A New Sense of Order

The parenting columns for Chase's age started talking about teaching your kid how to clean up their own toys a couple of months ago. I tried, but all he would do is grab stuff and spread it around more or throw it around the room. I was so frustrated & figured that I just didn't know what I was doing!

Then, suddenly, he just "got it"! Without me even working with him, Chase started to show a sense of order in things. He still likes to play with the empty macaroni & cheese box & tear the top into pieces, but now he puts the pieces inside what's left of the box, dumps it out & puts it all back in over and over again. He's one of the best helpers at Gymboree class for putting the balls back in the basket to be put away. He loves to hand me his clean clothes, one at a time, to be folded & put in his dresser drawers. To encourage him, I sometimes hand him trash & let him put it in the garbage can and yesterday, while I was washing doors (preparing to put our house up for sale), I let him "help".

Its so much fun & I guess I really shouldn't stress about stuff like that so much. Seems like there are just certain things that come naturally and in their own time.

Head Over Hills for Pink!

The buying of "pink" started a couple of weeks ago after the first sonogram, with just that 60% chance of a girl. Just 2 pink outfits to start with that I figured could always be given away as gifts if we didn't end up with a girl.

A follow up sonogram yesterday confirmed that the chance of a girl is a pretty sure thing. We got a great view (several times) that showed no "boy parts" -- so we're counting on that girl now, even though there's always a chance that we missed something.

That being said, I am not going to be one of those mom's who refuses to buy pink. I've never understood that, though I've heard a lot of it over the years. I've definitely seen cute things in other colors, but we'll be having a lot of pink in this house. I don't know; I guess I kind of look at it as a way of celebrating girliness! And after waiting so long to get our kids, I am celebrating all that I can! We did tons of blue with Chase & will do tons of pink with our little girl to come!

Time to Think

I have been so exhausted with this pregnancy that I typically don't wake up until Chase wakes up - around 8am and then I also need a nap at his naptime. It doesn't leave much quiet time for me during the day! Chase is great & can entertain himself quite a bit, but there's always the sound of his feet running around & his loud voice babbling on & on. I love hearing him, but I've felt a lot like my head is just always clouded up.

I am currently reading a series called The Kingdom and the Crown by Gerald Lund. It is a historical fiction trilogy that takes place at the time that Jesus Christ lived on the Earth. It is so fascinating & touching and I am really learning a lot from it. In the 2nd book, there's a quote from one of the characters that reads: "I want to have time to think. I want to lay on my back and stare up at the clouds and ponder what Jesus is asking of us, of me." I was so touched by that comment and knew that I was definitely missing that in my life.

So, the quest begins to find that "time to think". Now that I have a bit more energy in this 2nd trimester, I've started waking up earlier (most days). And Jeff takes Chase out for a walk or to Gymboree a couple of evenings a week. Its amazing what happens on the days that I get that time to myself to think & work on projects. Not only do I get a TON accomplished, but my head just feels so clear and that feeling of a clear head has just made all the difference in the past few weeks!

15% off Gold Canyon is a sweet deal!

Gold Canyon is offering another great deal & I just had to let everyone know! If its time for you to replenish your candle supply, this is a great way to do it! Your order must be $50 or more & you can place the order on my website: www.gottahavecandles.com If you prefer, you can call or e-mail me your order & I can place it for you for the same great price!

Moving On

What a week we've had! Between our "60% girl" (by the way, I've already bought my first pink baby outfit!) and now finding out that a move is in our future. Jeff applied for a "new job" which is basically a new job with the same company that will transfer us to a new location. We'll be headed to Colorado! We're excited for the change, to get closer to all of our family (in Arizona), and to get out of the humidity (which has been terrible for my rheumatoid arthritis lately).

So, its a good thing & we're so excited! The tough part right now is that we don't know WHEN! The person that Jeff will get all that information from is out of the office until Tuesday of next week. In the meantime, we're busily finishing up all those projects around the house that never get done . . . painting & little fix-ups that would've been nice for us to enjoy while we lived here, but at least they might help us sell the house (oh, please!).

I'm one of those people that always likes to know the future. Its hard for me to walk into the unknown, so while I'm very excited, all the unknowns of . . .

when
will it be before the baby is born & what doctor will I use when we get there
how long do we have to get our house ready to sell
will we be able to sell our house without going into extreme debt
where will we live when we get there
will we pick the right neighborhood

. . . well, those have me a little on edge right now. Looks like this will be one of those times that I get to practice some faith! We knew that buying our current house was the right thing & we feel good about moving to Colorado, so I'll just have to have faith that however it works out, everything will be okay in the end.

60% girl

We went for the "big" ultrasound today. This modest little baby kept those legs crossed the whole time. The tech got one small glimpse that made her lean toward "girl", but she said she could only be 60% sure. My cousin went in for an ultrasound a few weeks ago & was told 70% girl - a second ultrasound a couple of weeks later confirmed they were having a boy!

So, basically, we have no idea at this point, other than the facts that Jeff thinks its a girl, this pregnancy has been a lot easier than the last one, and this baby isn't as wiggly as Chase was. So, we're still hoping for a girl & leaning that way, but who knows what we'll end up with?

It was good, however, just to see the baby's heart beating & see the baby moving - a little bit. (With Chase's ultrasound, he was soooo wiggly; it was so different than this one.) I felt movement with Chase at 13 weeks and consistently from there on out. I'm now 18 weeks and I still don't know for sure if I've felt this baby move. Every now & then I think I might feel something, but I'm really not sure. So, it was so nice to see the movement on the ultrasound to give me the feeling that everything is alright.

What to do with the buttermilk I bought by mistake?

Have you ever gotten home from the grocery store & wonder why you bought something, why it was even on your list? When we were first married, I bought stewed tomatoes, thinking I was picking up tomato sauce. I HATE stewed tomatoes & never use them in recipes.

On a recent grocery trip, I bought the buttermilk that was on my list. When I went to make the zucchini pineapple bread that I thought had buttermilk in it, I discovered that I had mistakenly looked at the wrong recipe when jotting down my list of what I needed. It turns out that no buttermilk was needed.

I don't usually make recipes with buttermilk in them since its not normally something I keep in my refrigerator, but this week I saw a recipe for pancakes that looked so good & since I had the buttermilk anyway, I tried it out. This was the best pancake recipe I've ever tasted! If you'd like to try them, you can check out the recipe at: http://bakerella.blogspot.com/2009/06/good-morning.html Jeff doesn't like blueberries so we left those out & we didn't do the orange maple butter that is included in the recipe.

And, I do still have buttermilk left, so if you have any good recipes using buttermilk, please send them my way!

Making Lemonade

I grew up in a house with a lemon tree. I remember my mom juicing tons of lemons, freezing the juice in ice cube trays and then having a huge container of lemon juice cubes stored in the freezer. My mom would make fresh lemonade by adding water & sugar to the frozen cubes and fresh lemonade continues to be one of my favorite things.

Its been years since we've had a lemon tree, though at family functions I have an uncle that will bring a huge cooler of fresh lemonade & I always drink up as much as I can. Here, so far away from family, I've found that Chick Fil A has great fresh lemonade. You can even buy it by the gallon, but it is very expensive.

The alternative? Simply Lemonade that you can buy at the grocery store is pretty good -- the best fresh lemonade that I've been able to find at the grocery store. And when I was doing my shopping this week, I found a new favorite! Simply Lemonade now makes a lemonade with raspberry & its delicous! Olive Garden has a Raspberry Lemonade that I've always liked & I have to say that this one that you can buy at the grocery store was just as good -- though I do have to admit that I haven't been to Olive Garden in a while.

So, the next time you're looking for a treat at the grocery store, give it a try!

Toddler Velcro Shoes - part 2

So, remember a couple of weeks ago when I went on a rant about toddler sandals only being available with velcro & my little boy who lost a shoe at the mall because of that velcro (which is way too easy for him to get apart)?

Here's the rest of the story . . .

Jeff went out & bought another pair of sandals (velcro, of course, since that's all we can find) -- $22.00, since we couldn't find any cheap pairs at Walmart. After only a couple of weeks, we've lost another shoe! Jeff & Chase went out shopping with 2 shoes on Chase's feet & came home with only one. So, now we have 2 sandals left, but they don't even come close to matching each other.

Today, we bought our 3rd pair of sandals for this summer season. They were only $13 because I managed to find some at Target. FYI: If you're looking for toddler sandals, Target had some great deals, but your kid has to have slimmer feet than my Chase has - not a single one of the styles that were on sale would fit on his feet!

Stay tuned for part 3 of this story. Actually, I hope there won't be a part 3 and this will be the last sandal shopping of 2009!

Wordless Wednesday -

You should know I can't go completely "wordless"! This may seem like something I got from someone else, but it really is from our personal collection of pictures and we really were there, just a few feet away. It still seems surreal that we got to have an experience like that just a few months ago!

Needing a Toddler Schedule

So, enough of the posts about bad things. I'm moving on & won't be talking about my little one who is teething (1st molars) right now!

I've realized in the last few weeks just how much amazing growth Chase is going through right now. He is learning by leaps & bounds. I had heard that between 18 months & 2 years some amazing things happen & now I'm seeing what that really means, even though he's only at 16 months right now.

My little boy is very independent. There are days when I could just leave him by himself & he'd play & be happy. Because of that, its very easy to let him just do his own thing. But when I started to notice how much he was progressing (without any structure), I let the teacher in me take over!

We now have a schedule. Every day (instead of hit & miss), we'll work on specific animal sounds, body parts, active songs/activities, and skills. We tried it out last week & worked on:
Learning: nose Reviewing: belly button, ears, toes
Learning: what a cow says Reviewing: what a sheep & a chicken say
Learning: Ring Around the Rosies
Activities: gymboree class, coloring
Learning: how to drink from a cup

Well, everything went great . . . except the drinking from a cup. I think we'll try that again in a few months. For now, he just has way too much fun dumping the water all over himself! With everything else, the simple act of repeating every day (instead of every few days) helped him to learn so much faster. And he ended up LOVING Ring Around the Rosies. We play a few times a day & its so much fun to interact like that!

Also, for any other mom's who are looking for things like this . . . I looked everywhere for pictures of animals that we could put up in his room for the sounds we were working on for the week. NO LUCK! I finally did a google search for things like "cow coloring page" and found what I was looking for. Jeff colored the pictures & I laminated them & now they're hanging up on the wall. Because they are laminated, I can get them down & let Chase hold them as we review the sounds.

Date Night: Movie & the Hospital

We were pretty excited to get to go on a date yesterday. We were able to get a friend to watch Chase & could plan a nice time out together; we don't do it nearly often enough.

Jeff really wanted to see Transformers, so we decided to do that. We knew the theaters would be packed with most everyone having the day off, so we bought our tickets in advance & Jeff headed to the theater an hour before showtime. I stayed behind to get Chase ready & out the door to the babysitter (much closer to the start time of the movie) so that we didn't have to leave him for so long.

Everything was going smoothly & we were ready to head out the door, when I got a little rush of heartburn that I deal with during pregnancy. I headed up the 2 flights of stairs to our master bedroom to grab a Tums to settle things down. As I stepped into the family room, coming down the last stair, my ankle twisted and I heard a, "pop, pop, pop" as I fell to the ground. The pain in my foot was so bad that I didn't think I'd be able to get up but after a few minutes, I was able to hobble around a little bit, enough to get shoes on both Chase & myself and get out the door. I debated trying to call the theater & have them track Jeff down to take me to the hospital right then, but decided I'd try to tough it out. With horrible pain in my foot, I dropped Chase off & drove to the theater, now unsure of my initial decision to tough it out, as each time I had to press on the brake or the gas pedal gave me a lot of pain and not a lot of control over the car.

The walk into the theater was the worst of all, but I finally made it with just a couple of minutes to spare before the movie was to start. By the time I sat down next to Jeff, I started crying & was trying so hard to get myself under control. He volunteered to forgo the movie & head straight to the hospital, but I wasn't about to get up & try to walk again & figured we might as well sit through the movie.

Side Note: We were very disappointed with the movie - way too many crass sex jokes & foul language to fit my taste - and we wished we had just gone to the hospital instead! If we hadn't been in the middle of a row with tons of people on either side (too difficult to navigate my way through in the dark with my foot in its current state), we would've gotten up & left before it was over.

Anyway, after the movie, I managed to make it out to the curb with a lot of help & support from Jeff and he went & got the car to pick me up. We picked Chase up from the babysitter & went straight to the hospital. With a rambunctious 16 month old, we were glad the wait wasn't long. In fact, we were only there about 2 hours, total. The x-rays, showed no broken bones, but the doctor said there was definitely swelling inside my foot and I was diagnosed with a sprained ankle (funny, since its my foot that hurts & not my ankle!). They sent me home with an aircast boot that inflates to give support around the ankle and actually makes walking & even sitting even more painful than going barefoot. I can see how it would be helpful if my ankle was bothering me, though! LOL

So, instead of heading to the 4th of July breakfast at the church this morning & heading out to do some fun things as a family today, I've been stuck on the couch with my foot up & being iced. After all of that, I can actually walk a bit today, though not without holding on to something. So, Jeff pulled his old forearm crutches out & I've been using those. Jeff is great to take care of me ^ handle Chase & I just hope that the pain continues to subside quickly so I can be walking easily on Monday when he goes back to work.