Note

Quick note to a certain local dj--when referring to a incredibly stupid plan, the term you should use is idiocy, NOT idiocracy. Idiocracy is a movie by Mike Judge. Sorry, that's been bugging me.

Finger Paint

When you decide to let a 12 month old finger paint for the first time, you should just count on bath time immediately following paint time ;-) Sensorial Education at it's finest ;-) (p.s. I usually nab the pacifier for pictures, but I know if I did that, she would've felt the need to taste the paint as well!)





Of course, big sister hasn't quite moved past the "dive on in" stage either ;-)

Love It!!

Hi, my name is Kimberly and I'm a Wii addict. We did get the Wii (the very night I decided to have one) and my dad got us the Fit (muchas, muchas, muchas gracias and merci beau coup). I LOVE IT!! Okay, so pre-kids I would have been all hoity toity and purist about it and said you should get out and do the activities for real, but with two small children at home, I will TOTALLY take the ability to do a 5 minute step aerobics routine whenever I can carve it out of the day. I cannot emphasize enough how cool the Fit is. I especially like that it charts your progress each day and keeps up with how you're doing and the better you do, the more activities and levels you unlock, so it makes you want to keep doing more too. I am the Wii hula hoop queen in the house, but my abs are also killing me because of it! (that's a good thing ;-) My legs have been sore too from the ski jump and advanced step games. The regular games are good exercise too----my arms are sore thanks to my baseball addiction. Anyways, if you're looking to get/stay in shape and don't have time to get to the gym and can't handle running in 100 degree weather, I highly recommend the Wii Fit! To buy the console and the Fit, you're gonna spend $340, but that's less than a year at the gym!

Happy Birthday

Happy First Birthday to my sweet baby girl. Yes, her birthday is today (not yesterday, as both grandmothers tried to convince us ;-) we even checked the birth certificate to make sure we hadn't inadvertently forgotten our child's birthday). I have no idea where the last year went. Sedona is a remarkably happy baby and I've really enjoyed her infancy. It's a bit sad that she's taking those timid little steps into toddler hood, but she's also more fun to play with and still likes to come back for cuddles. The last year's been great, Happy Birthday darlin'!

Serious coveting

Ever since I saw the stories about it online, I've been interested in the Wii Fit. Problem is, we don't have a Wii. In fact, the video game system we are currently on is the Super Nintendo. Yeah, it's safe to say we aren't video game people. But the Wii Fit looked promising. And at a total cost of $340 (Wii console plus the Fit game), it's cheaper than one year at the gym. Then, I got to try the Fit out at a friend's house this morning. OH MY GOSH. I am seriously coveting the Fit now. I have to have it. I know the commercials look corny, but it is so much fun. And I can really get a pretty decent workout even while the kids are napping. And it's so much fun. Fun enough that I really think I'm just gonna take the money out of savings to get it, which is completely out of character for me. I'm gonna call it a gift to myself. We had planned to take a certain amount of money out of savings each month (since I quit my job) and we've managed to not dip into savings at all, so it's kinda like there's extra money sitting there, right? kinda? a little bit? I don't care. It was the coolest game ever and we never splurge on fun stuff.

While we're on the coveting topic...I'm also coveting another friend's new Honda Odyssey. I will not be buying one of those though. Sigh! I'd like a prius, but it'd be really really nice to have more space. They are supposed to be releasing a hybrid Honda Sienna in the states next year---the mileage isn't as good as a prius, but it's way better than what we get now!

And funny kid story....my nephew is not fond of my "2 cups of non-water beverage per day" limit. He gets a cup of juice or lemonade (or sometimes sprite) and then wants more and when I tell him he may only have water, he decides he's not thirsty after all. The first day he bumped up against this rule, he thought he'd out-wait me and just not drink. When I took him out to lunch he triumphantly said he was thirsty and they don't have water at restaurants---au contraire!! I ordered him a water (much to his chagrin). Last week I took him to Sam's for pizza. First he didn't believe me..."are you sure they sell pizza here? It doesn't look like they sell pizza here. I don't see any pizza..." Then he scanned the fountain drinks and said, "hey! can I have sprite?" and I said no, he was getting water. He scrunched up his face in a look of resignation and said, "they have water everywhere, don't they?" LOL To his credit, he now comes to me and not only does he not ask for lemonade or bark out, "I'm thirsty!", he says, "May I have some water, please?" Way to go kiddo!!! :-)

Who Are You...Who, who, who, who?

Anyone else channeling the "who are you?" song? You may have noticed (or probably didn't) that I've added a visitor's map to the blog. Actually, I added two since the first one I added didn't seem to work right. Anyways, it has come to my attention that I have an international following--wow!! Seriously, it's probably just old friends from high school, a surprising number are living abroad. I'm still curious though! If you feel like letting me know who you are, that'd be great. Otherwise, it'll just have to remain a mystery!! I only get location (and even then, the two different maps will sometimes give me close, but different cities), so I'm able to figure some of you out just because I had a good idea you were reading anyway and know approximately what city to look for, but for the most part it's a big mystery! Especially if you're an old friend I haven't talked to in a while (and super especially, if you're an old friend of Josh's that can share embarrassing stories ;-) let me know you're there! write me at penguinkimberly a t yahoo or leave a comment!

And I usually don't talk politics in large groups, but read an absolutely ludicrous piece of news today. I think my yelling scared Josh and it took me a while to calm down enough to be able to form completely sentences and not loud, angry jibberish, but I came across this story about our lovely, 25% approval rating, Dubya. I'll just quote:

President Bush has asserted executive privilege to prevent Attorney General Michael Mukasey from having to comply with a House panel subpoena for material on the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

Come again? Doesn't that seem just a tad counter productive to his supposed insistence at taking care of whoever (if anyone) in his administration was involved in the leak? Coulda sworn I remembered him making all sorts of statements about taking care of whoever was responsible. Oh, that's right, he did. Of course, this latest development fits in perfectly with the rest of the debacle, including commuting Libby's prison term (which, I'm actually not 100% against, since I think he was largely a scapegoat anyway). I cannot stand this loon. And while I'm on my soapbox, that idiotic laugh/giggle he does when he tries to imply that anyone that's not him is a moron makes me want to gouge at my ears with an ice pick.

Splashpad!

I've become addicted to taking the kids out to eat for lunch, so I decided today we would go to the splashpad to play in the morning, and then have a picnic lunch. One of my favorite things about our new house is having this within walking distance :-) A few random pics:




I LOVE my kids :-D Random stories: Sierra always wants to come to book club. It was at our house tonight, and she sat in a chair all by herself and pretended (quite well) to be one of "grown up girls". More than once today, she climbed into my lap and said, "I love you momma" (awwwwwwww.....). She has been (literally) climbing the walls--she'll hang from a window sill and climb up with her feet. After many repeats of "quit climbing!" She got exasperated and said, "ugh! Well, can you put up the climbing wall?" LOL She is going to be a "mermaid, a doctor and a princess" when she grows up. She is brilliant and beautiful and wonderful. I wouldn't trade one bit of the vivaciousness that gets her in so much trouble--it's going to make her into an amazing woman.

Sedona lights up and starts with the "duh-deeeeeeee" whenever Josh walks in the room. When she hears his truck pull up, she makes a bee-line for the front door with a steady refrain of "duh-deeee, duh-deeee, duh-deeeee". She crawls over to me, stands up, lays her head on my leg and says, "hi momma". My heart felt it might actually burst when I picked her up out of her crib to nurse her tonight. I've truly enjoyed her being a baby and just can't get enough of her (well, most days ;-)

PEACHES!!

Josh and I are masters at underestimation. For instance, we didn't quite expect how many peach slices you get out of 22 pounds of peaches.


We were up pretty late, but we ended up with 8 quarts and 2 pints of plain ol' peaches in syrup, and 7 pints of honey spiced peaches (honey syrup, cinnamon, clove and all spice added in)


Yay for "putting food by" while it is in season--not only easier on your wallet, easier on the earth as well. Quit demanding out of season produce and grocers, shippers, etc... will quit supplying it.

Slight Understatement

Was browsing through news articles today and came across one about Caffeinated Moms. There is a quote in there from someone that goes: "I can definitely say without a doubt that I am addicted to caffeine, I need about four energy drinks, three cups of coffee and a six-pack of soda every day." I think addicted is a bit of an understatement! I thought I was addicted because I'm back to feeling like I need a coke everyday!

Not much going on around here today. Peaches are on sale $0.77/pound and they are actually good after a day hanging out in a paper bag. This is the first time in 3 years that we've been able to get good peaches, so we have stocked up--6 pounds already got made into jam. Bought another 22 pounds today and will be doing plain ol' canned peaches and spiced peaches tomorrow. The new canner is working out well, it's so nice to be able to do so many jars at once!

That's one small step for baby...

Sedona took her first step!! It was one tiny step and we all started clapping for her and she got excited and started laughing and bouncing up and down, so she fell. I stood up her again and she took a step out to the side and then another step forward. YAY baby girl!!! :-D :-D :-D

Wow

Sierra wanted to do a workbook page about Texas today. There was a wordsearch and one of the words was "Alamo". As soon as I said the word, she got all excited...."I know about the Alamo!! Ms. Lydia taught me about the Alamo! There are bad guys there and they're shooting good guys and bad guys and that's really mean and the police are gonna come and take them to jail!" I explained to her that they aren't fighting at the Alamo anymore, it was a long, long time ago. She thought about that for a moment and said, "oh...it was when you were a little girl?" wow. didn't know I was that old ;-) I have a bit more empathy for my dad now---my brother asked him once, "dad, did the indians chase you to school when you were a little boy?"

Baby Genius!

Sedona was crawling around the living room today and happened to wander on over to Sierra's (straw top) sippy cup. The child picked it up, sat down, and started drinking out of it!! :-o Not sure about other kids, but I know with Sierra a decent amount of teaching was involved to get her to drink through a straw---it's just a weird process that you can't possibly explain to someone who hasn't done it. So, we were very pleasantly surprised that Sedona just did it on the very first try. She even knew to hold the cup down and not tilt it up (I guess from watching Sierra?) By the time I got the camera, daddy was helping her hold the cup, but cute picture nonetheless ;-)


She has also progressed from saying "dada" to saying "daddy". ALL day long, she crawls around saying, "da-deeeeeeee, da-deeeeeee, da-deeeeeeeee" She can also say, "hi momma!" but you can tell she thinks daddy is a much more fun word to say.

And another pop quiz for you....I bought the exact same lunch for both girls. When they were done, I had to take pictures of each of their leftovers:

Now, you would probably think the box on the right belonged to the 3 year old and she ate all of her lunch. But, you would be wrong. My not yet one year old ate every last bit, and the 3 year old left half her sandwich and applesauce. I'm telling you--Sedona eats crazy amounts of food. and then for dinner, we went to luby's and she had fish (about the size of 3 fish sticks), probably 1/3c mashed potatoes, 1/2c sweet potatoes, a roll, 1/4 c jello, a few bites of cornbread and a few bites of zucchini. In contrast, Sierra picked at mac and cheese and chicken strips.

Sierra stories---we were reading today and the normal course of events is for her to sound out every letter or consonant blend, then say the whole word. So, "cat" is "cuh, aaaaa, tuh, cat" (shout out to my teacher friend, Erin...she really does make her sounds more 'crisp' than that, I just don't know another way to type that ;-) Anyways, she's reading along like that and all of a sudden gets to "hungry" and just reads over it without sounding anything out like she's read it 10 million times before. I said, "woah, woah, woah. Did you already read this book with daddy?" "no" "well, how did you know the word 'hungry'?" "well, it just says, 'hungry'" (Josh confirmed later he had not read this book with her.) wow.

Yesterday, she asked for lemonade at lunch time. I gave her a glass of lemonade, which she promptly (accidently) spilled all over the table. She asked if she could have more and I told her I was sorry, but she wasn't careful with that and she was only getting water now (it's our rule---she's usually so crazy and hyper, it makes her slow down and be more careful). She looked down at the few drops left in her glass and sighed and said, "well, I still have this little bit" I praised her up and down and told her that was such a good way to handle it and she wasn't mad and frustrated and throwing a fit, she just looked at the good side. I told her since she handled it so well, she could have more lemonade after all. I thought I might get a "thank you" or something. no, instead it was, "okay, but maybe this time, we could put it in a sippy cup. And maybe next time I have lemonade, we can just put in a sippy cup so it can't spill" LOL This morning Josh was getting her apple juice for breakfast and started to get a glass out of the cabinet and she got all frantic, "no daddy! I need a sippy cup so it won't spill!!!"

Ode to my hubby

Reading random blogs and came across yet another tale of newlywed woe. It just made me think I should write a short, public letter to my hubby (who says, "I always check the blog so I can make sure I've got my story straight"). I can't even tell you how many times I've suddenly looked at Josh over the last 6 years (yes, we're coming up on the date of that fateful HalfDome adventure!!) and said, "how in the WORLD did WE end up together??!!??" To outside observers, that may seem a little rude. Seriously though, there were some crazy twists of fate along the way, including both moving 1500 miles away from where we met, not having each other's contact info and then just bumping into each other one day and learning we worked in the same building and lived less than a mile apart. I was even reading back through my journals a couple of weeks ago and found (to my surprise! not like I can remember everything I thought/wrote years ago) that I had a crush on him in college, long before we dated LOL I was completely shocked to see his name pop up, but there it was. So, I guess it really was meant to be. Apparently, we get along amazingly well and better than most. We don't fight, we share, we cuddle, we still hold hands (so, there! to random guy that made fun of us for holding hands a month after we were married and said that wouldn't last!). When I'm being crazy, he just accepts it and loves me anyway (which turned out to be the key to keeping me sane). We can still make each other laugh hysterically over really stupid stuff. He's still irresistible when he's "all cute and scruffy" (as I wrote in that journal LONG before we dated). He's definitely fulfilled his end of our marriage vows and "kept me on belay". I hope I've done the same ;-) Lots of lovins always!!

Quick update

Took Sedona into the doctor this morning. She is breathing better, just snot everywhere and has an ear infection (and the other ear full of fluid, but not infected yet). She's also lost weight from her last check two weeks ago though :-( :-( So, I guess we'll be continuing to check in with her GI after all. sigh!!!!

Sick Babies

Sigh! Sick babies are no fun. What causes a mild runny nose in a 3.5 year old progresses to seriously concerning in a one year old. Sedona started out with a runny nose, and by bedtime (and she was overly tired to begin with since we weren't able to convince her to take an afternoon nap), she was miserable, crying and so stuffed up she couldn't breathe while nursing or sucking on her pacifier. For a little while there she just got worse and worse and I was making the "if we go to the ER tonight..." plan in the back of my mind. She calmed down and seems better now, but she's been up 7 times in the last 2.5 hours, so it'll be a fun night. I'm thinking the start of an ear infection, or maybe the congestion is just bothering all those teeth she has sitting there waiting to break through. Whenever they're all stuffy and having trouble breathing, it's safe to assume mom and dad won't be getting any good sleep though. Even if she manages to rest, we'll be worrying about her all night.

Earlier in the day, before she was so sick, she was doing some serious work on walking. She now stands up and lets go and just stands there doing whatever. If you turn on music, she dances. If you try to get her to come to you, she laughs, sits down, and crawls. And we (oh so lovingly) call her chicken ;-) Sierra gets mad and says she is a baby, not a chicken.

Money saving tip of the day......got some split chicken breasts for $1/lb a while back (they've been in the freezer). Thawed them out today and cut the breasts off (woo hoo, $1/lb boneless, skinless chicken breast for 5 minutes worth of work) and cut them into chunks and made chicken nuggets. The rib meat and all that got thrown in a pot and boiled, then I pulled the meat off and put it in two family sized chicken pot pies. Yummy yummy food in the freezer :-)

Oh, and we used our new pressure canner friday night. We always have this problem with making our salsa too mild. Never fear, we finally got it "right"!! Just some background, we eat some pretty spicy food. When we cook for other people, we have to tone down the spiciness. When we make thai food at home, we do not shy away from the red curry paste. So, I dipped a spoon in the salsa (didn't scoop, just dipped) and touched it to my tongue, and my tongue was so much on fire that I refused to put it back in my mouth. I literally wiped the stuff off my tongue. Apparently those Ring-O-Fire chilies we planted this year really do have quite a bit more heat than seranos. This is even hotter than the year we added in habaneros. Anyways, good salsa, but I wouldn't recommend eating spoonfuls of it!

Happy Fourth!

We were invited to a 4th of July party this evening and the girls had a blast! When we got home, Sierra said, "momma, I really liked that party" LOL They had the great idea of staking a huge tarp out on the grass and setting up several small kiddie pools on the tarp. Sierra discovered "slip and slide" and Sedona crawled all around like she was one of the big kids (no sitting still and splashing in a puddle for her!). Pictures:
Sedona trying to get into the big kid pool (no, we didn't let her)

Sedona (outside the pool) flirting with Blake (inside the pool. Blake is almost a year older than her and they had lots of fun copying each other.

Sierra hanging out in a lawn chair in the pool. Give her 18 more years and that bucket will be full of margarita ;-)

Sedona crawling around like she owns the place

Sierra hamming it up for the camera

Sedona crawling through the sprinkler (at one point she just sat with it spraying her in the face while she laughed)

Sierra mid-slip n' slide

and post slip n' slide

And two more of Sedona in the sprinkler

Me again

Well, I tried to upload the pics from schlitterbahn, and they scanned in fine and look great on my computer, but when I upload them, they look all weird and dark for some reason. I have way more things to do than troubleshoot that, so oh well, you'll have to come over if you want to see 'em.

Fun times in the garden. We got rain one night. I went outside in nothing but a t-shirt and a rain jacket at 4 am to strategically place containers under all the downspouts around the house. When I first heard the rain, I thought I should just stay in bed, but then I found myself laying awake calculating how much free water we were missing out on and I just couldn't do it, so out I went. If the neighbors were up to see me, they're just as nuts as I am, so whatever! A few days after that, someone drilled into a water main. Great timing, huh? I stood in my driveway and watched this (literally) river of free water running down the street and looked at my two kids already in the car and ready to go see a movie and decided to just let it go. I'm still regretting the fact that I didn't at least go fill up a 5 gallon bucket or something. And no, it wasn't sewer water or anything. The water pressure was really bad at the house too, so it had to have been incoming water. (besides, it didn't stink).
Random picture of one day's harvest from the garden:



Tomatoes, pablano and chile peppers are all doing great, but they're about the only things. We ordered and received a new pressure canner. YAY. This is the one we got: Presto 23 qt Pressure Canner It's been tested and will start it's work life tomorrow evening. You should go to that site and read the first 2 star review...someone claims their pressure canner just completely blew up on the first use--like, for real, blew up. Yes, I know pressure canners can be dangerous and you should get them checked and be careful, but seriously? Blew up? The over pressure plug, the steam vent, the pressure gauge, and the gasket (all of which are designed to "blow" and release pressure) ALL failed on the very first use? And, okay, say the thing literally exploded on the very first use, why in the world did it deserve 2 stars instead of 1???

Total change of subject. Sedona naps in the stroller (it's easy, it's portable, no matter where we go, we can get her to take a nap). This is what happens when she decides she's not tired. 2 minutes before I took this picture, she was all sitting up looking around like, "I'm not tired! I don't need a nap! See? I'm sitting up! not tired! not at all!"


Her hair is long enough for pigtails! Isn't this the cutest stinkin' thing ever???



And my other cutie made it into this pic. We make adorable kids ;-)