September

We began September with a Praying Mantis...

 

 ...crawling all over S...

...whose freaked out face in the previous picture was just because it was tickling him as it crawled up his arm. He was so fascinated by it. Every time it tried to leave him, S would pick it up and place it back on himself.

 

Grandma Lundgren came to visit for Grandparent's Day at H and O's school. 

Who is that mowing the lawn?

Is that my 5-year old?

Impossible!

But true. 

H mowed the front lawn all by himself. Amazing kid!

And, to get in on the fun, O did the back.

He came into the kitchen to get a drink of water and said, "Whew! It is hot out there! I'm mowing the lawn, Mom! I'm going in circles and curves! I don't want it to be all straight like when S does it!" Sure enough...

I am a Jedi Master. Make me breakfast, you will...

Sunday Slackline Fun

Kids Entertainment Tip #298

Word!

Peace

Love

Understanding

Skeletons...

(or I Hope Ruby Will Still Love Me after Reading This Post or Maybe She'll Love Me More)

Today I thought it was time to show my 5-year old some of the demons from my past. It's time he knew truly where his mother came from and what she's made of. This decision was prompted by my response to my 7-year old's declaration, "I'm a cowboy!" What else could I do but scream/sing, "On a steel horse I ride. I'm wanted (wanted) dead or alive!" (J, on the other hand, always thinks of "I want to be a Cowboy! Baby!" Yes, Kid Rock. How we ended up together is still a mystery to me.) It was time to find Bon Jovi's album Cross Road (Thank you, Rhapsody!) and listen with H to the whole thing while we played with homemade, vanilla-scented play-dough.

For those of you who don't know, I was born and raised in New Jersey. I am a Jersey Girl. Maybe not what you think of when you think "Jersey Girl," but I am a product of the Garden State nonetheless. Is it only natural that we would be listening to Bon Jovi, this fine snowy, sunny day? It is not. Believe it or not, I did not like Bon Jovi for oh, about the first 33.95 years of my life. I didn't grow up liking them; I never owned an album; always changed the station when they came on the radio. I spent most of my youth listening to They Might Be Giants, classical music, and whatever music filtered out of my brother's room (which did not include Bon Jovi, at least that I remember).

Today, however, something changed. It changed somewhere in the first verse of "Livin On a Prayer." And (this is embarrassing) it brought tears to my eyes. I mean really, "...hold on to what we've got cause it doesn't make a difference if we make it or not. We've got each other and that's a lot for love. We'll give it a shot...We're halfway there. Livin' on a prayer. Take my hand and we'll make it I swear." (By the way, that's how the Kid Rock hearer and the Korean-American, NJ-born, Bon Jovi hearer make it together.) We won't talk about that abrupt and less-than-inspired key change in the middle of it. Anyway, them's some powerful hormones wacking out my body (very possible), or there's some truth in Bon Jovi that's resonating within me (also possible). Not fading, as a bell tolls, but getting louder and louder, reminding me of my roots.

And how's that for a random post? I'm not sure when this blog turned from updating about life with kids to my own personal sounding board, but I'm okay with what it is now. I hope you are too. I'll bring back the journaling about the monkeys, but for me, this is all about life. Life as a stay-at-home mom of three boys. Birthdays; holidays; school events; feelings of inadequacy; feelings of love and joy; kids' triumphs; my own triumphs as I learn and grow into being a better person, wife, mother; faith growing; manic-depression ebbing and flowing; managing; balancing; all that stuff.

The Sickness of Mr. H

Here is how H gets sick (so far)...

Wednesday night
11 PM: wakes up crying. I pat his back and get him back to sleep.

11:20 PM: wakes up again. I go in his room and he's standing by his bed with a little glob of vomit in his hand. We go to the bathroom, wash him up, wait for more (which doesn't come), get him back to bed. I fetch a bowl from the kitchen and set it by his bed.

Midnight: wakes up crying again, but no vomit. I decide to sleep in his room to keep him asleep.

12:20AM: wakes up crying again, leans over the bed and vomits in the bowl. Wimpers a little and goes back to sleep. I get up, dump the vomit in the toilet, rinse out the bowl, and go back to his room.

1AM: repeat of 12:20AM

6:30AM: I wake up in H's bed. He's sitting on the floor playing "Cars" on O's Leapster.

No. More. Sick. Wow. Would that all of us would get sick that way.

He played, scampered around, had a massive amount of energy all day. That's it. I've been watching him since then. No more sick. Still mystified by it.

From the Mouth of Babes...

Another H-ism:

This is a conversation we had while he was idly patting my belly fat this morning...

H: "You have a big belly, Mom."
Me: "It's squishy and jiggly, isn't it? Do you like it?"
H: "Yeah. It's soft. But those," here he points to my diminutive chest "you just put those on in the morning."
Me: "Yes, you're right about that, Son!"

To get ready for the day, some people their 'outfit' on and their 'look' together by getting dressed. Some people put their 'face' on by putting on makeup. Me? I put my boobs on when I put on my bra.


And can I just say, there is no shame in shopping in the little girls' section for clothes, but there is no dignity buying bras from the little girls' bra section. Do I really need ice cream cones or rainbows printed all over my bras? I don't think so.

Smelly, Silly

While holding my crying 4-year old...

Me: You smell nice. (Nuzzling his cozy jammies and soft fuzzy head)

H: It's because my tears smell nice. I cried and my tear saliva spread all over my face. My tear saliva smells like chocolate.

Mr. Wock

I'm going to miss it when H stops talking like this. How I love his squeaky little voice and inability to say his "R"s!



J took this video while I was running the Wasatch Back. He took the boys up Timpanooke trail to hike Mt. Timpanogos. They lasted about 3/4 of a mile. No worries though, they'll have an intimate knowledge of and love for Timpanogos just like their dad -- I can feel it!

Busta Move

Remember this priceless bit of booty-shaking?

H is at it again.


At the end he stepped on a random thing on the floor (an easy occurrence around here) and that's why he's screaming. He's fine. Now he walks around singing, "Kung Fu Fighting."

Potty Talk and Bath-es

We are finally, officially, wonderfully out of diapers! H is completely toilet trained! We decided one day to put underwear on him, cautioned him to not poop or pee on Lightening McQueen, and that was it. He was done. Hallelujiah!

One day, when he was on the toilet taking care of business (and a rather loose and runny "business" at that) he looked at me and said, "It's like my bum is throwing up!" I couldn't help it; I had to laugh.

And all of a sudden, this little one, who has been terrified of baths and water for the past year, has decided that he must have a bath every day, multiple times a day. First thing in the morning, "Can I have a bath?" In response to my, "A bath? We haven't even had breakfast yet!" or "But you're not dirty!" or "We need to get our chores done and make sure the house is clean before we do anything;" he says, "Well, let's have breakfast!" As soon as breakfast is done, "Can I have a bath?" Or he'll head out the door or downstairs, smear his hands in sand or soot from the fireplace, come upstairs and say, "I'm dirty now. Can I have a bath?" When his chores are done, he'll say, "My chores are done. Can I have a bath?" But the most important stipulation he has is this: "But DON"T wash me!" So, the whole bath time battle? Well, we're halfway there.

Water

Ahh, warm weather. It is finally here in Utah, hopefully to stay for a little while. Warm weather at the Judd household means water. We drink a lot of it and we play in a lot of it. Our flood irrigation comes once a week to nourish our crunchy grass and the weeds we have in our garden. The monkeys need my permission to turn on the hose, which is usually granted unless we have somewhere to go later on. H, after months of screaming his head off every time we've tried to give him a bath, has now decided that he likes baths enough to ask for them at least 3 times a day. Water is good. Water is good.

Water, running out of the toilet and down the heating/cooling vent in the floor (not fond of that idea, person who built this house); out of two vents in the level below onto my dryer and into the downstairs bathroom; out of the ceiling into the furnace room; and out of the corner of my house outside, that water I'm not so fond of.

H, who decided all of sudden that he was done with diapers (more on this in a different post), urgently needed to pee. He's a big boy, capable of managing by himself, so I sent him upstairs to pee before he wet his pants. Then a friend came to the door. Chat chat chat, talk talk talk. A little while later, S went upstairs and came down yelling, "Mom! Mom! Your bathroom is flooded! I heard a funny noise, so I went in and looked, and there's water all over the floor! Who did it? I didn't do it! That's a lot of water, Mom!"

H had peed, then put all of the toilet paper on the roll into the toilet. Of course it wouldn't flush so, independent do-it-yourself-er that he is, had fetched the toilet plunger from another bathroom to "fix" the overflowing toilet. When that didn't work, well, he just went out back -- either to play or hide I'm still not sure. There was almost an inch of water on the floor in my bathroom. It was seeping under the carpet in my bedroom and making its way under the vanity in the bathroom. The thick bathmat I have was soaked all the way through and water was cascading down the vent. In my calmest -- and possibly my scariest --- voice I sent the boys outside to play. Four towels and about 20 wringings in the toilet later I was no longer sloshing around in extremely diluted pee/toilet water. I gathered the towels and bathmat up and brought them down to the laundry room to find the top of my dryer wet with more dripping from the ceiling. I switched on the light in the downstairs bathroom to find the floor covered in water, which was seeping under the vanity in there. When I finally mopped all of it up, I opened the back door to take the towels out to dry before I put them in the washer. Water was dripping about a foot in front of my face from the overhanging ledge of the upstairs level of my house.

I think I called J's cell phone 4 times in an hour leaving scary quiet messages like, "I am managing ok but there is toilet water everywhere and I think that maybe you should come home as soon as you can." And, "I love you and hope your afternoon is going well. Mine is not going so well. I am mopping up toilet water. Please come home." You get the picture. Great day, yesterday. But today I'm laughing at it. I'm still proud of H that he tried to fix it himself. Now to work on the asking for help part...

What Was That You Said?

H:
Kineapple (pineapple)

O:
De-spectur Gagic (Inspector Gadget)
Ren-traunt (Restaurant)
Wolly (rolly) (O has trouble with "r"s and it is so cute)

Oh my small, sweet sons, please never grow up!

H is Free!

H is now 3! We had his party on Saturday.


Here is his cake. I don't know why I didn't buy the train cake molds earlier. They are a hit!




H loved the sleeping bag from J and me. He impatiently bounced while I took it out of the box then promptly jumped in it and started rolling around on the floor.


He only left the sleeping bag to play with the blocks from Grandpa & Grandma Kim.


Three years ago today I went into labor and was breathing through increasingly intense contractions while watching J eat a jalapeno cheeseburger and tater-tots from Sonic. To be fair, it was my idea to stop for lunch on the way to the hospital so J could receive nourishment before having to be my doula. Turns out, I didn't need anyone to coach me through delivery since, for the first and last time, I opted for the epidural. With S and O I was determined to birth the babies my way -- no drugs, just relaxation. It worked out fine and is my preferred way of birthing a baby. With H, however, J didn't seem capable of handling a drug-free delivery, so I had some guy stick a massive needle in my back. I got sleepy and J got chatty. 40 minutes after the doctor broke my water, H made his way into our life. He was and is a handsome little bugger and has always had our whole family charmed. When one asks him, "Are you spoiled rotten?" he replies, "I'm not spoiled; I'm H!" I love how he says his "th"s with an "f" -- as in fumbs (thumbs), funder (thunder) and free (three). He is our little blond boy (hey -- he's blond for coming out of my body!) and has the most beautiful brown eyes -- I could get lost in them. We are so glad for three happy giggly years with H!

Nap Time

Today I put H down for a nap. After an hour or so I thought I'd just go check on him. He was so quiet, so I expected to find him peacefully curled up in his blankets, fast asleep. Instead, I opened the door to a buck-naked H standing in the middle of his room looking like this:

He had climbed up his chest of drawers, pulled down the wipe container and the baby powder . The wipes were strewn all over the room and the baby powder was dumped into little piles on the floor and rubbed all over his body. He even managed to get his back. What an amazing kid.

Did I Speak Too Soon?

Proudly bragging to J about H's 3 successful days in training pants backfired on me yesterday and this morning in a big way. The 3 wet bottoms we dealt with yesterday were nothing compared to the gift he deposited this morning. We're back to diapers for a while, but I see a tiny pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel. 7 1/2 years of diaper changes will soon come to an end -- I can feel it! (Knock on wood!)

It's a Good Day for Sleeping, It Must Be in the Air

J's birthday started off early. When I got back from a 5 mile run at 6:30 in the morning, the monkeys were all jumping around J, who was prostrate on the living room floor, desperately trying to sneak in a few more minutes of sleep. We roused him and presented him with his gift -- 40 feet of 6 mm accessory cord, perfect for making Prussic slings and a gift certificate to a store where he could buy even more things made of metal and nylon that could potentially save his life when he goes wandering around on mountains.

O woke up in the morning with a cough. By noon it had progressed to a full-blown cold. After lunch we read a few books, but I was falling asleep between turning the pages. When we had read two books, O settled down with his blanket for a nap, poor boy. Somehow, my eyes closed and I too drifted off. I was aware enough to know that H went downstairs to play with trains. I woke with a start a little while later, thinking it was just too quiet. O was still on the other end of the couch and H, well, I couldn't find him! I finally located him my second lap of the house fast asleep on the floor by the trampoline.

I love nap days.

Playing Catch Up

I am sitting on my couch, deliriously exhausted, but having to be awake to manage the irrigation water for the next 1 1/2 hours, so this post may not be very coherent. Just to warn you.

Since my penultimate post much has happened. According to my camera, we have walked the Provo River Parkway Trail to Bridal Veil Falls (along with everyone else in Utah County, it seemed that day), hiked to Stewart Falls on the back of Mt. Timpanogos, hiked the "Y", and meandered around Cascade Springs. Pictures are forthcoming, although if you are not my mom, you probably don't care too much.

O, H, and I have lunched on Provo Temple grounds, gone to the library, and generally enjoyed each other's company while S has been in school.

Here is a picture that I really like for some reason:

H's fat little cheeks, the big broccoli tree -- I don't know. It just makes me giggle.

J has been in and out of town, taken days off and worked overtime -- you know, the usual.

I just finished reading "Quicksand and Cactus" by Juanita Brooks. It's a memoir of her life in Bunkerville and Southern Utah during what historians call, "The Middle Years" of Utah history.
"The Middle Years" refers to the time after the great Mormon Migration happened, but before "The Outside" came into Utah. Very interesting read.

Sleepy lady off to check the water...

I Think This Kid Likes Baths

What do you think?

Dance, Dance, Dance

Here is a favorite from last October. Busta move, H!

By Hook or By Crook...

I have a thinker. He is most likely to be found sitting in or behind his favorite chair with a book. I also have an act upon-er. His actions and reactions are, mostly due to his age, not tied to his thought processes. Then there is the thinker/act upon-er. He is a great combination of both. For example, today I made cookies ("ickies" in H-speak). I don't know how he knew they were done and out of the oven, but he appeared in the kitchen just as they made it to the plate. It was just before dinner was ready, so I answered his request for an "ickie" with a,"No, after dinner". He became more and more insistent. Finally, he pushed the stool over and climbed up. I moved the cookies further back on the counter and then resumed making dinner. When I looked over 5 seconds later, this is what I saw:

Now, how could I not be proud of that? (I still didn't give him a cookie, by the way. Should I have?)