Utah!

Last month Parker, Kate and I made a special trip to Utah for the wedding of my friend's little brother... It sounds weird when I say it like that.  Because she's not just my "friend," she's my friend for life, my BFF.  And her parents are like my parents and her siblings are like my siblings and consequently, Parker and Kate have an extra set of grandparents.  Anyway, so of course we had to go to the wedding.  Unfortunately, Paul wasn't able to get time off of work so it was just me and the kiddos.  Within the first few hours of our trip I had three people tell me how brave I was to fly by myself with two small kids in tow.  We had a pretty easy time though, but it did take some advance planning to make things run smoothly.  For example, we had a late morning flight (Paul was at work), so I chose to park our car in the long term parking lot and take the shuttle to the airport.  I knew that Southwest had an outdoor check-in and baggage drop and so I planned on asking the shuttle driver to drop us off right in front of it.  Also, because we had two suitcases, two car seats, two backpacks and a stroller, I wasn't able to take all of our luggage to the shuttle stop in one trip, and I didn't want to leave the luggage or the kids unattended at the stop while I made a second trip to the car.  So, I parked in a parking spot that was close to where the shuttle exits the parking lot and had the driver stop at our car on the way to the airport to pick up our remaining gear.  The plan was to have Paul either move the car to a residential street near the airport or come with a friend to drive the car home, but wouldn't you know it, he couldn't find his car key. I'll give you one guess as to who hid the key. So, my great idea turned into a rather expensive one, but at least we made it to the airport happy and on time.

We stayed with Aunt Kim for two nights and then with Jenni's in-laws the next two nights (Jenni, Jake, and their darlings were staying there too).  My dad even came down from Idaho to see us!



He watched Parker and Kate during the sealing and was all-around incredibly helpful.  I think the trip would have been stressful if he hadn't been there.  We really had a wonderful time.  The wedding was lovely and it was so nice to be surrounded by loved ones.





It was so cute to see Parker and Scarlett interact with each other.










She was definitely the leader in their twosome.  Parker would follow her around and make sure she knew that he wanted to play with her.  We went to a park one morning and somehow Scarlett slipped away to a different play area without Parker realizing it.  He started wandering around shouting, "I'm looking for my friend Scarlett!"









Lucky for us we got to be there for Jenni's twins' birthday party!  

(Thank goodness there were presents x2 because apparently Parker has not mastered the concept of who gets to open birthday presents.)



They truly are the cutest twins you'll ever meet.  In college Jenni and I used to joke that we were the same person.  Living together sort of morphed us into one big, awesome super-nerd.  And then we got married within months of each other, got pregnant at the same time and had frank breech babies.  I was a little thrown off my axis when she announced that she was having identical twins!  I was secretly scared that the doctor was going to tell me that I too was pregnant with twins when I got pregnant a few months later. Even though they aren't as close in age as Parker and Scarlett, the twins are a little small for their age and Kate is a little big for hers, so all is right in the world. 

A huge thank you to Aunt Jami for the matching pajamas.

A Momentous Occasion

I finished Parker's church quiet book!  (Finally!)  It all started about a year and a half ago.  I had been toying with the idea of making a gospel-themed quiet book, but couldn't commit to such a big project.  Then, after watching the October General Conference, I decided that I would go for it.  It seems that everyone is touched by the messages of Conference in a different way; the major themes are so personal and varied.  For me, what stood out was that we need to be teaching our children the principles of the gospel at home and at an early age.  In the world we live in it's not enough to have their only exposure to Jesus Christ on Sundays at church.  I thought that a quiet book would be a fun, interactive way to teach Parker the gospel at home and on his level. But making a quiet book is a huge undertaking and so I decided to do a co-op.  Not only would this ease the burden (financially, creatively, time-wise, etc.), but it would also be a great way to make friends and get to know people in our new ward.  (We had moved in just a few months prior.)  So I sent out an email describing my plan and got a great response.  Each girl would make multiple copies of a single page and then we would all exchange pages to get a complete book.  I was so pleased with the results.  I think every girl could agree that it was a lot of work and we were thrilled when we were finally done.

But the funny thing was, we weren't done.  We still had to bind the book.  This is where things really slowed down for me.  So instead of having a church quiet book, Parker played with fraying church quiet pages.  I loved each page the other girls made, but there were some things I wanted to add to make it a little more cohesive.  Not only that, but I had no idea how to bind a book and because it was something so new and foreign to me, I just put it off.  I knew that I wanted to have a zippered book so that the pieces wouldn't fall out, but I'd never before installed a zipper.  That is, until a few months ago when I made throw pillows for our couch that have invisible zippers.  I found out that it's not that hard!  Also, instead of eyelets I originally wanted to make button holes for the rings to go through, but I had never made button holes.  For two days I practiced and practiced doing button holes with my sewing machine, but they never turned out right.  The tension was off and sometimes the machine didn't finish off the circle of stitches.  I troubleshooted until I was blue in the face and then decided that I'd just use eyelets.  Anyway, without further ado, I present to you, The Church Quiet Book:

I made this page after the fact, so that I'd have an even number of pages.  I love the way Moses turned out.  He's snapped onto the outside and can snap his way across the dry ground on the inside.  The sea creatures (from Etsy) are velcroed on and can be moved around.

I worked a lot on this page.  We were supposed to leave a half inch border all the way around our pages for binding purposes, but the girl who made this page didn't.  I ended up taking it apart, cutting back the felt, and re-sewing it on.  I embroidered the words onto the page and I also put vinyl on the inside of the water so that the fish slide out easier.

 
I embroidered the words onto this page.

Originally this shoe was on a page that said, "Tie The Shoe" written in marker.  I wanted to make it more church-themed and look a little nicer, so I put it on a new page and added the glove and the iron-on words.

I added the embroidered words to this page.  Originally there was an assortment of small plastic animals and finger puppets inside the ark.  I thought it would be fun to have animal pairs, so I ordered these from Etsy and added a few gender-specific details.

This is the page I made for everyone.  I tried a million and one different adhesives to make the vinyl stick to the felt and ultimately found that a very thick layer of hot glue was the only thing that worked.  After seeing the other pages, I decided that mine would benefit by being a little more interactive, so I added the fishes after the fact.

I added the embroidered words to this page.

And here's how it's all held together.  I really wanted rings so that I could add more pages in the future if I wanted to, but let's be honest, that's never going to happen.  I'm so glad to have this thing done and not continuously on my to-do list.

As this project stretched on and on, I kept kicking myself for spending so much time on it.  I mean, it's meant for children and is probably going to get thrashed, right?  In fact, a couple weeks ago Kate spit up all over the Peter Fishing page.  She had just eaten some squash and there were orange chunks all over it.  Gross. The point is to teach the gospel and certainly Parker won't care about some of the details I added.  Oh well.  I hope that it can withstand the use of lots of children and that hopefully they can learn from it.

Ha!

I was flipping through the photos on our camera the other day and laughed out loud when I saw these two consecutive pictures.  Paul's patient and Kate have the same smile!  Ha!

Old Man Pablo!

Paul turned the big 3-0 last week.  Adios, 20s, this is when life really starts to get good. I offered to make any extravagant dessert that his 30-year-old heart desired, but he was adamant about having a funfetti cake.  Paul loves treats.  I'm sure he hasn't ever met one that he didn't love, but truly, his preferences are far from sophisticated.  I think probably the fastest way to win this man over is with an offering of a Hostess cupcake.  Or Twinkie.  Or Swiss Cake Roll.

In our six and a half years of marriage, there are have been only three desserts requested for his birthday: brownies (the boxed Ghirardelli mix), funfetti cake and strawberry pie.  This year I decided to make two.  Parker and I made funfetti cupcakes that we took to his work and then we had strawberry pie that evening.  I was surprised to find out that the staff at the office had also brought in some treats- an oreo cake and cookies!  I think Paul worked through the afternoon in a sugar coma.  We had planned on going out to dinner, but Kate went to bed that night at 5:00, so when Paul got home I went and picked up some fish tacos and brought them home.

Parker made a card for Paul.  I helped him write a Parker-original joke on it.  "Two years old?!  Psych!"

His parents gave him the gift of a vacation- without any kids!  They offered to watch Parker and Kate while we have a little get away.  Paul will be sure to wear his vacation shirt.  :)

I gave him two tickets to the rodeo next month.

John and Trudy also sent some M&Ms, which Parker immediately deemed as his own.

Consequences

This week started out a little rough, but I'm determined to end it on a high note.

During Sacrament Meeting on Sunday Parker passed some gas stinky enough to fool Paul and I into thinking that he'd pooped. I grabbed a diaper and wipes and was ready to take Parker to the bathroom when Paul decided to do a quick visual to make sure that Parker actually had a messy diaper.  Turns out it was a false alarm, but the prospect of potentially leaving the chapel was like dangling a donut in front of his face and then eating it yourself.  It was too much for Parker to handle.  His good behavior quickly turned sour and he started acting up.  I took him out to the foyer, but made him sit on my lap and told him that he could only get down if it was to go back into the chapel and sit next to dada and Kate.  He consented, only to be taken out again moments later. This time we had to go into a classroom because even in the foyer he was being disruptive.  In fact, people in the chapel could probably still have heard him from where we were in the classroom.  Determined to not have a repeat performance this Sunday, I pronounced the worst punishment I could think of: no iPad for a week. Paul and I have purposefully used the iPad in front of Parker to remind him of the consequences of his behavior. Hopefully it's enough to motivate him to be better behaved this Sunday.

I think Parker has given up his naps.  Today marks the fifth consecutive day he hasn't taken one.  The first three days were rough to say the least, but with an earlier bedtime, things have more or less equilibrated. On Monday he was in timeout no less than ten times. (I pray that by now he has learned to not throw things... books at Kate's head in particular.) During one of those timeout sessions, he threw something at his light switch that caused it to break.  When I told him that he'd have to use some of his birthday money to buy a new one he was devastated and when I said that he'd have to use one of the "big monies" (anything greater than $1 is considered big), he was even more broken up.

The next day he found himself once again in timeout. Usually timeout is only a few minutes long, but somehow in those three minutes he managed to dump all of his toys, stuffed animals and most of his clothes onto the floor. I remember learning in a BYU class about how children can get overwhelmed with a long to-do list; their brains can process only one thing at a time, so telling a child to just "clean your room" may be too much for them to handle.  Instead, you should break up the tasks and allow them to finish a task before giving them another one.  I've noticed that this is true with Parker in other areas as well.  If I say, "Ok, eat your sandwich and what would you like to drink?" he'll freak out and say, "No! I have to eat my sandwich! I can't have a drink."  Anyway,  I can often get him to clean up if we do it together, but it felt like rewarding his bad choices if I helped him clean up when he'd made the mess out of anger.  But I knew that he'd need a little guidance, so I told him to start with his train tracks.  "No, mama clean up my train tracks."  Ha!  Yeah right. I ended up leaving his room and shutting the door (he has a child lock on the inside) and told him that he could come out after he cleaned up his tracks.  Hello tantrum!  I went to check on him every so often, but I think it was about 45 minutes before his tracks were put away.  And then we cleaned up the rest together.  I guess we both won that one.

Grandpa Bob Visits

Since Kate's birth we have been lucky enough to have my dad visit several times.  Four times?  Five?  I can't remember, but it's always so nice when he's here.  We get to explore new places in San Diego that I wouldn't normally brave alone.  Even just going to the grocery store is infinitely easier with an extra set of hands.  Parker and Kate get spoiled to the max.  I should probably be more careful when talking about things they need/what I want for them because my dad always says, "Well, let's go get it for them!"  My dad was here for Parker's birthday weekend and it was so fun to celebrate with him.  While he was here Kate got a new wardrobe, we went to Old Town, Seaport Village, the Living Coast Discovery Center, the Gaslamp Quarter, ate at lots of fun restaurants and I finally, finally got to see Ender's Game.  Come back anytime, Grandpa Bob!

Parker Has a Birthday

We had a fun celebration on Parker's birthday.  In the morning we went to the Living Coast Discovery Center.  It's a small nature reserve that has marine animals and birds on display and it was the perfect size to hold a toddler's attention and also allowed us to see everything in between Kate's morning and afternoon nap.

On our way home we stopped and got a little treat.  (Paul has instilled in Parker a very fervent love of all things donuts.)

We asked Parker what kind of cupcakes he wanted for his birthday.  Initially he kept saying, "pink ones!" (which didn't go over very well with Paul).  We asked him if we wanted chocolate or vanilla or lots of different colors like last year.  He just kept saying pink, but eventually consented to red, which I then interpreted to mean red velvet.  Parker helped decorate them.

We went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner where Parker got to eat one of his favorite foods (french fries) and play in the play place.  Afterward it was time for presents and cupcakes.  Parker elected to open presents first.  We had been trying to really hype up his birthday in the preceding weeks to get him excited.  Any time we asked him what he wanted it was always the same answer: a Lightning McQueen race car toilet.  This was a win-win all around.  It was a great way to get him excited about getting potty trained, plus, we would have gotten him a training potty anyway, so to have him want it for his birthday was perfect.  We also got him some big boy undies.  Since his birthday he hasn't shown any additional interest in getting potty trained, and I'm really in no rush, but the seed has been planted.  Soon enough, soon enough.  He got some other fun gifts too...

Turns out that Parker did not inherit my love of cupcakes; he didn't eat a single one. A kid who doesn't like cupcakes?!  Sounds to me like that should be illegal.