cookies

i made sugar cookies with ava last week. this makes me a cool mom. despite the fact that seth was cranky and didn't really let me give ava the cookie making attention she needed, it still went well. ava used the cookie cutters, i helped peel the shape off the board and she tossed it carelessly on to the cookie sheet. nothing resembled itself. she didn't care.


ps. the rainbow chip frosting from betty crocker was tried because a super-baking friend of mine has an obsession with it. she has a right to be obsessed. it has enough sugar to lift your eyebrows right off your face, but it is delicious!

how am i doing?

i am on pins and needles, but not the kind that make you all excited for the results of some major competition that you've worked really hard for and are excited about because it's over.

nope.

i'm talking pins and needles because your toddler is holding a handful of butter and your newborn doesn't really want you to put him down and your house is a disaster because you're moving and oh yeah! you're moving.

ugh.

i told ryan that there's a good chance that by the end of this move this house may only have one occupant.

"why?"

"because i'm going to kill everyone."

"even me?"

"probably. because you're going to try to save my intended victim and i'll have to kill you."

things i hate:
realizing that i just packed what i need (the plastic insert for the diaper genie).
not being able to keep track of the freakin' tape!
washing butter off of ava's hands.
living in chaos.
bananas. nasty consistency.

venting does make it all better, so expect a lot.

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baby seth feet, september 2008

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weekly mouse

she watches her barbie and the 12 dancing princesses movie and dances around. when we get to the wedding scene, she becomes hysterical and in desperate need of her snow white dress and crown. then she spins around and does ballet-type moves like holding her leg in the air. by the look on her face, i know she thinks she's completely resembling barbie and her beauty. to me, she looks more like a dog using a hydrant.

weekly guy

his eyes are blue.

one month!

seth is a month.

what?

time slithered by in my last two months of pregnancy (okay, my last nine months of pregnancy) and suddenly, he's here and suddenly, it's a month later and i can barely remember all of the craziness of labor. i just know that i have this gentle little baby who likes to claw at his face (not intentionally, of course).

again, what?

morning moment

it is morning and i push ava's bedroom door open to see her standing in her crib, waiting for me to come and get her.

"good morning, ava!" i say, "i'm so happy to see you!"

"yeah," she agrees. "i missed you mommy."


this is why everyone should be a parent. there is nothing comparable.

everyone has their limits

lounging around in the heat late at night. ryan has a great idea:

"let's get ice cream."

"if we want to go get ice cream we have to change ava's diaper, get her dressed, find her shoes and then we have to change seth, get him in his carrier and pack the diaper bag."

ryan is silent a moment before saying, "they'd have to be giving away free houses for me to do all that for ice cream."

relocation

we are moving. same city, different abode. if all works out as planned, better abode. with three bedrooms. and a yard and a garage (no one should be as excited about a garage as i am, but do you know what this means?? i can go to the grocery store and then i can park the car in the garage and not have to walk fifty feet to and from the house! hooray!). i'm also ridiculously thrilled about the idea of NOT having seth sleep in or just outside of our bedroom. for one so young he is SO. STINKING. LOUD. and i'm completely looking forward to putting him in his bedroom and closing the door. and then sleeping. except i won't be sleeping, i'll be unpacking.

it's going to be awesome!

weekly guy

weekly mouse

a year ago. what a sweet, sweet girl she was (is).

why i make such a great mother

So two days ago was Sunday, a day of church (hah! bet you thought i was going to say rest! well, there is no day of rest when you have children. and, if you're mormon, there's certainly no such thing as the sabbath being a "day of rest"). a week from last sunday, ryan and i attempted to shower and dress ourselves and our two young children and make it to our church meeting starting at 12:30. we almost did not make it. this is partly due to the fact that seth decided he was hungry just as we were putting him in his car seat. and then there was that moment when ava took her hand, dipped it in her cereal bowl, swished it around for good measure and then proceeded to wipe it dry on her hair. this was following the conversation ryan and i had about bathing children (silly me, i wanted to bathe them all).

"hey ry, will you put her in the bath?"

"why, is she dirty?"

"well, yeah. and she hasn't bathed since thursday morning."

"she doesn't smell bad to me."

"it's been three days since her last bath. she's dirty."

"i think we should only bathe our children if they smell."

yes, spoken like a true man. sadly, bath or no bath, the milk in the hair was done right before we left. ava's head dried to a nice crispy cowlick that was immovable. she also had just discovered a headband and refused to either leave it in or leave it at home. so on top of the cowlick made of milk, she also was sporting a very badly placed headband.

we made it, but by the time hour one was over, i was exhausted. and, since i'd just had a baby, i got to go home (lucky me). my mother had left her car keys with me when i promised that we'd drive my brothers home from church, so i told ryan i was leaving and taking the baby and drove home.

drove home to realize that the house key was on ryan's keychain and not my mother's. so i sat outside on the patio and nursed my baby. like i was some sort of placenta-burying woman or something. then ryan came home with my brothers and, "where's ava?" was asked by all.

it was asked because we'd left her at church. somehow, ryan thought that i was taking both kids home with me and i thought i was taking half of the kids home with me. we stink.

so ryan rushed back to the church building and i called and left messages with ava's teachers. lucky for ava, my dad was still at the church building and ava's teacher simply handed her over. ava thought she'd just been the lucky winner of some extra grandpa time. i am, meanwhile, feeling an awful amount of guilt and wondering just how much therapy i'm going to need to get over this.

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more green acorns

accomplishments

sometimes i feel that i may never get another thing done ever again.

weekly mice

the face she makes when i tell her to smile

you may call it brown, but i call it gold

pictures from our hike to the chumash center on saturday:i love california. as we hiked through the heat (ava's face matched her shirt) ryan and i kept commenting to each other about the smell: a combination of oak trees, dirt and "fresh air". it felt good to be outside, it felt good to be moving around in it. and it felt especially good to do both and not be pregnant at the same time (new for me. both ryan and i felt that my seth pregnancy was twice as long as my ava pregnancy). new family goal: hike more (perfect timing since "fall" is arriving and it'll cool down a bit).

quick story: friends moved to california from the midwest (a place that amazed with its ability to be green of its own accord) and were looking at houses with a realtor. my friend looked around at our rolling hills and said, "it's so brown."
the realtor replied, "we prefer the word gold."

it was brown on saturday. and yet still so beautiful.

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i've never seen them green before (and still on the tree, for that matter). it was the only green i saw the whole hike.

grocery car-cart

my local grocery stores have all invested in grocery carts with cars stuck on to the front of them. you'd think this was a good idea, i know i did, but then i used it. it is impossible to steer. it's long. you can't tell when you're too close to things so you just plow them over (i received many mean looks that i didn't understand until i finally figured out i was hitting people). also, ava likes it and wants to get in it and then get out and then get in and then get out which made my grocery shopping experience hideously long. and of course, the most exciting part, trying to get your 2-year-old to leave the stupid grocery car-cart behind and get in to her car seat. i love driving around with someone screaming at the top of her lungs and kicking my seat. it's my favorite thing to do. and then, every time we see it, she cries and wants to use that car-cart instead of the regular cart. so every grocery trip begins with a whine and a short cry.
so last night i needed one thing. and i thought, 'i'll take ava with me.' so we got her dressed for bed, slipped some shoes on her feet and hurried to the store. only to come to a dead stop right in front of that stupid car-cart. someone had left it right next to the front door. so i told her we could play in it for a moment then run in and shop and come out and say good bye to it. this sort of worked. i mean, in the beginning when she was told there was more to come, but at the end when i was prompting her to "say goodbye to the car" she was just melting all over the place, sobbing, throwing herself on to the car. . .
ugh. so i had to pick her up and wrestle her into her car seat.

my question is this, do any of you have any good experiences with the grocery car-carts? am i alone in this loathing for those ridiculously hard to push, extra-long pieces of plastic trouble?

ps i googled "grocery car-carts" to find a picture and my results showed me all sorts of celebrities putting their groceries into their cars. isn't that strange? why are we taking pictures of celebrities while they grocery shop?

one week

this week we've been home a lot (due to the baby and all). we've done a lot of coloring, walks, dancing like ballerinas in the living room and book reading. and breastfeeding. a lot of breastfeeding.
so, on our official one week anniversary of being home, i have a few thoughts i'd like to share:

1. my friend dana was totally right: having two children is not harder, it's just more work (some of you may consider that to be harder, but i take physical labor over emotional labor any day). as a result, many emails have gone unanswered, many phone calls have been ignored and all sorts of things that need doing have gone undone. for example: there is a dead tomato plant on my porch. and it's been there since i went to the hospital and ryan forgot to water it. and that was a week and a half ago. i hate the sight of that tomato plant. and i miss the tomatoes. so does ryan.

2. i am way better at being a mom to seth than i was to ava (for that i apologize, ava). ava made me so nervous! i could barely shower as a new mother. and this morning? this morning i awoke and hopped in the shower just like that. it didn't occur to me that seth might awaken or be stolen or choke on something or attempt to climb the bookshelf which would fall on top of him and crush him to death. i am much less morbid this time around (thus the better mothering).

3. breastfeeding is a sucess. it always feels good to conquer something hard. it is akin to delivering ava naturally. i am empowered by my body's natural ability to mother, although i know i spend way more time than i ought to thinking over seth's latch. i'm going to end on that note because i know i have a few male readers and i don't want to get gory. i will add this: breastfeeding could be the most thirst inducing activity i've ever engaged in. dude, if you only knew.

4. ava is bored. to be honest, so am i. sitting in the house all day long is not fun. but seth is too little to be out and about and so, for his sake, we sit at home like the two children in the cat in the hat, staring out the window while it rains, too bored to think of anything to do inside. i call my mother almost daily and plead, "come over." as soon as that six weeks is up, we are out of here! i already have a list of things we're going to do (like the zoo and the barnes & noble storytime).

5. going places with two children isn't as bad as i thought it would be. it helps that one is contained. so aside from the fact that i feel as though i have packed all of my personal belongings into my diaper bag, we are more mobile than i had anticipated. i'm currently on the lookout for another diaper bag that isn't so purse-like and is more like a messenger bag, but with all of the pockets. i love the pockets in a diaper bag.seth is already bigger. this is the worst part of parenting: i feel like i'm busy with taking care of my children and then at the end of the day, when i'm exhausted and everyone's in bed, i'll think of a little thing that ava did (like when she ran a little too fast and startled seth and immediately said, "sorry." and kissed his head) or a little thing that seth did (like the big subconcious smile he flashed right as i slipped him into his cradle) and i realize that they're changing everyday and slipping out of their present forms and into future ones. and sure, i'm going to love the future ones just as much as the present ones (maybe more), but present forms become past forms and are never seen again.
so seth is moving into future forms, wiggling with a slightly better wiggle, his eyes are growing lighter and his baby acne is slowly taking over the planet. and with each day, i see more and more ryan in his little face.
and ava's discovered two things: the first is that ballerinas are almost as cool as princesses. she spends about two hours a day spinning in a haphazard way with arms out in the living room. i watch and anticipate a head concusion. my mom comes over and tries really hard not to look like she's enjoying herself to much. as soon as you look like you're enjoying yourself ava will shout at you, "DON'T!" and refuse to dance anymore.

the second discovery is band-aids. they are the coolest accessory by far (better than the crown). ava wants one at all times of the day. she puts it on various "owies" until it's disgusting and without any stickiness left. then i have to distract her so i can throw it away. then she'll notice it's gone and ask for another (incessantly) while i explain that band-aids are for owies. then she goes and hurts herself so she can have one (i'm rethinking that strategy).
so there you are: a week of staying home and nursing a newborn while simultaneously attempting to keep my 2-year-old under control. with my legs. it is awesome.

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ava and ryan feet, august 2008