Penguin Park

Today we ventured out in the hot MO-town sun to Penguin Park. Josh had never been there, he's only seen the pictures on here. He finished his mid-term today early so we made like penguins and skee-daddled.


Josh really did not want to be in any of the pictures! Sorry! Conrad was a good sport, and I asked Josh to take a picture of me with my kids because I don't have any. Now I do!

a few more pictures of Amelia here!

Can't Wait!

18 days until I arrive in SLC. Erin comes home in 21!
I have been thinking about the upcoming trip to Utah for awhile now... since I left there when I was 7 months pregnant. And I've been thinking about all the things I miss about Utah, or things I miss doing in Utah. So, I'm making a list of all the things I want to do when I arrive in 18 more days.
1- BURGER BAR! Ohh I miss that place! There is nothing remotely close to Burger Bar out here in MO-town. My favorite shakes are either their banana or their tropical shakes. SO GOOD! And their Big Bens!!! Oh, I love them.
2-Roast Marshmallows in the backyard. An electric stove top just doesn't do the job. And it's a fire hazard. eek!
3-Stay up with my baby sister gabbing about nothing at all... and loving every second of it.
4-I miss big backyards. A 250 sq. foot backyard just doesn't compare to the big backyards of my fellow Utah family members. My in-loves even have a horse pasture!
5-I miss needing to wear a light jacket once the sun goes down... here in MO-town it is HOT ALL THE TIME thanks to humidity.
6-Eat dutch oven dinner. Or at least dessert. I am going to have to get the ball rolling on this one...

Ok, I better stop there. This might be like rubbing salt in a wound for Josh. He is not coming. Poor guy. I will miss him, and I'm sure everybody else will miss him too! I'm sure I'll think of more things though... I am so excited!

Happy Birthday Lea!

Happy Birthday to my funny sister-in-law Lea! (Lea is in the red)
Sorry this is the only picture I have of you on my computer! (Although I think it's pretty special now!) :)
If you by some miracle look at my blog on your birthday I am surprised! You are one busy girl. Bad news: It is now your turn to make a blog... we don't want you to be left out! (and when I say "we" I mean me, Cindy, and Jamie!) Me and Josh are really missing out on watching our neices grow up. But Happy Birthday anyway. You are missed!!!

I eats me spinach

Being the nursing mom that I am I eat a lot. More than I need, obviously, since I've gained weight since I had Amelia rather than lost it. Anyway, I'll try to get straight to the point... I like to eat healthy. Ok, in reality I just like to eat my vegetables so that I have an excuse to pig out on other things. But when you are a nursing mother you can't eat certain vegetables or else you will have a monster in your arms rather than a baby. If I were to eat things like broccoli, asparagus and green beans it would present some side-effects in Amelia about 24 hours later. Side-effects? Answer: GAS. SCREAMING BABY. INCONSOLABLE. Not very pleasant to be around. Our neighbors come knocking on our door asking if everything is ok. Even romaine lettuce has a small side effect with Amelia. I have discovered that spinach has no effect on her! Hurray! Spinach is VERY healthy. I wanted to blog about something rather than my children for once and thought really hard and long and decided this is what is was going to be about. Pathetic, I know. But I really enjoy these recipes, so I hope you can try them and enjoy them yourself!

I am renaming the first recipe to be: Josh's favorite Salad. Thank you "big" sister Jeni for sharing this with us! Josh hates all salads except for this one!!!

Ingredients:
Spinach
Strawberries, sliced
Poppyseed Dressing (I used Brianna's, but you can make a homemade version with brown sugar and mayonaise, then throw some poppy seeds in)
Here is what makes it Josh's favorite: Heath Toffee Chocolate Pieces (buy them by the chocolate chips) Add as much or as little as you want! (I end up using probably 1/3 of the bag)
Mix it all up and enjoy! (Don't put the dressing on until right before serving or else it gets soggy).


Chicken Pasta Salad, by Natalie Conforto (this is from my cousin's cousin!) serves 6

1 lb. b/s chicken breast browned, then tear into small pieces. Cool in fridge.
1 pkg. colored curly pasta. Cook, then drain and cool in fridge.

1/4 cup cooking oil
1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
Cook seeds in oil at medium temperature until slightly browned.
Add the following ingredients to the browned seeds:
1/3 cup vinegar
1/3 cup soy sauce
3 Tbsp. sugar
Warm mixture together, then let cool. Pour over pasta. Add chicken, stir together. Add green onions to taste. Add 1 bag of spinach right before serving.

I love the flavor of that salad- it has a sweet oriental taste. And it's mostly kid-friendly with the noodles and chicken pieces. Unless your child is super picky and can tell there is vinegar in it just give them the noodles and chicken pieces without sauce.

Another recipe I like to make with spinach is on the back of the box of the Minute Rice BROWN rice. It's called Chicken Spinach Florentine. It has grape tomatoes, chicken, spinach (of course), rice, chicken broth, and parmesan cheese. It looks beautiful on the box. I love that it has only a handful of items. I hate recipes that have a ton of ingredients. Simple! Anyway, those are a few of my favorite recipes lately. Need I mention Betty Crocker's brownies?

And I posted 3 pictures below because I just knew the grandma's would be disappointed to not see any grandbaby pictures!

Hereyago:

(sorry about the red eye!)

somebody's figured out how to wiggle around:
funny newborn faces

Sunday evening activity

Here are my kids!
Conrad's favorite thing to do: give Amelia kisses
Conrad ran away, that seems to be his thing- he is so full of energy all of a sudden.

So darling!!!

Wow I am so fortunate to have talented photographers all around me! A new girl moved in on my street and she said she needed practice taking pictures of babies, so she offered to take pictures of Amelia! Here is her link so you can see them! Krista is SO talented!

Alright

Here is a question. When someone asks you how you are doing and you answer with "alright" what does that mean?

Does that mean that you are just fine and dandy, everything's good?
Or does it mean that you're not good, and you're not bad?
Or does it just depend on your tone of voice that defines it?

To me, it means "not good, not bad." Most of the time. And it is something Josh defines as "everything's good."

We have had a couple of discussions about this. Usually when I have answered with "alright." When I answer with "alright" I am in need of some attention. I have probably had a day with events that were not so delightful. So, I may need to vent. Watch out. And yet, they were nothing serious. I will get over it, I just need you to listen.

So please tell me what you think "alright" means. I would like to know who is on my side.

3 months old!

You can almost see the dimple in her left cheek in this picture. That is from Josh! My dimple is in my right cheek, Josh has 1 dimple in his left cheek.
Should she be able to do this at 3 months old??? AAAH! The beginning of a crazy journey!

I don't sound very excited in the video, that's just because it was like the 4th time recording it so the novelty was starting to wear off. MAN, I can't believe it already!!! I think Conrad didn't figure out how to roll over until he was 6 months old! Anybody else relate???

Still Kickin'

Not much happening at our house these days, but it's been almost a week since I last posted so I thought I'd say a few words.

Amelia has started sleeping through the night again. She goes to bed at 10 pm and wakes up to eat at 6 am, and goes back to sleep until 9 am. Finally. I feel like a human again. The trick for her has been to feed her every 3 hours during the day (give or take a half hour), and then use the SwaddleMe blanket. I've heard it called the miracle blanket. It really is. I highly recommend it to others. I've always swaddled her anyway, but she always managed to kick free from the swaddle-ness, or she would wake up when I would try to re-swaddle her after her middle of the night feedings. This has velcro so she stays wrapped up nice and tight even when I pick her up and feed her. It's bum-accessible, too so you can change diapers without totally undoing the swaddle masterpiece. Five stars.
I am going to have to record Amelia when she wakes up in the morning again because she is so animated then. It is so much fun.

Conrad is a hoot. He is just so much fun for us. I am terrible at remembering specific things he says, but he makes us laugh all the time. He cannot get enough of going outside or playing with his friend Luke. The poop fiasco has stopped, fortunately. And he really liked to sit on the potty, but he is so not ready for potty training yet. I am so not ready to embark on that either. I am a firm believer in waiting until he is all the way ready so we don't have accidents for 6 months.

Josh and I are doing well. Josh's back is all of a sudden starting to feel better! I am so thankful. It's been about a month or 5 weeks, so that's a good sign. Hopefully it's a full recovery. He is doing so well with school so far, too. He is very motivated. He gets up and is gone by 6 am every day so he can study the neuro-anatomy on cadavers. He amazes me every day.

I am staying busy cleaning up spilled candle wax on new carpet, mascara on my bedspread (it was my distraction for Conrad during the tissue fiasco, little did I know he figured out how to twist mascara tubes open), folding laundry, making meals and then cleaning them up (thank heavens we have a dishwasher now!), answering to the question "Da?" (which is Conrad's word for "what is that?", we cannot break him from it!!!), and playing with my kids. I also joined "The sewing group" within our relief society, and I got some amazing help with my Christmas Advent Calendar. Remember that project I have been working on for about 1 1/2 years? Well, it's about to get finished! And I think it will be in time for Christmas! Hurray!

Hey Tom I think you should create a blog. You have such wonderful witty things to say~so, I think you should do it. Then after you we'll only have Dave and Sarah to persuade. So far you 2 are the only ones out of the bunch! (Excluding Erin, but only for 1 more month when she comes home, and then I'm sure she'd love to jump on the wagon!) So, do it. I want to hear about Lisa and yours life.

Conrad milestone?

We all know that children learn by copying or mimicking. Well, Conrad really wanted a tissue to wipe his nose. So, I gave him a square and a half of the cheap Scott tissue. He wiped his nose, threw it away and was done.

Fast forward about 5 minutes. I am nursing Amelia. Conrad found that square and a half of toilet paper and was sticking it up his nose, laughing. I said, "Conrad, stop, pull it out." What did he do? He laughed and ran away. He put his finger up again and said, "Tissue! Tissue!" He came close to me to show me. I tried to pull it out, but couldn't get all of it. At this point Amelia was pretty much finished so I set her down. Also at this point Conrad kept putting his finger up his nose. Furthermore at this point I started getting worried so I had to chase him to help pull it out.

Anyway, can you guess what happened? I'll make this long story a little shorter by just saying that the tweezers only got bits and pieces and the bulb syringe only pushed it up more. I'm sure that a wiggling almost 2 year old didn't help it either. I panicked. I called the Dr. and they were full today, so they said that I'd have to take him to the ER. THE ER???!!!??? Over a square and a half of tissue?!?

I said a prayer. And I called Josh. Josh said he'd be right home. I told him to just wait a few minutes and I'd figure something else out. But, he said he was coming home anyway. I was sitting down, zoned out and in shock, and I had an idea! I'd make Conrad smell some pepper, as in salt and pepper. I could honestly visualize him sneezing it out. I knew it would work! At the point right before I made him smell the pepper I could see NOTHING it was lodged CLEAR UP IN HIS SINUSES.

So, I made Conrad smell the pepper. I made it seem all cool (you know like when you're trying to make a kid eat vegetables?), and he lingered on it and smelled it, and said something like, "salt," and he gave me these wierd faces and looked at me like I was losing my mind. He sneezed a couple of times, and I'd force him to hold still so I could see if anything was in sight. Nada. Nothing. He sneezed a couple more times, and we repeated the battle of making him hold still. Still nothing. I kind of gave up and moved on to finish a project I had started before this all happened. Josh was on his way home, so we'd just be going to the ER anyway.

So, while I was working on my project (changing a dirty diaper) Conrad comes running up to me saying, "booger! booger! booger!" with his hand in a fist. Lo and behold, it was the little ball of snot tissue. He almost wouldn't let me have it, he was so excited about it! I put it in a little bag so I could show Josh the disgusting little thing. Here you see Conrad holding the little bag, with the disgusting little thing right in front of Conrad's nose.

Don't worry, I immediately said a prayer of thanks, and have been so grateful all day that I didn't have to go to the ER. Conrad is doing fine. :) And Josh has been happy to be at home to study. We are all doing fine. This experience helped me feel the power from Heavenly Father a little bit more. I know that I received that inspiration only from Him. I don't credit myself, you know what kind of a brain I have!

Thursday Flashback

Here is Josh at 3 months old
And me, Ali, at 3 months old
This is not her 3 month picture, but it's just so you can remember what she looks like. :D
What do you think? Is she a lovely blend or a very pretty look-alike with Josh?

I need answers

Ok, I need some help/advice/tips.
2 Questions

1- Regarding laundry. Does anybody have any suggestions how to make it disappear? Ok, that is impossible. I need tips on how to make laundry seem less of a ....well, mountainous chore. Any ways to speed up the folding process? Or ideas to make it seem not so bad?

2-Regarding my hairdo. I am sick of it. I got it trimmed and highlighted about a month ago, and my hairstylist did a good job, but, it is driving me crazy. I think I am ready to go short like I had back in 11th grade when I had it pixie/Meg Ryan in "you've got mail" -style. Although, it would be nice to have it longer so I can pony-tail it on days when being a mother of 2 takes priority over my hairstyle. I have been attempting the pony-tail style recently and it just looks like a bunch of loose hairs bobby-pinned to some other pieces of hair. So, it's not long enough for that yet. I am tired of looking like mormon-mom with a mushroom head, too.

Edited to Add: my pixie haircut from 11th grade.


Bring on the answers! Please!

Josh's 1st Day

So, it's been 1 year already since this. Can you believe it? It has FLOWN by so fast! Anyway, yesterday was Josh's first day of school and all he came home with was this box.
Alright, you know I'm going somewhere with this of course.
That is a real skull! It is a woman's skull, and if you enlarge it you can see she didn't brush her teeth. Ew. Josh's first section this year is neuro- it is 12 weeks long. For good reason. There's a LOT to know when it comes to your brain!!!
I can't believe I put a real skull on my new tablecloth...
Josh is really excited about this year. His schedule will be lighter, he will have lab only on 1 day each week, and the other 4 days of the week he'll be done with classes in the early afternoon.
The whole idea behind the schedule this year is so they can also study for the big end-of-year-dreaded BOARDS. His board score will greatly affect "us" when "we're" applying for residency. So, it is very important he do well so "we" can get into a good residency program. And I am really hoping for somewhere closer to home. Having a baby away from family is not ideal. Having Conrad away from his cousins at such an impressionable age is making Josh and me sick. Josh is amazing, though. And I know that wherever we go we will be taken care of.
Oh, and Josh's back is still hurting him. He has a hard time lifting Conrad and bending over, sitting at church, sitting at our kitchen table. Basically, he is still not doing so well. I definitely have empathy for him, since I just finished a very uncomfortable pregnancy and I know how painful it can be to bend over, or lift Conrad, or sit down for a long time. And I also now know how Josh felt dealing with someone in pain. I will try not to complain so much with our next baby! No, that is not an announcement.

pictures and video of our babies

Amelia is really getting big. We went and welcomed the newest baby on our street, Chloe, the other day. Amelia seemed to be a monster compared to Chloe! Chloe was 8 lbs. 3 oz. when she was born, so she was a very good size. But Amelia has already grown so much in 2 1/2 months! She is getting really good at holding her head up. She is starting to need to be held outwards so she can see everything. Otherwise she arches her back and flops her head all around! It's funny. I know, this may sound boring to those of you that are not parents or relatives, but it is so fun for us!
And she is starting to need something new to look at, rather than the usual ceiling fan! So, we are entering the "rotate" phase where I just move her from one spot of the room to another, or from one toy to another.
Man, she is just adorable! We sure love having her! I am looking forward to showing her and Conrad off in another month and a half to family! Speaking of showing off, watch this video and see Conrad's new trick. I just shot it about 2 hours ago.

I have no pictures to prove what we did

I am not really in the best "blogging mood" either. It was a long 29 hours. Ha ha.
Here is what we did for our 29 hour vacation:
Drove for 3 hours with a whiney sleep-lacking boy, checked into a filthy hotel with a ton of 14 and 15 year old boys in Omaha for a baseball tournament with their drunk parents, ate fast-food, got to the Omaha Temple late for our session (so we ended up doing sealings- which was a highlight of our trip), came back to a boy up 2 hours after his bedtime, spent the night with a baby waking up every 3 hours like it was daytime, had the worst experience eating hotel food (major bummer, seeing how I was looking forward to it), and then we went to the zoo with a tired whiney boy. On our way back to Kansas City we sat in traffic for half an hour. Am I being negative? Crap.
Here are the positives:
Spent quality time with Josh in the car, laughing my head off over the lamest things, while Conrad wondered what happened to his parents. Then we got to hang out with 2 cute kids while their parents went through a temple session. I got to eat Conrad's cheeseburger leftovers that he didn't eat (and my veggie-burger from Burger King was gross). When we did the sealings at the temple we got to seal FAMILIES, not just couples or individuals. We had FAMILIES getting sealed. It was a very neat experience. Josh and I got to be proxy parents to a couple of different families, each with 4+ kids. One family had 4 sons, and another family had 4 sons and 1 daughter. I hope you get the opportunity to do that someday because it was very special. After the temple we had Sonic ice-cream. Me and Amelia had a sleepover in 1 bed while Josh and Conrad had a fall-asleep together in another bed. Then, the next day we got to see so many cool things at the Omaha Zoo. Conrad saw elephants, rhinoceros, bears, butterflys, "dirty" spiders aka. tarantulas, sharks, stingrays, turtles, minnows, grasshoppers, giraffes, and some other things that I can't remember. Then, we drove home and Conrad slept for 2 hours in the car. And tonight my neighbors that are non-LDS came to our ward activity! Just the mom and her 2 sons, because the Dad was out of town, but I'm sure he would've come if he were here.

So, thanks everybody for your comments on my prior post. You are all very kind, when in fact I was being helped by my good husband. Josh baby-sat me while I sewed. He encouraged me to give our neighbors the Book of Mormon. He is always patient with me when I struggle. He is so good.

Sorry about the pictures. I am feeling a little spread-out with the new tasks that come along with baby #2, including keeping my head screwed on tight. It seems to have gotten worse. Of course it wasn't on that tight to begin with, but I am afraid I am just holding my head in place with my hands now! Oh well, I am doing my best!