Bread

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. ~John 6:35

We're having the missionaries over for dinner tonight, like we do every Friday. I decided to be ambitious and try out a new recipe for some awesome homemade spaghetti. The sauce is looking and smelling fantastic so far. I have yet to try it (weird, I know), but Jacob says it's great.
Now for the garlic bread to go with it. Since I was planning on going hard-core with the sauce, I bought a bagged salad and was going to do some frozen garlic bread. But, since our local grocery store is itty bitty, they didn't have any. 

Plan 2: Toast up some bread and put butter and garlic salt on it. But .. .I used the last of our bread for my sandwich at lunch. 

Well, says I, let's go ALL OUT and make some breadsticks. This is very risky, folks. The few instances I've tried to make any sort of bread, I make a huge mess, the dough doesn't turn out right, and the finished product is so-so, leaving me and myself as a giant ball of frustration. Side note: This is why my husband is the bread maker in the family. Alas, he had his first school meetings this afternoon, which made the bread situation up to me. 

Let's do it.

Oh, but let's add to the mix a three year old.

>And you know what .. .it turned out alright! Thankfully we have a big table now, so Laura could just sit plopped up there while I sat in a kitchen chair. Granted, she didn't have any clothes on besides a shirt (that's the mom-laziness factor of not putting a diaper on after her last attempt on the potty), and we both made a huge mess. But, I decided I was going to have fun with this .. .and we did! I can see how I easily could have gotten frustrated and shooed Laura away, but I didn't. I think because of that I held myself in check better .. .I was more ok with the mess and the sticky goo-y dough because I wanted it to be a fun experience for me and my daughter. She was so good at pulling out a wad of dough and holding it in her hands. Once I was done shaping what was in my hands, she'd hand me her wad, "Here you go Mommy, another one!"

She also pretended to add salt, sugar, and milk ("This needs more salt. And milk. Sugar and milk. Yum!") And she called them "poopsticks" more than once (#facepalm #toddlerforthewin). When we were all done, she wanted to lick the bowl, so I let her. "Can I eat the flour? Yum!" My most favorite thing was when I said, "This is fun, huh?" and Laura said, "No, it's not fun. It's DANGEROUS!!"

Someday she will smile for pictures.

Home

I decided I want to be more regular in posting on my blog. I got the inspiration from reading Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson. (Side note: this is a great book, and an easy read in one day if you need something to read. It was a DI special =). Perhaps you've heard or seen of Stephanie-she is a popular LDS mommy blogger who had burns over 80% of her body in a plane crash. In her book, she explains that while she and her family were living on the East Coast, she felt really homesick for her family and friends in Utah, so she decided to start a blog to reach out to those she was no longer physically close to.  I was inspired by her dedication and love for motherhood, and like her, I have felt the everyday joys of being a mother to beautiful children.

While I live hours away from the closest family, I feel so at home right where we are. I don't feel homesick, but I do want a way to document to myself and others what home and motherhood is to me on a daily basis. We have made friends quickly here, and we love the low-key environment and close community. This is our sixth place where we've lived in our 4 years of marriage. Our first few homes that we lived in were each temporary, mostly because we were still in school and we didn't know where our post-school plans would take us. Because we didn't anticipate living in those apartments for very long, we were able to endure tight, old, dirty or inconvenient living spaces.

When we took our first job in Magna two years ago, we were excited to have a real job and be in the real world on our own. It was the biggest apartment we had ever lived in, and it felt huge to us. (And then we had two more kids there and started to feel just a bit cramped by the end. . . .) When I look back on those first few months there, I remember feeling mixed emotions. Even though we had a good home, I remember feeling a heavy weight of worry. Mostly I worried about three things: not having a car, having a baby soon, and not having home internet. In time, each of those situations worked out well for us, and the absence of those things taught me self-reliance. We had good friends there, and we were sad to leave.

But here-we felt right at home from the first day. This was really the first move we've had that had ward members help. Previously, we lived close enough to family that they helped us. When he got here, someone brought us dinner that first night, someone else watched the girls while we unpacked, and we had a neighborhood fire pit that night. Our kids love playing with the neighborhood kids here in the complex (often nicknamed "The Compound"), especially the Gosneys (Spencer, 9, James, 7, Carrie, 3, and Leah, almost 1) and the Muhelsteins (Joy, 4 and Ammon, 18 months). Laura plays outside every day, rain or shine (unless she's grounded). Jacob has a garden that he loves. Lucy is just happy wherever we are or whoever she's with. Sam gets cuddles and lovin' from all the soon-to-be-grandmas in the ward. We have 7 closets in our apartment. Jacob walks 100 yards to go to work. We walk across the street (and two cattle guards!) to church. We have the missionaries over every Friday for dinner.

Life is good. We are so happy here. And it feels like home. Magna felt like home, but I think it took a while for me to really feel like home there. Perhaps that was because of the lack of those things mentioned above, or perhaps because our closest friends there moved in after we had been there a year or so. This feels right. This is right. I thought I would miss Magna, and in a way I do. But now it's just one of those previous homes that carries wonderful memories. .. similar to the home I grew up in. I had wonderful times there and I will never regret living there, but right now I am where I need to be.

I've got two naked girls who need to go potty, and a baby who's crying, but I'll throw in a picture of the view from our kitchen window.

Until later--

This was during a thunderstorm, and you can barely see a rainbow in the picture. Isn't this beautiful?!

Mommy Win! (They Happen Every Once in a While. . .. =)

Laura threw a book at me today. She was genuinely surprised when it hit my head. Before I could even get upset (which frankly, I am prone to do sometimes!), she came up to me with wide eyes and hugged and kissed me and said, "I'm sorry Mommy! It's OK, Mommy! Calm down, Mommy! It's OK!"

My heart melted at that! I love how she is learning the natural consequences for her actions (i.e.-throwing a book at someone's head will most likely result in some sort of owie). And I love her gentle nature that had her comforting me right away. She's seen Mommy and Daddy comfort Lucy when she's crying by saying the same things--it's okay, calm down, etc.

Today I also fully implemented a new reward system, and we've had EXCELLENT results so far! I've had some packages of raffle tickets that I bought several months ago to use for my Usborne business. Since I wasn't using them, and the girls liked to play with them, I decided to put them to use. So now Laura can earn tickets for things like:

-reading a book with Mommy or Daddy
-sharing toys
-helping with household chores (laundry, dishes, etc.)
-putting away clothes, toys, dishes, etc.
-sitting on the potty
-making pee pee or poo poo on the potty.

She loses tickets for things like:

-hitting, poking, pushing, etc.
-not finishing a meal
-having potty accidents in her panties
-screaming

So I did that for a few days, letting her earn and lose tickets, and then I attached rewards to them. So, for 15 tickets, she can watch one episode of Dora the Explorer (then she's not watching 15 million of those a day!). She can get an ice cream cone for 25 tickets, a candy for 5 tickets, etc. Granted, right now, all she wants to use her tickets for is watching Dora, but something is finally working! She gets so excited when we count the tickets together to see if she has enough for her desired prizes. Sometimes she was so close, I had to quickly decide something I needed help with so she could earn a ticket. "Hey, let's draw a picture for Daddy!" or "These blocks need to be put away." It's a good motivator for me too . ..I have to find positive things for her to do, instead of just letting her watch Dora after Dora all morning. . . .=) Hopefully this excitement continues over the next several days and weeks! =)

p.s. She always asks for a snack cup full of carrots while she's watching Dora. If my kid is asking for vegetables for a snack, I certainly won't deny her of them!! =)

The Girls.

Laura loves to climb up on my lap and say "Read me a story!" In saying that, she really means that she wants me to make up a story on the spot and tell it to her. She likes to climb into laundry baskets and hampers, and she loves to color. She'll scribble something and say, "Ah! It's my name!" Then, when every paper has one tiny mark on it, she claims, "I need more paper, Mommy!!"

The other day I was singing the Dora the Explorer song "Dora Dora Dora, the explorer!" and I tried getting her to fill in the "explorer" part. Instead, she says "The giiirrlll!" She fake coughs so she can try to ask for medicine. She loves candy-nola (granola) bars and always wants them for her treat for going potty. Speaking of potty, she'll pull out her potty into the living room and say, "I need to do my exercises." She then promptly climbs up and jumps off her her potty several times in a row. She likes jumping down curbs and jumping out of the car, too.

It's fun taking the girls to the pediatrician's office. If it's for Lucy, Laura likes to say, "Not for me, not me." But she loves watching the doctor do her thing, "What her doing to Lucy?" And inevitably, she always grabs at least 3 urine sample cups, opens them and asks me to put water in them. So yes, she drinks water out of the urine cups. =)

She loves trying on and wearing shoes. Any size. She likes to climb up on the stool or couch and say, "I am tall, Mommy!" Her favorite phrases lately are "What _______ doing Mommy?" & "Are you happy, Mommy?" (She's even learned other emotions, "Are you upset Mommy?") She likes to talk about her upcoming birthday: she will be three, and she will eat cake.

Earlier today, I heard the girls playing in the bathroom, then I heard Lucy crying really hard. It turns out, Laura had grabbed the dishrag from the kitchen sink, soaked it and tried giving Lucy a sponge bath, "I clean Lucy, Mommy! I clean Lucy!" Besides the hysterical crying, it was pretty funny.

Lucy makes the CUTEST faces. I love when she nods with her little lips puckered over her teeth. She's a food magnet and finds anybody who has food. She GUZZLES milk and will drink her entire sippy cup within just a few minutes. And then she usually burps pretty loudly, and it's cute. She has the darlingest grin with a dimple in each round cheek. Besides Mama and Dada, she can say "Baa" (ball), "App-uh" (apple) and "Eh-eh-ooo" (Let it go). I love her little bow-legged, big belly waddle! When we go outside on the playground, she is content just to walk on the sidewalk, rarely venturing to the sand or even the grass. She had her 15-month checkup yesterday, and it turns out she has a little ear infection, so she gets to take medicine day and night for it for a few days (which is why Laura thinks she should get medicine, too).

I am so blessed to be home with these two little munchkins every day! Some of these little things that they do are so endearing, I don't want to forget them, so I write them down. =) Being a mom is the best!

Sewing Bits

Now that my sewing machine is fixed, I've worked on a couple of projects lately. I had a couple of yards of coordinating fabric  that I was going to use for a car seat cover. Then I  decided that I  hate those things, so I put that fabric to  good use. I made two little pet pouches to hold the girls' stuffed animals! One is pictured here, and  the other is like unto  it. . . .just a pink, teal, and yellow birdie  fabric.

I have also been working on  Baby  Sam's quilt. I finished a couple dozen pinwheel blocks, which will make half of the quilt top design. They look  like this. 

Hooray for some fun projects!

The Little Memories I Want to Remember Forever

Sometimes when Laura is hungry, she says, "Dinnertime!" So I said, "Yeah, we should probably have lunch, soon, huh?"

So she goes to the fridge and brings me the tupperware of leftover cookie dough. "I need cookie dough, Mommy! Eat cookie dough?" Well, she's obviously seen us do it before, and with the sweetness overload (of the cookie dough and the cute kid), I couldn't say no.

We snuggled on the chair picking out and eating cookie dough with our hands. Laura grabbed a toddler-size fistful and said, "Big bite Mommy!" and stuffed it all in her mouth. And then for no reason at all we both started giggling with our mouths full of cookie dough. Here we are a pair of dirty ragamuffins (both overdue for a shower/bath) snuggling, eating cookie dough and laughing like little miscreants.

Another funny thing-on Sunday, she was playing with her little go-car thing, and she said out of the blue, "I go to Bethlehem!"

Recently she likes to ask, "What (someone's name) doing?" Or "Where (someone)?" She had a whole series of "Where Stephen? Where Charlotte? Where Kyle?" questions. I usually answer those, "At Stephen's house," etc. She asked a whole series of those questions and ended with, "Where's Heavenly Father?" Ahh . ..what a sweet moment! Now she knows that Heavenly Father is in heaven. =)

I love being a mom. =)

Giggles and Grins

Often I feel like I talk about Laura more because she's older and more active, vocal and physical. But this post is about my little chubby baby girl who captures my heart every day.

Have I mentioned how much I LOOOVEE Lucy's giggle and grin? She has the chubbiest, roundest cheeks, a mouthful of teeth, and the cutest dimples and little roundy nose .. .aaahhh! I just can't get over how cute she is! (I really should post pictures since just talking about her doesn't do her justice)

Right now, she's in her high chair just giggling away. 'Course, she did just have lots of food for lunch . ..including juice and some cookie dough for dessert. =)

She's really good at clapping (often when other people are), and pointing to her nose. I say, "Point to your nose!" and she puts her finger and thumb in a gun pose and points to her teeth. Sometimes she'll just rub the side of her head with her palm. Bah! Cuteness overload. And she still has the out of control arms sometimes that like to bang on things or just wave.

Somehow she's learned to get one arm out of her bib, so she usually has a bib half on at mealtimes. I love when she laughs at silly things .. .like a movie or her sister's antics or something random. She actually loves being tickled on her bare belly. And she loves to watch videos of herself .. .she just laughs and laughs at herself because she thinks she's so funny.

This is one of my favorite videos of the girls--mostly because Lucy is giggling like none other, and she's super duper happy. And because Laura is doing what she does best--playing with non-toys with her little flair for movement and drama.