name, and gave a kind of vague, "Oh, that's nice," when I told her it was Forrest. I figured she just didn't like the name much until she started to walk away and waved goodbye, saying, "Bye-bye Horace!"

No wonder she didn't seem to like it. There's not a ton to like about the name Horace . . . (now I'm just waiting for someone to comment that they're planning to name their firstborn Horace, how dare I).

Between that salesperson, my little friend Taylor who kept calling him Boris when I babysat her a few weeks ago, and a lady on the plane ride out here who said, "Forrest? And how old is she?" (I've never met a girl named Forrest . . . ), I'm a little surprised at how confusing this name is turning out to be.

Figure of speech?

2010-12-18T10:03:00.003-06:00

You know how people say things like, "Oh, you're so cute, I could eat you up!" ?

Okay, yeah, but I really mean it. I LITERALLY want to put his face in my mouth and eat it.

Hat here

What's better than one cute baby?

2010-12-17T08:32:00.009-06:00

Answer: TWO CUTE BABIES!

Forrest had a playdate with a little cutie in our ward this week, and I couldn't resist putting these pictures up that I took of the two of them playing. (Playing? Or staring blankly at each other?)

I put them on their bellies facing each other, and Bella instantly lunged for Forrest's hand:

Forrest was rather shocked by her boldness:

And swiftly rolled away from the situation: (Can you tell this is an action shot? I'm not so sure he knows how to roll, really . . . I think it's more like his 95th percentile gargantuan head gets too heavy and tips to the side, and the rest of his body has to follow.)

Poor Bella. She did get one good thing out of this playdate, however . . . her first modeling gig! All you whiners (JEANNETTE! JEANNETTE!) can stop complaining that I keep putting Forrest in girls' hats on my etsy page.

I'll admit, they are more fetching on a baby girl:

Doesn't she look so sweet? She's really holding it together, even though she just got her heart broken. A true professional.

Are we not fun enough for you? HMM?

2010-12-15T08:06:00.005-06:00

For the past few days, we've been waking up to the sound of Forrest being completely delighted with a mysterious something in his bedroom at roughly 4 or 5 AM each morning. We're not sure what's tickling him so very pink, but if we peek into his room, he's grinning and laughing into the darkness (well, he doesn't really laugh--it's more of a high-pitched, gasping shriek that really freaked us out the first few times we heard it before we realized he was happy and not desperately gasping for air). He laughs and talks for a while before eventually going back to sleep for another hour or two.

This morning while Forrest was laughing at who-knows-what in his bedroom, Jeff said, "Have you noticed that he seems way more happy alone, in the dark, in his bedroom than he ever is with us?"

That's a sad thought. Our best parenting efforts can't trump . . . nothing?I feel like I can't make a blog post without a chubby baby picture anymore . . . how fat is he getting?!

Shutterfly is my new best friend. We're going to have a sleepover and braid each others' hair.

2010-12-08T09:38:00.007-06:00

I had kind of forgotten about Christmas cards this year until I saw a blog post from a friend who did a Shutterfly promotion for bloggers—you can get 50 free Christmas photo cards if you write a blog post about them . . . don’t mind if I do! You can’t beat free, and at Christmastime on a student budget, I’ll take a deal wherever I can get it. Last year was the first time we’ve sent out Christmas cards, and I had a lot of fun putting them together (inasmuch as uploading a photo to a template can be called “putting them together”), but I was almost ready to let it slip this year. Not so!

They have some really cute templates for Christmas photo cards that I love, as well as a strictly unoffensive “happy winter” holiday photo card section . And if they had a free deal for these, too, Grandma and Grandpa would be getting a cute photo calendar for Christmas, full of pictures of their favorite grandchild (THAT'S RIGHT. THEIR FAVORITE.) (Shutterfly? Eh? Want to give me more free stuff?).

Now to spend an absurd amount of time on shutterfly and in my pictures folder trying to make some decisions. The current top contender? I could go for a very Field Christmas (in case you haven't met my dad, I have a hard time imagining what he would look like if he weren't wearing plaid).

Ah, now I'm feeling the Christmas spirit. Maybe that should be the photo on my Christmas cards this year . . .

(Here's the link to sign up for this promotion, if you, too, are impoverished yet festive.)

Sweet boy.

2010-11-27T14:16:00.000-06:00

Oh, did you want to see my child NOT covered in crap and screaming?

(Forrest was an ear of corn for Halloween--you wouldn't believe how many people said, "Oh, what a cute little pea pod!" CORN.)

I'm happy to report that things have been tremendously better around here--way less screaming and crying, and tons more sleeping for everyone. Everybody said to just ride it out until he was 12 weeks old, the age when colic is supposed to magically disappear, and they were right. Around weeks 10 and 11, he suddenly began taking naps during the day, a huge change from his old naptime habit of never taking them, ever, and spending that time crying instead. And now he's generally consolable when he gets upset, which happens way, way, way less frequently than it used to, and also mostly for obvious reasons now (for example, being soaked in poop) instead of just being angry about everything, all the time.

See? Sleep makes him happy! I've been trying to tell him that since day one, but apparently he's just now getting the message.

Life is so much better with a happy baby . . . I probably shouldn't admit this, but this blog is swiftly becoming the place where I divulge my feelings inappropriately, so, hey, why not? (No, seriously though, I'm writing this half-hoping that someone out there with a baby who WON'T. STOP. CRYING. will read this and feel better about things . . . reading this sort of a post from somebody else would have done wonders for me a month or so ago.) but these past few weeks have been the first time since Forrest has been born that I've felt like I understand why people say they enjoy being mothers. It's hard to find much joy in life when your child spends 90% of his time screaming at you. I know that, ideally, I should have been more grateful--he was healthy, he was growing normally, he didn't seem to have any major problems, etc.--but it's awfully hard to think that way when you haven't slept in 3 months and the atmosphere in your home is less pitter-patter-of-little-feet, love-is-spoken-here and more the-neighbors-are-calling-CPS-because-we-must-be-doing-something-awful-to-that-kid. (Side note: the only neighbors with whom we share a wall moved out when Forrest was 3 weeks old. I kind of feel responsible for that. Sorry, neighbors.)

But now that he spends so much of his day smiling and cooing at us and acting generally adorable and delicious, I think I get it! I get why women like to have babies and want more of them! After weeks of telling Jeff that I hoped he was okay with only having one child because SWEET HEAVENS I couldn't ever do this again, siblings for Forrest are back in the picture! And although I would rather have him screaming at me all day and night than not have him at all, it's a whole lot easier to feel happy about life now.

He knows me well.

2010-11-21T16:42:00.002-06:00

Three times in the past few weeks, I've casually mentioned to Jeff, "I wish I had candy right now," and he has stood up, left the room, and returned with candy. I don't know where in the house I could find this secret candy stockpile or how much more he has hidden, but it will be a sad day when I tell him I could really go for a treat and he just shrugs.

Ew.

2010-11-17T18:31:00.000-06:00

Forrest gave us a nice little surprise a few days ago . . . anyone care to guess what it was? Anyone? I'll give you a hint: he made it all by himself.

It was a massive poopsplosion!

Moments after the above pictures were taken, Jeff went to get the mail, where this magazine was waiting for me:

Let's get a closeup on my favorite article, shall we?

Turns out, the article was about hair (would your first thought have been about poop, too, or is that a mother-of-a-new-baby thing?), but I feel Forrest could have written this really nicely. For example,

Step 1: Begin crying long before you feel the urge to poo. 10 weeks or so should do it. This ensures that no one suspects anything is actually wrong with you when you scream because you're completely drenched in your own feces. They'll have learned to tune you out by now.

Step 2: Store your poop for a few hours in advance--you must have a good supply to reach maximum explosive force, rocketing the fecal matter nearly to your shoulders.

Step 3: Wait until Dad is watching you. When you cry, Mom will check for comfort and cleanliness, but Dad will allow you to sit alone, crying, for quite some time. This is key--Dad will not check for a dirty diaper. Fill the diaper when Dad is on duty. Repeat: Fill the diaper when Dad is on duty.

Step 4: Commence poopsplosion. Continue screaming as usual. Ideally, you should wriggle, kick, and flail for a while before Mom finally comes and picks you up, allowing the poop to fully saturate all layers of clothing and work as far up your back as possible.

Well done, soldier! The perfect blowout: accomplished.

A big old sigh of relief.

2010-10-16T16:15:00.004-05:00

Thank you for all the comments on the last post--I was desperately in need of some reassurance, and I feel much better now, knowing that this too shall pass, and Forrest is not a monster gremlin child. I'm slowly starting to notice some little blessings that having a difficult baby is bringing about, one of which is that my family and friends and ward members are about 6 billion percent more awesome than I had realized--I've never felt so supported and loved before. To have so many people offer encouragement and help and prayers for me really makes me realize how lucky I am to have so many great people in my life. I don't mean to get all testimony-meeting on you, but seriously, thank you all for being so kind and helpful. It's meant more than you know.

And maybe because of all the praying I'm assuming you're doing for me, I got a beautiful little break over the weekend. On Friday, Forrest did what I'm assuming is normal for babies his age: slept. And slept. And slept. I think he woke up Friday morning and thought to himself, "Today would be a nice day to catch up on all the sleep I haven't been getting since I left the womb." So he napped almost the entire day, waking up just to eat and smile and act adorable before going back to sleep with only minor protest, then slept for 10 hours through the night. 10 hours! (This does not, however, mean that we slept 10 hours. I was up every 2 hours checking on him, because something had to be wrong for him to sleep that long, right? Then I laid awake, somewhat giddy, from 3 to 5 AM, unable to get back to sleep because I was so excited he was sleeping so long. Smart.) Since Friday, he has slowly gone back to his old self, but it was a lovely glimpse at what life will hopefully be like in a few more weeks. I had time to exercise! And make dinner! I sewed! And he spent, throughout the whole day, more time smiling than crying! It was a great day.

Remember how I said I couldn't find any blog posts that talked about colicky babies? (By the way, a few friends pointed me in the right direction, toward their memories of their own monster gremlin children on their blogs . . . the colic posts do exist!) A friend of mine who had a baby with awful colic revealed to me the other day why those posts are harder to find: the mothers of colicky babies don't want to leave themselves any reminders of just how hard those first months were. Aha! There it is. So maybe I'll regret leaving myself a trail of tears on my blog here to look back at when I maybe, mercifully, start to forget . . .

In case I've sounded overly complain-y lately, I want to make sure that I put this out there: I love Forrest. I really, truly, deeply love him, and even on his worst days when we're both in tears and it feels like this will never get any better, I am still thrilled to have him and so excited that he's a part of our family. Hopefully I haven't made it sound bad enough that anyone doubted this, but I felt it should be said anyway.

Well, I started this post at about noon and have had to leave and come back to it no less than 6 or 7 times (which explains some of its rambly disconnectedness) (hmm, apparently rambly isn't a word? imagine that!) so enough's enough--it's getting posted as is.

The truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

2010-10-12T17:46:00.006-05:00

At church on Sunday, a lady came up to me while Forrest was sleeping in my arms (sleeping! a rare treat) and said, "You're old hat at this by now, aren't you?" I just laughed. I still have no idea what I'm doing.I'm finding out now that a lot (as in, almost all) of the ideas I had about mothering and parenting and babies in general were woefully incorrect. For example, I had this laughably crazy notion that when babies were tired, they would go to sleep. Ha! How ridiculous! Are all the mothers reading this laughing at my naivete? It is a sweet, sweet day when Forrest goes to sleep for naps or bedtime with anything less than Herculean efforts on my part. Yesterday, for example, was just such an awesome day--not only once, but two times during the day, I could tell he was getting sleepy, so I swaddled him up and sang him a song and laid him down, and miracle of miracles, he fell asleep. And stayed asleep for more than 5 minutes before realizing that he was doing that sleeping thing he hates so much and woke up furious that I had fooled him into doing it again.
Today, however, has been a different story . . . he spent the better part of his day screaming so hard that I'll be shocked if he hasn't permanently damaged his vocal cords (which wouldn't be such a disaster, now that I think about it). The only thing that consoles him when he gets that worked up is nursing, which means that I spent the better part of my day trying to nurse him to sleep, then oh-so-slowly pulling him away, letting him lie there asleep on my lap for a few minutes until I was sure he was out, then oh-so-slowly transferring him from lap to crib, then hovering nervously over the crib for a few minutes to make sure he's still out, then cautiously backing away, only to have him start trying to suckle and realize, "Hmmm, when I fell asleep, there was a booby in my mouth . . . and now there's nothing in my mouth . . . THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!" And then we started all over with the screaming again. It was a long day. (Jeff commented that he wouldn't be surprised to come home from school someday and find me shriveled up like a crusty raisin with Forrest all bloated and distended like a tick since all he does is nurse all day.)I also thought, before having Forrest, that parents had significantly more influence over their babies than they actually have. I thought, for instance, that I would be able to make him like things a certain way by only giving him that one way as an option . . . like, if I never rocked him to sleep at night, he wouldn't ever have to be rocked to sleep, because I wouldn't have taught him to need that. Makes sense, right? It does, until you have a baby. They like what they like, and will (very loudly) let you know when it is not happening, and there's nothing you can do about it.Although it does seem like his happy periods are gradually getting longer and, as a whole, his fussy times are maybe getting shorter (after a day like today though, I'm having a hard time believing that), I have to admit that he might just be a colicky baby. (Another embarrassing misconception I had: I kind of half-thought colicky babies were their parents' fault somehow . . . they must be doing something wrong, or not meeting their babies' needs, or spoiling them, or something. Hopefully I was wrong about that.) Forrest is so off-and-on--some days he's happy and smiley and rather easy to handle, and other days he is just inconsolable. I don't know what other babies are like since I've never really been around babies this small, and I've been scouring people's blogs, going back to when their babies where his age to try and see if they acted like this and if Forrest is actually colicky or if this is just normal infant behavior and I need to chill out about it, but either everyone but me has perfect little happy cherub babies, or they're lying about it online, or maybe the people with fussy babies just don't blog (which makes sense . . . they certainly don't have the time for it, I'm learning). There seems to be a serious dearth of blog posts about colicky babies. Or I'm the only one who might have one. So? Anyone want to fill me in here? Would your babies scream for what felt like an eternity and you just didn't want to admit it on your blog, or is my baby some sort of shrieking anomaly? Were your babies easily soothed when they became upset, or did they, like mine, have unbelievable little baby endurance?

I need some honesty here . . . because every blog I've gone back through (desperately hoping to find someone with a baby who sounds remotely like mine) only says things like, "My little sweetheart smiles all day long!" and "She slept 10 hours last night!!!!" and "I can't believe my little angel never cries!!!!!!!!" and "ThIs iS sO EaSy I lOvE bEiNg A mOmMy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and I'm thinking, "Okay, first of all, sleep is a distant memory at this point and I'd give my big toes for a full 8 hours--scratch that, even 5 or 6 would do--and apparently my baby is the only one on the internet to have ever cried for more than, like, 2 minutes at a time."

There you have it. The mic is yours. Comment away, please.

Ha! Gotcha, baby!

2010-09-23T11:43:00.005-05:00

Forrest has been smiling for about 2 weeks now, but we haven't been able to catch it on camera. He'll smile and coo right up until I get the camera all ready, then decide it's time to get serious. Or, even better, to cry (not my favorite moments to immortalize, but I have plenty of sobbing pictures now). But this morning, we finally got him! Ha! Take that, baby! We win!

He was smiling up at Jeff until I grabbed the camera, then decided perhaps Jeff wasn't so amusing after all . . .

But he must have forgotten the camera was there because . . . ha! There they are! Smiles!I guess I'll forgive him for waking me up at 2 AM.

Here you go, Grandpa!

2010-09-09T19:11:00.011-05:00

(My friend Janel took this comparison shot of 2-week old Forrest next to a zucchini from her garden. I'm sorry to say it, but I think in a fight, the zucchini would win.)
Grandpa Brown has been waiting VERY patiently for pictures but was finally reaching his breaking point. Sorry for the delay, Gramps :-)

Well! This is crazy, huh? There was a baby in there after all! It's odd, but even after 9 months of pregnancy, seeing ultrasounds, hearing heartbeats, and feeling him kick and bump around, I almost didn't expect for there to really be a baby at the end of it all. I'm not sure what I expected the doctor to hand me at the hospital, but it was a bit of a shock when it was actually a person. Even after 3 weeks with him, I still look at him and can't believe that he's actually my baby--that he's the same little parasite that I carried around for 9 months, and I get to keep him. Very unreal.I have to say, parents are not kidding about the sleep deprivation--I thought I knew what to expect, but you really can't understand it until you're living it. Your brain goes into this weird sleepwalking mode where you can't think straight and you're not sure when you're actually awake and when you're practically hallucinating. I don't think I've had a night since he was born when I haven't woken up to the sound of Forrest crying when I've thought I was already nursing him--I'm already sitting in bed, holding my arms out, thinking there's a baby eating there while poor Forrest is crying in his bassinet. And this is usually accompanied by me wondering what to do with the additional baby--I'm already holding this one (there's nothing there), and there's another baby crying over there . . . what to do with the extra baby? My bleary brain has a few frantic moments where I wonder how I will manage to care for two babies before it sorts things out and I realize, yep, there's only one baby in this room, and I'm not actually holding it yet. (Thanks to my mom for helping fix the sleep problem--thank goodness she came to visit! Here she is with Forrest at 3 weeks . . . )Sleepiness aside, though, this has been pretty incredible so far. It sounds corny and cliche to say this, but I really don't feel like I can describe how it feels to hold my own little baby. I'm sure every mother feels this way, but I look at him and honestly think I've never seen anything more beautiful in my life. I had tried to prep myself before the birth to not expect a cute baby right away, and not to feel bad if I didn't instantly love him--I didn't want to be disappointed or feel guilty if my first thought upon seeing him was, "Ew, not quite the chubby, smiling cherub I had expected," or wasn't immediately overwhelmed with ooey gooey love for him. But even all slimy and purple and screaming with a pointy conehead, I thought he was perfect. I can't believe how much I love this little guy . . .

2010-09-01T12:04:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Aunt Bekah for the BYU socks :-)

Oh baby

2010-08-25T10:17:00.003-05:00

Here are a couple pictures of our little baby Forrest. He was born August 24th 4:09 pm. He was 21" and 8 lbs 10 oz. If your wondering why this post has no whitty quips and spelling errors it's because Jeff wrote it. If you are wondering why there are not direct picutres of Rachel holding her child right after she gave birth, you don't know Rachel very well.

I know what you're all going to make for dinner tonight!

2010-07-21T07:45:00.009-05:00

(Computer tip: Try to avoid downloading a virus masquerading as not-a-virus, reacting by setting your firewall to the super-highest option, then bemoaning the fact that the virus is blocking your internet connection for 2 weeks, and finally realizing that the virus was not blocking the internet . . . your ridiculously high firewall setting was. Sigh.)

Anyway! Over the 4th of July weekend, we went to Minneapolis for my cousin's wedding (congratulations, Joanna and Ben!). It was a really fun trip, and great to see some family members that I haven't seen in a long, long, very long time. But the part you'll get to see is our last minute, spur of the moment, did-that-billboard-say-what-I-thought-it-said? detour on the way back home . . .
The Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota! We thought it couldn't possibly be much more than, maybe, someone's little backyard memorial to their favorite canned meat, so we were certainly surprised to find 16,500 square feet of Spammy goodness. And it was free . . . truth be told, that was a big part of what made taking the exit after the Spam Museum billboard an easy decision.

All dressed up in the Spam factory garb.
In case you were wondering, yes, they do give out Spam samples. (Free admission AND free heated Spam cubes on pretzel sticks?! I can practically hear all your little feet pounding the pavement to get there first!) Can you believe this was Jeff's first taste of Spam? I should have captured the happy smile after he bit down, but I was so caught up in the magic of the moment, I guess I missed it.

Our baby is going to hate me, because this is the quilt I'm sure he would have preferred me to make for him. DANG IT, WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF MAKING A SPAM QUILT FOR THE FETUS?!
When we got back home, we completed the experience by partaking of a delicious Top Hat Supper, a Field family classic (well, I guess it's a classic, insomuch as I remember eating it, like, 3 times throughout my whole childhood, probably all on my sister Bekah's birthday--yeah, she requested Spam for her birthday dinner . . . multiple times). I just googled it and, apparently, the internet has never heard of a Top Hat Supper! I thought the internet had heard of everything! I'm happy to oblige . . . internet, here you go. Enjoy your Top Hat Supper (so named, obviously, because of the resemblance to a top hat).

1. Slice Spam.

2. Heat Spam.

3. Make mashed potatoes.

4. Place scoop of mashed potatoes atop each Spam slice.

(Edited!!! My mom, Top Hat Chef Extraordinaire, has informed me that I left out a crucial step! I completely forgot that, after topping with mashed potatoes, you [step 4a] top with a delectable gravy of either cream of celery soup or cream of mushroom soup, then proceed as follows. Phew! Crisis averted!)

5. Sprinkle with grated cheese.

6. Heat.

There you have it! Top Hat Supper! I'm sure somewhere out there, Bekah's mouth is watering.

We's so purdy.

2010-07-01T20:57:00.008-05:00

Jeff and I had family pictures taken by our friend Erica (you can see her photo blog here) and I'm so happy with them! Up until now, we've had about 3 pictures of us together that I like . . . our wedding pictures are certainly nothing to brag about (I've always wanted to redo them--is it too late, 3 years later, to get all gussied up again and have a do-over? Well, we'd definitely have to wait until I'm not pregnant anymore for that), and this is the first time we've had photos taken since then. Thanks so much, Erica, we love them!

And don't expect a massage when you're finished, I'm not going to be an enabler.

2010-06-14T09:43:00.003-05:00

Jeff is currently training for a triathlon (which is next Saturday), sandwiched nicely between his last race (an 8K) and his next (a freaking marathon in September). I commend his efforts, but have to admit, I don't get it. At all. I've never been the athletic type--in frustration over always being the laughingstock of my gym classes, I once asked my mom why she had never signed me up for sports when I was little (it was obviously HER fault I was so untalented! If only she had gotten me started early in sports I wouldn't be so awful!) only to hear, "Are you kidding?! We tried. You refused." Well, I knew what I liked and didn't like at an early age, apparently, and sports is item number one on the NO THANKS list.

I'm more than happy to go cheer Jeffry on at all his various events, but I don't understand why he wants to do them. Well, I guess that's not completely true. I can understand why people might like group sports, in theory, I guess, and even something up to, say, a 5K I think I can kind of grasp. I suppose sports could be satisfying if you weren't terrible at them, and didn't grow up with your teammates always yelling at you for ruining everything (hypothetically) until you were so afraid of trying and inevitably failing that you just stood quivering at the edge of the court/diamond/what-have-you during gym class and let balls roll past or bounce off you if a kindhearted/pitying teammate tried to get you involved. And I can see that being in a race could be exciting, what with the cheering crowd and free t-shirts, and hello, have you seen the snack bar at the end of races? That alone is almost enough to convince me to start running, until I realize I can go buy snacks on my own and I don't have to run to get them. I can just walk into the grocery store.

And I can sort of get the triathlon, even, because then you're proving your manliness in not just one, or even two, but three athletic events, all in one day! That's impressive! To complete one event that, all on its own, would leave me (and probably most Americans, let's be honest) writhing and gasping for precious air, and then go on to do another! AND THEN ONE MORE! That's pretty admirable, I think. I wouldn't want to do it myself, but it is admirable.

I have to say though, that this marathon really has me baffled. Does anyone really enjoy running that much? Do you do it because you honestly like to run for that long? If so, is there any sort of medication to fix that? It just seems excessive to me. (This would be a good time to point out that my own parents have run a marathon, and my mom even qualified for the Boston. You'd think I'd have some sort of genetic sympathy for such a lofty goal . . . nope. I've got nothing.) When he told me he had signed up for it, I was like, "Oh, I didn't know you liked running that much." He said, "I don't."

Me: "You don't really like running?"

Him: "Not really, no."

Me: "But you're doing a marathon."

Him: "Yes."

Me: "I don't get it."

Him: "I like how I feel after I'm finished running."

Me: "Okay . . . "

Him: "And then I can say I did a marathon."

Me: "Okay . . . but you could also just say that right now. No one would know. And then you wouldn't actually have to do it."

He was unconvinced, and is still planning on doing the marathon. I think it was a little off-putting when he looked up the route online and realized that the Quad Cities' Marathon actually does go through all four of the cities that make up the Quad Cities . . . 26 miles is a lot. A whole lot. But I guess he's going to do it, for reasons I can't understand, and I will be there to (confusedly) cheer him on. I'm going to use "just gave birth" as my excuse for not doing it with him, since we'll have a month old baby by then.

Speaking of which, if you've read this whole thing, good for you, you get to see a picture of me in my current 30 week state. To steal a line from my lovely no-longer-pregnant-but-has-a-precious-little-girl cousin Rachell, enjoy viewing my fatness.

You'll like this, alot.

2010-05-20T15:04:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across a blog post recently that has really helped me with some of my anger issues. Read it here.

A little something for the little mister

2010-05-19T15:49:00.002-05:00

I finished the baby's quilt a while ago and finally got around to taking some pictures of it. Behold! A quilt for my fetus!

I didn't want to do the typical baby boy colors . . . I'm not a big fan of the whole pastel blue and green Winnie-the-Pooh look (although we somehow already have drawers full of baby blue onesies . . . I'm not sure you can really avoid it), and I think these bright oranges, yellows, and teals are way more fun.

This quilt was really fun to make--I used freezer paper to make the circle appliques (see this tutorial for instructions), and it was a lot easier than I think it ends up looking (bonus! looks harder than it is!).

And (what? this is mildly related), I can't leave out this priceless facebook wall message from my (pregnant) friend Michelle who is one big lame and moved to Washington:

"What up fellow gestator? I would just like to report that over the past 4 days I have cried at: Sandra winning Survivor (even though I can't stand her), not having a toffee crunch ice cream bar in my freezer when I wanted one, Kara looking at me with the most beautiful look in her eyes, looking up Extreme Home Makeover houses online that have gone into foreclosure, a coyote that was dead on the freeway because it probably had babies that have no mommy now, and my favorite jeans not being clean when I needed them.

You?"

My response:

"Well, so far today, just Glee really got me . . . the part where the other school's coach said she never got to hold her baby (SHE NEVER GOT TO HOLD HER BABY, MICHELLE), and then again at the end of the episode, when I had almost finished mopping up my tears, when they showed her again. And I remembered the part where she never got to hold her baby . . . kind of got me going all over again. But! Not to be outdone by your amazing crying stories, my personal best so far may be in my first trimester when we were watching Animal Planet, and there were these adorable little lion cubs (SOB), and then the narrator comes on and says that sometimes the male lion in the pack (or a different pack? Can't remember, too distraught) EATS THE SWEET FUZZY LITTLE CUBS TO ESTABLISH DOMINANCE. Jeff has a cold, cold heart and refused to change the channel. Many tears were shed."

It's sad, but true. Jeff is a monster, and pregnancy hormones turn us into soggy weep-bags. I forgot to mention in my reply to Michelle that for the next week or so, Jeff would occasionally say something like, "Rach, do you remember those lion cubs? That was sad, huh?" and that would be enough to set me off again. I'm tearing up a bit just thinking about it. Poor little lions . . .

Weekend O'Fun

2010-05-02T08:40:00.006-05:00

Who said weekends in Iowa weren't exciting?

We started out cheering on Jeff and his friends at the N8K, a 5-mile run through Davenport:

Jeff and his friends Will and Josh.

Coming up on the finish line:

And after the race was done . . . apparently, they were all still feeling pretty good:Then we headed over to the John Deere headquarters in Moline, IL to check out the John Deere Museum:

They let you play on the tractors!

Surveying the crops:(This was part of a 3-vegetable face-cutout thing . . . the other two vegetables said "Blue Ribbon" and "1st Place," so I guess "John Deere" is another winning category? John Deere Grade asparagus?)
Good news for Bessie--I'm totally a natural at this:

Then, to celebrate our third anniversary, Jeff surprised me with a riverboat cruise down the Mississippi! Yeah, we went on a cruise for our anniversary, no big deal, what did YOU do?
(Michelle, does this count as enough of a belly shot for you? Do you believe that I'm actually pregnant yet?) Between our various cruise events (you know, indoor rock climbing, sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them, hot tubbing, etc., did I forget to include pictures of those?) we managed to learn some creepy historical facts about the area, such as that Arsenal Island, the government-owned island on the Mississippi, was a prison camp during the Civil War, and according to our cruise director, over 5,000 Confederate prisoners died there due to inhumane treatment and disease (Happy Anniversary!).

Oh, and the best line of the day may have been what we misheard due to the captain's country accent . . . when he was talking about the construction of a dam or lock or something, WE heard him say, "Now this was back when they were just getting introduced to porn . . . "

and then, after about a 20-second pause, " . . . concrete." I guess he actually said "pouring," but it was better the first way.

Weight Loss Tip!

2010-04-20T14:07:00.003-05:00

It's a lot less tempting to sneak bites of cookie dough when you leave the bowl on the counter for an hour and come back to find this lurking amongst the chocolate chips:
This is not the first time my baking has been foiled by insects . . . the experience brought back really, really, really awful memories of my sugar cookie disaster back in college . . .

Jeff and I were dating at the time, and I mentioned to him that I was craving some sugar cookies and thought I'd bake some after class. He (very generously!) offered me a bag of sugar that he had in his cupboard and, not quite being of the Betty Crocker mentality, would probably never use. I stopped by his apartment to pick it up, then went home and started baking.

Only after I had already baked at least a dozen or so sugar cookies--tasting the dough as often as I pleased, mind you--did I look down at a glob of dough I had just placed on the cookie sheet and notice that the cookie was moving. Closer inspection revealed, oh yes, weevil-infested cookie dough that I had baked. AND EATEN. A LOT. Commence retching in sink . . .

Turns out Jeff had had that sugar in his cupboard for so long he couldn't remember ever having bought it, and some friendly weevils had taken up residence there. I finally, about 2 years later, got up the nerve to bake that particular recipe (minus the weevils) again, and had to stop every few minutes to gargle and spit in the sink because the memories of my little sugar cookie secret ingredient had not yet faded . . . and thanks to my little friend last night in my peanut butter cookie dough, they probably never will. Nor will I be able to make peanut butter cookies for at least the next 2 years.

Gag.

It's no Dapper Dan, but it'll do.

2010-04-06T21:53:00.004-05:00

Behold, the greatest product packaging I've ever seen:

Someone hasn't updated their company look in 30-some years!

For the past 3 years, Jeff has been relying on the same little jar of pomade which finally ran dry (you don't have to use much when your hair is only 1/2 inch long). Unfortunately, we can't find that kind anywhere, and after such a long relationship with it, he had really gotten attached. After buying him 3 or 4 different brands and hating all of them, I picked this gem up from the, er, ethnic section of the hair aisle (does that sound racist? I don't meant to . . . there really is a section . . . ) purely because of the awesome little tin it came in, and it's actually the closest we've come to his original beloved pomade. I kind of want to buy a second jar and scoop out the contents and just put stuff in it, it's so cute.

Didja guess right? Didja didja?

2010-04-03T19:31:00.005-05:00

Final Poll Results:

58% of you voted girl

41% voted boy

(wait a minute . . . that does not add up to 100!)

And the only one whose opinion really counts (the ultrasound tech)

. . .

says it's a boy!

We've got the ultrasound between-his-legs picture to prove it, but I figure the day will come when he will not appreciate a picture of his dingleberries on the internet :-)

Me: "What should I name this post?" Jeff: "Quilt-a-stravaganza!" Me: "Okay."

2010-04-01T11:25:00.006-05:00

I just finished another quilt! This one was by far the most fun to make--the top was very quick to put together and I did free motion quilting on it, which is how you get the little squiggles and shapes that you see stitched onto quilts instead of just straight lines. I was a little nervous about testing that out, but it went better than I had expected.

I added a coordinating patchwork stripe on the back, like so . . .

And here you can see the loop-de-loop stitching:

I'm so happy with it! It was such smooth sailing, especially compared to my other quilts which definitely involved a lot of trial and error.

I didn't make it for anyone in particular, and I amazingly did not become deeply attached to it throughout the process, so I'm going to try to sell it on etsy to fund my quickly-growing sewing hobby. So, you know . . . buy my stuff. (You can look at my brand-spankin'-new shop here)

I'm amazed by how much I love sewing. My mom tried to teach me to sew time and time again when I was little, and it never worked. I would get so frustrated so quickly, and it seemed like everything I did came out wrong. I would break needles by just looking at them, sew all the wrong pieces together, and my mom STILL talks about the time I added extra "buttonholes" (read: huge jagged slices) to a dress she had spent weeks on when I was, like, 4 years old. We once decided to sew a simple A-line skirt--how hard could that possibly be, right? I somehow managed to instead make a tube roughly the size of a lampshade that my poor mother was forced to rescue. Thank goodness she's so patient . . .

Now I get a little high just from walking into fabric shops. The colors! The patterns! Sensory overload! I won't even get started on the way new fabric smells when you iron it . . . my heart rate is rising a little just thinking about it. I just wish I hadn't wasted so much time thinking I hated it when I could have been making little beauties like this all along.

Now if I could just find my platform flip flops, we'd be all set.

2010-03-31T17:54:00.004-05:00

Almost as nice as the 70-degree weather today was seeing everyone bust out their classy summer wear. I forgot over the winter just how sophisticated my fellow Iowans choose to look in the nice weather. I got to see today just a few of my perennial favorites:

- the I'm-a-white-acne-coated-male-trying-to-look-really-gangster-in-my-wife-beater-although-I-live-in-the-not-very-gangster-midwest look--always a nice option (although given our exciting news lately, this doesn't seem quite as unlikely today).

- the peek-a-boo butt cheek shorts. (Hello there! I see you!)

- tattoos on parade! My favorite today was a set of baby footprints--one inky little foot on each scapula, making it look more than anything else like her child had walked through the mud and then stepped on her back.

- pajamas turned capris. Always appropriate for public wear, did you realize that your ankle-length plaid (or character!) pajamas can conveniently be rolled up at the cuffs to create a nice spring look? Pair with a high school t-shirt (preferably a graduating class of at least 7 years ago . . . go Seniors '99!) to complete the ensemble.

Can't wait to bring out these summer styles myself! Stay classy, Iowa!

Handyman

2010-03-23T11:46:00.007-05:00

My nephew Preston turned 2 while I was in Utah, and I wanted to make him something cool for his birthday. He's really into tools right now and I thought it would be fun to make him a little tool belt to wear around and carry his tools in. I was planning on just using an adult pattern and scaling it down to his size until my mom found this tutorial, which was really handy.

[In case you're planning on making it, too, I would advise you to make your life a little easier by not making your own seam binding--just buy it ready to go. Next I'm going to make one for each of my nieces and I'm planning to add a ruffle all around the sides and bottom--I'll let you know if it works out.]

Lest you think too highly of me, my mom's sewing machine is amazing and embroidered his name all by itself. I was hoping it was amazing enough to make the toolbelt all by itself, too (just plunk the fabric in front of it, type in 'toolbelt,' and watch the magic!), but it's not quite that amazing, it turns out.

Happy birthday, Preston!

(I'm pretty sure that face means he's totally in love with it . . . )

I'm CUTE! She thinks I'm CUTE!

2010-03-21T08:29:00.003-05:00

(Do you remember that line from the old claymation Rudolph movie? It always pops into my head when someone compliments me, but it's probably not as quotable as I think, so I usually resist imitating it in Rudolph's nasally little reindeer voice.)

If you're reading this on Google Reader, you'll have to click on over to the real deal to check this out--look how cute my blog is! My sister is inexplicably talented at computer stuff (inexplicably because no one has ever taught her anything and she just figures it out on her own, not because it would be unthinkable for her to have a talent . . . ) and gave me a little makeover. Thanks Beck! I love it! I keep telling her she should start a business and charge for this sort of thing (not charge ME, of course, family discount, but I really think people would be willing to pay a couple bucks for a customized header like that). What say ye?

And, in case anyone has wondered, airport security nary even batted an eyelash as my drug stash scooted through the x-ray machine. Either they've seen massive amounts of spices in sandwich bags brought as carry-ons before, or the economy is worse than I thought and they were willing to let it slide.

Victory!

2010-03-18T19:30:00.003-05:00

Like every other twitterpated preteen girl, I jumped on the boy band wagon (or should it be boy band bandwagon? That seems superfluous) with N'Sync as the object of my affections. My sister Bekah very foolishly chose to drool over the Backstreet Boys, who were OBVIOUSLY inferior. A divided house cannot stand . . . we had many, many arguments (not just joke-y conversations . . . I mean serious, infuriated, door-slamming arguments) about who was better--N'Sync or Backstreet Boys?

Today, after about 10 years, Bekah finally conceded that N'Sync was, in fact, better. I should probably be mature enough to not have been terribly affected by this, but I felt hugely victorious. A 10 year argument settled (and to think I'd been right all along!). Go N'Sync!

I wish I had the little "I Voted!" stickers.

2010-03-09T08:34:00.003-06:00

Cast your vote on the poll over there ----->

Will our little fetus have boy parts or girl parts?

Winner gets the pride of knowing they have super-sonic gender-guessing abilities!

EIGHT spices? There must be SOME duplicates . . .

2010-03-07T20:29:00.005-06:00

(Title is a quote from . . . anyone? 10 points)

My boss's son-in-law works for a company that . . . well, honestly, I can't really figure out what exactly they do because we're always being given samples of just about everything . . . but they seem to make organic products of every sort, including spices and herbs. I used to have a very pathetic spice drawer (garlic powder, seasoned salt, chili powder--what do you mean there are more flavors out there?) which is now literally overflowing with dried herbs and spices courtesy of said son-in-law (many of which I had never even heard of before). The bad part is, they are usually given to us in plastic baggies, and also no longer fit in the drawer I've allotted to spices, so my counters and kitchen table often look like this:

Yep, those are my herbs on my table. Now I'm no expert, but to me, those look a little bit (lotta bit?) like drugs. And I have a pretty impressive stash of about 18 or so baggies.

After weeks of just moving my herb baggies around from one countertop to another since they no longer fit in their drawer, I finally found an organization system for them:

I'm not sure where to buy empty spice jars, but these were in the craft section at Walmart and are supposed to be for organizing beads, and I figured they'd get the job done. I'm glad to no longer have suspicious baggies all over my kitchen--I was beginning to worry that someone would peek through our windows and report us to the police, or (worse!) break into the house and steal what they would think was a huge amount of drugs.

Now I'm concerned, however, because I'm flying out to Utah to visit my family later this week (HURRAY!) and I promised all my sisters-in-law herbs (I have far more than I could ever use in my entire lifetime). I've been planning to just walk onto the plane with what's left in my baggies, but I'm wondering if security will see them while they're going through the x-ray machine and bust out the drug dogs, and if so, will the dogs have been trained to smell the difference between marijuana and dried rosemary?

And we're off!

2010-03-02T11:09:00.006-06:00

Many thanks for all the well wishes! You guys are nice. In case anyone's wondering, here's what everyone is asking me these days . . .

ETA? August 18th

How far along are you? 16 weeks.

Did you plan this? Oh my goodness, I cannot believe everyone asks this. But yes, thank you, we did.

May I give you unsolicited advice/tell you about how horrible my pregnancy and/or labor were, and how frustrating/time-consuming motherhood is? No.

Were you sick? Nope. But Jeff's sudden dietary change from cereal for breakfast to bacon and eggs for breakfast during my first trimester definitely caused a few close calls . . .

Will you find out the gender? Hecks yes! Early April.

There we go! Curiousity satiated. Now, let the baby crafts begin.

My friend Janel showed me an adorable little newborn gown she made from her husband's old t-shirt before her little girl was born, and I got the tutorial online here. I thought it was a really cool idea, and I made this out of one of my old shirts that has been in my donate-to-Salvation-Army-one-of-these-days bag for, oh, about 8 months:

Hooray for being lazy and never getting around to donating my old stuff! It was so easy to make--I was nervous about the sleeves (I've always had the idea that they're really difficult), but they were not bad at all, especially since I just used the sleeves from the original shirt and made them smaller . . . already hemmed! And it looks surprisingly boy-ish to me for being made from a girl's top. Oh well, Jeff keeps insisting it's a boy anyway, so we'll see.

It literally could only be better if I stole a handicapped tag.

2010-02-22T10:22:00.000-06:00

Guess who's parking in the good spots at Walmart?

(That is, when they're not taken by chubby 40-year old men shopping alone. Outrage!)

Seam rippers are our friends.

2010-02-18T21:14:00.008-06:00

Well, this one took a couple tries.

First, the oh-so-lovely, can-you-believe-I'm-not-a-fashion-photographer, looks-like-this-belongs-to-a-linebacker before shot:

For the first refashion attempt, I tried to do a tuxedo ruffle, sort of like this but not as long and a tad more structured:

Needless to say, that didn't work. At all. I failed to anticipate that the dress is stretchy and the ruffles, which were meant to be very close together, stretched and gapped apart over my . . . self.

Add a week spent with it hanging on my wall, a la that first picture above, me scowling and grumbling every time I walked by, a little blog-perusing of more fashionable strangers, some quality time with my seam ripper, and voila. I went with this instead:

A little ruffle-neckline action with some ruffly-rose-do-dads at the end.

I apologize for the horrendous pictures--it was late, and dark, and my flash is sort of broken/crazy, and wouldn't you just expect my camera batteries to die after only, like, 3 not-that-great shots? Oh well. Perhaps the blurriness will add to the allure, and you'll think I'm more talented at this sort of thing than I actually am.

I like it.

(Side note: In response to some questions about Janel's quilt from a few posts ago, I did all the quilting on the machine. I love Janel and her cute babies, but not enough to hand quilt. Yeesh. I probably would've finished it by, oh, baby's 18th birthday. The only things done by hand were the initials and the stitching around the birds and trees.)

$4 + 30 minutes

2010-02-09T14:26:00.007-06:00

I bought this dress at Old Navy the other day for $4 (50% off all clearance items!)--I thought it was a good start, but pretty bland:

With a little fabric left over from another project . . .

. . . 30 minutes later I had this:

Much better, huh? I love it! I still kind of feel like it needs a little more, but I'm not sure what. I'm thinking of swapping out the tie-belt for a coordinating ribbon--would that be too much, or just enough?

And I got the same dress in navy blue, too, so I'll have to come up with something to jazz up that one as well! I swear, this sewing machine is the best thing I've ever bought in my life.

Take two!

2010-02-08T10:52:00.009-06:00

I decided to make a baby quilt for my friend Janel whose second baby should be making an appearance sometime today. Bear in mind, I still am not very good at this, so don't laugh when you see it, but here is a picture of what I ended up with:

I was trying to imitate this Pottery Barn Kids quilt--I thought it was so cute, and although it looks girly in this bedroom, I thought it would work well for a boy or a girl (they didn't find out the baby's gender):

Sadly, I kind of think that the almost sloppy, homemade-looking touches that make a $150 Pottery Barn quilt look cute don't do much for an actually homemade quilt. I'm not super-thrilled with how it turned out, but for being, still, a very early quilting attempt, I think it went pretty well. Especially since I keep insisting on just making up patterns or trying to copy pictures from catalogs instead of just paying $10 to buy a pattern.

My favorite things about Janel's quilt are the little birds in the corners:

And the monogram I added (I was thinking about waiting until the baby was born so I could do the baby's first name, but with how long just these four letters took, I'm so glad I went with only the initials):
Congratulations, Janel, and if your baby someday realizes that its quilt is not that great, please don't tell him it's from me :-)

Please, please be a premonition . . .

2010-02-03T10:02:00.001-06:00

I dreamed the other night that I sat on a bus next to Clinton Kelly (from What Not To Wear) and we really hit it off. We were pretty much best friends by the time the bus stopped and, naturally, decided to go shopping together. Clinton was even ever-so-understanding of my cheapness/poorness and we shopped all clearance racks! HE'S THE BEST! Sad news is, I woke up before we could buy anything (I vaguely recall trying to convince him that he should give me $5000 to shop with and him insisting I was just his friend, not a makeover on his show), but I'm really hoping that this was more of a vision than a dream and Clinton and I will soon be best buds/shopping pals. How cool would that be?

Will the joy of Christmas never end?

2010-02-01T15:30:00.007-06:00

Just when I thought the Christmas season was surely over . . .

In mid-January, we had a somewhat-belated-Christmas lunch at the office. We went to this cute little cafe and as we waited for our food to arrive, one of the doctors hands me and Ashley a huge folder, saying, "We didn't want you to think we forgot your Christmas presents!"

Inside was our gift . . . the very best possible, true-blue, country farm girl, we-live-in-Iowa present ever . . .

A cow.

Ashley and I are the proud co-renters of Bessie, a dairy cow located at a nearby town here in Iowa. Our rental benefits include quarterly updates on Bessie from the farm (Farmer Joe says she's doing just dandy), a certificate of rentorship (not a real word), a cheese sample from Bessie herself (yum, atta girl Bess!), a sample of the hay she eats (for what purpose, I'm not sure), and a sample of her bedding (hopefully not used), plus visitation rights!

Best. Christmas present. Ever.

Pet peeve.

2010-01-05T11:34:00.001-06:00

This has been bothering me for a while now (20-some years), and I just had to see if this really gets under anybody else's skin, too, or if maybe I'm just a terrible driver and get a lot of grief about it . . .

It bugs me lots (LOTS) when drivers overreact to minor inconveniences, as if road rage is some sort of inherent right and unavoidable reaction no matter what trivial thing you've done to bother them, and you get flipped off as if that just happens to be the only functional finger on their hand. If I do something really awful and dangerous and my fellow drivers get THAT angry over it, fine, but usually I do something teeny tiny, or even--could it be?--nothing and they completely flip their lids.

For instance. Last night I was driving home from work, and was waiting to turn from the parking lot onto the main road, which has two lanes going in either direction. I nosed a little further out than I probably should have--I would guess my car was poking about a foot into the road--causing the car headed past me to have to nudge probably 3 or 4 inches into the other lane (which was empty, I think you should know, and also headed in the same direction as she was, so she's not exactly facing oncoming traffic here, or setting herself up for a rear-end collision). As she drove by me, she was literally screaming at me and waving her only functional finger. Um, is that really an appropriate reaction to me impeding on 4 inches of your lane? Yes, I was kind of in her way, a little bit, but that's an overreaction multiplied by, like, a billion.

I think the thing that bugs me, at its core, is that people seem to feel that they are entitled to a complete meltdown for minor inconveniences. Just be a grown-up, accept it, and move on! I see this often enough that I don't think it's just a fluke . . . someone will do something that should, to a sensible driver, be little more than a gnat-sized annoyance, and they will react with a terrible-twos-style tantrum, complete with windows rolled down, curse words flying, and fingers a-blazin'. Kind of seems overkill to me. Your driver's license, as far as I know, does not come with a freakout license as well. You would never display that kind of childish behavior over any other sort of transportation, either, now that I think about it. If you were walking along and I--dare to think of it--stepped slightly into your path, would you scream at me and flip me off? Why does it become all right just because we're both in cars?

Anyway. That's my pet peeve. People are jerks. Do you notice this, too, or do I just bring out the worst in people?

Best part of my day.

2010-01-04T17:53:00.003-06:00

Check out the size of this raisin from my trail mix today:
That is just one raisin! I thought for sure that it must be multiple raisins stuck together, but it was really just one, and it was really a raisin, not, like, a dried plum or something. And it was so good.

Conclusion: We are not as cool as Bekah.

2009-12-24T18:14:00.004-06:00

They're certainly no Tolkien culinary tribute, but they'll have to do. Here are our gingerbread houses this year:

And on an unrelated note, you may enjoy this conversation we had while watching You've Got Mail this afternoon:

Jeff: Who's that actress?

Me: Meg Ryan.

Jeff: She's really cute.

Me: I agree, she's adorable.

Jeff: She looks like she'd make a good wife.

Me: . . .

Jeff: Like, you know how some actresses are really hot but you wouldn't want to marry them? She's not like that.

Me: So you'd marry Meg Ryan?

Jeff: Yeah.

Is it really fair for one girl to have SO many wants?

2009-12-20T17:07:00.005-06:00

(I think not!)

Wakefield Chandelier from Pottery Barn

Typewriter Keys wall art from Pottery Barn

Nestling necklace from Figs and Ginger

Fifth Avenue dress from Shabby Apple

Urban Landscape plates from Snowden Flood

(at least I can have one of the things on my list)

B . . . R . . . O . . .

2009-12-15T09:30:00.004-06:00

Twice in the past two days, I've been asked how to spell my last name (which is Brown). I don't think I've ever been asked this before (granted, this hasn't been my last name for very long, but still). A few times, if I've thought someone might ask, I've gone ahead and said, "Like the color," and that seemed to be enough. But today, during a phone call, I was asked what my last name was, and I told her, and she said, "Could you spell that for me?"

I said, "It's spelled the same as the color."

And she said, ". . . could you spell that for me?"

Okay.

Nothing says Christmas like a Gingerbread Tower of Mordor

2009-12-08T22:23:00.002-06:00

I'm sure you all already know what a terrific blend of nerdy and awesome my sister Bekah is, but just in case anyone needed any further proof, here is a conversation we had on Google chat today: (a little long, but probably worth it)

Bekah: You should see something that I made!

me: a baby?

Bekah: A GINGERBREAD TOWER OF MORDOR!!!!!!!!

me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA i actually LOLed.

Bekah: Let me take you on a little tour of it

me: please do.

Bekah: Alright Let's begin. I like to call this tour, "ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL: a tour of the Middle Earth gingerbread kingdom." Here you can see an overview of the whole tower/map of Middle Earth.

Bekah: Notice Sauron peeking out from behind one of them. The one on the left. He's a chocolate santa (because he's evil) and he's peeking out from behind the left spiky thing on the top of the tower behind the eye. The blue blob on the bottom left in an orc.

me: IS THAT GANDALF THE WHITE AT THE BOTTOM? WITH HIS MAGICAL STAFF?

Bekah: Um....yes :)

me: AHHAHAHAAHHAAHAHHA

Bekah: LET'S PROCEED

me: I'M LIZZING! proceed.
Bekah: Here we can see Gandolf the White and his magical staff leading the hobbit Frodo and Samwise Although the picture is not entirely in focus, you can see Gandolf's delicate coconut beard. Frodo and Samwise are gummy snowmen. I bit them in half.

me: HA what is the yellow circle? gollum?

Bekah: That's the ring, silly!!! It's on Frodo's chest. And it's so big as symbolism of the great weight and power that it carries. Frodo barely had the strength to carry it.

me: good thing it's a giant gumball so he can just roll it along

Bekah: NONONONO It's a skittle! Now, this is more of a symbolic map of Frodo's journey. As we follow the path of the hobbits and move behind the tower of Mordor, we find this.

me: what is it?

Bekah: !!! OFFENDED. It's the SHIRE!!! The marshmallow is the hill, and the peppermint is the door in!! And the blue coconut is the grass

me: i didn't realize it was conveniently located right at the foot of the tower

Bekah: I said it was symbolic of his journey. You can see that the hobbits began in the shire, gandolf the white is leading them to Mordor, the ring is gargantuan as a symbol of its great weight on Frodo, they had to get past the orcs in order to get to the tower and fight Sauron at the top! IT'S PERFECT.

Bekah: Merry Christmas from our Middle Earth to yours.

Too bad "doppelganger" doesn't quite mean what I thought it meant, because I would have liked to name this post "doppelganger."

2009-12-06T16:11:00.010-06:00

At the office where I work, the office manager/billing specialist/receptionist, Ashley, and I are asked nearly every day if we are cousins or sisters or even twins (as far as we know, the answer is no, unless you have something to admit, Mom?). Both of us have a sister and are sure that we haven't been told we look like our own sisters as much as we are told we look like each other. It gets especially confusing if I sit in her chair behind the computer at the front desk and end up being asked for paperwork or files and fumble around until someone realizes I'm not Ashley . . .

We wore our matching company T-shirts the other day and, in the spirit of the Highlights-for Children-magazine-style "Spot the Differences" game, decided to see if you notice anything different between these two shots:

My feelings completely.

2009-12-02T13:20:00.001-06:00

In case any of you haven't read Twilight yet.

(Click here for the nice big version.)

Mama's gonna be so proud.

2009-11-30T15:06:00.005-06:00

Yet another old lady hobby that is now one of my new favorite things to do: quilting. I just finished making this:

I'd give you a closer detail shot, but then you would see all my little mistakes . . .

It took me nearly as long to put together a decent set of instructions as to actually make it--it's a kind of newer pattern, I guess, called a Bento Box, and you can't really find the pattern for free anywhere yet. Pshaw! Like I'm going to pay $9 for a quilt pattern! I don't have $9 to throw around! So I spent a ridiculously long time going from blog to blog of people who have made it, piecing together the little amounts each one had said about the process. And for having no experience and little to no pattern, I think it actually turned out pretty well. Go me.

I almost forgot about this!

2009-11-23T10:34:00.000-06:00

I sure do love writing about Harry Potter on this blog.

On Halloween, we got a little Harry Potter trick-or-treater at our house. I told him that he had to cast a spell before we could give him his treat (I know, I know, the poor kid, how embarrassing, whatever). He hemmed and hawed for a little while, obviously trying to think of something, and I was just about ready to help him out (I was thinking "lumos") when his face lights up and he yells, wand aloft, "CRUCIO!"

Jeff was like, "Dang, kid, you went right for an Unforgiveable. Rach, give him two candies."

A little bit of PDA never hurt anybody.

2009-11-22T11:05:00.001-06:00

This is why you shouldn't make out in public. Some weirdo might take your picture and put it on the internet.

I stiiiink at this.

2009-11-20T20:28:00.007-06:00

Oops. I did that thing again where I don't make a post for two months. I really have been making a poor show of it these past few months as far as posting goes. I'm going to blame it on still not having the internet (it's not that we haven't been trying--the Internet Hooker-Upper Guys have come to our house no less than 3 times [and stood us up when they were supposed to come a few times as well] [jerks]), but I think maybe it's just that our lives have not been terribly interesting for the past few months. And the past few times that I've tried to post, I couldn't get any pictures to upload (and got so frustrated that I didn't post anything at all, pictures or no), but lo and behold, here they are today!

These are all completely unrelated and go back a long time. But I guess it's been a long time since I took photos off of my memory card.

First up, I looked out my window one day early this summer and saw this:

From lots of randoms

That is our good friend and former neighbor Dean. He is inside of the dumpster. I wish I could say this was unusual for Dean (or for the complex we live in), but not really. Our kitchen window has a perfect view of the dumpster, and we can (and have) watch people take a box out to the dumpster, then wait a few minutes for someone else (usually Dean) to not-so-casually stroll by and scoop out the goodies. He actually got a lot of good stuff that way . . .

Remember my prize-winning zucchini bread? (HOW COULD YOU NOT?!)

From lots of randoms

THERE IT IS, BABY! That ribbon may or may not still be hanging on my refrigerator. Still feeling pretty proud of that.

This is what happens when Jeff is in charge of picking out the pumpkins for Halloween:

From lots of randoms

Those pumpkins easily weighed 40 or 50 pounds each. Or I'm a weakling. I think both are plausible.

Jeannette, as promised . . . Jeff in his "thinking cap":

From lots of randoms

It's hard to get high-quality thinking done with such a porous cap.

We visited Jeff's family in PA last month. For the record, 6 AM is not the best time to gather for a family photo, I'm just sayin'.

And I can't pass up on an opportunity to show off what just might be THE BEST (actually, "only decent" is probably more accurate) picture Jeff and I have ever gotten together:

There. Now leave me lots of comments so I'll feel really validated and not wait 2 months to do this again.

Shall I write another Harry Potter post?

2009-09-28T15:35:00.003-05:00

Yes, I shall.

We finally saw the 6th Harry Potter film the other night (spoiler alert? I guess everyone knows by now what happens . . . ) and as we were leaving the theater, the guy behind us was saying to his girlfriend, "Don't worry, there's no way Dumbledore is really dead. He'll be back in the next movie."

Someone's going to be pretty disappointed . . .

What sisters are for.

2009-09-16T13:28:00.004-05:00

I called my sister, Bekah, the other night reeeeeeaaaally late (about 11) while I was lying in bed, struggling to sleep, and we had the following conversation.

Bekah: (without even a hello) Isn't this past your bedtime?

Me: I can't sleep. I have a pressing Harry Potter question and I need you to answer it.

Bekah: Done. What is it?

Me: (Okay, I'm not kidding about this. This is ALL the information I gave her.) What is that thing in Dumbledore's office--?

Bekah: The Pensieve.

Me: YES! THAT'S IT!

Is she not a genius? This is why I love having a sister. I puzzled over the name of that thing for probably like 15 minutes before I finally called her, even trying to remember which books it was mentioned in so I could go look it up, and after a mere 7 words from me--not even enough description to give her a fair shot at figuring out what I meant--she knew exactly what I was talking about.

I love my nerdy sister.

I miss The Office.

2009-09-11T10:20:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, Jeff was at a ward meeting that started by having everyone go around the room and state their name and calling. When Jeff's turn came, he said, "I'm Jeff Brown, and I think I'm the Assistant Ward Mission Leader," making up his title on the spot since no one has ever really told him what it is.

The ward mission leader, sitting next to him, leaned over and whispered, "Assistant to the Ward Mission Leader."

Sadly, a whispered joke is a joke wasted. Jeff was the only one who cracked up.

2009-08-29T10:04:00.000-05:00

Although I haven't finished this book yet, I feel no qualms about jumping the gun and adding The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way (by Bill Bryson) to my Best Books Ever List, because it's been awhile since I was this thrilled by something I've read. And I'm not even going to pretend to be embarrassed by how deeply nerdy it is that I'm loving every second of this:

It's dorky, I know, but for some reason I get really excited to learn that once upon a time, the "k" in "knight" was pronounced! As was the "g!" WHOA! And that the "b"s in words like "debt" and "doubt" were added unnecessarily because early scholars were trying to make English words conform to Latin spelling rules! (As boring as I'm making this book sound, it's really interesting, and the author is very subtly hilarious.)

So now our dinnertime conversations are filled with these choice little nuggets of information, and I'm like, "Jeff, can you believe that if it weren't for the Normans altering English spelling so they would be able to pronounce it more easily, our word 'queen' would probably be spelled 'cwene'?" And Jeff's like, "Can you believe that that isn't even marginally interesting to anyone but you?"

I'm kidding, of course. Jeff would never use the word "marginally" in casual conversation.

Spellcheck, anyone?

2009-08-28T16:27:00.002-05:00

I read this on a document left on a desk at the office, which I probably wasn't supposed to read, but what do you expect when you leave such enticing little tidbits out in the open? This is really, for real, unchanged, what it said:

"My creditnals should speak for itself."

I bet they probably do.

Zucchini Ahoy!

2009-08-19T11:37:00.003-05:00

Here's my award-winning barely-modified (so I can act like it's my own when it's actually--) stolen-from-Betty-Crocker recipe:

3 cups shredded zucchini
1 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups white flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1. Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease bottoms only of 2 (8x4-inch) loaf pans or 1 (9x5-inch) loaf pan with shortening or cooking spray.

2. In large bowl, stir zucchini, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs until well mixed. Stir in remaining ingredients. Divide batter evenly between 8-inch pans.

3. Bake 50 to 60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans on cooling rack 10 minutes.

4. Loosen sides of loaves from pans; remove from pans and place top side up on cooling rack. Cool completely, about 2 hours, before slicing. Wrap tightly and store at room temperature up to 4 days, or refrigerate up to 10 days.

I don't know for sure, but my boss claimed that it probably made a difference that I stirred it by hand instead of using an electric mixer. All I know is I have a nice shiny red ribbon on my fridge.