odds and ends

random pictures from the past couple weeks:

madeleine loves eating tomatoes. while i work in the garden, she picks cherry tomatoes as fast as she can and shoves them in her mouth until i finally have to stop her so that she doesn't get a terrible diaper rash. she loves eating whole large tomatoes as well.

madeleine also loves to dress up in clothes that she finds around the house. she really loves randy's clothes and digs through the dirty laundry basket to find her favorites. these were actually clean. i finally just helped her out with the shorts by tying a rubberband around the excess waist so they would stay on and she could stop tripping over them.

another dress-up episode where she found an outfit that is still too big for her in a drawer. she put it on by herself and came out to show randy and me.

madeleine's new-found accessories include as many of rachel's rings as she can fit on her wrists, as well as a "tangle," toy that works nicely as a necklace.

little did i realize, the theme of this post seems to be clothing. this is an adorable dress that my mother-in-law bought for madeleine and she wore to church for the first time yesterday. it is a beautiful color on her and i kept trying to get a cute picture of her for her grammy, but this is the best i could do. i have several eye-witnesses that can vouch that it is even cuter in person. good thing her grammy is coming to visit in a couple weeks and can see it in person herself!

finally, the binky round-up. in general, the rule is that madeleine can only have her binkies in her crib or at other events where i want to keep her pacified (church, car rides, etc.). sometimes, she asks to get in her crib just so that she can have her binky in her mouth. yes, she does have that many binkies, and no, i'm not ashamed. you get pretty creative when you are trying to figure out how to avoid getting up with your child in the middle of the night. eight binkies seemed to do the trick for me. she can always find one.

20 weeks

20 weeks along and starting to show

update: alright, you naysayers, here is another picture of me slouching. see, i'm showing, and i'm definitely not arching my back in this one.

unimpressed

i was at the fabric cutting counter at joann's fabric tonight and the employee helping me tried to make small talk while she cut my felt. she asked me what i did today and after pondering about 20 seconds (literally, which is a long and awkward time, especially in conversation with a stranger), i finally came up with this response:

"i took care of my daughter and my niece."

i decided to leave out the fact that i threw up this morning because i was sleep deprived, as well as my nap, which occurred for the same reason. neither of those things seemed appropriate or impressive in my response. but i did consider it, which is why it took me 20 seconds to respond. maybe i should have included that i made dinner as well.

she didn't seem impressed by my response and quit the small talk right then and there. i was fine with that.

she obviously doesn't have any children.

happily awake

some children wake up from their naps quietly; cooing, or simply waiting in their crib for someone to notice that they've woken up. not madeleine. madeleine wakes up with crying, screaming, or at the very least, a load whimper. not that i blame her. that's how i feel when i wake up. but when i walked into madeleine's room the other day after a four hour nap (VERY uncharacteristic) and found this:

i was shocked. where is my baby and what have you done with her? who knows how long she had been standing at the edge of her crib, simply smiling? i asked her if she wanted to come out and she said no. so, i went and got the camera and decided to take a picture and when she still didn't want to come out, i took some video:

probably boring to most of you, but never to grandmothers. in other sleeping news, madeleine fell asleep in sacrament meeting for the first time in over a year on sunday. after the meeting, she remained asleep and randy snapped a couple pictures with his iphone.

first pictures

well, despite randy's fatherly intuition and my general suspicions given the different nature of this pregnancy, we found out today that we are having another GIRL! here are baby #2's first pictures:

i am still a little skeptical about the gender, actually, but not really for any good reasons. this little girl was modest and would not spread her legs for the entire ultra-sound, despite poking and prodding from the ultra-sound technician. finally, at the very end, the technician proclaimed that it was a girl and pointed to minuscule genitalia to try and convince me, but i just wasn't seeing it. and i definitely saw it with madeleine. i couldn't help but feel that maybe she was just in a rush and didn't want to poke and prod anymore, so i actually asked her how sure she was and she said she was 95% sure. so i guess i should just trust that, right? i mean, she's not going to guess the gender to try and please the patient, right?

right. another girl and we are thrilled!

activity center

my sister is a genius. in a recent burst of creativity, audrey decided to make activity centers for her boys and i tricked her into making one for me.

the basic idea is that it is a box that holds smaller boxes containing items such as crayons, markers, magnetic letters/numbers, etc. (i have yet to fill mine).

the box also has room for notebooks, paper, and a pad that audrey also made.

the pad can either be attached to the back of the whiteboard and then the whiteboard rests comfortably on the child's lap while they play, or i have also discovered that madeleine likes to use it to sit on while she uses the other stuff.

the whiteboard also velcros to the top of the box, forming a desk for the children to sit at while they work. the boxes have magnets on the bottom, so they attach securely to the whiteboard as well.

pretty cool, huh?

thanks, audrey.

berry picking

after reading "animal, vegetable, miracle," i was inspired to do some form of canning with locally grown fruit. so, i did some investigation and found a u-pick farm down in payson (phelp's farm, if you're curious) that has raspberries and blackberries right now, made an appointment, and dragged along two of my friends who are already experts at canning/jamming.

the farm was beautiful, although i think that if i could do it over again, i would wait until a little later in the season when it is cooler. fortunately, we did all of our picking by 11:45, so it wasn't too hot by the time we left, but you know how i am about heat.

here is robynn, picking.

megan and madeleine.

megan, don't kill me for posting this. this is megan modeling the suggested way to wear your berry picking accouterments: two milk jugs with the tops cut off, with a belt threaded through the handles. keeps both hands free for picking and really is the most efficient way to do it. robynn and i are both pregnant and were not willing to put on belts, but megan sported the style well.

beautiful berries

madeleine was happy for about the first 20 minutes, just walking around and eating berries off the bush.

or out of my jug.

however. as soon as the novelty of picking berries wore off and she got full, she went into melt-down mode. she has been extremely clingy this week and has been insisting that i hold her hand or hold her almost all of the time. she decided that our picking time was no exception. poor megan and robynn ended up picking lots of my berries for me as i tried to entertain my clingy toddler.

a momentary reprieve from holding madeleine while she played on her stroller. this lasted approximately two minutes. i wasted 15 seconds of it by taking the picture.

this is madeleine, showing us her messy hand from eating the blackberries, which were much more messy than the raspberries had been. my daughter does not like things on her hands.

closer up. all in all, she actually didn't get that messy. i had actually intentionally put her in white so that i could just let her get as messy as she wanted and then oxy-clean the onesie later. it was nice not to worry about that while dealing with everything else.

this is madeleine at the end of the picking session. i did not put her in the carseat. she went over to the car, insisted that i open the door, and climbed into the seat herself. she had checked out. she was done for the day.

home and washed. aren't they beautiful?

i spent this afternoon making jam with my berries. i decided to go for freezer jam to keep it simple (and cheaper) on my first attempt, but i am very excited to see the results tomorrow, once it sets up. i made one batch of raspberry jam and one batch of raspberry/blackberry jam. i also made sure to pick some extras for us to eat, so we have been enjoying those. they are really sweet and delicious berries. perhaps this will have to become a tradition!