random

This blog of our family's fantastic adventures has two main purposes. The first one is as a record of our family that I plan on printing up as a book every year. And second, as a way to keep our far away extended families in touch with our adventures.

So here are some random blurbs about life as of late and our little girls and whatever else comes to mind.







September started out cool. Summer just kind of abruptly ended and I was nervous about how soon winter would come. But the weather has been great, usually in the upper 60's or 70's. It is definitely Fall though. The days steadily getting shorter, the mornings too dark. In the very beginning of September I noticed a tree just down the street who had a few branches tinged with red. Now most trees have been touched by the season. Our back porch is often covered with leaves. Cumorah likes to play with them. She even brought me a handful into the house. It's been beautiful. I feel the need to take back just a little of my comment on how those that love their REAL four seasons can just keep their four seasons to themselves, because I really do like Fall here. I don't take it all back though, I still really don't like winter.

We've been to ice cream three times in the past month. The first two times were in the same week. Snookies closed for the season in late September and we just had to take the opportunity to enjoy it before we were forced to wait until April. Yummy, yummy stuff. The third time was just this last Saturday. We went to Cold Stone out at the mall in West Des Moines. The last two times we've been to Cold Stone, Cumorah has chosen her own ice cream. She tells the server, "Blue." Blue ice cream at Cold Stone is cotton candy flavored and very yummy. I'm just grateful it's not the bubble gum flavored ice cream of my childhood. The kind that after you ate it you were left with a nasty sticky napkin full of sucked on gumballs. Cumorah had gummy bears on her blue ice cream, but next time we'll stick to sprinkles. She doesn't have the patience to chew the gummy bears. I think she was swallowing them whole. After the ice cream we walked around a little lake with fountains that is right next to the mall. Cumorah ran around the entire lake. I think she was on a little bit of a sugar high. The best part about going out to ice cream is seeing Cumorah's face light up when we ask her if she wants ice cream and listening to her yell in the car "ice keem!" when we ask her where we're going.


BooBooBunny was wildly popular in September. Every little owie needed the sweet comfort of this cute little frozen washcloth guy. Funny thing that no matter where the injury, the best relief is found through sucking on the plastic ice cube. We also have a BooBooBear who is really just a picture of a polar bear on the terrycloth cover of a little rectangular gel pack. He apparently works best applied to the head. BooBooBunny used to be very white and fluffy and fresh looking. Now he is one eyed, his perky little cottontail has been pulled off, his bow is never tied and he has blue playdo and red spaghetti sauce splatters. Reminds me of the Velveteen Rabbit.


My redwood sorrel is finally happy. Brian brought me home some from near Jedediah Smith Redwoods when he was working on that construction job in Crescent City in the spring of 07. I love shamrock type plants. (they close up and go to sleep at night, how cute is that?) They finally started growing this summer when I abandoned them on the back porch and left for California. Now I just have to make sure that I bring them in before it freezes or before the squirrels get to them. Nasty little buggers. I used to think squirrels were cute and sweet before I moved to Des Moines. Now I think they're destructive evil little nuisances. They're really at their worst right now as they have a last burst of hole digging, nut gathering frenzy. I must admit they are fun to watch in the tree out back crunching on nuts.





I have been injuring myself as of late. First, I broke my own strict toothbrushes-belong-only-in-the-bathroom rule. I read one of those "real life drama" stories in the Reader's Digest as a teenager about a little boy who ran down the hallway with his toothbrush in his mouth. He tripped and fell and jammed his toothbrush deep into the back of his throat. I've never been the same since reading that story. Anyway, I was multi-tasking as usual, brushing and putting little shoes away at the same time. I bent and twisted to drop the shoes in their little bin in the girls closet and I rammed my toothbrush into the side of my cheek by hitting it on the door frame. Not quite as dramatic as the story of the boy, but it did hurt and it did tear my cheek open on the inside pretty good. I will no longer be breaking my strict toothbrush rule. Then last week I think I might have broken my toe. I stubbed it and fell to the floor cursing the inventor of bouncy seats while Cumorah watched me curiously. I have stubbed my toes about a thousand times on the stupid thin metal legs of that bouncy seat. I know, you'd think I'd learn, but I'd rather blame it on somebody else. Makes my toe feel better. It did the usual turning mottled purple and radiated pain all up my foot to my lower leg. It seemed to get a lot better pretty fast though. So if I did break it, it was probably a wimpy break. That's how I break bones, wimpily. That's how I broke my arm at girl's camp the summer I turned 13 and that's how I broke my nose "catching" a soft-ball the summer I turned 19 (i was never meant for sports, i lack confidence, coordination and competitiveness). But I did get flowers out of the deal. Brian had to stop at the store to get something on his way home that day, and he took the opportunity to get me flowers in honor of my debilitating injury. He even made dinner (canned chili). I love flowers. My husband is the bestest. However, the yellow and green bruise on my arm is not an injury resulting from my own stupidity. All I have to say about that one is that it is a good thing that the nurses working for Brian someday will be giving the shots. I think I might start doing my own shots again.

Cumorah is growing up so fast. She's a smart cookie. Very aware of things around her, she picks up on stuff really fast. Too fast, sometimes. We were at the store the other day. A little market we hadn't been to yet called Gateway Market. It is a neat store, yummy specialty gourmet type stuff. But it is no Trader Joe's. It's too expensive, more like Whole Foods. (I can't get over the lack of Trader Joe's. I've been on the website several times suggesting they build one in Iowa, they're not listening to me.) There was no room in the cart for Cumorah so she oscillated between crying on the floor and being Mommy's big helper. Mommy's big helper won out in the end, when she got enough free samples from workers at the store who thought she was really cute despite her tantrums. When we were all done browsing, she helped put our selections on the counter, tipping them up over the edge on her tiptoes. She got her purse out of the cart and I told her we didn't need to buy that and she could put it back, but she ignored me and set it on the ground, fishing around inside of it. I watched her curiously while I emptied the rest of the cart. She found her wallet and opened it up. She pulled out her credit card (the type you get in the mail that say "your name here") and tipped that up onto the counter to give to the checker. I could hardly contain my laughter as I realized this little girl knows exactly what that piece of plastic is. You give it to the checker at the store and they give you all the stuff you want to take home. Watch out Daddy, your little girl knows how to shop.

Another funny about Cumorah... She loves to go to nursery at church. Once when we forgot something on our way to church and had to go back to the house, she started frantically yelling, "Nurshie, nurshie, nurshie!" as we were pulling into the driveway. She practically runs down the hallway at church on her way to nursery. She sings all of the typical nursery-type primary songs around the house. The singing is VERY cute. This last Sunday Brian asked her who was in nursery and she said matter-of-factly, "Boys."


The girls have been sick a lot lately. And when they're not actually sick, their noses are still running. Cumorah has taken her own box of tissues to various places where other people are watching her. The cough is what bothers me. The only real treatment recommended for your standard non-serious cough is a humidifier. But when the house is already at 70% humidity, it's hard to imagine a humidifier doing anything more but aid the growth of mold spores. Oh well, winter will be here soon enough and the heater will take all that moisture out of the air and we will be plugging our humidifier in after all.





Cumorah has gone pee pee in the potty several times. We're not potty training in earnest, but she was interested and so we play around with it some. She likes to run around the house with a bare bum for a while and then go sit on the toilet and read one of her two potty books. Her daddy wasn't sure about the nakie bum part, especially when I let her out on the back porch where the neighbors could see. So we tried running around in big girl panties just recently. Nope, didn't work. So we'll just go back to the occasional nakie bum for now until we get a little more serious about it.









And Rivers...Rivers is Rivers, just so darned cute and fun. She's cute when she's screaming and she's cute when she's happy. She got the long dark eyelashes, too. They touch her eyebrows. Rivers is a mover. She squirms and strecthes and bounces her legs. She doesn't stay in bouncy seats (there's a reason they tell you to buckle them at all times) and she almost flips out of the bumbo, too. Something that Cumorah didn't do until she was almost one. Rivers is rolling over a lot. She does push ups and is quite strong. She looks like she's going to start crawling tomorrow, but she's not sitting up yet. She is also very into fine motor skills. She likes to carefully grab and pick at things with her little fingers. She has a very pleasant coo, the type that makes strangers just gush over. She loves attention. She LOVES kisses and returns them with a wide opened gummy mouth. She likes to touch my face while she's nursing and cuddling, and she likes to play with my hair. She's a momma's girl. It makes Brian pout and vow to win her over eventually. I'd say he should just be happy that Cumorah is HIS little girl. Isn't it delightful that it's him she cries for in the middle of the night? Oh, and I just felt Rivers first tooth poking through on the bottom yesterday, though I have yet to see it. No wonder she was having a hard time napping.