Stir Crazy!

We have been SO busy lately! I am not sure how things got so crazy around here. Suddenly, in less than 2 months, Adam went from no clients to 5, and I am working 10-15 hours a week. So I have been working a lot on Saturdays, and Adam comes home at 4 on weekdays and makes dinner with Lily while I work. Unfortunately, this has been limiting his time to study for his classes, grade assignments for the class he is teaching, meet with his clients, and work on his dissertation. I have also been doing a home-study HypnoBabies course, which I am really excited about! It is a different approach to natural childbirth, and I think it will make this a really great birth experience. However, it is "labor" intensive (haha), and requires about an hour each day, which I can only do after Lily goes to bed. And Lily never goes to bed before 8:30 (usually more like 9), has stopped napping, and always wakes up at 7. If we put her to bed earlier, she wakes up earlier. So by the time we get her in bed, clean up from dinner (some days), read scriptures, and I do my Hypnobabies studying, it is past our bedtime already! In fact, it is so busy that I am almost excited for this baby to come so we can have more time . . . I said "almost". I recognize that once that actually happens, we won't even have time to sleep!

So how's that for an explanation of why I haven't written in almost two months? Let's see, since I wrote last, we went to California for Christmas, had a wonderful time, got completely spoiled by Nana & Papa, visited San Francisco for our 7th anniversary, got fairly sick, but had fun anyway. Here are some pictures of our fun trip to California.

Lily decorating the tree with her cousin, Amelia. 

And her aunt Amber. 

Playing Mr. Potato Head with Nana 

Christmas morning! 

It was a fun trip. Lily got her fairy wings from Santa, and a lot of other fun gifts. May too many . . . :) We all enjoyed it, but it was also nice to come home and start regular life again.

Then I had a lovely week in January when I couldn't do anything because my back went into terrible spasms. It was so painful that I couldn't sleep or do anything else for four days and had thoughts like "If only I were in labor right now. At least that ends!" Ultimately, the chiropractor said that my huge belly has been pulling my back out of alignment while I sleep. So I invested in a super-awesome maternity pillow, and every night I look forward to snuggling with it! I also spent a lot of days in a friend's hot tub, borrowed a massager from my neighbor, tripled my intake of calcium, and increased my exercise regimen. And now my back feels great, thank goodness!

Otherwise, we are doing well. Lily is growing up and saying funny stuff, as usual. She asks "why" to everything, and has for about a year. Those conversations usually terminate in "because that's just the way God made us." So for example:

"Lily, put your shoes on please."
"Why?"
"So we can go to the store."
Why?"
"Because we need to buy food."
"Why?'
"Because we have to eat in order to live."
"Why?'
"Because that's just the way God made us."

Well, that has backfired. Now, whenever we ask her a question, she responds with "Because that's just the way God made us." Whether we ask her why she doesn't want to eat her cereal, or why she threw her sippy cup on the floor, or why she took a toy away from a friend, or why she is screaming. "Because that's just the way God made us," she replied, with a pesky little grin. It has been funny, but also really frustrating.

The other day, Lily was singing "Jingle Bells" and a little while later I told her, "Lily, you got Jingle Bells stuck in my head." She replied, "You have dingle bells stuck in your hair?" We laughed, and I tried to explain what having a song stuck in your head means.

Then the next day, I was brushing my hair and Lily asked what I was doing. I said, "Getting the tangles out of my hair," to which she excitedly replied, "You getting the dingle bells out of your hair!" Classic.

This next little guy is also making his presence known. He can really kick! He kicks much harder and much more often than Lily did, and I thought she kicked me a lot. I am also getting bigger, and have already had someone ask if I am having twins. Really?! In fact, most Sundays and Tuesdays, when I take Lily to the library, I have multiple people ask, "You must be getting really close, right?" No. I am not getting really close. I am just getting really big! But, honestly, do you have to rub it in? I am certainly grateful that I don't need to worry about him being a low-birthweight baby. But I had really hoped to gain less than 50 pounds this pregnancy. That will probably not happen. I guess I should just be grateful that I lose it easily. :)

To ward off any unnecessary weight gain, I have been successfully avoiding sugar for the past month. However, yesterday I went to a friend's house and she taught me how to make fudge. That kind of catapulted my sugar-resistance efforts. But I thought it was worth it since fudge is Adam's favorite thing ever. I really wanted to make him some for Valentine's Day, but I have failed at making fudge so many times that I knew it would be a bad idea to attempt by myself again. Happily, our fudge was a fantastic success! We made the marshmallow creme kind and the old-fashioned kind - so much work, but vastly superior!

And today, it snowed another 10 inches in Corvallis, and it's still coming down hard! I ended up watching a friend's children most of the day since school was out, but she still had to work. We played in the snow a little, but Lily got cold really fast. Hopefully the whole city doesn't shut down again, or we will be really stir crazy! But if it does, maybe I will get caught up on all my neglected sewing projects. :)

Lily's Stage Debut; Mommy's Backstage Debut

Well, it has been a loooong time since I have written on this blog, which is a shame because lots of things have been happening. Well, mostly one really big thing, which is in fact the reason I haven't written on this blog for so long. That thing is called Promised Valley, aka "the play". I have been heavily involved in our stake's 50th anniversary musical representation of the Mormon Pioneers' trek west. The musical was originally written to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the pioneers arriving in the Salt Lake Valley. It has been a lot of fun, and it literally took over my entire life for more than two months.

I auditioned for the play at the beginning of April, but because the director knew I might have to go to my mom's funeral sometime this summer, she put me in the chorus without a part for fear that I might be gone the week of the performances. Then soon after, I did have to go to Utah for the funeral, and was very glad to not have to worry about the play. But when I got back, I learned that the musical director for the play had been a complete disaster. She is a wonderful pianist, but apparently knows nothing about choral music and the practices were completely unproductive and frustrating. She was also too busy to commit, and after a few weeks simply backed out. So they used several different people temporarily to fill in, and by the time I got back, the overall music comprehension was in a terrible state. The director literally begged me to take over the music, and I reluctantly agreed.

Little did I know. Since I had been gone for three weeks, I knew less of the music than anyone in the chorus. At my first practice, before I had even had time to look over the music, at the director's request we dived headlong into the most difficult piece, and I was more than completely overwhelmed. It was SO DIFFICULT!! It would have been an interesting, but demanding, challenge to learn it myself. But to teach it to others was completely over my head! This piece literally changed time signatures multiple times on almost every one of 18 pages. It switched constantly from cut time to 4:4 to 3:4 to 2:4, so it was infuriating to count. The tempos changed multiple times, and all but the last two pages were so dissonant that just learning the melody line was difficult, let alone the harmonies. The accompaniment was also dissonant and lacked coherent melody, so entrances were incredibly hard, and there was intermittent dialogue that completely threw off the music if they didn't say the lines at exactly the right time.

So I practiced conducting at home, listened to the CD recording, and counted out rhythms for literally hours. We hammered out parts over and over and over during rehearsal, in additional to the many other difficult (but not as difficult) numbers we had to learn, and we eventually got them down. In fact, in the end, this terrible beast was our best number! It had the most choreography, was the most dramatically interesting, and sounded the best because we had practiced it so much. But all the numbers sounded really good, and it made me so proud of everyone's hard work. I have to say that I was completely humbled by the experience, but in the end it was so exhilarating to know that we had conquered it, and that I helped bring something about that seemed impossible at the beginning. It was so much fun, and I am sad that it's over.

But it's also a relief to be done. Lily's sleeping schedule was turned on its head. This is primarily because Lily was in the play with me. I wasn't planning on this, but I had to bring her a few times, and the director thought she was so cute that she wanted her in the performances. Lily LOVED being on stage. She learned many of the words to the songs and would try to sing along, she would help me pretend to gather firewood into a basket in the first scene, and she knew when to look sad. She knew exactly when to put her arms up at the end of a few numbers, and often did it before anyone else. Then she would clap enthusiastically. She enjoyed it so much that she cried when we were offstage because she wanted to go on. Almost everyone I talked to said she was their very favorite part of the play, and many mentioned how impressed they were at her stage presence. Every time I have seen the director since (she's in my ward, so that's often), she tells me about more people who have asked her about that "incredibly adorable little, little girl in the play who was their favorite part" and demanded to know why she wasn't in the program.

Here we are "Going West!"

She doesn't look that enthusiastic in these pictures. That's because Adam took them all at the first dress rehearsal when she was SUPER tired.

I guess it is unusual to see toddlers in plays, since they are so unpredictable. It was VERY stressful to have to with me, since I never knew if she was going to suddenly bolt off the edge of the stage, or run behind another cast member and get stepped on, have a diaper explosion onstage, or throw an unexpected tantrum. But none of those things ever happened, although I had to bribe her a number of times with fruit snacks during various parts of the production.

In our Winter Quarters costumes, playing in the nursery room between scenes.

So it is nice to have my life back. I am trying to get caught up on all the stuff that got completely neglected during the month of having 6 rehearsals per week. Lily misses it profoundly though. She still asks me to "go west" and begs to go to play practice. She has been singing vigorously every day since the play ended, and it's funny because she belts it out so loud. One day she sang at the top of her lungs (mostly gibberish with random words mixed in about mommy, daddy, swimming, cookies, kitties, going west, and other phrases from the play) for more than 20 minutes continuously while we were outside on a walk. People on their front porches kept looking around trying to see where that noise was coming from, and they laughed when they realized it was emanating from the 1 1/2-year-old in my stroller. I got a little snippet of one morning serenade on video:

Videos of Lily + Moving

Here are some funny videos of Lily.

Otherwise, our lives just got really crazy because we will be moving in a few weeks. I can't really say that I am excited to move. I love our apartment now, and where we are moving will be smaller and doesn't have a dishwasher. Did I ever mention that I HATE washing dishes? Well I hate washing dishes. But it will save us about $170 per month, which at this point is significant. There is also a playground right outside our door, and lots of families with little kids for Lily to play with. I know she will love it. It will probably be better for me too, since where we are now, there are mostly single students and I have never met another stay-at-home mom. That gets lonely during the day. And I won't have to carry Lily plus laundry/groceries/stroller up and down a flight of dangerous cement stairs anymore - hallelujah! 

So there will be good things, and it just feels right. But in the mean time, it means we have to pack up all our stuff which will be time consuming, to say the least. So, I guess it's adios to all those goals I made about getting things done this month, like training for a 5k and planting a garden. So long, goals! I will be packing boxes instead.

Daddy, Mommy, Dogs, and Bananas (the most important things in the world, of course)

It seems like Lily has just been growing up so fast lately. She has been crawling for over a month now and has been pulling herself up on the furniture more often and with greater stability. Her favorite thing is to hold onto one of our hands and cruise around our apartment or the lawns outside picking up anything and everything from off the ground (sometimes it takes a very long time to get very far). It has been very exciting and interesting to see Lily growing up and interacting more and more with her surroundings. I know what you're thinking: every first-time parent goes through this stage of awe at every little thing their child does from pooping to pulling the books off the bookshelf. Well, you're right. But you're here reading it so that means you want to hear about all the cute stuff she does too ;)

So like I was saying, it's been so much fun to see Lily growing up before our eyes and learning more about the world around her. Like when I come home from class and she gets a big grin on her face and points. Or when she sees one of us coming from down the hall or across the lawn and she turns, giggling as she tries to get away. It has been so much fun getting to know her little (or rather, big) personality. We just wish she could tell us what it was that she wanted more of the time. Which is why the title of this post has us very excited. If you haven't guessed, the title refers to the four words that Lily can say (or at least uses consistently in reference to something): Dadda, Mamma, Daw-do (which means dog, or cat), and "Na-na," which means banana. Other recent additions to her vocabulary include hand signs for "more" and "milk" which she generally signs quite emphatically and with gusto! She's also getting a lot better at pointing at things that she wants instead of just grunting.

Which brings us to another interesting development: Lily's culinary preferences. She has apparently developed an affinity for seafood. A few days ago Christina was having some lunch with Lily in her high chair at the dinner table. Lily didn't seem too interested in her peaches or banana, which is surprising since bananas are basically her favorite food. She kept pointing at something on the table very earnestly but Christina couldn't figure out what she wanted. Finally, she realized that the object of Lily's insistent attention was Christina's tuna sandwich. So, as an obliging mother, she gave her some tuna with a little piece of bread and Lily gobbled it up gleefully by the handful, immediately demanding more. The worst (or best) part about it was that Lily's hands smelled strongly of tuna for the next 24 hours. The next day we had shrimp soup with our dinner and Lily was equally enthusiastic about her portions. Funny, I thought most kids didn't like seafood.

And now for the pictures:

Lily 3 Month Pictures

Time for some more pictures of Lily for our grandparents! To all the rest of you, sorry if our blog is overwhelmed with baby pictures! Lily's grandparents (and some of her aunts and uncles) just don't get to see her enough, so this blog attempts (unsuccessfully) to provide adequate compensation by exhibiting as many pictures and videos as possible. Also, sorry about the video quality. It is really bad, but better than no videos, right?

This is Lily sleeping with one arm straight up in the air. Not sure how that was comfortable . . . :)

Two Month Videos/Pictures of Lily

Here are a couple videos and a few more pictures of Lily for our families:

These next two are for Grandpa Curtis :)