Daily life

Just a bunch of tidbits today.

*Murdock Canal

There is a canal that is about a block from our house, which has always been a funny thing.  There was a service road next to the open, concrete path for the water to flow.  But since the government didn't want to be liable for anyone falling into the water there were big signs that you were trespassing if you jogged/biked on the gravel path beside it.  So, naturally, everyone used it anyway.  A level trail with no cars that runs for miles is just too tempting.

Thankfully, they have spent the last few years running the water through an underground pipe and making a nice paved trail on top.  It is so great to ride on now!  I love that we have somewhere nice and flat to take the kids with their bikes.  Up until now, the kids could only bike a couple of houses each direction on our sidewalk if someone was out there to watch them (our street is just busy enough to worry us).  If we wanted them to get practice on the bikes, we had to load them up and drive to a park.  This new trail means we will probably go biking once a week, instead of twice a summer. Hooray!

Of course, Kaitlyn had outgrown her bike, so Daddy set out to get her a bigger one.  I thought he would get one second-hand, but instead he came home with this pink Princess explosion.

The dolly seat cracks me up.  She's doing really well (now that she gets actual practice with it), so hopefully both kids can work up to getting the training wheels off by the end of the summer.

Jasmine has a little seat, too, but she isn't as fond of the helmet.  I guess the seat just comes up too high for the helmet to fit right!

We actually got a new seat from my sister-in-law that puts the baby in front (like the baby dolly above), so we'll hook that onto my bike soon.  And we might just buy a new bike for me, since I've never been a fan of leaning forward on my 20 year old mountain bike.  I test drove a cruiser the other day, and I was a convert.  Since Daddy just got a new mountain bike, I guess that makes Tyler the only one whose bike from last year is doing just fine!

And I'm so glad that Tyler is doing well on his bike lately!  He used to ditch the "tall" bike in favor of his Big Wheel.  He must have felt more secure when he was low to the ground, because he would zoom like a maniac on the Big Wheel and then crawl like a snail on the regular bike.

He's getting the hang of it now, though.

*Peanut butter

Speaking of Tyler, one of my favorite stories is from this last weekend.  You see, when he was younger peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was one of his favorite foods.  And then about a year ago he informed me one day that he did not want peanut butter.  "Just jelly."  And while I was proud of him for vocalizing that desire, jelly on white bread isn't exactly packed with nutrition.  I have just about stopped sending him a packed lunch to school, since he likes the school lunches and I couldn't figure out what to send that kid.

And then, over the weekend, I brought out a stray jar of creamy that I got to make a recipe with.  "Peanut butter with no nuts in it!" He exclaimed, as if he had seen the Holy Grail.  "I want peanut butter with no nuts in it!"  He then took a slice of bread with just creamy peanut butter on it and inhaled it.

So ALL of this time, he just wanted creamy instead of crunchy.  And since I had no idea anyone else had a preference, I have only bought crunchy because that's what Daddy likes.

Having a kiddo with disabilities is always an adventure, I tell you.

*The battle of the sleeping baby

It seemed like Jasmine taught herself to sleep through the night at about four months old.  Jackpot!  But slowly, the extra feedings got more and more common, so that by the fall she almost always woke up once at 3am.  And then, slowly, she added a midnight feeding as well.  I think the main problem was that she truly was hungry.  She has never been a very consistent eater - she will inhale scrambled eggs one morning, and then angrily chuck them off her tray the next day. So I figured we needed to get the feeding down before I worked on the nighttime stuff.

And then, a week or so ago, she went through some sort of sickness/growth spurt/something that made her cranky ALL weekend and up every hour of the night for a week.  Ugh.  I let is slide before that, but once an hour is not cool.

So I broke down and bought a sound machine.  She has always been a light sleeper, waking up when the kids were too loud or Daddy and I made too much noise getting into bed.  I kept putting it off, since there are free apps that do the same thing, but I don't have an iPod that I want to leave next to her crib for every single nap and evening!  Thankfully, this has been the best $20 I have spent in a long time.  She is sleeping much better, but most importantly, going to sleep much better.  It isn't perfect, but it is helping.

*Thanksgiving Point trip

There isn't much to say here, but I just wanted to include these pictures.  My kids always love the Children's gardens and playing with their friends.

Jasmine loves to carry things when she walks around now.  I guess that's part of the novelty of walking instead of crawling.  "I can take things with me!"

Thankfully, I've been here enough to know the kids WILL get wet, so you might as well prepare for it.

And nothing tops an open stage in Kaitlyn's mind.  Time to prepare "the show"!  I swear, every time she has friends over she continually talks about "the show".  We have to make invitations to "the show", we have to practice, we need to get the costumes ready.  But the few times she has actually had an audience sit down to watch, nothing really materializes.

*Baby mood swings

Baby Jasmine is a very sweet, fun baby when she is happy.  She loves to babble in her own cute little language, push her little cart all over the house, and play with her big siblings.  In fact, Tyler loves her so much that he squishes her into (much despised) hugs whenever he can, but she still toddles along after him and laughs at his antics.  And when she gets the chance to retaliate, like waking him up in the morning, she gleefully shrieks while she pats him and tugs at his hair.  My favorite was a month or two ago when she crawled into the room, saw that Tyler was sitting on the floor distracted, and laughed to herself as she crawled at ramming speed and bumped her head straight into his side.  She was so proud of herself for getting him!

But unfortunately, this girl has serious mood swings.  If she is tired or hungry, look out.  And if she sees something she wants, she has decided to shriek until she gets it.  Loudly.  I have been desperately trying to teach her signs and words so she has another (quieter) way to communicate, but mostly my attempts are met with blank stares and more shrieking.  She just doesn't have the idea yet.  Thankfully, my training with Tyler has given me more technique than I would otherwise, so hopefully she will catch on soon.  I don't want this to become a habit.

*Moose shed

We went to our cabin for Spring Break last week, and when Christopher was exploring he came home with one of these!

He said it was just laying in the gravel road.  Wikipedia told us that they often shed in the same place, so we went back to hunt for the other one, but didn't find it. (And yes, Tyler is wearing the hat and scarf in our snowman kit.  We accidentally left it on a snowman this year, so the kids were happy to rediscover it once the snow melted.)

 I love spending conference weekend up there! (In our church, twice a year we have a weekend of talks broadcast from the church leaders instead of meeting at our local churches.)  We tried to find friends to come up with us, but ended up just hanging out together.  Which is just fine by us.

Kaitlyn invented a new game of dragging the baby around on a sled, which she thought was pretty funny.

And the kids got back into swinging around on the play dome.

We even planted some bulbs for our garden.

*Forgotten iPhone pictures

I borrowed Christopher's phone to get a couple of pictures for this post, and discovered some lost ones!

First of all, we stopped on our trip back from  Vegas in January to have dinner at our favorite place.  But when I cut into my panini, my plate broke!  Christopher made fun of me for a while on that one.

Christopher had a fun trip to Moab with his friends a couple of weeks ago.  I am really glad that he has friends that enjoy his hobby so much . . . since I really, truly don't.

My sweet Aunt and Uncle still host Sunday dinners for their family and invite us up occasionally.  And in March she made an adorable little Panda cake for each of the one year old babies!  I still can't believe two of my cousins had babies the same month that Jasmine was born.  Three mommies and three first birthday kiddos.

This time, however, Jasmine really didn't want to eat any cake.  Which was her loss, because it was delicious.  Hope (the little girl with dark hair) figured that out pretty quickly.  She inhaled it, smearing the cake and frosting everywhere!

Jasmine was more interested in putting that leg up and sometimes trying to kick the panda.  Funny girl.

Easter

Does anyone else feel like Easter is the holiday that just keeps going?  I guess I expect Christmas to take over a month or two, but I keep thinking Easter should be a one day event and it turns into five egg hunts per kid.

As usual, it started with the neighborhood hunt.  Which, as usual, started with an enormous amount of snow. But this year, the new people in charge have a new house which they kindly let us take over.  And thank heavens, because it was really great to be able to chat with everyone instead of huddle over hot chocolate and run off.

I stayed with Miss Jasmine while Daddy took the bigger kids downstairs to their area.

So we looked for eggs.

And the first one she found popped open.  There was shiny, foil wrapped chocolate inside!  Instantly, the hunt was over.  She had all she wanted.  I tried to talk her into putting more eggs in her basket, but all she wanted was the (now) slimy mess of her chocolates.  Tyler and Kaitlyn were all done before I even got a second egg in Jasmine's basket.

So we went home and let the baby have her prize.

A week later, we dyed some eggs.  Kaitlyn had been begging for this for days, and was really into it this year.  Tyler loved it, but had no patience for the multicolored creations like Kaitlyn.  He wrote his name in crayon on each one, dunked it in the dye, pulled it out five seconds later, and proudly talked about how green the egg was now.  Done!

And the day before Easter was the annual family hunt.  There are a lot of cousins these days (25 with two on the way, I think), two doggies, some chickens for them to chase, and Grandma brought goldfish for all the kids to "win" and take home.

 Peek a boo!

The kids played with the parachute while the adults hid an unbelievable number of eggs.

And Tyler might not have been keen on following the instructions on when to stay still and when to run, but it was mostly because he was SO excited about the parachute.  He was jumping around in sheer glee!

And Jasmine was just happy to be walking around in the sunshine.

They let the little kids go first, and we did a little better this time.  Mainly because that first egg just wouldn't pop open like she wanted it to.

I didn't get a good shot of the kids hunting for eggs, since they moved pretty fast and Jasmine didn't like me leaving her side with so many people around, but they had a blast.

In fact, I gotta say I really appreciated my sweet kids that day.  Another family has three little girls that each gathered 30-40 eggs until their baskets and arms couldn't contain any more. But at least one of them still went home sobbing because she didn't get enough of the certain kind of eraser like her sister.  Tyler picked up 6 or so eggs and acted like it was the best thing ever.  Kaitlyn got 14, half of them hard-boiled, and didn't even care what was or wasn't inside.  I've tried to instill that in them, but honestly I think the credit goes to Tyler for just being happy no matter what happens, and passing that nonchalance on to Kaitlyn.

Besides, how can you have a bad day when you get candy, cupcakes, take home a pet goldfish, play games, and eat cotton candy?

By the time we got to Easter itself, I was rather sick of plastic eggs.  Which is why, I have to be honest, the Easter Bunny has never come to our house before.  But Kaitlyn is old enough to have heard about how it was supposed to work, so thankfully the Easter Bunny came while everyone was at church.

Kaitlyn was thrilled to find all of the eggs. And once again, Tyler was happy to sit and play with the first couple he found.  "Do the patt-er-ens match?  Noooo."

Such a cute little guy.

After he opened a couple of them up and switched them all, he took his new Pez and went over to Daddy.  "You are my homeboy," he said, repeating what Daddy has told him since he was little, and offered Daddy a "treat."

Tyler might not be anywhere near other kids his age developmentally, and he might never be.  But he sure is the sweetest little guy I've ever known.

Craft table!

It's done!  I'm limping to the finish line on this one, but my new table is finally done.  And I love it.  I love it so much that you are going to get a long post devoted to it, with many pictures!

Actually, there are funny stories along the way.

So, the reason I wanted a new table in the beginning is because the folding Lifetime table had a few issues.  Namely, I had to take everything off every time we needed to use it for seating extra people, and it couldn't handle the sewing machine.  When I went at a quick speed, the whole table would shudder with the jackhammer motion.  So I started scouring the second hand websites looking for a dining table or desk I could convert over.  I was pretty specific in what I wanted, but after weeks, the perfect . . . table thingy finally popped up on a surplus site.

Isn't she awesome?  I know, not very good looking.  But it was (nearly) the perfect size and shape.  And it is very sturdy.  And, best of all, she cost $1.25.  That's right, I handed over a dollar bill and a quarter and took this baby home.  First up, she needed a new trim piece.  I wasn't willing to wait for Christopher, so I took a scrap from our pile and cut it to size.

Not bad for my first attempt at a circular saw.  Next, the table/counter/ whatever it was lacked a few inches in height.  My thighs could fit under it, but I would have to hunch over to work.  Which makes me really wonder what it was in its former life.

So I asked Christopher for advice and went and bought myself some lumber.  I tell you, nothing gets customer service like a girl walking into the lumber section all by her lonesome.  I had a guy following me within minutes who insisted on carrying my wood to the car for me.

Anyway, I flipped her over and made a toe-kick.

With that problem solved, it was on to making her less ugly.  Ombre is huge on Pinterest right now, along with geometric shapes like chevrons and stripes.  So I painted a nice base of white, decided on a pattern, and taped it out.

 Ta-da!  Purple ombre strips that widen as they darken.

Love.

Well, I didn't love touching up the stripes, but that's life.  Why oh why can't tape make perfect lines?  I had to go up and down each stripe with white to fix the edge.  But it looked awesome.  So I used my spray can of gloss to seal it in.  Only, one can wasn't nearly enough.  When Christopher (who, if you are keeping track, hasn't helped at all yet) saw it, he said that he had a can of clear coat he intended to use for something else, but didn't end up using.

So I sprayed on his can.  It looked like chalk, rather than a clear gloss, but I hoped it would dry clear.  And when it didn't, I took a better look at the can he gave me.

Not clear.  WHITE.  Opaque.  Non-transparent.

RUINED OMBRE STRIPES.

I don't think I've ever cried over furniture before, but there were tears on this one.  But, at the end of the day, tears were not going to magically fix the table.  So I repainted my stripes all over again.  Thankfully my tiny sample cans of paint stretched far enough.

As his penance, he came home from work that day with expensive, real clear coat gloss to brush on.  After another day of cursing painter's tape, and a day of three coats of gloss, I pulled her inside just before the rain is set to come.

And so she finally came home, a few days behind schedule!  And she is beautiful, so all is well.

I know it looks like furniture for Kaitlyn's room, but I figured that a craft and sewing table is the only place I could have a fun and crazy paint job in my house.  The rest of the basement is BYU themed for the projector to watch movies and games on, but this is my corner.  Might as well make a statement out of it!

Speaking of statements, Tyler has had awesome quotes lately that I need to record.  One day he was having fun playing with Daddy before it was time to go to school.  And then, with no provocation at all, he turned and said to him "really, Daddy?" with a flat, sarcastic tone.  "I do not like you.  I will see you tomorrow." And he walked off.

Another day, when he got his foot stuck in the snow at the cabin, he congratulated me on a good job "unstucking me".  Why, thank you.

And in other news, the baby is walking more each day!  She's nice and slow about it, which is just fine by us.  But it is fun to see her progress.

And speaking of Jasmine, I hear her waking up in her room.  So I guess that's all for this blog post!

Sweet baby Jasmine

I can't believe how big my little baby is getting!

When Tyler and Kaitlyn turned one, it just so happened that my parents were in town each time.  So we threw a party so that my mom's family could come down from Salt Lake and see them, and had some birthday cake while we were at it.  But this time around I just couldn't see the logic in a party.  One-year-olds don't really get anything out of that.  I couldn't just do nothing for her birthday though!  So, thanks to Pinterest, I came up with a new plan.

The cake smash photo shoot.  Sure, letting a one year old attack their birthday cake with both hands is nothing new.  In fact, I've even got pictures of my first birthday, eating the candle off of my cake.

I found one photographer on Pinterest that tried to claim that she invented the cake smash photo shoot ten years ago when her daughter was a baby.  Suuure.  She did have really cute ideas, though, and I got a lot of great tips from what I found online.

Prepare for the picture overload!

Basically, I took a couple of "before" shots, set the cake down, and before I could stand up and aim the camera, she had two fistfuls of frosting.

 The funny part was that she spent the next ten minutes on those two fistfuls.

And this was serious business.  We all spent a lot of energy trying to get her to smile, because all she wanted to do was sit there and slowly lick it off.

She did offer to give us some, which was nice of her.

And eventually she got a bit more into it.

One thing I didn't see online but wanted to try was involve the siblings.  So I ordered a matching cake and had Tyler and Kaitlyn join her.  Jasmine immediately decided that their cake looked better than hers.  Quick, she's distracted!

In fact, she was so in love that she crawled over her own cake (tutu and all) to get to Kaitlyn's small piece.

Here you can see my set up.  I got some bulletin board paper from the school supply store, cut spare scrapbooking paper up into some bunting, and made a floofy tutu for her to wear.

She tried to steal some of Tyler's cake too.  He adores that baby to pieces,  but he was not about to let her take his cake.

And of course, eventually she was entirely coated in frosting.  She also made it her mission to yank off her hairbow, so that was coated in purple frosting and eventually tossed to the side.  It was a lot of fun!

Presents were also interesting later, but not quite as much.

And because I love comparison pictures so much, I dug out the pictures from Tyler and Kaitlyn's birthday cake.

It cracks me up to look at Kaitlyn's tiny stick arms, especially since they are wearing the same shirt!

And of course, my favorite part of my birthday posts.  The snapshot:

*When Jasmine refused to come on Leap Day last year and decided within weeks that she didn't care for being cuddled either, I thought we might be in for a stubborn little girl.  And while we'll probably hit a stage or two of that later, I think she is much more like my mellow Tyler.  She lets us know when things are not going her way, but she mostly is just happy to mosey along and take things at her own pace.  She wasn't in a big hurry to hit milestones like crawling or walking, though she did take four wobbly steps on her birthday!
* She eats most of her food by grabbing it off her tray, though occasionally she'll let me spoon feed her.  Her favorite is blueberries!  She usually tries to eat an entire carton in one sitting.  Of course, the biggest difference from her big siblings is that she still LOVES to nurse.  I'm used to my babies being done about now, but this girl still takes all she can get.  While that has been great for my waistline, to be honest I'm looking forward to some detachment someday.  I'm not going to force it though.
*Currently, she doesn't have any consistent words, though she loves to babble.  She also loves to wave to us, give high fives, and she tries to imitate lots of our silly antics.  She's been imitating the more mundane things too, like picking up a hairbrush and trying to brush my hair, trying to use the remote, and babbling with a phone at her ear.  Oh, and she doesn't like being kissed or snuggled much, but she does kiss me sometimes.  With her mouth wide open and a little tongue sticking out.  When I try to turn so she kisses my cheek, she hunts around until she finds my mouth.  Um, at least the sentiment is nice?  She is sure proud of herself when she does it!
*Tyler is still her biggest fan in the world.  Lately he has taken to picking her up and carrying her around the house, which we protested until we saw how much Jasmine loves it.  She just laughs and laughs!

Overall, she really has been a sweet little girl.  I'm not going to lie, having a baby in the house again has been an adjustment, and it hasn't always been easy.  But she has been a wonderful addition to our little family, so I can't complain!