We are a house of sickness this weekend. But you wouldn’t know it from the three fairs/festivals we attended! On Thursday, our dear friends Ben and Candace and their daughter, Cadence, came down from Boise. So the next morning we decided to go the state fair.
Lydia solemnly showing me her balloon “doggie” and the free pink purse a random vendor gave her for being cute.We loved the diving show! When we go to the pool, Lydia always loves watching people dive off the diving board, and so watching these fun high dives (with the accompanying splashes!) was super exciting for her.
Since Abe had to work on Friday (boo!), on Saturday morning we went to the Avenues Street Festival. Since Ben and Candace went to a wedding, we took their baby with us. Between Lydia in the stroller, Cadence in the baby carrier, and my big belly, we were a sight. The casual observer must have concluded that Abe and I had no concept of spacing (which is partially true even without the extra baby)!
Lydia looks perplexed at the opportunity to select a free toy from the library lady.
And then after Lydia’s nap, she was ready to go again, so we took her to the Greek festival to get her in touch with her Greek heritage. She loved the Greek dancing, although you wouldn’t know it from this picture. Only when I put my camera away did she start stomping her feet and clapping to the music.
I lost my camera’s memory chip for a couple weeks, and then I simultaneously lost my oomph for blogging, so these next pictures are practically a month old.
We had a “baby Olympics” a couple Saturdays ago with some church friends. Lydia was the youngest participant, so she needed a little help from Abe.
Long jump–wheeee!With a medal around her neck and the broken race tape around her waist, Lydia hoards the balls. She is slightly obsessed with balls, and she got extremely distressed when she was not in possession of all the balls in sight.
And about two or three weeks ago, Abe and I took Lydia to a petting zoo with pony rides with the express intent of giving Lydia a pony ride, but she refused to sit on the pony. So we just looked at the animals instead.
On a different Saturday, we watched the daughters of one of my dear friends. Here’s a fun picture of Lydia, Abe, and Selah playing in the sprinklers on our front lawn. They were all so cute together!
And finally, we had a ward picnic a little while ago. Abe and Lydia hung out at the playground after they ate, and I found them in this position. I took this picture to remind Abe that Lydia is definitely his child, even though he occasionally claims he can’t see himself at all in her. Look at those pairs of matching long legs!
So…it turns out I am not Gretchen Rubin, and because I am not Gretchen, I have missed many precious photo opportunities in the past week. Ever since Lydia started taking one nap a day, I make sure (for my sanity) that we either have a play date or go on at least one fun outing per day. And most of the time, I forget my camera. So my treasure trove of happy memories from the last week went largely undocumented, but I did remember my camera a couple times, as demonstrated below.
Also, I don’t have gestational diabetes!!!!!!! Hip, hip, hooray!!!!! I thought I had it because my glucose test was high and I never got to speak to a doctor (long story, but the short story is: I have a toddler and my doctor routinely runs over an hour late), so I left the office thinking I was diabetic. A week later I took a four and a half hour test that showed I process sugar normally!!! I can’t even express how excited that news made me. To celebrate, I had a milkshake from Iceberg.
I forgot to take pictures of a baby shower I hosted this weekend, but I do have pictures of Lydia holding some of the decorations (after they were taken down) the next day. I guess I am not perfect at this document-your-life-through-photography- thing yet! I feel kind of silly bringing my giant camera on play-dates and to Baby Book Club, but I keep reminding myself that I basically want to BE Gretchen Rubin, and she takes her camera everywhere. So I should too.
We hung a cluster of tissue pom-poms from the ceiling for the baby shower. Lydia loved playing with them, especially after we took them down.On Monday we had a super fun play date with our best play date friends, Misty and Sophia. Lydia calls Sophia “Fia” and has spent the rest of the week telling me all the stuff we did with them. (Well, actually she just says, “Fia, wa-wa, caaah, zooom!, wocko, woof!” which means, “We played with Sophia in the water. Then we played with her car which went “zoom!” and then we played with Rocko (the dog) who goes woof!”)I opened the paper on Tuesday and discovered that Thanksgiving Point, which has a petting zoo, had a special on that day. Lydia loved the petting zoo and tried to climb into the cage with the goats. She thought the baby goats were cats and followed them around excitedly saying, “meow! meow! MEOW!”Basically, I lured Lydia into standing against this wall so I could capture her pigtails. I am TERRIBLE at doing her hair and it always takes me a million tries (with poor Lydia wailing the whole time) to do simple things like put her hair in a ponytail. I consider pigtails super advanced hair styling, and I was SO proud of these.I really feel dumb whipping out my big camera at Baby Book Group, but I did it anyway. Today they had a bubble machine, which Lydia loved. She’s a little shy though, so this shot is of her running back to me because she wanted me to come with her to play with the bubbles. Unfortunately, I was busy taking pictures and so she never got the courage to play with the bubbles herself. So sad!
On Friday Abe’s nine year old cousin Isabella came over and we had lots of adventures at Liberty Park! First we fed the ducks, then we explored the splash pad (representing the seven canyons around Salt Lake City–so cool!), and finally we ended up at the playground. Each activity occupied us for over an hour, and by the time we left, I had turned into Liberty Park’s number one fan. I just love living in a child-friendly city that has so many fun, free things for children and parents to do together.
The next day Abe, Lydia and I all attended a family reunion in Mill Creek Canyon, and Lydia made (and ate) her very first smore. Lydia loves watching the July cover video for Martha Stewart Living on my Ipad, which just happens to be a video about making smores. She was excited to make her own after watching Martha do it about a million times!
Lydia eating the bread we were supposed to feed to the ducks!Isabella and Lydia at the splash pad!S’mores are messy!
Lydia was struggling to get the hang of the marshmallow at first, but she eventually caught on (with Abe’s help).
I just finished reading The Happiness Project, which was so, so inspiring! Although I found many of the book’s ideas helpful, one idea that is particularly pertinent to this blog is Rubin’s epiphany that happiness comes in an atmosphere of growth. One area that I’ve been saying I want to grow in for years is photography. I am terrible at taking pictures and hate the hassle of having to whip out (not to mention locate) a camera when I’d really rather just enjoy the moment.
But I know that I loved looking at my baby pictures when I was growing up; there’s something about having parents who took time and energy to document your life that feels very reassuring. I always felt so loved when I looked through pictures of my childhood, and although I look at those pictures less and less frequently as time goes by, I still feel comforted knowing those pictures exist.
Now to the obvious: I want to give the same gift to Lydia–and to all of my other future children! So I have recently resolved to “become a treasure trove of happy memories” (also a quote from Rubin–my new idol) and to do a better job of documenting Lydia’s life. I want to get better at taking pictures, and I figure the only way to do that is to actually do a better job of taking them regularly and then lovingly writing captions to accompany them. At one point, I also hope to find/read the manual that goes along with my camera….
So, here goes!
We went to the aviary today. Lydia was enthralled with all of the birds. It’s not a huge aviary, but we spent an easy couple hours there and could have spent several more (except we had to come home so Lydia could have a fun play date with her cousin!).
Without any external prompting, Lydia decided it would be a great idea to share her snacks with the birds. Here is a picture of Lydia offering a crane one of her delicious “beeps” (her word for grapes).
Lydia contemplating her exploring options in the “Owl Forest.” She eventually opted for exploring it all.
I just spent hours upon hours (no exaggeration) putting together a catch-up post, and WordPress lost it. So I’m giving up on the idea of a catch-up post and am just going to post some pictures I took today of Lydia.
Quick preface: This morning I took that awful glucose test to screen for gestational diabetes and…my glucose was too high. I wasn’t really surprised since my diet has mainly been chocolate chip cookies and Dairy Queen blizzards, but it was still horrible news. After going home and bawling for a while (my first cry this pregnancy, by the way!), I calmed down and tried hard not to mourn the loss of sugary treats in my life. A couple hours later, Lydia woke up and cheered me up tremendously with her cute antics. Even amid the worry about how my bad habits have affected my baby in-utero and the awful feelings that accompany excessive pregnancy weight gain (round two–ugh), this darling girl managed to make me feel better.
Lydia LOVES to floss her teeth. I actually have to hide the floss because she will pull out a whole role and just go to town on her teeth. Today we literally spent an hour sitting around while Lydia flossed happily away.
We got Lydia a potty! Since my bladder is under a little strain right now with Baby Number 2, Lydia and I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. As a result, she is obsessed with the potty and is madly in love with her new one. I could give more graphic details about her little potty enactments, but let’s just say this is a happy relationship for her. Her name for the potty is “paw-wah.”
I am happy, happy, happy! The birds are chirping, Lydia and I are almost completely over our weeks-long cold, and Abe has been home for the majority of the last week and will be home until we leave for Chicago. He planned his work schedule so that he will do his April/May travel during the four weeks Lydia, my mom, and I will be in Chicago. Yay!
Also, I get to go see The Hunger Games today. My mom offered to babysit while I go to a matinee with a friend. How lucky am I??? I was so excited about how great this week is going to be that I kept waking up Abe last night as he tried to fall asleep so I could tell him all the things on my to-do list (which, in the case of this week, is really a “to-have-fun” list). He sleepily replied that he intends on having fun too…at work. It really doesn’t seem fair that while my husband slaves away to fund our fun, Lydia and I get to have so many field trips and good-food outings. But then again he gets to go travel and sleep through the night, so I’m hoping it all evens out??? (I kind of suspect it doesn’t, but that is my one solitary justification, so I kind of need for that bubble to remain unpopped.)
Also, I loved this past General Conference (http://www.lds.org/general-conference/sessions/2012/04?lang=eng). My favorite talk was the first one in the Saturday session (I think! maybe it was Sunday?) on the importance of children. While we listened and watched Lydia, my heart was so full of gratitude for my darling little girl and our precious baby-to-be (due Oct 16!!!). I love my family, and even though Lydia still wakes up a LOT during the night and leaves us all bleary-eyed and sleep deprived (as evidenced by the lack of posts on this blog), she brings immeasurable joy to our lives. She also has turned into the most affectionate child! She used to be completely uninterested in cuddling, but when I found out I was pregnant (for the third time in two years…maybe at some point Abe and I will realize that birth control exists), I decided it was time to teach her the concept of “gentle.” So I pulled out a stuffed cat and cuddled it in front of Lydia, all the while repeating “We are SOFT and GENTLE with our cat. We LOVE our cat. SOFT, SOFT, GENTLE, GENTLE, Meow.” She loved it and immediately started cuddling with her cat, both of us, and really almost any soft object she can get a hold of — even the stuffed rat my lovely friend Candace sent for her birthday!! Yuck.
Speaking of Candace, she and Ben and their gorgeous baby, Cadence, visited us a couple weeks ago. We were the worst hosts ever and set up a blow up bed that deflated the first night onto the floor of the draftiest, coldest room of the house. I really don’t know what I was thinking when I put them in that room! And then I came down with food poisoning (at the time I thought is was a terrible turn in the pregnancy), and spent the whole weekend writhing in bed while they suffered in the cold. I wince just thinking about it! Thankfully, starting in May, we will have actual furniture and I hope, hope, hope that this awful experience won’t deter them from gracing us with their presence in the future. Aren’t they a beautiful family?
Such a great and gorgeous family!
And then the next weekend was Lydia’s birthday! I wasn’t originally going to invite anyone but family because the week before I felt so yucky with food poisoning, but the night before the party I freaked out and felt soooooooooo guilty for not throwing her a proper party. So at 10pm on the night before the party I invited a couple friends over. The party turned out to be just perfect, and Lydia was so excited she didn’t take her afternoon nap that day. Isn’t she just precious in her party dress?
Exccited little Lydia turns ONE!
The next week she went to another family birthday party and learned what balloons are. I was home sick, but Abe called me from the car and told me that she was giggling and playing with her balloons during the drive home. When he opened the car door to bring her in, the gusty wind immediately blew all of her balloons away! She was so sad and bewildered. But God must really love Lydia, because that night at the ward birthday party, there were helium balloons at every table, and Abe collected so many for Lydia that I really hoped no one would notice. I mean, most of the kids were allowed to take one balloon home, but Abe went around and collected a whole assortment for Lydia. And then he made me stand by the door with them while he got the car ready!! I was so embarrassed. All the ward was passing by looking askance at my giant collection of balloons…but it was all worth it when we saw the look on Lydia’s face the next morning as she saw her new balloons. She loved them so much she would get distracted from eating because she just wanted to hold them. Eventually, we just tied them to her high chair so she could play with them and eat at the same time. I should have taken a picture, but after two weeks of Lydia loving on her balloons, they are not in photographic condition. In fact, they are in the trash somewhere starting their thousand-year process of decomposition…but we won’t tell Lydia that!
I didn't know if anyone would actually come, but I was hoping!I set out all of the folding chairs in the house--and we filled every one!Our soup group! In the foreground, Abe and Cierra (his home teachee/my visiting teacher) are WINNING the what-friends-do-we-have-in-common game. If you are LDS, you have played (and probably won!) this game before.
Lydia crawls around soup group, adorned by her unicorn-ish spray of hair.
Later that day, Abe decided to have fun dressing Lydia up:
She appears to enjoy his clothing selection.
A couple Sundays ago, Abe and I realized Lydia had never experienced grass. She’s seen it from her stroller, but she’s never touched it or sat on it or rolled down a hill of it. We felt like bad parents for depriving her of those basic experiences, so we hightailed it to the nearest park.
"That dirt looks so tasty--I should eat some!" --Lydia
When we put her on the grass, Lydia started eating the dirt. Abe brushed off my alarm by saying. “It’s just dirt–nothing healthier.” Ten seconds later we saw a man with his dog head for our patch of grass and we realized–oops!–we were in the doggie part of the park. A little closer look at the mounds of “dirt” proved that there were indeed healthier things our baby could be ingesting. We quickly relocated to the spinner.
Wheeeeeeeeee
Lydia was a little bewildered by her whole park experience, but she is not bewildered by toothbrushes! She loves to watch us brush our teeth, and even better, she likes to use BOTH of our toothbrushes to brush her own. She recently acquired her very own toothbrush, and so she no longer has to resort to using both of ours (simultaneously) to clean her teeth.
Two at a time!
And happy belated Valentine’s Day! Here are our valentines:
Abe: got me roses. I: baked him a cranberry upside-down cake. (Okay, okay. I ate more of it than he did. Yeesh.)And the next day I discovered this on the floor of the basement. It's a poem with little hearts that record special memories we've had together. Recently, this has proved to be a wonderful diversion for Lydia while I do the laundry. While I fuss with the machines, she crawls around and examines all of the different hearts. So much better than the days when she headed straight for the furnace!! I don't think this valentine is getting disassembled anytime soon...
Somebody had a birthday, and it wasn’t Lydia or I! Abe turned 28 on January 28th, and since he couldn’t be home that day, he took us with him to Moab. We spent three days there, and we didn’t go hiking once. Instead, we lazed around the hotel..
Lydia explored the room thoroughly. Here she is trying to figure out what’s under the closet door.
and ate all too frequently at Pasta Jay’s. On Abe’s birthday, we actually considered eating lunch AND dinner there, but we I was too embarrassed. That would mean we would have patronized their restaurant three times in less than 24 hours, and the wait staff would have judged us.
Lydia helps Abe open one of his presents at lunch.
But even though we didn’t go there for dinner, we stopped by after dinner to pick up a piece of their to-die-for cake. Seriously, I’ve never had a better piece of cake–and I don’t even really like chocolate cake! Give me carrot anytime…except when this is around:
It looks like a triple mouse, but it isn’t. No, it’s better. (did you think that was even possible? ‘Cause I sure didn’t…)Lydia helps her daddy blow out the candle. Well, actually she just sucked her binky ferociously while Abe blew out his own candle, but she provided moral support.
When we got home, my mom came over for dinner. As she and I were prepping, we heard Abe exclaim that Lydia was climbing the stairs. We rushed out and saw this:
So proud of herself!
I should have known this was bad news, but it was so cute and fun that I didn’t think ahead like I ought to have. Specifically, I should have realized then and there that we need baby gates, and I should have made an immediate run to Target for them. Instead, I just applauded and cuddled Lydia for being cute. And today I learned my lesson. It started out with a mess:
After pulling everything off the shelf, she’s on to bigger and better things–like our full trash can!
Lydia returned to this mess after dinner:
stripped down to her diaper, Lydia sorts through her earlier work.
And since she was going to bed shortly thereafter, I thought I could get away with quickly cleaning the mess before she went down. At that point, Lydia had moved on to her stuffed lady bug (or so I thought). Not thirty seconds after I start cleaning the mess, I hear a BOOM! and then a loud wail. Lydia had fallen down the stairs.
After I rushed to pick her up and ascertained that she was miraculously okay (thank you, guardian angels!), all the worst-case scenarios played through my head. Right now, I am feeling intensely grateful to God for looking out for my daughter, and I also know the first thing I’m doing tomorrow: buying baby gates.
And to celebrate Lydia’s new, safe space, I am going to use up the very last one of these:
My Auntie Geri sent me these luscious lemons from her backyard tree in California. Aren’t they gorgeous? Thank-you, Auntie Geri!!
