Good-bye, Grandpa Hinckley

As most of you know by now, President Hinckley has passed away. We will miss his leadership, his humor, and his love. I can only imagine what his reunion with his sweetheart, Marjorie, must have been like. I didn't think I was going to blog about President Hinckley's passing (or Grandpa Hinckley, as he was dubbed in our household about a year ago by Kaia during an FHE - we're not actually related to him), until last night. Kaia & I were looking at pictures in an e-mail about President Hinckley. When we came to this one of Sister Hinckley Kaia simply said: "She's beautiful." The caption for this picture from the photographer reads: "When we first published it, one woman wrote to us and said, 'If people don't believe Mormons are Christians, just have them look at this picture of Sister Marjorie Hinckley.' I so agree."

I have been amazed and inspired that nearly every person who has talked or written about President Hinckley's passing has talked about this reunion with his wife. They were so clear about their deep love and affection for each other through their actions and comments. I'm taking this as a lesson for myself to try to be better at showing my love and respect for Peter.

I also just remembered that I have (sort of) met President Hinckley. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go with my family to meet Elder Maxwell at the Church offices. As we were walking down the hall to the elevator, we saw President Hinckley come out of a hallway about 50 feet in front of us. His bodyguards looked really concerned, but President Hinckley just lifted his cane in the air and waved at us with it! We all got a good chuckle out of that.

One of THOSE Days

I had a really good feeling about today, starting at 6:20 when Asher woke up (I DON'T get up before 7:00 if I can help it). He just talked in bed until a little after 7:00 when Peter got him out of bed. Peter had to leave early for work today, so the kids and I had breakfast and then began entertaining ourselves. Kaia and I were starting her very own first scrapbook! And Asher was screaming. Actually, he pretty much screamed all morning. This is his trend right now. I'm guessing these are tantrums. Kaia really never had tantrums at this age. I don't think she ever had the terrible twos. If anything, she had a hairy time right before she turned 3 when she wasn't sleeping well at night so she was not herself during the day. But Asher is entirely different. Kaia was naturally curious at his age so she would get into things out of curiosity, but I can tell by the glint in his eye that half the time he is really just looking for trouble. And he spends a lot of time screaming. I think a lot of it is frustration on his part that he can't communicate what he wants since he doesn't have many words yet, except for animal noises. And I think it's also frustration that he doesn't get what he wants even when I do understand exactly what he's saying. So he SCREAMS!! Anyone who has talked with me on the phone recently knows this. It is the ear-piercing scream that enters right into the interior of my brain and makes me want to scream, too.

Okay, I'm sorry for seeming like I'm complaining. Asher is a sweet guy when he's not screaming. He still loves to cuddle and sit on my lap to read books or just play. I guess I'm having a really hard time with the screaming because it's so Jekyll & Hyde. Anyway, I felt like we'd spent a lot of the morning doing various things and I was hoping it was getting close to Asher's naptime to end the screaming spells for a while. I looked at the clock and it was 8:22. WHAT?!? How could that be? And how were we going to spend the next couple of hours while maintaining my sanity to some degree?

Well, Kaia suggested the wonderful idea of cleaning the bathroom. I thought, that should take up some time, so away we went. Of course, both of the kids were fighting over who got to swish the toilet brush around to make blue bubbles. And both kids were fighting over who got to scrub the toilet. But, hey, at least they were fighting about cleaning! Kaia got the Swiffer out of the closet, and Asher decided he wanted it to so he started to run around the house as she held it above her head to keep him from getting it. I thought this would be a great opportunity to lock myself in the bathroom to sweep the floors in peace. Of course my shutting and locking the door got their attention and they both came over and started knocking on the door. Then Kaia said a priceless thing: "I need some alone time in there, Mommy...with you!" That would go over well, I'm sure. The 2 of us locked in the bathroom...and what would Asher be doing - screaming, of course!!

These pictures are from the other day showing how helpful the kids are with cleaning. I tried to get Asher to turn around and wipe the windows like he'd been doing before I got the camera, but I guess he thought I wanted him to rub his little tush on the window for the picture instead.

One of Kaia's very favorite things to do is wash dishes. This usually involves oodles of soap and very breakable dishes, so I don't let her do it nearly as often as she would like. It must be a genetic thing - I remember loving to do dishes when I was a young child. I have a particularly sad memory from when I was probably in 1st grade or so. We had family friends over until late in the night and I had fallen asleep on the living room floor. I was very upset that my parents were making me go up to bed at 1:30 in the morning instead of helping with the dishes. Very strange!


A happier anecdote: Over breakfast the other day I heard Kaia say to Asher, "You are a beautiful guy, but you don't really talk."

And here are some pictures of Asher wearing his very own hat and gloves!! He no longer has to wear Kaia's old purple ones, which he always fought against. I finally caved when I saw these at Wal-mart - the hat was $1.44 and I think the gloves were $.94.

Of course it doesn't look like he's going to be any more likely to keep his own on:

Modern Art

One of Kaia's favorite art activities is having me trace her on a large ream of paper and then coloring it together. This picture shows our most recent attempt:

It reminds me of some of the things we've seen at the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). I particularly like the turquoise sleeve. We used one of my scrapbooking toys to make it. Basically we made a crayon rub over a texture template. I drew the garishly huge eyes and Kaia did the cute little mouth and nose. Here's the result up close:

We Need An Intervention!

Kaia has cross dressed from time to time of her own free will and choice, but that doesn't seem to bother Peter much as long as it's not in public. But when it comes to Asher, Peter gets VERY concerned with anything even remotely close to cross dressing. However, since Asher is around only girls 99% of the time, we're bound to rub off on him at some point. Yesterday morning at breakfast Kaia informed me that "Asher is a beautiful princess. He wants to wear a dress!" I was shocked that Asher seemed to understand because he marched right into their bedroom and started rifling through her drawers until he found a green dress covered in flowers. I'm NOT kidding - he did this all on this own! I don't think it helps that Asher loves to carry around a mirror Kaia was recently given that lights up when you press a button and tells you uplifting things like, "You're a pretty princess! You're beautiful!" I think Asher has really taken these sayings to heart. Anyway, to save Peter from a heart attack, I did NOT put Asher in the dress. But then today Kaia got her heart set on wearing boy clothes. She dressed herself, as you'll be able to tell from the pictures. And the good mom that I am, I did let Asher put this pink jacket on so all my blog-reading friends and family can see how he'd look as a girl!

A few inspiring talks...

Cleaning is not one of my favorite things to do, but if I'm listening to something interesting at the same time my perseverance improves tremendously. I thought I'd share links to some of my favorite talks. I find them all at byubroadcasting.org.

Home as a Sanctuary: One Mother's Journey by Betsy VanDenBerghe

I appreciated this woman's honesty about what she realized were some of her shortcomings in creating a home that was a sanctuary. Her honesty has helped me more openly acknowledge (to myself, at least) some of my own weaknesses, and hopefully I'm beginning to improve.

The Power of Music to Lift & Teach by Michael Ballam

This one may seem an odd choice, but I was raised listening to talk tapes of Michael Ballam. I find this talk fascinating. He talks about the connection between music and the mind - how inspiring music can help our brains function better. And he breaks out in song throughout his talk!

Knowing Who You Are - And Who You Have Always Been by Sheri Dew

Those who know me well - or who have ever seen me bear my testimony - know that I am a crybaby. I'm not proud of it but I also can't deny it. This talk never fails to inspire me. Just this weekend my tears joined the Murphy's Oil I was mopping the floor with. =)

You Were Born to Lead, You Were Born for Glory by Sheri Dew

True Blue, Through and Through by Sheri Dew

I just love Sheri Dew. When I hear her speak I feel so clearly that she has a great vision about the greatness of women and it inspires me to want to be better.

Intuitive Eating

The most influential class I took while at BYU was called Intuitive Eating. Although I had many interesting and informative classes, this is the class that has most influenced my life and my habits. The basic premise of intuitive eating is that you eat what you want when you want it. I've had people tell me this would never work for them because they'd eat candy bars all day. I'll be honest. For the first little while after I started intuitive eating, I ate a lot of junk. I have a particularly bad memory of going crazy with a huge bag of M&M's. But then I felt awful. That's why intuitive eating works if you really listen to how your body feels when you eat food. I started to realize that I wanted to eat healthier food because I felt better when I did. Although I still occasionally eat emotionally instead of from hunger, I do it far less frequently than before I started intuitively eating a few years ago.

Now for the reason I'm posting...I was recently at the library when I picked up a book called "Ending the Food Fight" by David Ludwig, M.D. Since I had Asher and Kaia with me, I didn't have time to read what the book was about before I took it home. I only hoped it might give me some suggestions for getting more vegetables into my kids. Once I got the book home, I didn't pick it up for a long time because I had realized it was a book written by a pediatrician who works to help overweight children and teens lose weight. That's definitely not my situation so I didn't think the book would have much value to me. Then one day, on a whim, I picked it up and started reading. I was hooked from the start. I feel this book has taken my intuitive eating to the next level. Ludwig largely advocates a low-glycemic diet because it makes a person feel full longer, so they're less inclined to overeat. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I recently started running again for the first time since my kids were born. As my metabolism picked up, so did my hunger and I was always reaching for crackers and other high glycemic foods to fill that hunger. Then I would find myself hungry again within half an hour or so. As I read this book, a light turned on. I learned that low-glycemic foods like whole wheat toast with peanut butter would leave me full longer. I have loved eating intuitively, but I think at a point I just didn't have the knowledge to do any better with my eating. Once I read this book, I wanted to eat low-glycemic foods and other healthier alternatives to some of the foods we had been eating because I really feel better when I eat them. Also, this book goes into some detail about the efforts that fast food and junk food companies go to in order to get kids and others to buy their food. Learning about these manipulative methods has further turned me off to eating junk food. This book has revolutionized the way we eat, so I wanted to share it in case it can help anyone else. Here's a picture of the book (Peter laughed at me as I arranged it to get a more attractive picture):

Zoo Day!

Our friends, Jess and Emma, invited us to go with them to the Bronx Zoo to enjoy weather in the 60s in January! Insane! We had a great time.
"Shhhhh! Don't disturb the Wild dogs!"

Asher shows off a few of his favorite parts of the zoo. His belly button, or "bah!" as he calls it:

Who cares about the animals? Here's a great wall to climb!

His tongue!

You might have a hard time finding Kaia in this picture. :) She's "hiding from the camera." Unfortunately, the gorillas who should have been behind the glass were all kept indoors. Just because there were 2 days of nice weather didn't mean they brought the animals back outside.

Christmas with the Christensens

I'm catching up for the last month by adding a plethora of posts tonight. I have had these all building up in my head for weeks now with no time to do anything about them. We had a wonderful Christmas. Peter’s family traveled to us again this year, so we didn’t have to worry about traveling with the masses. We enjoyed Christmas morning with just our little family, and then the Christensens joined us that evening for Present Opening #2. And we’ll be traveling to Thailand in February, where I know more presents are awaiting the kids. I only hope they’re too young to realize they’re being spoiled!

Take a good look at the following picture:

This is the picture you would have received if we had managed to get Christmas cards out this year. The main problem is that the last picture we have of the 4 of us together is from last Christmas! So we needed to wait for Peter’s family to get here to take a family picture of us. Then things were a bit hectic with 9 people in a one-bedroom apartment, so we never quite got around to writing up our letter and sending it off. But don’t lose hope…there may just be a Chinese New Year card in the works! And if you think the above picture was bad, take a look at a few of these (it's impossible to keep these kids still!):


By now we're ALL having too much fun:


Here are a few pics of us with Peter's family:



left to right: Erick, Nicholai, Peter, me, Anneke, Asher, Vickie, Vern, Kaia

Simma the Duck

We have a few standard things we do whenever certain people come to visit us here. With Peter’s family, one of the things we do without fail is head to Zabar’s, a delightful grocery store on the Upper West Side, where we pick up olives, cheese, and bread. Erick & Nicholai, Peter’s brothers, usually head next door to grab some H&H bagels (This last trip Nicholai singlehandedly finished off 5 or 6 bagels and a half pound of cream cheese in one sitting! But we can't figure out where all that food goes; he probably weighs 10 pounds less than me even though he's got at least 6 inches in height on me!). Then we walked over to Central Park to enjoy our bounty. We had some incredibly warm weather for December so we let the kids burn off some energy at a playground in the park. Then we walked to FAO Schwarz, the large toy story at the southeast corner of the park. As soon as we got into FAO, Kaia dashed across the aisle and grabbed this “duck” (she won’t even hear of it being called a goose):

Grandma Vickie just couldn’t let her leave the store without it since Kaia carried her duck all through the store, and it was 25% off! On our way home, Kaia was explaining to me that, “We need to make a dress for my duck, Mommy. With yarn. Will you knittle it for me, Mommy?” I have definitely rubbed off on this child. After I agreed to “knittle” it for her (I actually crocheted it), Kaia proceeded to inform me that her duck also needs shoes, hair, a necklace, and a crown made of yarn. I decided to stop while I was ahead. Here is Simma the Duck showing off her newly knittled dress:

Ay Matey!

Thanks to a tip from a friend, I was able to purchase some very inexpensive Christmas presents on Amazon.com a week or so before the big day. I found a Mr. Potato Head set for only $7.99 and I was sold. It wasn't until we opened the box on Christmas morning that we found this 15" potato head with 2 medium potato heads and 2 small potato heads inside. What a steal! Now where do I put it?

Here's Asher REALLY enjoying the fruit snacks that were in his stocking:

Kaia's new Polly Pocket dolls have been a huge success.