You know those times when you say something in front of your kids that you immediately wish you hadn't said? That happened this last week when we were watching a friend's daughter. The little girl was really getting into dancing with the music from our keyboard. Without thinking I exclaimed, "Shake your booty!" I followed that immediately with, "Oops, I shouldn't have said that." I really didn't want to be the one to teach my kids that saying. Of course, Kaia immediately asked, "What's a booty?" I tried to deflect her questions by just saying it means to dance and shake your body. Later in the day, Kaia looked up at me with this look on her face like she was trying to remember something. Then she exclaimed, "Move your buddy!" I like her version much better.
Kaia has recently taken up dancing as a hobby. I don't mean with dance lessons - this is just spontaneous, uninhibited dancing in the comfort of our own home. It shocks me because I am an extremely inhibited dancer. I would rather do just about anything rather than have anyone see me dance. Here's a sample of her new dancing skills:
Move your buddy, girl!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Some Daily Life
I woke up to Kaia saying things you just don't want to hear before 7 am. Kaia was saying, "No, don't cut there, Asher! I'll show you where to cut!" I thought, what is going on?
Moments after these declarations, Kaia came bounding into my bed and said, "Mom, do you want to come see the ponies? I'm making them beautiful. I snipped a little bit here and a little bit there to give them a haircut. And I put hairspray in their hair. We're saloning them!"
Let me backtrack a moment. Yesterday Kaia was the recipient of oodles of My Little Ponies from an older girl at church who was done with them herself but wanted to pass them on to another home where they would be loved. She picked the right place!
I wasn't sure how Asher would respond to all these girly toys in the house. As it turns out, he loves them, too. When Peter saw last night how much Asher was enjoying them, he jokingly told Asher in a manly voice that he didn't want to play with them...but then Peter admitted that he used to love braiding the hair of his sister's My Little Ponies (but don't tell him I told you :).
On Sunday afternoon, Asher did something that I'm guessing is a boy thing - he stuck a bead up his nose! We were on our way to pick Peter up from church once his responsibilities there were done. As we walked to the car, Asher said, "I put the bead in my nose." I turned around and asked, "Are you joking?!" Sure enough, the bead was in his nose. I was pretty scared as this is the first time either of my kids have done something like that. I called Peter in a panic, not knowing if I would need to go to the emergency room (I know I was kind of overreacting). I gave Asher explicit instructions NOT to touch his nose anymore (he had been pushing the bead up higher in an attempt to get it out). Then I let Peter have the job of extracting it with tweezers. The joys of parenting! (You're all spared from seeing the inside of Asher's nose since the bead was removed before we got a picture of that. :)
Moments after these declarations, Kaia came bounding into my bed and said, "Mom, do you want to come see the ponies? I'm making them beautiful. I snipped a little bit here and a little bit there to give them a haircut. And I put hairspray in their hair. We're saloning them!"
Let me backtrack a moment. Yesterday Kaia was the recipient of oodles of My Little Ponies from an older girl at church who was done with them herself but wanted to pass them on to another home where they would be loved. She picked the right place!
I wasn't sure how Asher would respond to all these girly toys in the house. As it turns out, he loves them, too. When Peter saw last night how much Asher was enjoying them, he jokingly told Asher in a manly voice that he didn't want to play with them...but then Peter admitted that he used to love braiding the hair of his sister's My Little Ponies (but don't tell him I told you :).
On Sunday afternoon, Asher did something that I'm guessing is a boy thing - he stuck a bead up his nose! We were on our way to pick Peter up from church once his responsibilities there were done. As we walked to the car, Asher said, "I put the bead in my nose." I turned around and asked, "Are you joking?!" Sure enough, the bead was in his nose. I was pretty scared as this is the first time either of my kids have done something like that. I called Peter in a panic, not knowing if I would need to go to the emergency room (I know I was kind of overreacting). I gave Asher explicit instructions NOT to touch his nose anymore (he had been pushing the bead up higher in an attempt to get it out). Then I let Peter have the job of extracting it with tweezers. The joys of parenting! (You're all spared from seeing the inside of Asher's nose since the bead was removed before we got a picture of that. :)
Saturday, October 10, 2009
36 Weeks and Nesting...
First, thank you to everyone who gave an opinion on our baby names. Now we'll wait to see who Hermie is before making any final decisions.
I hit 36 weeks on Friday, and I'm getting a little panicky. We had our hospital tour this morning, and I felt vaguely nauseous as I thought of impending labor - at least it only lasts a few hours (hopefully) and then we'll finally get to meet Hermie. My nesting urges have been coming on strong. A week ago, I cleaned my house from top to bottom, thinking that if the baby came early, it might just break me to come home to unmopped floors. :) Then I realized that if the baby goes to term, I'll have to mop the floor a few times more to have a clean floor to come home to. Anyway, here's the belly at 36 weeks:
Some of my nesting instincts have been stranger than others. On Monday, I just had to find Halloween costumes for the kids. We headed out to a couple of consignment stores and found the perfect costumes. Asher will be a "Sharptooth" and Kaia is Pocahontas. She's been on a big Native American kick ever since seeing Disney's Pocahontas in August. I'd say the money I paid for her costume has already been worth it since Kaia has been Pocahontas every day this week. In fact, as we've headed out to the grocery store and on other errands, she tells me, "Mom, don't tell anyone I'm pretend. I'm really Pocahontas." She literally beams when people say, "Look, there's Pocahontas!"
This picture illustrates another one of my stranger nesting instincts - buying 22 boxes of cereal at Wegman's, one of our favorite grocery stores. The sell their own version of some of our favorite cereals like Wheat Chex (theirs is Wheat Squares) for half the price of the brand name cereal. Cereal is a real staple around here and I was getting very worried about the imminent arrival of the baby when we were down to only a few boxes in the house.
I've been making good headway on some of my other projects. This week I finished up Hermie's blanket:
And I'm almost done with Christmas stockings. I need to finish the last of the stitching on the boy stocking and then add embellishments to both of them. I had made the girl stocking a few years ago but then couldn't find it when I was pregnant with Kaia, so I made her a different one. I figured I would make the boy one so I would be covered either way. It will be easy to sew the needed stocking up once the baby is here, but there's no way I would have time for all that cross stitching after baby's arrival.
I definitely have the tendency to get obsessive about my projects sometimes, so I've been grateful to come across a couple of quotes that have really meant a lot to me in the last couple of weeks. First, in the recent General RS Broadcast, Sister Julie Beck quoted Elder Uchtdorf:
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught: “A wise man once distinguished between ‘the noble art of getting things done’ and ‘a nobler art of leaving things undone.’ True ‘wisdom in life,’ he taught, consists of ‘the elimination of non-essentials.’ ” President Uchtdorf then asked: “What are the nonessential things that clutter your days and steal your time? What are the habits you may have developed that do not serve a useful purpose? What are the unfinished or unstarted things that could add vigor, meaning, and joy to your life?”
Then this quote from Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin from his address in the April 2002 General Conference:
Sometimes we feel that the busier we are, the more important we are—as though our busyness defines our worth. Brothers and sisters, we can spend a lifetime whirling about at a feverish pace, checking off list after list of things that in the end really don't matter.
That we do a lot may not be so important. That we focus the energy of our minds, our hearts, and our souls on those things of eternal significance—that is essential.
So I've been trying to eliminate the non-essentials from my life, which mostly means that I'm spending far less time on the computer. And I'm trying to spend my days enjoying Kaia and Asher before the dynamics of our family change and my evenings pursuing or finishing things that "add vigor, meaning, and joy" to my life.
I hit 36 weeks on Friday, and I'm getting a little panicky. We had our hospital tour this morning, and I felt vaguely nauseous as I thought of impending labor - at least it only lasts a few hours (hopefully) and then we'll finally get to meet Hermie. My nesting urges have been coming on strong. A week ago, I cleaned my house from top to bottom, thinking that if the baby came early, it might just break me to come home to unmopped floors. :) Then I realized that if the baby goes to term, I'll have to mop the floor a few times more to have a clean floor to come home to. Anyway, here's the belly at 36 weeks:
Some of my nesting instincts have been stranger than others. On Monday, I just had to find Halloween costumes for the kids. We headed out to a couple of consignment stores and found the perfect costumes. Asher will be a "Sharptooth" and Kaia is Pocahontas. She's been on a big Native American kick ever since seeing Disney's Pocahontas in August. I'd say the money I paid for her costume has already been worth it since Kaia has been Pocahontas every day this week. In fact, as we've headed out to the grocery store and on other errands, she tells me, "Mom, don't tell anyone I'm pretend. I'm really Pocahontas." She literally beams when people say, "Look, there's Pocahontas!"
This picture illustrates another one of my stranger nesting instincts - buying 22 boxes of cereal at Wegman's, one of our favorite grocery stores. The sell their own version of some of our favorite cereals like Wheat Chex (theirs is Wheat Squares) for half the price of the brand name cereal. Cereal is a real staple around here and I was getting very worried about the imminent arrival of the baby when we were down to only a few boxes in the house.
I've been making good headway on some of my other projects. This week I finished up Hermie's blanket:
And I'm almost done with Christmas stockings. I need to finish the last of the stitching on the boy stocking and then add embellishments to both of them. I had made the girl stocking a few years ago but then couldn't find it when I was pregnant with Kaia, so I made her a different one. I figured I would make the boy one so I would be covered either way. It will be easy to sew the needed stocking up once the baby is here, but there's no way I would have time for all that cross stitching after baby's arrival.
I definitely have the tendency to get obsessive about my projects sometimes, so I've been grateful to come across a couple of quotes that have really meant a lot to me in the last couple of weeks. First, in the recent General RS Broadcast, Sister Julie Beck quoted Elder Uchtdorf:
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught: “A wise man once distinguished between ‘the noble art of getting things done’ and ‘a nobler art of leaving things undone.’ True ‘wisdom in life,’ he taught, consists of ‘the elimination of non-essentials.’ ” President Uchtdorf then asked: “What are the nonessential things that clutter your days and steal your time? What are the habits you may have developed that do not serve a useful purpose? What are the unfinished or unstarted things that could add vigor, meaning, and joy to your life?”
Then this quote from Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin from his address in the April 2002 General Conference:
Sometimes we feel that the busier we are, the more important we are—as though our busyness defines our worth. Brothers and sisters, we can spend a lifetime whirling about at a feverish pace, checking off list after list of things that in the end really don't matter.
That we do a lot may not be so important. That we focus the energy of our minds, our hearts, and our souls on those things of eternal significance—that is essential.
So I've been trying to eliminate the non-essentials from my life, which mostly means that I'm spending far less time on the computer. And I'm trying to spend my days enjoying Kaia and Asher before the dynamics of our family change and my evenings pursuing or finishing things that "add vigor, meaning, and joy" to my life.
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