Jumping Daisy

>My kitchen counter is littered with the little cellophane wrappers of too many oatmeal creme pies and dirty dishes. That is the kind of week I have had. I have a headache, it is starting to get cold and I can’t seem to shake my bad attitude. As much as I try to focus on how lucky I am, and what a wonderful life and family I have, some days I find myself wallowing in self pity over all of the things I don’t have. It is the most unbecoming way to be, and lately, it is just me. I am embarrassed to admit that when Ree from the Pioneer woman (www.thepioneerwoman.com) gave away a fancy new Kitchenaid mixer the other day. I nearly cried when I didn’t win. I don’t even have a place for a mixer so I am going to blame my poor attitude and propensity for tears on postpartum hormones. I can still do that 7 months after giving birth, right?

To make myself feel a little better, I am going to take this time, while Thea is napping and Leila is watching Dinosaur Train not to clean my kitchen, or my bathroom, but to post pictures of some of the things that I can’t afford, but want. A lot. Forgive me while I bathe myself in envy and materialism. In no particular order:

A Blackberry. Because my Internet addiction is not quenched unless I have constant web access.

Actual bedroom furniture. How pathetic is it that I am nearly 29 years old and I have never had a headboard? Oh how I covet this bedroom set…

A new down comforter. I have one of these that Cory got for me on my 21st birthday. I have a 5 year old dog who likes to sleep with us and has a urinary incontinence issue. Those things can only be dry cleaned so many times. Need I say more?

When Leila was a baby we spent like 600 dollars on a video camera that we have used like 3 times. If I could have that 600 dollars back and a cheap flip video camera, I would absolutely buy this:

Love this house that is for sale in North Liberty (though I don’t love the location). Can’t even come close to affording it, so I guess the location doesn’t matter:

I hate hate hate how crap gets stacked up on the half wall in my house. I want something like this to house all of the junk that just must be dropped right inside the door:

*sigh*

>Cory’s birthday was on Sunday, and I had a great time with Leila getting ready for the big day. Birthday’s are kind of a HUGE deal to 3 year olds, so she was notably excited about Daddy’s big day. Friday while Daddy was at work we went to the mall to buy a present for him. Leila picked out some new boxers. I took her to the store and told her she could pick out her favorites to give to Daddy, this way I knew she would be excited to pick, and Cory wouldn’t have to go around wearing some super embarrassing shirt or something that she picked out. I thought it was good thinking on my part…we picked up a couple of other things for him too, but the boxers were the highlight for Leila. I gave her my credit card and she paid for them herself. Well, I had to sign for it, but she did the swiping! And then she told me that she was just going to hold that card and I couldn’t have it. I managed to avoid a tantrum and get my card back by letting her carry the bag out of the store. Next we went to Target where I picked out my gift for Daddy, and Leila got to pick the wrapping paper. I told her to be sure to pick something that DADDY would like. She picked the pink paper with the flowers on it. When I asked her if she was sure that is what Daddy would like, she assured me that it was. Ok.

The present that I picked out for Cory was a video game. I know, you are probably thinking I am crazy to want to give my husband a time sucking disk, but the truth is, he deserves it. Cory is such a wonderful husband and father that I wish that I could give him everything that he really wanted, a new house, a blackberry, new clothes…but for now, the video game will have to do, and I know he will put it to good use when he stays up rocking our baby girl to sleep when all else fails and Momma needs her rest, because that is the kind of daddy he is.

I love you Cory and I hope you had a great day!

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>We learned our lesson about apple picking last fall…you must come early in the season for the best selection! This year we went earlier and we checked out a different orchard than last time. This was Wilson’s Orchard in Iowa City and it was absolutely beautiful out there! We went on a perfect Friday night after Cory and Andrea got off work (Steve was off from having just had surgery) and we walked around the orchard picking tons of apples and followed it up with an apple turnover and Heyn’s Ice Cream while we sat on picnic tables overlooking the orchard. I can’t wait to go back for pumpkins!

>These pictures were taken by Laura Hansell. Laura and I went to elementary school together, and I hadn’t seen her since I was 12 years old, but through the wonders of internet, we are now friends who follow each other’s blogs. Laura is a great photographer. Her and Jessica (another Tabor schoolmate of mine) both take the most awesome pictures of their kids, so I was really excited that Laura made her services available to me! We managed to both make it back to Tabor on the same weekend and so we met up at the Tabor park for Thea’s pictures. Laura lives near Boone, IA. If you want to see more of her work, you can check out her photography site at: http://www.hansellphotography.com/ Thanks again Laura, it was so nice of you, and so nice to see you!

Sitting by her namesake’s tree in the Tabor park.

Love that little tongue!

Our little Hawkeye!

This one is my favorite!

>There are a lot of really great things about the second baby…everything is just a little more comfortable because we have done it before. Life is a bit more relaxing for me. I am enjoying nursing more this time around, I just don’t feel a lot of the stress of being the sole source of food that I did with Leila, or the anxiety over public nursing, though I could really do without the nursing sessions all night long.
When I look at Thea I get these wonderful flashbacks to Leila as a baby, and I love to sit and think back to her as an infant…before Thea, I don’t think I ever really spent much time thinking about the vast amount of change that she had gone through, I just knew that everything was different. It is kind of like having a chance to go back in time and experience it all again, all the while having my big girl around to keep me company! I love seeing their similarities and I also really love noticing their differences.
I love to play with Leila, and to show her new things. She is my little buddy and she is a great conversationalist. Four of my favorite things about Leila: 1. The way she loves her stuffed animals. She doesn’t want to go anywhere without at least one “friend” along with her. She has so many stuffed animals, and she picks a different one everyday that has to ride to school with her, and someone else has to sleep in bed with her. I really appreciate that she is equal opportunity…she loves all of her animals and they each get a turn! Tonight Leila is cuddled up in bed with her stuffed horse, whose name is piglet 🙂 And today, Alex the Lion rode beside her on the way to school. 2. The way that she tells stories. Leila loves to tell stories…many of her stories are about animals, but she has come up with all kinds of crazy things! The best part of Leila stories has to be the delivery though. She talks with her hands and makes big arm motions as she tells her stories with her big expressive eyes. I can’t help but tell her all the time how cool she is, and how much I love to be with her. 3. She does what she wants to. As trying as it can be to parent a free spirited child, I am so happy that Leila stands up for herself and stubbornly decides what she wants to do. I hope that as she grows she will continue to be stubborn about those things that are important to her, and in the meantime, I just remind myself when her obstinacy is driving me bananas that the girl knows what she wants, and there is a lot to be said for that, I hope no one ever breaks that spirit!
my fourth favorite thing about Leila has to be her love for Thea. When we get ready to go to school on Tuesday and Thursday Leila always has to check and make sure that Thea has her blanket. The funny thing is that Thea isn’t attached to her blanket, but Leila is attached to hers and so she knows how important it is to have your blanket! Leila takes care of Thea and when she isn’t happy, she talks to her and plays peekaboo with her and whatever else it takes to make her smile or giggle.(I started out with my 2 favorite things, but I couldn’t go on without mentioning 3 and 4)

Tonight we were at the table having dinner and I was feeding Thea some rice cereal. As I was feeding her she started blowing raspberries and spitting the cereal all over the place! Leila started laughing at Thea because she thought it was so funny, which made Thea laugh, and also continue spitting to make Leila laugh more. Pretty soon we were all sitting at the table laughing and I was covered in slobbery rice cereal. I love my girls so much, I couldn’t imagine a better family than the one I have, I am so blessed!
Thea is getting bigger all of the time and growing more active everyday! She is now able to get herself to a sitting up position from laying on the floor, and she is getting up on her hands and knees rocking all the time! one of these days she is just going to take off!
She is sleeping like crap…like 3 hours at time when I am lucky. So she is sleeping in our bed most of the night so that i can get some sleep, which only makes her sleep worse, which means more awake time for me too. It is stressful, but we are getting by until I can get to the point where I am comfortable with making a change.

This past weekend we went to the apple orchard and picked a ton of apples, and we also went to a butterfly tagging event where Leila got to see a cocoon up close and had the opportunity to pet a butterfly (she chickened out! :)). All of this along with painting the kitchen and Cory volunteering to do roadside clean up. I have some pictures of the orchard and butterfly festivities that I will post, maybe tomorrow.
Tonight I am feeling a great sense of contentment, and the memory of our dinner table laughter will help get me through another sleepless night!

>Lately Leila is into telling everyone she talks to about this movie that she saw at Grandma and Papa’s house. (She didn’t watch the whole thing, I promise)…her story goes something like this, “Have you seen I Love You Man? It was so HILARIOUS! The man drank too much pop and he said, ‘in your face!’ and he throwed up right in the other man’s face! It was SO DISGUSTING!” HAHHAHAHAHA

She is so funny, and I love to listen to her talk…it kills me when she pulls out words like, “hilarious” or “enormous”. Leila is a pretty smart cookie. I fear for her kindergarten teacher because she will have her hands full with our little character.

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Not really, but doesn’t it look like it…if only she was making a kissy face at the camera she would be all ready for her myspace page!

>I have been debating about whether or not I would blog about this book. I started reading it almost two years ago, and I set it down, not be returned to until this past week. I have a love hate relationship with this book. I majored in English in college, and though I may not write like a writer, I am a snobby reader, and the snobby reader in me really didn’t like this book. It is not written in a way that does the subject matter justice, it just isn’t good. The book is a dialog between two women as they work through their issues of faith together. They both tell their stories throughout the book, and they talk about God. I couldn’t keep the two of them straight, so most of the anecdotal parts were lost on me, and the writing just seemed hokey. So there you have the hate. 🙂 I do have to say though, that maybe I am being too harsh because this is not a genre that I frequent. I really like non fiction, which this is, and I picked this one up because I was looking for a spiritual pick me up. I actually heard about the book on a forum that was discussing “The Shack” which I had suffered through even though it made me miserable. This book was described as being “kind of like The Shack, without all of the sad stuff.” It wasn’t, but the Shack was a novel and this book isn’t, so that is a big difference that I have to consider.

Anyway, I did pick up some interesting ideas from the book, not necessarily new principles in my life, but a new way of arriving at them.
The “apple concept” refers to the idea that like Eve in the garden of Eden, we are susceptible to sin because we are constantly looking for the next best thing and trying to make ourselves more “worthy” of love. Both the love of those around us and of God. The apple is really being fed to us by ourselves, society, our families, our churches. Basically anyone that makes you think you have to do or be more than what you personally feel is best for yourself.
What I am took from this book is the idea that God created us the way that we are, and we should accept ourselves because we are perfect in His eyes, and do our best to be true to ourselves and make the most out of ourselves by following our own hearts, and not worrying about other peoples wishes or expectations. Along with that, don’t blame your problems and shortcomings on others because we all decide how we are going to react to the things that happen to us in our lives, and no one’s life is perfect.
I for one, and many people that I know, tend to assign myself with responsibilities and then spend time feeling put upon because I am giving so much of myself to meet those responsibilities, without considering the fact that it was my choice. This is a major challenge for me, and I identified with the authors of the book in this respect.

The most valuable gem that I picked up was to remember that when my children aren’t meeting my expectations, or I am feeling disappointed in them, I must remember that they are God’s children and my idea of how they should be is not necessarily God’s idea. So when Leila is running around like a little beastling screaming and laughing and playing when I really want some quiet, or she is embarrassing me in public, I will remind myself that that is part of what makes her Leila, and she is just the way she was meant to be (3 year old manners and discipline requirements aside).

One of the neatest things about being a parent, and being around children is the realization that in a lot of ways, kids have it figured out better than the adults. Preschoolers don’t sit around comparing the clothes and hair styles of their friends and wondering if they stick out. They run and play without worrying about getting their pants dirty, or having to go back to school with sweat beads on their faces. They laugh when things are funny, and they don’t bother to when they are not. They shout out their joy and they toss themselves on the floor of Old Navy when you refuse to buy them an Orange Julius for lunch. Kids are awesome, they are pure and they are a reflection of God in front of us everyday. We could all stand to learn a thing or two about how to be ourselves, and how to be true to our creator from the experts.

>After Thea’s 6 month check up we decided to go ahead and start her on some solid food.
I debated about how I was going to go about solid foods this time around. I had read about a method of solid food introduction that skipped past the puree and went right into self feeding, and I found that idea to be appealing. When it came down to it though, we decided to do a bit of a baby feeding strategy hybrid…we did start with some rice cereal, but we are going with mashed or food processed soft foods and skipping the Gerber. I am hoping that this way we can get her onto table food quicker, but who knows! So far she has had rice cereal, apple sauce, banana and now squash. She is still getting the hang of the whole eating thing, but she is interested in everything we have given to her and so I am happy. These pictures are from the evening of her first meal…rice cereal mixed with breast milk. She wasn’t so sure about it!