Awesome discovery (ies)

I'm sure this never happens to anyone else, but it never fails that as soon as I start trying to cook dinner, everyone needs my attention or help--especially the baby. Dinnertime for him is always while I am cooking, and never when I'm done and the rest of us are eating. Tonight it just hit completely wrong. He was finished eating the things he could feed himself and wanted his baby food. I was not in a spot where I could stop and Damon wouldn't stop crying. Natalie came into the kitchen and I asked her to play with Damon for a minute. Then I had a great idea.
I sometimes forget that Natalie is old enough to do stuff I think she is too little to do. I think that happens a lot with the oldest child. But this worked out great. Natalie was very excited to feed Damon and Damon didn't protest to it either. Yes, it was slightly messier than when I do it but it was worth the extra clean up. She successfully fed him the entire thing.



On another note, Damon wants to know how fast you can unroll a tube of toilet paper. He seriously doubts you can do it faster than him. We have been trying to keep the bathroom doors closed, but when we don't, Damon gets in there, and that kid is fast. He loves the toilet paper. He is my first child to have such an obsession with unrolling the toilet paper.

And I found out the real reason why babies do this. You may think it's because it is so much fun to bat at the toilet paper and watch it spin around and around and pile up on the floor. Not so. It's because if you are successful at unrolling the whole thing before you are prematurely removed from the bathroom, there is an amazingly yummy treat hiding in the middle...

Sadly, this isn't even the first time he has eaten the toilet paper tube. This kid loves to eat paper/cardboard/magazines/boxes and anything else along those lines. And I mean eat. Not just "pick up and put in the mouth because I am a baby" but, "pick up, bite off, chew, and swallow..." unless I get to him before the swallowing part and pinch his cheeks and make him spit out his wad. Maybe I should be more alarmed, but I actually find it kind of funny. I say "kind of" because sometimes he eats important stuff, like bills or the Ensign, and then it's more annoying than funny. But he's just so cute that I can't be mad.

And no, that's not paper on his face. Kelton was kind enough to leave an unfinished white fudge covered Oreo on the kithen floor. Again, too cute to be mad at the mess. What's funny is that the scene of the crime was about three feet behind Damon. But as soon as we discovered what was going on, he started crawling away as fast as he could. It's funny to watch a baby "sprint" on hands and knees. It's probably even funnier to watch a 9 month old baby realize that he's been caught doing something he knows he shouldn't be doing.

And all this pretty much sums up Damon at the moment. He really is as sweet as his little face looks in the pictures. But he really never stops moving and he gets into anything he can. (And as of the last few weeks, he is finally sleeping through the night!)

Back in business

Today is Monday. I have been without the internet since last Wednesday. And now finally, the internet is working again. I'd like to thank Qwest for the huge inconvenience this has been. Seriously, it seems silly, but you try to go without the internet for almost a week. No email, no online banking, etc... Fun. We canceled our home phone and I agreed to let them upgrade our internet speed. When all was said and done, our modem couldn't support the higher speed (even though they said it could) and they of course couldn't send someone back out right away to fix their mistake. But we are good now.

While the internet was out of comission, we had a crazy bout of weather roll through. No rain, no snow, just cold. Like really cold. We had one day where the high was barely above freezing. Remember, we are talking southern Arizona. That same lovely day, we had frozen pipes. Gratefully they were just frozen and not broken like a lot of other people's. But we had no water until 3:30 when I decided to go outside, unwrap my pipes (yes they were wrapped up and still froze) and use my blow dryer on them. I felt a bit like I had been thrown back into the past that day. We had no TV (we never have TV), no internet, and no water. The next day (Friday) the crazy weather actually caused school to get canceled. The school was afraid of having trouble with frozen water lines, electricity and heating problems and such. It's finallly warming back up to normal February temperatures, but it sure was a crazy, cold few days.

I need your advice...

So I may be opening up the floodgates here, but I need some advice.

Kelton is 3.

Kelton wears a diaper.

I think he is now the oldest child at church who is not potty trained, or potty training.

I do not want to potty train him. I am actually quite happy to just change diapers. I am lazy and only change him in the morning when he wakes up and again if he is messy and then before bed. It's easy. Potty training is a mess. It's not easy. I don't like it. I don't want to do it.

I have potty trained one child, so I should know what I am doing, right? Well... I'd rather not go into that whole story right now. It's depressing. And I think it's the real reason why I never want to potty train another child. How am I supposed to potty train another child when the first one used up my ENTIRE (plus some) potty training patience reserve? And Kelton is headstrong, stubborn, always right, etc..., etc..., etc... I'm afraid one of us might not survive.

So. Help me out here. I need advice, strategies, methods, books, whatever you've got. I want to hear about it. For the sake of a very stubborn 3 year old (who really is a sweet boy) and his already-frusterated-just-thinking-about-it mother, please tell me you've found something that works. Please!

Mesa Temple and a Baptism

This post is a little late, but I wanted to track down some pictures first, and I didn't have my camera with me.

On Friday, January 14th my sister-in-law Tina got to go through the temple for the first time. She asked me to be her escort, so it was a really exciting day for me too. I love being able to hear the temple Matron, or one of her assistants, talk about the temple. This is the third time I've had that opportunity, and I love it every time. The session was in the evening and we didn't take our kids with us. Nate's parents were able to come down and stay with our kids at our house. It was so helpful to have them do that for us. And the kids loved spending time with Grandma and Grandpa.

Then, the next day (Sat. Jan 15th), my niece Hannah (Tina's daughter) was baptized. She's been waiting for about a year for this to happen, so this was a really exciting day for her. It was also exciting for my brother Rob, because he got to baptize her. Also, January 15th is his birthday. So not only did he get to baptize his daughter on his birthday, but he was also baptized on his birthday. So they were baptized on the same day--just many years apart.

Now this is where this post kind of ties into the one about Kelton's birthday. All of these events kind of happened at the same time. So it is because of the temple and the baptism that Kelton was able to celebrate his birthday with both sets of grandparents. (We celebrated Kelton's birthday with the family and the cake on the same day as the baptism.)

Blog post about my blog book :)

A few weeks ago I finished making my blog into a book using Blurb. I just got the finished product today and it is so awesome!
You can arrange your posts however you want, put your pictures where you want, etc... It was really easy to do and didn't take that much time. (granted, I just finished turning my husband's mission journal/letters into a book, so this was a piece of cake.)

The best part is, I was able to buy a Groupon to Blurb a few months ago--$60 value for $20! So, the total for my 150 page harcover book came to $60 and some change, plus about $7 shipping. And I only paid $27 for it. Awesome. (thanks Chad and Erica for letting me know about the groupon!) To anyone who might be contemplating this, it is totally worth it. Now that I have the finished product, I even think it would have been worth paying the full price if I had to. I upgraded the paper to Premium (lustre) and I think it is worth the extra few dollars too. (I think it added $6 or so to the price of my book.) The paper is nice and heavy and has a nice sheen to it. It doesn't have a glare like glossy paper, but is not dull like matte.

Anyway, I am very excited about my new book. It actually inspires me to blog more. I used to keep a written journal. I was actually pretty good at it. Then I had a baby. But I still did a good job about writing every few months. Then I had another baby. Journal entires dropped off to one or two a year. Add baby number 3. My last journal entry was... January 31, 2008... 3 years ago...written just after Kelton was born. Wow. But then I started blogging. I don't really like that it has replaced my written journal, but that's just kind of the way it is. So, now that I have this nice little book, I am inspired to write more so that my "replacement journal" is accurate and not missing any of the little things that make me smile from day to day. I know it's not the same--I don't put the same details in my blog as I would in my journal. But for now, it's better than nothing, right?

So maybe you will see an increase in posts. Maybe not. But if you do, at least you will know why now.

Look who's 3!

Happy Birthday Kelton!!!
Kelton's birthday is today and he is three years old. I can't believe it! I'm starting to think that every time one of my kids has a birthday, I am going to be amazed that they are as old as they are. I don't know if I will ever get used to them getting older. I started asking Kelton about a week ago what he wanted on his cake. I threw out some suggestions, like Lightning McQueen, but when his dad threw out an "A" cake, Kelton was sold. He changed his mind a little depending on the day, but the "A" cake was requested the most. So here it is. I did two things with this cake I had never done before. This was my first ever cupcake cake and I did it using a method called "frozen buttercream transfer." It turned out to be pretty easy, and I'm sure it helped that the "A" and the balls were about the easiest design I could have used to do the frozen buttercream transfer with. (for anyone wondering, the condensed nutshell of the method is: get a picture, put waxed paper over it, pipe in the colored frosting in the appropriate places, freeze, then peel off and put it on the cake.)

Kelton loved his cake. And so did a handful of other adult U of A fans who happened to see it.

He was excited about the candles and us singing to him.

He was not so excited about the flames on the candles being gone after he blew them out...

Cupcakes!!! Kelton loves cupcakes.

Kelton does not love messy hands. My poor kids. I hope I haven't done permanant damage to them. I do not like for them to have messy (with food) hands. And it has rubbed off on them. They don't like having food on their hands and after eating, insist on getting it cleaned off right away.

We actually did the cake yesterday because we had some family gathered together. (I plan to do another post on that when I get some more pictures.) So we also had Kelton open his present from Grandma and Grandpa Burgess after we had cupcakes. He got a wooden train set, similar to the Thomas ones, but at a bazillionth of the price. Kelton has no idea who Thomas is anyway.

He loved it.

So much so, that he went a little crazy.

Earlier in the day, Grandma and Grandpa Webb were at our house. So he got his present from them a day early too. He got a new Zhu Zhu pet with a house and a garage with a car. It really is fun. I didn't realize that Zhu Zhu pets did more than just scurry around aimlessly. My favorite is when the Zhu Zhu pet goes toward the car, makes a car-starting noise then gets in the car and "drives" it. Kelton was having a lot of fun playing with it.

We were really glad that we ended up celebrating Kelton's birthday a day early because at about 2:30 this morning, he woke up with an upset stomach and started throwing up. Nate was such a good husband/dad and took care of him and cleaned everything up. Then he slept on the couch with Kelton the rest of the night. Kelton had a bit of a fever this morning and was really tired today, but he's feeling better now that he was earlier. (Ironically, it was exactly three years previous, 2:30 a.m., that we were on our way to the hospital for him to be born.)

When he first woke up, he didn't want to open his presents, and he was quick to make it known that he didn't want us to wake him up by singing "happy birthday," which is our tradition. After a few minutes, he decided that he did want to open his presents. I was afraid he was going to feel too sick to enjoy it, but he was still really excited to get some new toys and was even smiling and laughing.

Here he is with his daddy, sitting right in the very same spot where they spent most of the night. It's too bad I didn't take a wider angle; you would be able to see the throw-up bucket sitting on the couch next to them. Poor little kid. No fun to be sick on your birthday. Like I said, I'm glad we celebrated yesterday.

Happy New Year?

Here's a great way to start off the new year... have a pipe freeze and break. (Will someone smack the homebuilder and tell them that yes, it does freeze in southern Arizona, quite frequently actually, so pipes should not be exposed.) I don't know how long it had been out there gushing before I found it. I could hear the water but thought it was my neighbor washing something off. I don't know how well you can see in the picture, but a few inches under the spicket, the first elbow joint completely broke and blew off. Water is pouring full blast down out of the pipe. And you can't see this at all because of the shadow, but there is a nice little 2-3 inch deep river over by the trash cans which ran all the way down to the street (this picture is taken on the back side of the house.) So Nate got to go out by the street to turn the water off, which turned out to be not so easy, being that the box was flooded with muddy, ice cold water and filled with rocks. It took a while before Nate could even find the shut-off valve (like maybe 15 minutes) and even longer for him to be able to feel his hands again. When I talked to the guy from the water company, he said he had already been to about 20 houses to turn off the water because they had had the same thing happen. But everything turned out okay. Nate got a cap to screw on to stop the water and fortunately, the broken pipe was outside and not in the house.

So this post should probably be a couple of different posts, but I can never remember what order the posts show up in when you do multiple posts on one day, so they are all lumped into one so I can make sure they are in the order that I want.

Since coming home from Christmas, Damon has become quite the little box climber. He loves, loves, loves to climb up/into any box that is on the floor. Take a look...


And there he goes.

And he's so proud of himself.

Damon has also figured out how to pull up on things to be able to stand up. He hasn't mastered it yet, but we have caught him a couple of times at the bookcase and most recently at the bathtub, throwing toys in to make loud noises. Problem is, he is too little to get back down. Oh, and he also can't figure out how to climb out of the boxes once he gets sick of being in there. So overall, Damon has recently learned that up is easy, down is not.

These next pictures are for Grandma and Grandpa Burgess. The kids love their scooters! We got them out and put them together a few days ago, but it was nasty cold and windy outside (and I think it was raining). So, we pulled the car out and let them ride in the garage. They had a lot of fun.

And how cute are these pajamas?!

How cute is this BABY?!

Grandma and Grandpa Webb gave Damon these pajamas for Christmas (along with the U of A ones) and we put them on him tonight for the first time. I absolutely love the reindeer on the bum. So adorable.

Christmas in Snowflake

We had a fun Christmas in Snowflake. This year we stayed with my parents and Christy, Tennyson and Hudson were there too. The kids had so much fun playing together and played really well. The day before Christmas we took the kids to see Tangled. It was the first time we had taken Kelton to a movie. I think he was a little scared at first, but he liked it. I really liked the movie and can't wait until it comes out on video so I can watch it again.

On Christmas Eve we went over to Webb's so all the grandkids could open their pajamas from Grandma and Grandpa. Our whole familly got matching U of A pajamas. It was really fun.

Here are a bunch of the grandkids in their new pajamas.
Here we are in our matching pajamas on Christmas morning.

Natalie got up at 6:30 on Christmas morning. A little while later she asked if she could wake Kelton. I told her no. She then went right in and did it anyway. I guess she was just too excited. After everyone was awake, we needed to wait a few more minutes for Melanie and Sean to arrive from Show Low. I found Natalie up in the window watching for them.

Damon is 8 months old, so this is his first Christmas. He loves to eat paper, so he was a fan of wrapping paper. He did actually seem interrested in the presents underneath too.

Damon also thought all the big boxes were really fun to climb on. He pulled himself up onto his feet for the first time on Christmas day. He fell over and cried a few seconds later. Also, by the end of our stay, he was crawling everywhere. Before we went to Snowflake, he could crawl a few "steps" but then would flop on his belly because it was faster that way. But now, he is pretty good at crawling on his knees.

You can't tell from Natalie's face, but this was her most favorite present.

Over Thanksgiving, Nate's neice, who is a junior in high school, had one of those dolls that simulates a real baby that she had to take care of. Natalie was fascinated by this doll that cried and had to be fed and changed. She decided that she wanted one for Christmas. I found this doll that the face moves when you give her a pacifier/bottle. The eyes open and close (not the old school ones that use gravity--this actually looks real) and the mouth looks like she is sucking on the pacifier. It makes sucking noises and if you take out the pacifier, she cries. If you leave it in, she falls asleep, closes her eyes, and her chest rises and falls as she sleeps (and kinda snores). If you pick her up while she is sleeping, she will wake up and make playing noises. It's a really cool doll. I would have loved it as a kid. And Natalie does love it. She has been the best little mother to her doll. We got the doll a rocking basinet and I crocheted a blanket for it. We actually didn't know the doll cried. It didn't say anywhere on the box that it did. So when it first started crying, we thought it was one of the real babies in the house. My sister Melanie even went down the hall to check on Jade because she thought it was her. That night, Natalie pulled the doll in her bed next to where she would be sleeping. She came to me and asked, very seriously, "Mom, what do I do if my baby starts crying in the middle of the night?" It was so cute. Who knew I would be giving motherly advice to my daughter so soon? I assured her that her doll wouldn't cry in the middle of the night. I then made sure the bottle and pacifier were far away from it's mouth. The last thing I needed waking me up along with my real baby, was a doll crying.

Nate combined all his resources (including some left over birthday money) to get himself a PS3. I also published his missionary journal and all the letters he wrote home (and also the letters his mom wrote him) in a hardbound book and gave that to him. Nate surpried me with an iPod shuffle and an under the cabinet stereo system for the kitchen. I didn't even know that I wanted any of that, but I am really excited about it.

We had one little setback at the end. We tried to come home on Monday night but a little more than an hour into our trip, Kelton threw up. Natalie followed suite about a minute later. They had eaten some cottage cheese right before we left, and I think it might have been bad. So, the kids and the car were a mess, so we headed back to Snowflake for the night. By the time we got back and got everyone and everything cleaned up, it was about midnight. We then got up in the morning and started our trip over again. It was lots of fun. But that part aside, we had a great Christmas and had a lot of fun seeing our families.

My spirit is...

This little girl of ours. She really does keep us entertained.

We told her it was her turn to teach FHE tonight. She's been waiting for this for a few weeks. She told us she didn't need any help and then she said she needed to make a picture first. So she ran off to her room.

A few minutes later, she came back. We sang, we prayed, and Natalie started her lesson. She held up visual aid #1...

and said... "This is my spirit. It's white because I have a clean spirit."

Then she held up visual aid #2...

and said, "This is Kelton's spirit. It's black because he had a dirty spirit."

Nate and I started laughing, as quietly as possible, of course. Apparently, in her mind, she has been an angelic child and her brother has some repenting to do. Anyway, she later told us that people with clean spirits return to heaven with Heavenly Father and people with dirty spirits go down to the bad people. I asked if Kelton was going to go down to the bad people, and she said no. So that's good at least. We then had a nice talk about what you do if you have a dirty spirit, i.e. repentance.

Silly girl. We love her tons!

All I want for Christmas is...

Not the two front teeth, but close. The two bottom ones. Natalie's two bottom teeth have been loose for a little while now. As I was brushing her teeth last night, I wanted to take a picture, mostly because her permanent teeth are coming in behind her baby teeth. (Her dentist said this happens in about 10% of kids.) So she has two rows of teeth. It reminds me of a shark and how they have multiple rows of teeth.

So then, I decided to wiggle the tooth, like I do every night. It was so loose, but still stuck. I asked her if I could just pull it out. She said yes. So I started pulling and she said it didn't hurt, so I kept pulling, and... out it popped! I think I scared her though, because I gasped and she didn't know her tooth had come out and she thought something was wrong.

Then I showed her the tooth and she was soooooo excited. She couldn't keep the laughter inside. She could only be quiet for a few seconds at a time before the next round of excited laughter came out. It was so cute. You can tell she is way excited.

Here she is in bed with her tooth tucked in beneath her pillow, waiting for the tooth fairy. Who, by the way, took her tooth and left her a dollar. She is very excited to go to the dollar store and pick out "whatever she wants." Her other bottom tooth is really loose too and I've noticed her working at it more today than ever before, because now she knows how fun it is to loose a tooth. That one will be gone too within the week. Oh, and Natalie also discovered yesterday (before loosing her tooth) that her top right tooth is a tiny bit loose. So there is still a chance that she might be wanting her two front teeth for Christmas. If so, I will definitely teach her to sing the song. And I will record it.

And Natalie is not the only one... At about the same time that Natalie's permanent bottom teeth started poking through, Damon started getting the exact same two teeth. (this was 3 or 4 weeks ago) I thought it was funny that they were both getting the same teeth at the same time. Natalie, however, was a lot less grouchy about the whole process.

Look closely, they are there! As of today, they are a little more than halfway in. I forget how razor sharp they are. I love how these super sharp teeth coincide with them being mobile enough to get all the little things in their mouth that you have to fish out with your fingers. I wonder if Heavenly Father thinks that is funny. I have to admit that I would be up there laughing too... if I weren't the one being bitten all the time.

Lawyer conversation

Today we were driving in the car and Natalie asked,

"What do they do in law school?"

Before I could answer her, she asked,

"Do they sit around and color pictures?"

I started laughing. I said, "No, they don't color pictures. They learn how to be lawyers."

"Oh. I want to be a lawyer."

So later tonight at dinner she remembered to tell her daddy that she wants to be a lawyer.

Nate said, "You want to be a lawyer? Hey, Natalie, what do lawyers do?"

"They make money."

Nate kind of laughed.

"Dad, how do you make pennies?"

I really started laughing. I'm not quite sure how to explain to a 5 year old what lawyers really do, but I guess I need to explain what it means to go to work and "make" money. No wonder she wanted to be a lawyer...

Shhhh! Don't tell daddy!

Wouldn't he be an aborable girl?
And look at those eyelashes...

Damon needs yet another haircut. I've cut that hair on the top of his head about 4 times already. Now, the sides are actually needing it too. But I thought before I do that, I needed a picture first. Nate doesn't like this hairdo--even on a girl. So... sorry, Nate. And sorry Damon. I just couldn't resist. At least there's no bow, and I didn't put him in a dress. (I thought about it though.)

*update* Nate says I'm grounded. :(

New

As you can already probably tell, we got a new family picture. And I've decided that there aren't many more stressful things in life than getting a family picture. (Not really, but it sure felt that way at the time.) Lets just say, the kids were crazy--especially the almost 3 year old. Kelton wanted to have nothing to do with holding still (what else is new). Natalie felt the need to make silly faces. And Damon started crying uncontrollably, which he rarely does during the day. I was shocked that we got a picture this good. However, if you know Nate and me well, you can see it in our faces--we are trying our best to smile instead of strangling some children. The more kids we have, the harder this picture taking thing becomes. Oh well. There is it. Done for at least another year.

And if you can't figure out what else looks different, I made a new blog background. I'm not super happy with it, but I wanted it to match the picture. Maybe I'll make it better when I'm feeling more creative.