Don't let the unnawears catch you unawares

Miana calls underwear "unnawear." I never know what to expect when I open the door to her room in the morning or after a nap. Usually she has every piece of clothing she owns out on the floor and she is wearing something unexpected. One Sunday morning, she came out with her swimming suit on and informed me that she was going swimming with Papa. I love the fact that she always has a plan.

Underwear and potty training don't necessarily go together in her mind. We spent 2 full days wearing underwear and only sitting on the potty once, but just to try it out, not to actually use it. In those 2 days she went through every pair of underwear we own, twice! My favorite is when she came out of her room wearing a plastic diaper cover with nothing under it and told me that she found more underwear.

This morning, I opened the door to let her out of her room and found her standing there in some clean underwear with another pair in her hand. "This is for Tayla," she announced and would not let up until I promised to put them on her. So... here is our underwear morning:

Pass the peas, please

Last night we had peas with dinner. I had a few left over so I put them in the fridge. Tonight, I gave the baby a few of the cold leftovers with her dinner. Miana saw them on Tayla's tray and wanted some. I told her they were just cold ones, but she didn't seem to care and ate few off of the tray. Then Carter came over and saw the peas and asked for some. We had just finished dinner and I was trying to clean up and didn't want to go through the trouble of heating them up. I told him that he could have some tomorrow at lunch. He started to cry. He wanted peas NOW! Miana tried to console him, "They just cold, Carter." He got over his tantrum quickly, I went on cleaning up after dinner. I finished up, turned around to see Carter and Miana huddled over the bag of cold (but not frozen) peas. They were grabbing them out by the handful and stuffing their faces as fast as they could... It reminded me of the last time we had M&Ms at our house. Next time you are at my house, don't be surprised if you hear things like, "If you clean up your room you can have a handful of peas."
I really love my kids!!

I don't even know where to start...

We are trying to refinance the house and I have been horribly stressed out in the last 3 weeks. We had a horrible experience from one lender and had to switch last minute to another. Why does this matter? Because it is a major reason why I need a vacation. Today, I had the overwhelming task of trying to get the house ready for the appraiser to come tomorrow. I've been really busy and had things for each child to do. The boys got home from school and Spencer started crying because I informed him that after homework was finished, he would have to do 2 clean-up jobs. Then, we could go out to play and come in and do 2 more. Apparently, at school they did speed cup stacking and he didn't get a gold medal. He didn't want to tell me that, I was supposed to figure out that's why he was really crying. So, homework took about an hour because he had "had a really hard day." Then, while he was cleaning up, Carter and I finished his homework and he went out to play. I needed to find some paint and while I was in the basement looking for it, Carter (almost 6 years old) came back downstairs to ask me if he could go to the park with some friends. Here's the conversation:
Me: Is an adult going?
C: Yes, Mr. B-- is coming
Me: Really? So it's okay if I call them and check?
He got the look which tells me he is lying and and I asked if he had lied to me, he admitted it, I told him that he could not go out to play at all and that he needed to go upstairs and wait for me to come up so we could discuss punishment. I was downstairs about 3-4 more minutes, came up and the phone started to ring.
Man on Phone: Ma'am, this is Deputy Randolph. Everything is fine, I just have your little one here and he said he had your permission to come up to the park by himself.
Me: No, actually, he just got in trouble and was told not to leave the house. He is absolutely not allowed to go to the park by himself.
Deputy: Oh, well, he was walking very quickly. Do you want to come and get him?
Me: Yes, I'll be right there.
Luckily, Denise had just stopped by to check in on me and agreed to stay with the girls. I threw on my sandals and ran up the street to the park. There I saw 2 police cars, one with it's lights going, parked on the side of the road.
I wasn't sure what to do or say. I got down on Carter's eye level. Asked him all of the "are you allowed" questions, made sure he knew all the right answers, and then turned and thanked the 2 deputies. Deputy Randolph explained that they were sitting in the parking lot and saw this small boy come walking as fast as he could up the street and cross it all by himself. Carter really is petite and doesn't really look like he is 6 (almost). The deputy looked at Carter and told him that he is too little to be able to see all the cars coming and that he really needs to have a grown up help him cross the street. I had Carter say thank you and shake hands with the 2 deputies and I thanked them and we left. As we walked home, I talked to Carter about crossing the street, I talked to him about being obedient, and we talked about consequences. He was not happy that lying, disobeying, and getting stopped by the police all carried punishments. He has pretty much cried and whined all afternoon about not being able to go outside to play. I told him that he shouldn't choose the first day in the 50s to be the day he gets in trouble. Too bad for him, tomorrow is supposed to be in the 60s... he'll be inside doing extra chores!
I really need a vacation... alone... well, maybe Dave can come...

The final week of January

The first grade share show: First graders get to do a musical presentation for their families. This was Spencer's second year getting to participate, next year we get to watch Carter do it, that's 3 years in a row of getting to watch!

The Girl in the Plastic mask: On Tuesday (Jan. 26) Tayla wasn't feeling well so I decided to take her to the doctor the next day. On Wednesday morning, Miana woke up with her cough being a bit worse and she said she didn't feel good. So I decided to take her in as well. Turns out that Tayla was just congested with a slight start of an ear infection. Miana, on the other hand, was diagnosed with RAD (reactive airway disease) which acts like asthma, but in this case, was caused by a virus. She had to be on nebulizer treatments for 2 days. She was a good sport about it and it went very quickly, but it brought back memories of Spencer in his dragon/dinosaur mask.

Spencer's very first Pinewood Derby: (January 30, 2010) He even won his first few races!

Overall, we had a pretty good week last week!

January 23, 2010 - "I don't know if there is a record for this, but if there is, I think we came close"

We thought of everything... Printed the programs, set up the chairs, had nice pictures around, verified that everyone would be there, brought a change of clothes, and even remembered the dry underwear. It was all going to go smoothly, right?

Papa preformed the Baptism. The picture on the right is my favorite!

I have to document this or we may forget details, although I doubt it will be soon forgotten. The following account is from my own perspective and it may have been different for someone else. If you were there and want to comment to share your perspective on the events, that would be great, thanks!

Spencer got into the font and as my dad said the baptismal prayer he said, "... of the Father, and (he took a breath in) the Son, and of the Holy Ghost..." I did not know if he had said "of" where he took the breath or not. He put Spencer under the water and EVERYTHING was covered. They got out of the font and pulled the plug and went into the bathroom and started to change. As everyone filed back into the other room, my Brother-in-law says, "isn't it 'of the Son'?" Yes, it is. So he hadn't actually said it right. I took most of guests back into the other room and they were going to get Spencer and Papa back into the font to do it again without everyone watching. The problem was this... the water drains very quickly. It takes 2+ hours to fill the font, but only about 10 minutes to drain it completely. By the time they got back into the font and put the plug back in, there was only about 1.5 feet of water in the bottom. Dad said the prayer and tried to baptize him but he couldn't make it all the way under. So they tried 3 or 4 more times with no luck. They added more water to the font. By this time, almost all of the guests were back in the hallway watching - talk about pressure! They tried 3 or 4 more times with no luck and again added some water. At this point Spencer had a foot come up twice, a leg once, a forehead, an arm, and I'm sure I'm missing a few. I was watching from the side and saw my oldest son's face. He looked exhausted and frustrated. He looked up and I thought he was going to cry. He said, "We'll try one more time and then stop..." At this point, I thought, "oh, no! He's giving up!!" Boy was I wrong... He continued... "and then stop and add more water so we can try again." I have never been more proud of my little man. He handled the whole situation with a maturity I had never seen in an 8 year old before! I can't remember if there was only 1 time more or not, just that he was eventually baptized properly. It was a good opportunity to explain to our friends and neighbors who are not members of the church of the importance of performing ordinances perfectly and with exactness. It was a baptism that none of us will soon forget! (Note: No one actually counted, I thought there were at least 8 times, many others thought it was around 8, so we decided it was 8 times total. The counselor from the Bishopric that was in attendance thought it was much more than that, possibly 10-12 times. As BD said, "that's a lot of sins...")

Here are the family members that were in attendance.

Just for a record, Grandma Tarbet gave the opening prayer, Nana Peterson gave the first talk on Baptism, a musical number - "A Child's Prayer" was sung by Trisha Snow (the Primary Chorister, my Visiting Teacher, and Spencer's former tutor) and Jill Barnes (Spencer's Primary teacher), Papa Peterson baptized Spencer, Dave and Grandpa Tarbet were witnesses, Grandpa Tarbet gave the talk on the Holy Ghost, and Dave confirmed Spencer, and then we had welcomes from Emily Allred (Primary President) and Randy Christensen (from the Bishopric), Jaclyn Peterson gave the closing prayer. The music was led by Heather Ure (Spencer's Primary teacher) and Brother and Sister Allred took turns playing the piano. The opening song was "I am a Child of God" and the closing song was "If the Savior Stood Beside Me." It was a nice service and we are grateful to all who came and all who participated!

Here are some pictures of Spencer in his new suit. No, they aren't great, he was not in a smiling mood when I took them. I had to bribe him to smile in the last picture.

"Happy Martin Luther King Day!" AND Sleepy Girl AND The Party

On Monday, January 18, 2010 I woke up to find that the boys were awake downstairs doing something. They heard me get up and ran upstairs to tell me that I couldn't come down yet. I told them I would take a shower and first and they seemed happy with that. Later, when I came out of the bathroom, I found this:

and these cute boys yelled, "Happy Martin Luther King Day!!!!"

I came downstairs and found that in addition to making the cinnamon toast for me they had also cleaned up the family room and vacuumed it! As I thanked them for their great surprise Spencer said, "We only clean up on Birthdays and Holidays, that's why we don't clean up any other day."
Later that week, Tayla fell asleep in her high chair for the first time. Since this is one of my favorite kid occurrences (falling asleep anywhere, anytime) I took a picture and included it here:

Spencer was not feeling well and had a plethora of symptoms during the week leading up to his 8th Birthday. He started exactly 1 week before feeling nauseous and being very tired. Then the next day he woke up with a terrible cough, then the next day he seemed fine but still had a lessor version of his cough. Then the on Tuesday, just when I thought he would go to school, he woke up at 4:30am with diarrhea. Couldn't send him to school. Tuesday night, he had a slight fever, so not allowed to go to school. Wednesday he woke up fever free and I called the school and said, "he should be there tomorrow." Wednesday afternoon the fever came back, but worse. Thursday I took him to the doctor to find out that he had pneumonia but that he was not at all contagious. I had him rest all day Thursday and Friday I sent him to school with a note to not let him go outside and not to let him run around at all. I figured he could sit in a chair here all day or sit in a chair there all day. I also came into the school at about 11am to check on him to make sure he was not too tired. He was doing fine and seemed happy to be back at school. Friday after school we headed strait to Pump It Up for his Birthday party. He had personal rules about not running around, not working up a sweat and not breathing heavily. He did pretty good at taking breaks and taking it easy. He seemed to have fun and I am glad we decided to do it.
This is Spencer in the white shirt, they gave him one with his name on the back.

They even had some soft blocks for Tayla to play with - she loved it!!

The whole group of kids, so glad I didn't have this group at my house that day:

Spencer in his throne:

The cake: I wasn't paying attention and bought trick candles, normally not a problem, but to a boy with pneumonia, it made it almost impossible for him to blow them out in the first place, but to have them relight was very frustrating! I'm soooo sorry!!

Overall, I think it was a fun week. The weekend was just as amazing! (see next post)

December...

Kid fun, getting a tree, big snow storms, and CHRISTMAS!!!! Woohoo!!!