Just some shots from around my patio. . .I love spring!



Top: Whirligig, geranium, icelandic poppy
Bottom: columbine, grapefruit blossom (not jasmine!)

I found a really great new take on Kool-Aid. It is invisible! I don't feed Jonas a lot of sugary drinks to begin with, but we had a barbeque on Saturday, so I picked some up for all of the kids. It is great, it got sloshed all over and one kid sat in a puddle of it and no stains. The only problem is that we are trying to get Jonas to drink the rest of it and he is throwing a huge fit because he thinks we are trying to poison him with plain old water. Clearly, I can't win.

The Magster is officially rolling over. She has tummy to back mastered. In fact, I can't even get her onto her tummy any more. The minute she figured out how to flip I could see her thinking, "That's enough of that lame-o tummy time! I hate that! Just try and put me on my tummy now, Mommy! Ha!" She is halfway flipped over before I even take my hands off her. Truly gifted, this one is.

I had a fabulous breakfast today! I toasted whole wheat bread, buttered it, then sliced fresh strawberries onto the toast. It was wonderful! I think that will become the breakfast of the summer. Balanced and yummy.

I sat in the garden today and rearanged a bunch of pots so the jasmine plant could have more sun. Chris fell in love with a jasmine bush/tree thing a few weeks ago and brought it home. At the time the plant had no identification tag and no instructions. I did several Google searches for stuff like "smelly white waxy flowers" and "flowering tree/vine/shrub thingies" before I made an educated guess toward jasmine. A few days after we got it I went to Bath and Body Works and on a whim looked at the label on the jasime body wash. There was a picture of my plant! I'm such a detective. The plant is pretty peaky looking; it has yellowing leaves and just looks a bit sad. Chris was hoping I could revive it. I love him for thinking I could. What part of "raised on the North Dakota tundra with no tropical plants" thing did he miss? I can fix easy plants. I tend to plant stuff that pretty much grows itself. Even with those strikes against me the jasmine does have some fresh growth and many, many heavenly smelling blooms. I must be doing something right.

Chris just got switched to working the swing shift. While I don't really like him gone in the evenings, it will be nice to have him around for the better part of the day. He has a lot of training that will be taking up his time for now. He did get pulled off of the twelve hour shifts, so yippee for that. That was much more short lived than expected and I am grateful.

Jonas wanted to go for a drive today so I took him out to the car and let him pretend to drive while I cleaned it out. It needed it. There were five sippy cups stuffed under seats and toys and random french fries from our trip to the Botanical Gardens when Jonas punctuated throwing a fit by throwing his fries. What a mess! We are slobs.

After church today I came home and read some of the transcripts of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints General Conference talks from last weekend. There were some really wonderful talks given. I didn't catch much last weekend when I was listening because my children were a bit noisy (ok, rioting madly for the cause of the moment is a more honest description). I am glad the talks are transcribed so I can go back and read them during naptimes. They are very uplifting and offer so much good counsel. I really enjoyed this one, in particular. Conference talks always encourage me to do a little better, stand a little taller. There are always a few that seem to jump out at me as answers and guidance to the stresses and trials in my life. Most of the time the counsel given is something I have already heard, but I am in a postition where it makes sense anew. I need the repetition.

So, that it today in a nutshell. What did you do?

We really did love the botanical gardens in San Francisco. They had different sections devoted to different parts of the world. My favorite part was definately South Africa (Cape Province to be exact). You guys have some awesome plants!


This one was stunning, in particular, but this next one, well, if I could have hidden it in my camera bag, I would have. This is the coolest succulent I have ever seen. It it like a Hen and Chicks, but it grows on these wild stems that send the tops careening in all directions and it is about four times bigger than me!.

Scott, Janine, if you have a spare one of these around, send it my way! Someday I will have one of these in my garden! (Probably when I have an actual yard and not just 10,000 pots).

The weather was incredible, especially for San Francisco, which enjoys being all foggy and cool. Maggie was content (that's her specialty), Jonas was wild and crazy and had a wonderful time running down the paths and smelling the flowers. It was the nicest day we have spent as a family in a long, long time.

Here are some more pictures as PROOF that we went somewhere and did something as a family.

Jonas enjoying the foilage

Maggie enjoying all the nature

Me and the Wild Man

Another really spiffy plant.

The handsome husband and darling babe.

and another one of the cutest baby in the world. I just want to eat her little toes and chubby cheeks!

You know what I like about being a grown up? I know there are lots of negative things, like taxes and having to pay for your own stuff, and getting fat and old, but guess what?

You can grab the entire container of ice cream and spoon, dive in, and nobody is going to tell you NO because YOU are the adult. And you can eat it until you are sick if you so choose! Isn't that awesome!

C'mon, I gotta get my kicks somehow :-)

Breastfeeding has many benefits. Babies are supposed to receive the mother’s antibodies and maintain better health. The rest of the family will get sick and the infant will stay healthy- all due to the miracle of breastfeeding. Everyone told me that if I breastfed I would not only lose the baby weight faster, but I would be so fortunate as to not menstruate the entire time I was exclusively breastfeeding. Pretty good perks, eh?

Well, I am here today to tell you that it is either a hoax or I have defective hormones. Maggie has gotten every bug the family has thrown at her. None of them have totally wiped her out, but she has been boogery just like the rest of us. I am perpetually picking little crusties off of her teeny little nose. She has been congested for over a month. It doesn’t seem to bother her too much, thankfully. She does, however, snort when she cries. This is quite amusing, although not very girly. It is getting her extra attention. We were out shopping yesterday when she started to fuss.

The whole store heard, “Waaaaaaaah! SNORT! SNORT! Waaaaaaaaaah! Snort!”
One mother finally asked incredulously, “Was that her?”
“Um, yeah, she’s a little stuffy.”
“Do you breastfeed?”
“ARGH!”

So, clearly, not helping me out there. Let’s discuss the weight issue. Now, everyone said that I’d get skinny faster if I breastfed. The truth is exactly opposite. I am incapable of losing weight when I breastfeed. It refuses to budge, and for good reason. Once I realized I wasn’t returning to my svelt self I did a little research. Apparently, really healthy women will retain five to ten pounds to help them better feed their infants. It protects the mother from illness and depletion. So, apparently, I am oh so healthy. Darn! My mother had to stop breastfeeding because she couldn’t keep any weight on. Why couldn’t I have been like that? To heck with healthy, I want my size six back thanks!

And now for the final blow. Yesterday, as I was rushing to get out the door I realized I had a very full bladder, I ran to the bathroom, dropped my pants, saw red, and actually jumped from the shock. That’s right, Maggie is only three months and unwelcome Aunt Flo is back in full force. I ask you, is there no justice? I suppose I should be grateful, Jonas was only two months when I got it back. But still, do you know what this means? This means that my body is capable of getting pregnant again. It is ready and rarin’ to go. Oh. No. Hell no. I love babies, but I abhor being pregnant. The fact that my body is now ovulating and is capable of getting pregnant is not a good thing. I really don’t want to get pregnant again. Birth control is not good enough to prevent this. Abstinence is the only answer that gives me any comfort. . .now I just have to convince my husband.

Ok, so why is this woman still breastfeeding, you ask? Clearly, the most exciting perks have been denied her.

I do it because I love breastfeeding. I love the snuggling, I love the attachment Maggie and I have. I love the convenience. Blessings of health, birth control, and skinniness denied, I still love breastfeeding.

Jonas has decided to start biting again! He bit one kid when he was one and the kid screamed os loudly he never bit another kid again. Now, out of nowhere, he bites his friend! I am so skeeved. He had a time out the first time, then an hour later he tried to bite him again! He is in serious time out.

If you decided to come meet me at the local McDonald's PlayPlace how could you recognize my child? Oh, he'll be the one covered in blood, zooming through the various tunnels and slides dripping type A negative to mark his path. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure it is clean blood, hepatitis and HIV free (I haven't caught him sharing needles or engaging in unsafe sex lately). I'll be the mother standing helplessly with a wet wipe hoping to get him cleaned up, but unable to catch him.

Jonas has been getting bloody noses again. He had one yesterday and another today. Once he gets one he bleeds off and on for a month. I have no idea why. Sometimes he actually gets bumped and sometimes they are completely spontaneous. Today's event caught me totally off guard. He came down from the tunnels to eat some french fries when I noticed he had blood all over his arm. I started cleaning him up, trying to figure out if he had picked a scab or cut himself somehow, but I couldn't find the source of the blood until he used his arm as a Kleenex again and wiped his nasty, dripping schnoz. As soon as I went to help his nose, which had mostly bled out while he was playing, he zoomed away from me and went back up into the maze of tunnels. Bloody noses don't phase Jonas a bit. They are only a minor irritation and only because I usually interrupt whatever he is doing to clean him up.

I have never had a bloody nose. I am pretty sure he got this from his dad. Chris gets bloody noses at random and, like his son, barely notices. I always notice! Imagine being a young bride, waking up in the morning and looking over at your new husband who is laying in the bed next to you, drenched in his own blood. I swear I though he was dead. At any rate he ruined our sheets.

The first time Jonas got a bloody nose he was about twenty months old. I wasn't home. Chris said Jonas tripped, landed on his face, and started to bleed. Better Chris dealing with it than me I figured. I had no idea what to do for a nosebleed, having never had one myself.

The following day marked one of the darkest days in my career as a mother. I was pregnant, very sick, running on almost no sleep, and Jonas had woken me up by taking off his diaper and tracking poop all over the cream carpet. He then started to throw huge tantrums. After about two hours of these colossal meltdowns interspersed with trips to the bathroom so I could vomit up the lining of my empty stomach, I cupped my hand over his screaming little mouth in a desperate attempt to get him to shut up. In retrospect, I didn't do this too hard. I certainly didn't smack him a smack worthy of any real concern, but I did aim just a wee bit too high. I bumped his nose. His sensitive little nose, with barely closed off, thin as phyllo dough veins and capillaries. Instantly it started bleeding like I'd turned on a faucet. I couldn't believe it. I had given my child, my dear little baby boy, a bloody nose. I was unfit to be a mother. I had no idea how to fix a bloody nose. I was ready to call CPS on myself.

He was dripping blood all over himself, the carpet, me and my bed. And screaming. Not because of the blood, but because he wasn't finished with the previous fit of temper. I grabbed a roll of toilet paper and tried to stem the bleeding. Was it tip the head forward or tip the head back? What exactly was I supposed to pinch? Which position would make him choke on the blood and die? Which one would make him swallow the blood and throw it up? Even if I did stumble upon the correct blood stopping stance was there any way to get him to stay in that position? Was there anything I could do to make the bleeding stop? I was literally sitting on the floor shaking, trying to deal with the blood and the guilt of having caused it, and the morning sickness that was making me dry heave every time I looked at him.

I really believe that God isn't going to give you more than you can handle. He knows your limits. And I was at mine. At this moment, Chris walked in the door. He was home for lunch. It was a totally off schedule lunch. He rarely came home to eat. But there he was. My knight in shining camouflage.

He took Jonas, had the blood stopped in a matter of seconds and listened to me sob and confess that I was a horrible mother. I had made our child bleed his own blood. He gently explained to me that it doesn't take much to start a bloody nose bleeding again.

He was right. I think Jonas had about six more bloody noses in the next four days. Each time I became more blasé toward the entire situation. Now when he starts bleeding, I just strip him down, toss him in the tub and figure as long as he doesn't pass out he's probably fine. I've come along way, baby.