Baby Tuesday

Good morning. I'm having one, how about you?



Normally I'd delete a photo off the camera that had someone closing her eyes.
But this is an important protective measure when Baby R is near your face.
I have new nickname for him, "little Wolverine." Because not only does he have a quick
temper and is not afraid to fight anyone at anytime. But he's also incredibly strong. It's an achievement in itself to hold him down and change his diaper.*


Hey, hey, look at that cool shirt!
I got a little pint size Beautiful Day shirt for Kid C.
Mommy and Daddy have matching tee's too.
Oh and, I don't know where she learned this funny move with her face.
I didn't teach her, but it cracked me up.




Yes, he was really saying "cheese." He'd never done that before either.


Again, more "cheese."
But I'd like to draw your attention to the giant yellow ball behind Dr. Frankenheimer.
I bought that for a WG project, but then we didn't end up using it after all. So here it
sits in our house where the kids bowl each other over with it and cry. I like to sit on it
though so it's staying until I can paint it like a giant ornament. (yes!)


The reason they're being so cooperative and cute, is due to the sleeping bag.
They were magnetized to it, ever since I brought in the house.
Who knew it would be so exciting?


They snuzzled up to it immediately.
Like Mojito would.


Big mom foot, 9 o' clock.



I don't know if it's clear from the video, but Baby R for some reason has become facinated with Olive's poop-shoot. He has a tone in his voice like he's concerned about it, like he thinks she's injured or something. Either way, I gotta keep them separated.


This is from Halloween, I forgot I had it. Kid C was serenading us with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This'll be nice and embarrassing later, right?

*Speaking of diapers. I've been seriously considering going ot disposable diapers with Baby R. Because he has to wear them when he goes to Grandma's or church or out somewhere. And he totally prefers the disposables, and he won't fight me (as much) to wear them. Plus, Kid C is in disposable pull ups, 24/7. I feel like I've done my 3 years of cloth diapers, I've reduced my share of the landfill, and now I'm going to be a polar bear killer like the rest of society. I haven't made the call yet, but I think I might do so in 2009.

don't say "it's only Nov 18th!"...

...because when I tell you I'm going to a Christmas Tree Lighting tomorrow night with the kids, you're gonna think it.

I have mixed feelings about Santana Row.

I mean, mostly I love it. The Dallasite in me loves it. It's produced, polished, filled with shiny new products and well dressed people, and lots of restaurants.
But then, alot of those people are the rich and the bored and it's very pretend-cosmopolitan. Because it's in San Joser, and everyone knows it used to be a Chevrolet dealership.
Watching the "singles" action there is an event in itself. I like to play the "I know why you're still single" game while watching the parade of push-up'd women, and dry-clean-only-shirt men walk around.

Anyway, it's most likely going to be a refreshing mix of families with kids.
And hot chocolate tasting, I can get behind that.

coming to a mailbox near you

postcard size...and somehow I gotta put the address and map and whatever else...

I'm exhausted

Let me preface this by saying, I'm not complaining.

I'm just reporting. It's my blog after all, I need to tell me about me.

This is how I gauge my exhaustion:

I'm too tired to /I can't handle:

-closing kitchen cabinets
-opening the garage door to recycle something
-do anything but read aloud to or take a walk with the kids
-plan a meal, cook it or clean up after it
-e-mail maintenance
-phone communication
-shower
-make/keep doctor appts
-read Bible/books

I don't feel like I'm going lose it. But I do feel like falling over.

I made a bunch of mistakes in the last week because I'm so exhausted and I can't think straight.
And I feel really terrible about them. It's like cosmically I know I'm forgiven, but I'm so tired I can't make a resolve to fix the mistakes.
It's different than the pregnancy "Stupids" because that was more like going around in oblivion. My thoughts now are clear, and clearly regretful.

And I've been meaning to say this following statement for years:
If you have gone to a spa recently, or are planning on going, etc-- *do not tell me about it.* It only makes me want to cry. I don't want to know what you do or how great it is, or how great you feel, because I'm horribly jealous and it makes me depressed.


I'm going to stare at this beluga whale for a while and see if that helps...

Prudence is a frumpy girls' name...

...but I'm learning the benefits of it.

I was considering this year's Christmas card, the other day while shopping. How can i make it meaningful and cheap...meaningful and cheap...hmm.

And then I realized the most meaningful thing to do with that 100 bucks that I have spent on cards (yes, I'm an idiot but $1.00/card plus stamps adds up when you send out 50 cards)
...the most meaningful thing to do would be to spend that money on people that need it.
...the cheapest thing to do would be to not send cards.

I knew it was a good decision when I felt a big relief after I made up my mind.
And I weighed what I believe and the facts as I see them, and it's the only logical choice.




But! I promise to make a really cute photo shoot and make a blog post that looks like what
my christmas card would look like if I had really made them.
It'll be entertaining, I promise!

Stay tuned.

Baby Tuesday

Kid C likes to take pictures of herself.
I don't know where she gets that from. *eyes darting back and forth*
She will sit with my laptop and play with the "Photo Booth" program for like 30 min straight and take photo after photo of herself.
If she sees the camera, she wants me to take her picture.
She loves the mirror. No self esteem problem here, people.



She insists that no one else be in her shot.
We snuck in on this one, and then she told us to go away.


Working with props, namely, my earrings.


She did a ton of these, motion shots.






More props.


Extreme close-up.


Classic.


Baby R wanted part of the action.


There are a ton of these too.
She would hit the button and then flop on the table.


She wanted me to take photos of her in the bathroom all night.



She looks like, what, 10 yrs old here?




My absolute favorite!

what we have here is a failure to communicate

I don't know how everyone else does it.
Look at my current situation:
(these are screenshots from my email accounts)








This last one is my Flickr mail.


I mean, oh my gosh. I can't handle all this mail.

And the real paper mail is the exact same way. Que horrible.

And now that I have so much, I really don't want to spend a couple hours of my time sifting through it all.

And yes, I still can't access my voice mail.

Arrgh!

Military packing!

Do you know what I just stuffed into a gallon bag?
2 dresses
1 shirt
1 pair of pants
10 pairs of underwear
1 pair of socks
1 pair of crocs
1 pair of sunglasses
24 pack of colored pencils
20 pack of #2 pencils
1 spiral notebook
1 board book
2 oatmeal bars
2 fruit bars
2 toothbrushes
1 bar of soap
1 doll* + accessories (it's tiny I admit)
1 jumprope
2 yo yos
1 harmonica
2 bags of jacks
2 balls
10 hair clips
1 bar of soap

That has to be a record.

We're following the Operation Christmas Child method, but instead sending it to the children we met down in Haiti.
Thats a photo of the little girl, Damilove, who's going to recieve my bag in the photo above. (It's skewed from the angle)
I'm so excited and I hope Kristie can take a photo of her with all the stuff I/we sent.


*It's a Jasmine doll (from Aladdin) that was the closest to "black" as I could find in the store. I was like "what's a woman gotta do to find a black doll around this place?!"

A or B?

Taste test:


Fig A


Fig B


Honestly I don't feel great about either of them, but I did go ahead and send one along.

I cram and then I sit

I manage to cram way too much stuff into my life and then when I get a free moment that I set aside for the purpose of just getting things done that need peace an quiet to accomplish. I just want to sit and stare at the wall or lay on the couch and contemplate soap commercials.

So I accomplished a couple of things in the last hour. And now I want to blog and chat with people.

I have shirts to make, house to clean, make a new coffee business plan for church...

Hey, I'll blog about my new coffee plan for church! (ha)

So the woman who was staunchly opposed to my fair trade and eco friendly suggestions is now gone from the church. And the resposiblity for that "ministry" now belongs to my boss's department. I put ministry in quotes because at this point, it's just a glorified snack bar.
We serve coffee in carafes and hot water with tea bags, and a giant bowl of donut holes. I don't think anyone feels ministered to or that somehow this relates to the reason we are up early on a Sunday morning.

The reason I ran into road blocks for the fair trade coffee and the eco containers was money.
We have x amount of dollars to spend on coffee.
I agree we should spend the very minimum of the money that people give in the name of God to stock a snack bar.
So here is my revolutionary idea:
Are you ready for it?

Make less coffee.

People only drink it because it's there. I know that's why I drink it. And people that come to the 11 o clock service don't need coffee to function, they've probably already had their Starbucks before they came.

And I know I'm kind of a jerk this way, but I think too many people have caffiene addictions. I know, I know, I'm judging, I am.

So if we only serve coffee to the first service, who we want to reward for getting up early anyway, we can then afford to spend money on fairly traded coffee and eco friendly cups.

Any other suggestions?

Baby Tuesday

Happy Halloween everyone! I mean...Happy Election Day!

I have so many photos this week that I'm saving some non-Halloween pics for next week.


Here we are, the family unit, in theme.
Apparently our family was the hit of the party
I didn't expect that.
Baby R's costume is borrowed from a friend.
Kid C's I completely sewed (except for her wings, those were last year's Tinkerbell's wings)
She wanted to be a green bee, and I told her no one would understand that she was a bee, so I sewed a green flower on her costume. That was enough for her.
I sewed the bottom part of mine. And we doctored up a rain suit for Kevin's bee keeper's getup.
Oh and Kid C and I are wearing practice golf balls and pipecleaners as antenna, ha.


I promise the church Halloween party was more fun than this photo would have you believe.
They had Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin playing in the auditorium, which was when we remembered the camera.
They put a giantic inflatable slide IN THE LOBBY! It was awesome. And this year my skirt didn't fly up when we went down. I was sure to weigh it down with Kid C.


Baby R loves to run through the auditorim when it's [mostly] empty. With my job, he gets to do it alot.

Oh and he had no shoes. That's also why we spent a lot of time with Charlie Brown.




Earlier in the day, we hit Willow Glen for toddler trick o treating.
It went much better than last year. Kid C had so much fun, and Baby R just rode on my shoulders the whole time, watching the action. He's a chunk, so my shoulders were killing me the next day.



Docile. It was nap time.


No nap for Kid C! Candy time!


Bees ready for takeoff.


This entire costume was made without measuring.
Velcro, velcro velcro.


After two sessions of trick o treating, and the big party, the bees were ready to go back to the hive. We stopped by Grandma and Papa's house on the way back.


He just wanted Grandma to hold him and feed him milk.
So cute. He gave up on Halloween hours ago.


I missed the moment, but Kid C was trying to put her fancy dress up plastic shoes on her brother and he thought it was so much fun.


It hadn't rained in months and months, and I wondered if he would be too big for Kid C's old "ducksuit" by the time rain fell again.
But yes we had a "storm" (hah!, not a storm by any non-bay-area standards).


He wasn't really happy about the rain or the ducksuit.
Grumpy duck.

cute preview

It was a very cute Halloween....

this deserves an essay

But I'm not going to write an essay. Even though it would be more moving than this blathering...

After watching The High Price of Low Cost this weekend, I got another big cosmic push to be seriously mindful of how I spend money.

I always knew something must be wrong for the things I buy to be so cheap.
But it took THREE movies to finally coerce me to change my behavior:

Movie #1. What Would Jesus Buy

Movie #2. Call + Response

Movie #3 The High Price of Low Cost

When I put them all together, along with Advent Conspiracy and Relevant Magazine's latest cover story, I have no other choice but to stop buying things simply because they cost less.
I can no longer plead ignorance.

Perhaps I saved 20 bucks on a pair of shoes, but those were made a woman somewhere, who has a name and a life, and wants to go to school and wants to make enough to feed her kids and if she gets sick, she deserves medical care.
That means, I have to buy less stuff and buy it more carefully.
And I know I'm part of a tiny tiny group of people that are thinking this way and buying this way. I know that it's going to take millions of people to boycott to make giant evil corporations change the way they operate. But I'm blessed enough to have options, and I believe God wants me to do everything in love. That includes shopping.

Thankfully I found this list, and some of my favorite companies are on it, like Trader Joe's, Old Navy(Gap), and IKEA.

Target is not on the list....sigh...

...sigh...

Must stay strong. Must stay strong.



I'm gonna cruise around here for a while...

let's all get on the same page

After listening to This American Life I feel the need to clarify the following points about Obama:

1. He's not a Muslim. He's Christian
(remember that whole crazy reverend thing? yeah?)

2. He's not a terrorist.
Just because his name rhymes with a terrorist means nothing.
My last name rhymes with Slayer.

3. He's not buddies with crazy people like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.
Remember this?

4. Yes, he's black. (I can't believe that's really a problem for people.)
But he's also white, and was raised by white people.

5. He's not a "radical."
He's against gay marriage, which around here makes you a total conservative.

6. He's way more like Hillary Clinton than John McCain.
All of those pouting about Hillary need to calm down.

Okay, I just needed to get that out there.

bad juju moving in

It's 10:15 pm. Tomorrow is Halloween.
Kid C's costume is done.
Baby R's is done, although the pants are still in the washing machine.
My costume is about half-done.
Kevin's is half-done.

Baby R somehow got a stomach bug (the kind that hits you on the way out) and has passed it around to all of us.

And because of those intestinal cooties, I'm feeling like calling it a night.

After all, tomorrow I need to:

10am- take kids to elderly center for halloween party
then bring kids back before 11:30 to drop them off with Grandma
11:45- figure out how to spray paint a bunch of stuff (for the big Beautiful Day sign up bonanza when it's raining outside)
1:30- return to kids, and possibly take the trick o treating in either downtown Campbell or Willow Glen.
5:00 get everyone ready to go to church for our Halloween Party
(I'm not calling it a Harvest Fest, I mean everyone knows it's Halloween, and no one harvested anything around here. C'mon)
6:00 until cranky- party down in the rain at church dressed as bees.

I might be able to finish my costume in that window of time when Baby R is sleeping and Kid C is watching TV...

I dunno, I'm just pooped.

the weather is in on it

It has been sunny and warm for like the past two weeks. I mean it's practically like that every day here.

Tomorrow, it's supposed to be cold and rainy.


Good thing Kevin's costume involves a rainsuit.

The rest of us will have to huddle under an umbrella.

new series

November's series is about addressing destructive or growth-stunting patterns in our lives.

We think we're gonna call it "Unstuck"

Who knows if by the end of the meeting tomorrow if that'll be what it's about or what it's called.

oh boy

Yes.

kinda cool, kinda gross

Did you know that ladybugs did this?



I didn't.