Holiday? (long post, sorry)

Every time I go to our blog homepage, I am reminded that our header is old. I also immediately think "I don't want to deal with that right now." And, its true. I could update pictures, get anew look or whatever, but sometime when I am less busy.

This weekend Daniel came down with some cough, headache, lose your voice fun. He even got a blessing Monday to help him be better for work. I think Alice has some of the same stuff, and with the way I have been sleeping I probably have a bit of something as well. Lucky us!

Saturday we spent about 2 horus at Nebraska Furniture Mart sitting on couches. It sounds relaxing, until you also realize we never sit on one for longer than 2-3 minutes until we found one that was a comprimise.

You see, Daniel likes comfort so much that even the {hideous} lazy-boy style couches that have recline function, and are way way too big for our living room anyway look good to him. I think he is also somewhat resentful that I immediately said no way to the first couch and we were stuck covering literally the entire rest of the furniture department.

Here is our opinion in the way of couches. If you want a stylish couch, you must be willing to sacrifice some comfort. The cooler it looks, the harder it will be, and the less back support because the back is only 18 inches tall, etc. The so called 'comfy' couches are incredibly soft, but provide no back support at all. Oh, and futons. You have to get a REALLY expensive futon for those to be comfortable.

We went with a $450 sleeper sofa. (I think it was $450, one can't be sure.) It gets delivered on Friday, and the arms are less tailored than I would prefer, but its soft while still being somewhat supportive on the back and stuff.

Its 91" long. I realized as we were 'checking out' and setting up delivery. Part of why we nixed the last couch was the sheer bulk. But, this couch doesn't have slanty arms or a slanty back, and aside from the built in pillows in the arm cushions, its rather tailored. Upside? ITs the same color as our slip cover we already have. That means, we can throw that on top, and keep it safe. Then again, I ordered the 5 year stain warranty stuff, so we might just let Alice go nuts. Eat fruit loops on the couch? OK. Dump spaghetti and tomato sauce on there? Go for it.

It gets delivered on Friday.

We also had copious amounts of family visitation this weekend. Rachel came up for the weekend, then my parents showed up Monday morning and slept for a million hours. Not consecutively, but still. They took more naps than Alice. Thats accomplishing something. My mother said they must be getting old. Maybe.

Last night Alice was having the WORST time teething. She is getting her first molars on top (don't know the name). And, I numbed up her gums thinking she could nurse and go to sleep easier. Well, she was REALLY mad that I numbed up her mouth. She was drooling, and upset. We literally watched Sesame Street clips on youtube until midnight (2+ hours). I kept falling asleep and she would harass me until I would repeat the clip. I was glad there were a few 8 minute clips on there. The 30 second ones were killing me.

She finally passed out head at the bottom of the bed, staring at the fan. Thank goodness. She is still in bed. I had to help Daniel find the keys to the car. I think I shall join her.

Oh, and I decided on dates for the homemaking Food storage class. The first one will be June 8th at 10am at the church. That's right, a Monday morning. I figure, people can't forget if its the day after church. Also, it will be at the church, so people can just bring all the kids and let them run around the gym. We are going to sanitize containers for water storage. Yay bleach water! (The church also has deeper sinks than most homes, so we might be able to do more at a time.) Plus you know, I never sanitized our 2 liter water bottles before filling them with water. That probably means they are, or will be, growing green stuff under the cap. No worries, I will just water the garden with the green stuff and sanitize them on the 8th.

Mother's Day Weekend

Well, this weekend was fun. We visited my sister and took her out to a yucky dinner. We were impressed how bad the food was. Then I saw her fridge. The girl had two oranges in her fridge. Two oranges people. Thats it. She had a bag of chicken pieces in her freezer, and food storage style food in her cupboard. She said she didn't need food. Daniel and I decided that next time, instead of wasting $25+ on bad food we will go buy that much worth of groceries. I guess she will be getting breakfast and lunch provided at her summer job, so she will be able to eat more balanced meals. She also lives alone, but I have never seen her fridge so bare. The worst part is that she will refuse to take money from us, a 'loan' is even hard to give her.

I got sick this weekend. Its called a sneezy sniffly coughy, can't sleep Good Times! I got some medicine and a pack of cough drops and it seems to be helping. Of course, I can't sleep. (I fell asleep earlier and then woke up.) It was a better choice to get up and go downstairs than wake the baby.

This morning on the way to the car for church, Alice decided to try and run into the street. She didn't get very close though. She broke out into a run by the car and right before Daniel grabber her to put in the car, she face planted. Right on her forehead. Giant scrape/bruise thing. It turned pink, then sort of purple, and I could see little bits of bleeding. Anyone that has wipes out on a bike knows what it looks like, and how much it hurts. Alice got to sport one huge bandaid all day. Everyone asked what happened. The bandaid didn't hide the swelling, but at least it hid the gross looking part.

I haven't done much for enrichment. I made the flyers and they went into the Relief Society folders, as well as on the bulletain board, but the lesson and (possible) handouts? Yeah, I got nothing. Plus, whatever I encourage people to do, I should be doing myself. After some reading I like the idea of keeping the 3 month supply of food in big storage bins marked with dates for rotating. But, I don't have that. When I told Daniel about the enrichment (in 10 days) he asked if we needed to get the rest of our food storage together. Technically, yes. But, lets face it, I don't have the time or energy to get that done right now. I may get an official 3 month's supply though. Or at least enough of a 3 month supply to drag to the church for part of my lesson. Its been so long since I have done any teaching in Releif Society, so the whole thing mght flop. That means I need lots of visual aids. Lots and lots of them.

Sickness spreads at School amongst the seeds

Yesterday was cold and windy. We didn't even get snow. :-( If its gonna be cold, I would prefer the weather to go all out and get snowy.

Alice and I seem to have caught something. Nothing terrible mind you, but enough of something that we are sort of cranky and yucky feeling. I assume its from the neighbor boy we hung out with on Friday (though originally I thought it was from the super spicy black bean soup we ate Saturday night).

Yesterday I cleaned the living room. To the point of moving the couch and vacuuming underneath it. I asked Daniel if he could tell and after him staring at the room for 20 seconds I knew the answer. Clearly if you have a toddler, you will not have a clean house. Even if its vacuumed and mopped, there will always be a fine layer of toys strewn about. Because all toddler toys come with 10 pieces that can be stacked, attached and put together, and therefore taken apart, and will end up all over the floor.

I just tried to enroll Daniel in a summer class. They told me he couldn't take it without taking a placement test or a prerequisite. Its sort of funny since he did transfer credit for this course over (its calc 1 by the way) I just thought it would be a good idea to have a refresher before taking calc 2. JCCC disagrees. I sort of want to see if they would allow him to take Calc 2. He does have the Calc 1 prereq.

Alice and I just planted some more peppers seeds (the last ones have still not popped thier heads out of the ground, so I am thinking they are future compost). This time I soaked the seeds first. I also, just 'cause, planted some seeds I harvested from a store bought bell pepper. I then marked all the seeds, in a very systematic way. Thats right, bamboo skewers and nail polish. The sweet pepper mix has really red tips, experimental peppers coral, snapdragons are innocent pink, and pansies are rum raisin. If only I thought of this method before confusing the tomato seedlings. Luckily the leaf shapes are different enough I can assume they are different tomato types. Its too bad i know there are three types and I can only tell 2 different leaf shapes.

Thats the news for the day / weekend / until we post again.

Oh, and I put pictures of the child on Facebook.

Allergies or a persistant cold, you decide

So Alice still has an evil cold. I have used a thing of tissues, plus a couple of rolls of TP wiping her nose. Drip, drip drip. Its been 3 weeks for her.

Its pretty obnoxious.

Obnoxious enough that I have started some research into milk allergies. My family tree runs rampant with allergies. In fact, we never had cow milk growing up thanks to an allergy to the milk protein. Also known as Whey. They boys in the family even got tested and had whole lists of things they were allergic to (eggs was another one, good old eggs). Its no wonder we ate lots of organ meats (kidney liver tongue, even heart.) If you can imagine a random and possibly 3rd world food, we tried it. Though honestly most countries other than the US eat a lot more of those things. Take Haggis or meat pies. Did you know you can't even make traditional Haggis in the US unless you slaughter your own sheep? Its illegal to buy or sell sheep lung. Thats a total aside that really has nothingto do with this post.

I think Alice might have the family allergy. It explains why she got sick enough to refuse to eat (except nursing) and seemed to be getting better. Is also explains why once we got her to eat again, she got the runs. Even if its not a familiar thing, its very common for young kids to be allergic to cow milk. So we are gonna get a little crunchy on you guys.

I am gonna try making rice milk. In fact I have some rice soaking. Rice milk is the same thing as Horchata [though horchata can be made with almonds or barley or really any grain]. Horchata is a sugary creamy vanilla delight served as a bit of summertime refreshment.

In our case it will be a test. We will find out if cutting milk and her Boost supplement (contains milk and soy) will be out as well. I guess we will try and see if carnation instant breakfast is the same...or even check out the organic aisles for some different kinds of milk free supplement stuff. Either way, we have been making way too much mucus, and we shall postpone the milk thing until she is 2 or possibly three. (I have read many kids grow out of it, so here's to hoping she does.) But, honestly if she doesn't I don't think it will kill us to switch to Rice milk. Especially if I make homemade. That stuff is practically free. More free than cow milk ever was.


P.S. I wrote this yesterday and got too distracted to finish. Note: You cannot make Rice Milk in a food processor. Especially one that's almost dead and barely shuts. The kitchen will be covered in 'rice milk.' It will taste way too sweet and not creamy at all. Perhaps the recipes that call for cooked rice are better? Perhaps I got over enthusiastic with the Honey? Either way, this will need experimentation.

Teeth!

Alice has at least 2 teeth popping onto the scene. A canine (or maybe just one next to the middle two) has broken the surface, and I can see that the middle two are on thier way out as well.

This explains 104.9 last night. Followed by a tepid bath. Followed by ibuprofen. Followed by a trip to the store to buy more Tylenol.

Did you know that you can 'alternate' between ibuprofen and tylenol for infant fevers...so long as you wait at least 4 hours between doses. The nurse thought it was probably because it had been 8 hours since her last dose of ibuprofen that the fever was so crazy.

Of course she was fine the rest of the night. At 5am this morning she had a 100.3 so we put off giving meds until 10 am when it was 102.something. She also acted interested in toys and food and even smiled today! Yay. Recovery is on its way! It only took about 2 days of sleeping, lots and lots of nursing and some drugs. Oh yeah, and a blessing (which she got before the fever got really bad, ironic huh?)

Don't inhale

I found out that this caulk type stuff that you put on windows to seal them for the winter is really noxious. I.E. if you inhale the fumes it will affect you neurologically...and make you go nutso or at least feel sick and screw with your nervous system.

Luckily I think all the yucky stuff has pretty much dissapated. (I learned that if you can smell the fumes, its not ventilated enough oops) and that would explain why the baby was so 'cry, cry, cry.' So yeah. Tada. All is well, not just cause I had come to terms with feeling not as amazing as all these other people that in my view are freaking awesome (don't ask guys, everyone has one of those days I am sure)

Daniel took some time off work to get caught up on end of the semester projects...and he also came down sick yesterday. So his nose is drip, drip, drip. And I have some very stuffed sinuses, so I am sure I will be the next to drip. Oh well.

I glued the broom head onto the handle last night. And then duct taped it. Yeah its stylish. Then while I was holding a piece of trim for daniel to nail into the wall, I look at Alice. Yeah, she had taken the lid off the wood glue and had it all over her, and the floor. Daniel transported her to the tub, and I came up and bathed her. It was everywhere. In her hair, covering her clothes, sticking her fingers and toes together. Yes. Glue.

So I got to take a shower after I bathed her cause she still hates baths and was trying to crawl her way out of teh tub via my body.

Now, if only she didn't want to be awake at 6am.

ALice Reads

So ALice was jibber jabbing to herself on the floor. You know amidst the scattered Uno cards, the toys and some books.

I looked at her to discover she was reading Toy Story to herself.

She has since moved on, and come to remind me that I am the one that changes the diapers.

Some day I will post about our vacation. That day is not today.

Photo Post (and the bag I made)

Its now January 2004! I really should change the date on the camera...or at least turn it off. Well anyway: Here is the bag in all its glory (technically it needs ironed)


And below is my first zipper! I only ripped the whole thing out once (maybe twice) before I ended up using a glue stick to stick the suckah to the fabric, then sewed it in. To make it more confusing, there was a complete lining and then I had to add that on later.

Also, the zipper area had darts, but the patter was way confusing about it since it cut the excess fabric out of the pattern. After doing what looked like the picture I figured out what I was supposed to do and ripped them all out and do it right. And Below Gathered elastic pockets!

Holding the morning's diaper. Still clean!


A few moments later, the morning's diaper was on the move and no longer clean.



And from a couple of nights ago: Alice wants to work in a Chem Lab!!!





Except it was past her bedtime. Goodnight Alice!

Alice is masochistic

(I found this that was written by Daniel...and I am posting it. Cause, he never posts. But he has drafts. Strange.)

So my child likes to hurt herself. Especially when she is tired. Or teething. Or waking up and alone.

Case 1: Tuesday night. I put Alice to bed. An hour and a half later she wakes up with a lovely hand print on her forehead (from sleeping on it) and a huge scratch/gash on the side of her head.

Case 2: I was holding her on the couch Wednesday evening and her ear was bleeding. Yeah, thats not normal. She had scratched at her ear enough to bleed. I had thought I had seen scabs there before, but it could have been dirt, this was fresh. So yeah, totally not cool.

Case 3: She got herself bruised up real good. I think its from when she was so excited she leaned her head back and lost her balance and fell against the computer tower. From a sitting position. Or she backed into a chair while sitting up??? All I know is she has a mystery bruise on the top of her head.

Yeah it looks like we beat our child. With very very tiny objects. It could be bad. I mean, on Bones the dead lady was killed by a staple. Those are tiny.

3am Post! Sweet!

So I watched the Women's Conference from the comfort of my house, which was great. I remember in years past going to meet with the stake and feeling the awesome spirit of sisterhood, but guess what, you can feel it at home too. Plus its much less interfering with baby bedtimes.

While Alice was a bit of a buttface during some of the talks, she was amazing during President Uctdorf. I think that has something to do with the fact that I typically lie down with her between 7:30-8 and by the time he spoke it was already 8. Lucky her, late night fun! OK she was pretty cranky until I told Daniel to stack up blocks into a tower for her to demolish.

For some reason it just makes me feel better to knock things over and destroy all order. I mean it makes HER feel better.

So President Uctdorf shared this little example about how men and women are different based on cooking styles. She makes fabulous foods from around the world set and some immaculate tablescape and they will sit down and she will say "I put too much ginger in this." or "Next time I will add this to it." etc etc. The food he cooks best? Fried eggs. Sunny side up. Or something that had a nice sounding name, which was twice toasted toast. And he said when he makes it he feels like a hero.

Gotta admit, the foods Daniel makes the best either come from a box or its...tada! eggs!. His even have cheese. Sliced American. And the eggs are barely cooked. And even though he scrambles them you never add milk. Milk doesn't add anything to eggs. Ever. Or so I have been told.

I don't think I am buch a hardcore cook though. Occasionally I will get a table set and have more than three foods on the table (like pasta, veggies, and fruit! or even more rare dessert). Yeah anything beyond cooking some one dish meal, or having some meat bread and veggie belong to company. And in our case, its the missionaries.

Why don't we have people over?

One word folks. Laziness.

Mine.

Not that I am lazy. Its just the effort to invite people and find a time they CAN come, as well as planning a dinner. Ok I admit, company days are days I get to cook whatever I want. That means things that if cooked for Daniel will get the compliment "This looks god for what its supposed to be." Yeah, it looks and tastes like how curry is supposed to. Does he like it though? No. Does he even like the sides? No. Rice is ok.

Meh. I like rice, and I like to occasionally cook something amazingly different like curry! Or stinky stirfry. Cause soy sauce is gross.

Thats why sushi is great. I can make some, roll it and keep it in the fridge for whenever. Then slice and eat!

How did I get on this topic? Oh yeah, President Uctdorf. You know I can't even remember what else he talked about. I remember things from other speakers, but I am guessing waking up after being in bed for 4+ hours is getting to me.

Oh and people from the ward came and helped rip up our backyard! That means the fall yard project is now started and I can pressure Daniel into working on it more. As in actually grading the yard. ANd my homemade tortillas that I made the dough the refridgerated...they stuck together hard. Still tasted good, but they were funny shapes from peeling them apart.

FYI when you have kids, you will pass out at 9:30 sometimes. And when you get joined in bed at 1:30am by your husband, he will wake you and then you will be awake.

Maybe thats not a kid thing. But it happens to me at least half the time when he stays up late working on school. OK, I gotta get up in the morning. Not early, but I gotta get up. Plus my brain stopped working.

Follow the trail of crumbs...

So Alice decided to play Hansel and Gretel with me. I gave her a roll to eat and she took it with her on an excursion of the downstairs. Ok, it was from the computer room to the living room, but whatever.

So I hear her cry. I ignored it cause sometimes she just wants to know someone will find her and I figured if I called she would come.

Unless she was on the stairs.

She didn't come, and cried again. Great she is on the stairs. I knew I should have put up the baby gate. She has this thing where she wants to stand, and will climb up the legs of chairs, tables, people etc to get standing. Then she is stuck.

Its a similar thing for stairs. She climbs up a step and gets stuck.

Well I go to get her, and I notice that she left some crumbs of her roll on the carpet, I assumed I would run into the remainder of the roll, but no just lots and lots of crumbs.

And there she was on the stairs. Almost past the turn! Dang it. The turn had stumped her for a while now. Alas, she will be much more dangerous soon.

I grabbed her, out her on the floor, put up the baby gate. Then I saw it.

Thats strange. Was that here this morning? Is it a poopy diaper from last night? That would be Daniel's fault, and why he left that there is beyond me.

Then I saw Alice starting to stand using her swing's legs. I saw her pink rear sticking out. I was mooned.

Crap.

I picked her up and realized her dress was wet.

Double crap.

I went and grabbed the diaper. It was also wet.

Dang it.

I grabbed her and the diaper and went to get a dry one and dry clothes. I got the diaper on her and started taking off the wet dress.

She IMMEDIATELY started taking off the diaper.

UGH!

We like BumGenius diapers. We really do. But she has learned that if you grab at the velcro you can be free.

So I put her in a one piece outfit that snaps in the crotch. Try to get the diaper off now!

So yeah, I get to vacuum up a trail of crumbs, and clean up a wet spot on the stairs. Oh yeah, and I get to start shopping for a couple of diapers that are stuffables like BumGenius but use padlocks, chains and electricity to keep them on and little hands off.

Saturday is a Special Day

Its the day we get ready for Sunday!

Well I don't know how much of what is going on today is in preparation for Sunday, but whatever. Alice woke us up late (as in around 8am) out of the kindness of her heart. We had decided to go grocery shopping and wanted to do it either quite early or quite late. So off we went.

We found some random gerat deals at Aldi. The strawberries were starting to die so a pound of them were 85 cents. I went through a few before I found a container without visible mold, but its worth it. Strawberries (no matter Daniel's dislike for the seeds) are the food of gods. I am soaking them in some vinegar water and I plan on hulling them and freezing them. Oh my goodness, I just remembered that freezer jam is made from strawberries. *Drool* Of course I would need some geletain, and I don't know if I want to actually go to the store again. Oh well, freezing the strawberries is still a good plan.

We also got 75 cent bacon cause it expires next week. That will be frozen as well. Possibly even cooked and frozen, but I have no desire to cook bacon. Its yummy stuff, but such a hassle to get to. Then again if I actually cook it, it will be more handy for the days I actually cook breakfast.

And then when we were just about to check out they had a huge cart of bread that was marked 20 cents a loaf. I already made one of the loaves into ham & cheese sandwiches and threw them in the freezer. Then I noticed the date on the loaf of bread we were already using was the 19th, so we are finishing that off before touching the next one.

All in all it was a productive morning.

I also looked at the bulk bins at Hyvee. Its all 'organic' stuff so that can mean overpriced (to me since I think most of the "organic" hype is just hype. And yeah, I am not paying $12/lb for organic oats. I don't even like oatmeal. The lentils that were 70 cents/lb thats a maybe. I did want to see what flax seed looks like, but it was empty. In fact there was lots of palces that weren't stocked on all the aisles. It was strange. Usually you go to Hyvee and see Tons of food on the shelves, especially the produce. Plus it always looks really fresh. But today, I only found one last bag of oranges and it looked nasty (and yes it was organic as well). See pesticides and wax mean my food stays fresh longer. :-)

Oh yeah and we are getting set apart for our "New" (as in additional) Joint calling. Yeah the bishopric has a thing for this. They call husband/wife or companionship teams for several callings. I guess you have a back up that way, but I have never seen it in other wards. So we are now also sacrament meeting choristers. I told Daniel that its pretty much his job, and I will be backup. I mean come on I tend to do lots of the bulletain every week, so he can do lots of arm waving every week. Plus I still have additional callings in Relief Society. Yeah. Alice is grumbly.

Teething and cooler weather part 2

So we put the groceries away and I tell Daniel to call his mother (she called while he was at school and had poor reception so we talked for about 5 minutes between two different calls and I figured whatever Daniel can call back when he gets home).

I come down after Alice passed out within 30 minutes to find the strangest looking rice crispy treats I have ever seen. Daniel got too excited about eating them and didn't melt the marshmallows down enough. That means there were random marshmallows amongst the cereal. Plus it was REALLY sticky (also because it wasn't cooked long enough).

Alice wet herself awake every hour for the next 4 hours. I passed out with Daniel on our floor reading right before midnight.

Alice woke me up a few more times. The last time it looked bright. I woke Daniel and asked what time it was. 10:10. Oops. We rushed about getting dressed and the bulletin printed and off to church where we were surprisingly not late.

Sunday night was a similar thing. Only, her fever which was really low until then, spiked to 103.2 and at 5am I was sitting in a bathtub holding a crying baby and pouring water over her.

Alice woke us at 8:20. Daniel works at 8:30. She felt really really hot. Her temp was 104.4. She got a blessing and fell asleep and began feeling cooler. She still had abit of a fever the rest of Monday, but we drugged her. Between benzocaine on the gums and tylenol down the gullet she was manageable.

By Monday evening she had no fever and had little daggers coming out of her gums.

Daggers for chomping.

She also thinks she needs to be standing all the time. This results in falling. And bruises. She had a nice shiner on the edge of her chin that looked like a tiny fist clipped her. It was part pf the chair she was climbing. Luckily she seems to get over the pain rather fast.

Daniel said I needed to correct things from my last post, but I don't remember what they are. Oh well. Maybe I will post them some other time, maybe not.

Cooler weather and teething

Well it feels like fall is here. Its been drizzling and cool for a few days, the leaves are starting to die and fall and I somehow have tomatoes finally growing. My guess is that it will get too cold and we will have green tomatoes, but you never know.

Alice has Teeth! Well right now we are looking at tiny little nubs on the gumline, but if you stick your finger in her mouth, tada teeth. I have a efeling that every time we get teeth we are gonna be facing torture though. Forget the middle of the night crying, the worst part is the fevers. She spiked to 104.4 yesterday morning.

You see, the fever was discovered Friday morning, and it was rather low (about 101.4 without tylenol) so we figured what the heck, she will be fine. She was also somewhat cranky and acted sleepy all day. Besides, she was goign to bed earlier and earlier and some nights waking up every hour, but the last few we got a few hours without hearing from her once. It wasn't a big deal as it was pretty much the weekend and I can get baby duty relief, right?

Wrong.

Someone hadn't done any school work during the week. None. In fact the only thing he did Friday night was the discussion online thingy that he had to do.

Saturday morning he went to his Chem lab. It was rainy and gross, and the baby was cranky but wouldn't allow me to sleep.

The teacher had indicated that the lab would only take them until noon. He came home around 2:30.

Daniel was banished to take a nap and do homework. We went grocry shopping. Daniel decided he wanted rice crisy treats (and we have TONS of cereal but never remember to buy marshmallows), we needed a vacuum belt and I just wanted out of the house. We went to Dillons and the price of marshmallows made Daniel decide we were going to Hy-vee. Dillons is closer, but they tend to be the most expensive store in town.

So off to Hy-vee on the quest to find a vacuum belt. (and get marshmallos for less than $1.60 a pound, i mean come on marshmallows are sugar and fat...why spend that much for Generic brand?) So I had no clue where the vacuum belts would be, or the marshmallows. So we ended up going down 6 or so aisles before finding Marshmallows (not on the baking aisle but 2 aisles down with the Jello) and vacuum belts.

In our quest to find the marshmallows we ran across the canned food aisle. And everything was on sale. And we have no canned food. I prefer frozen veggies, or fresh, but canned is really handy, and it was a great price, so we got some...or rather TONs. I don't think I have bought that many canned foods at a time ever.

We also bought 4 bags of marshmallows. Yeah. I know its excessive.

continues in part 2...you know when the baby lets me.

Alice sells UPS Tshirt Bags

So this is from the trip to the family farm. Alice in a bag of future soiled diapers...they were clean at the time. My cousin took this and posted it on her facebook, but I figured I would share it with all the good time stalkers on the net. :-)

This is one of my Tshirt bags. In fact this is the second one I made. The first looked way more like a Tshirt. Daniel was even surprised this was a Tshirt at one point. The best part is this Tshirt (a free one from campus) has a big UPS logo and phone number on the back advertising for students to work for them. Alice sells UPS!

Today needs to be a cooking day

So I haven't checked the garden in almost a week. I know, thats not allowed. I had one zucchini still on the plant last time I was there and I was monitoring it from the computer room window. Only it ended up that that zucchini composted itself and I was monitoring a different one. Oops. Here is what I found:

For the record our tile is 12x12. Yeah the big one was too big for me to carry while holding Alice.

Alice saw the camera and got excited! It took me 2 minutes of shouldering the back door to get it open. I am not sure why it seems to want to stay shut. Maybe 'tis humidity or heat, or something happened that warped the frame? Who knows. I just know I don't want to have to take it out of the house to get it in right. Yucky.

I forced her to lie down by the zucchini to compare sizes. She didn't like it very much. Notice the pointing finger. Thats her new thing. Pointing. What a rude little baby.


As you can see sitting up next to the zucchini was more acceptable. So now I just need to motivate myself to cut them all up and freeze them for stir fry and zucchini bread. You know come winter when we won't have a prolific garden. Instead I vacuumed. And I cleaned out the sink. We bought a bag of 10 lbs of chicken legs that I want to cut into pieces and stuff, but I need lots of sink space for that. Sink space and disinfectant. Gross, raw meat.

Alice gets Pictures!

So Julie came to visit and we took Alice pictures. Alice was not having it, and in all the pics we got one 1 that she was smiling in. So here are a few...including the one smile!

Nights of Torture

Alice has started being evil at night. Her sleep schedule got really messed up when she was sick 2 weeks ago, but I thought we had recovered.

Lets just say Monday night she woke up wailing at 2am...refused to take a pacifier (boob or otherwise) and was an all around butt. At 3am, we got up. We got up and watched half of Pygmalion. At just after 4am she decided boobs were her friends and nursed herself to sleep. Lets just say Daniel and I were both tired yesterday.

Last night was a similar action. Only instead of it beign 2am, she just refused to go to bed. We finally sat her between us, with youtube music videos playing. I was almost asleep when she decided that she wanetd to sleep. It was midnight. Midnight!!! I don't even stay up that late.

So now I am sort of torn. I am glad that she is weaning herself from the pacifier, but why am I becoming the pacifier of choice? (She will literally scream more if you try and put the pacifier in her mouth) She also is talented enough to pull up on things that she can grab, chair legs, people's clothes, etc; so, if we even wanted to put her in the crib we would need to lower the mattress. In that case there is no freaking way we could get her in while she was asleep. She already wakes up and freaks out as it is.

My hope is that she has teeth that are just under the surface and driving her mad. I even gave her Tylenol last night in hopes we could all just go to bed. I don't know if it helped or not, but an hour later she was ready to sleep.

I miss the pacifier. :-(

Future heartbreakers and loose meat tortillas

OK, so the title is random, but since the post is going to random it fits. We haven't done too much in the last couple of day. The home Teachers came over last night (to my suprise). We had planned on having them come a couple of weeks ago, and even decided the time Sunday...but I forgot. Daniel did as well, since he went by the store on the way home. It is a sort of funny story, and here it goes.

This is Alice looking coy for the camera. Future heartbreakers of America. (Oh and she is not crawling, but she will get up onto her hands and knees .)

I was planning Daniel's much anticipated meal of soft tacos. Its not anyone else's idea of soft tacos except his, but thats because he is picky and dislikes all things saucy/spicy/ethnic. We had bought 10lbs worth of hamburger from Hyvee over the weekend when it was $1.60/lb and had kept 2lbs in the fridge for the purpose of eating and loose meat tacos was the meal of choice. Granted, we only cooked one pound, but this way we had thawed meat for eating.

I also made the dough for the tortillas. (Honestly this makes me sound really domestic, but I insist I am not that much.) I had made them once before and it wasn't a totally hated meal, thus the repeat, but this time I put in 1/3 whole wheat flour. Thats right, eat what you store, store what you eat. (We are trying to get into food storage, very very slowly.) So if any of you have a love of checkers homemade tortillas, I can make them in like half an hour, and they might even be better for you, plus they won't grow mold in 2 days. (We had that happen, and thats what got me to try making them at home)

Alice eating yummy yummy green beans. They are so yummy she can't keep them in her mouth. And she sucked on my peach I was eating for breakfast, after the initial Yucky Fruit look, she seemed to love it, and was sad I didn't let her keep it forever.
So I was letting the dough rest for 10 min while I had Alice on the living room floor eating the laptop power cord and some toys when I see a car go by. Huh, that looks like Will's car. (Yeah that was in my head, fun huh?) Oh my gosh, its Tuesday. I quickly picked up the diapers that were launched toward the wet bin, but didn't make it, carried the laundry that was sitting on the stairs to the top, carried a glass or so to the sink and thought Sweet, they will never see my house clean! Admittedly it wasn't horrible, but lets face it, I don't work, I am at home all day, I have no excuse to not have a clean living room.


She has started reacting this way to seeing the camera held in front of her! So I let Will and Aaron in while I swiped the innards of the diaper bag, back inside itself so they would have seating. Yeah, talk about strange. Daniel wasn't planning on being home for half an hour. He was going to stay a little late from work since, yet again, there was no Sat OT allowed, and run by the store for some things that are cheapest at Aldi, and were almost gone, or completely gone) The whole situation was sort of funny really. Aaron and Alice played on the floor. Alice wasn't sure if it was fun or not, but since I was there and allowing it, she let it happen. There was even a point where Will proclaimed that she looked uncomfortable, and she did, but I wanted to see if she would cry. She didn't. I could have left her there while I made the tortillas, but I just assumed that she would cry if I left. I mean come on, two strangers take care of her while I am in another room AND neither of them are female. Thats two strikes right there.

Anyway, Daniel came home earlier than expected, and we discussed why the prophet is the prophet to the world, how good looking President Uctdorf is, and why Cary Grant should never play a Frenchman. (Expect a review in our other blog where we review old movies, This one was the 1949 "I Was a Male War Bride)

After they left, we cooked the tortillas, the meat and ate it while watching House find out the chick had a broken toe. I knew it was something about the foot, but I had forgotten it was a broken toe.

Oh yeah, and that last pic was where I baked Alice into a JCCC baby pizza. The battery on the camera died before I could get anymore good pics though. I decided to make the whole post nto flow, by including random pictures of the baby, and comments about them. Or maybe thats what kept you all reading. Eitherway, it was on purpose.

Enrolled!

Daniel is enrolled.

All the classes he is taking will transfer to KU, and go toward the school of business.

His classes have been signed off by a supervisor, so his company will reimburse us for tuition, fees, and books. Up to 15K, lifetime max. Thank goodness for community colleges that are less than half the price of KU. Not that he won't be paying KU prices eventually, but this way we don't max out the 15,000 early on.

His classes are:

Business communications
Intro to International Business
World Chem (with lab one Sat a month)
Drama in Literature (yay for plays!)

And aside from the Chem class, everything is online! Talk about awesome! Now he has to finish fililng out all the Financial Aid stuff, so we really don't have to pay for it. :-D

Oh, and Alice is scared of automatic paper towel dispensers. Those boxes that spit out paper towels are scary!