For the Love of Movies

One project finished! Love that feeling-don't get it enough, I guess I need more simpler projects. I just converted our DVD's over to slim cases to save space. We essentially live in two rooms which serve as our shared bedroom, family room, play room, food storage including 1 mini fridge, and office to...how many home businesses do we have now? Needless to say, space is precious! I must be organized for my sanity. I probably spent more time than most people would to make our movie covers look nice, but this is our collection, and once it's made it doesn't need re-doing so I wanted to do it right the first time. I use photoshop all the time so it wasn't really so bad. I re-used the backs and fronts and just made templates for the side titles, I even threw in a little color coded categorizing for easy organizing. I just made 3 categories: Classics, Animation, and Live Action - which is basically any movie with live actors in it even if there is some animation too. I know technically classic movies are live action too, but sometimes we feel like a new movie and sometimes an old so this is how I did it for us. Yay! twice as much space means twice as much room for new movies! We are not into cable so we usually get each other movies & older TV series on DVD for pretty much every occasion. I love the no commercial and no worrying what your kids are watching aspects of having a personal library. This is what thrills you, Lissy? Well, I always thought it was a good thing to be easily amused and it is the little things in life that give you the most joy.

Love this picture

New Favorite Author

   Not that she usurps the place of my old favorite authors, but she has a place of her own right up at the top. I just recently discovered the books of Maud Hart Lovelace and am loving the children's literature. I have yet to get to her adult fiction - the children's stuff is so good. It's kind of like L.M. Montgomery in that it's still interesting to adults though geared toward youth. At least it interests this adult. I am kind of a kid at heart though, and I love hearing about the turn of the century - early 1900's where so many things were changing...the telephone and the horseless carriage and tons of other new things were just being introduced into and changing people's lives and women were gaining increasing respect for their contributions and achievements intellectually and artistically. What an exciting time!
    Anyway, just thought I'd share - it is so exciting for me to find a 'new' author I love so much and look forward to sharing with my children. I don't know how I never heard about her before. I love re-reading books because they don't consume me as much as a new book - so I can put it down and do other things. I read the last Harry Potter book in one day and had to go to a picnic in the middle of it - torture! I have read my L.M. Montgomery books so many times I have had to take a major break from them, because it got to the point where I knew too much word for word and couldn't get into them anymore.

An Extension of Summer

   It is scorching hot. Yesterday Mike had a free afternoon, and so - though we had many other things to do - the beach was calling us! The beach is our haven since we don't have a place of our own. What better place to relax and be renewed and entertain a little outdoors girl for hours on end. We ran into Judy and Gloria who had the same great idea. It was so nice, and my favorite - the hot shower afterward! Nothing makes you feel more alive and more clean than a hot shower after a day at the beach. I really don't mind if the weather can't make up it's mind what season it wants to be. Variety is the spice of life. Every season has it's good points - just like every place. I loved summer afternoons in Boulder, Colorado. Every day at around 1:00 it would rain like a monsoon for about a half an hour, and then the sun would come out again with rainbows and a fresh washed face. Storms are so exciting. It did make us worry now and then since we lived right next to the river in a flood zone, but at least we were on the second floor. I didn't take my camera yesterday, but here are some pictures from when we lived in Colorado and one from my phone of sandy Miss Lily and her little lamb in the car on the way home.

Whoa

   It was super hot and windy outside during our walk today. Hello, Santa Anas! Hello, Static Electric Head! Picture me: new haircut -

 

- rising straight up in the air. Short haircuts have way more volume! Yeah -- I looked goofy.

   Little girl almost couldn't fall asleep. I pulled her blanket over the stroller, because the wind was even warmer than being covered in a blanket anyway... and thought I was going to have to get her indoors and stroll her around in the living room for a bit. But tiredness won out.

    Lily was dancing so cute to Yo Gabba Gabba today. They were saying to clap your hands and jump and different things she's been getting more into recently, and she added her little bop to that. I have been looking forward to seeing her really get into dancing, and then when it happens I don't think to take a video until it's over. Typical. I dashed for the camera and tried to get her going again, but she will dance when she wants to - all I got was fussiness. No one really wants to preserve that on film - but it was nap time after all. 

   The only way I can get this girl down for a nap these days is to take her for a stroll. She was so used to nursing to sleep and I recently stopped breastfeeding her because I needed to take some medicine and get some tests done that weren't safe for breastfeeding. Since I didn't have much luck pumping, and Lily was already over a year, taking a sippy cup, and preferring her milk over solids -- it has really been good for both of us. I would have liked to have gone a bit longer and stopped more gradually, but it actually turned out pretty good in these circumstances. We worked out an altered bedtime routine so milk came earlier and Mike took over at the end. I cut out feedings one at a time with a few days in between for us to adjust - leaving the bedtime one for last. I thought: 'Well, at least she's not to the point where she's really asking for milk with words and I have to push her away..' (She rarely even said mama at that time - probably because I was always there.) And then the last night I planned to nurse her before going to bed she reached out to me, desperately signing milk with her hand, and said "Milk! Milk! Mama!" --Kids tug at your heart strings for sure. Now a daily walk is our routine - the only way to nap. Hence the wish for more trees in our neighborhood. On a couple really scorching hot days I was lucky enough to just put Lily in her stroller and head toward the door and have her konk out. I am really looking forward to cooler weather, and I am a total lover of summer and sunshine!

Keep on Keepin' on

I have had a lot of "I can't do this!" moments this past year...more challenges and more stress than I have ever had in my life. I can be pretty hard on myself as I think a lot of women, especially moms, tend to be. When I say "I just can't do this!" Mike always says,"You are doing it." It's surprising how much that helps me feel better. It doesn't fix anything that's going on, but it slowly changes my attitude. It's good to have a husband who thinks I am doing a good job at being a mom. I'm glad he helps me see that I'm stronger than I think I am, and focus on what I am doing when I get in a downward spiral of what I think I can't do. So I just want to share that with everyone else with their own personal struggles:

You are doing it! You are strong to do all that you do with all the stuff you have to deal with everyday. So keep up the good work :)

Walking

Finally we can share videos! Here's Lily a few weeks ago walking. This is when she was just starting to go longer distances and she'd start crawling when she fell down. Now crawling is a thing of the past... and so are the mummy arms (aww!)

My Baby!

Lily is 14 months old! She is walking like a pro and almost running. She does get kind of wobbly and fall down when she's tired or too excited, but she doesn't have the mummy arms so much anymore -- which is kinda too bad... It was so cute, and that would've been an easy Halloween costume. Her favorite thing to do is 'go outside' and that is exactly what she says pretty much all day long...but, I can't really blame her...Outside there is bark, rocks, dirt and leaves to pick up and throw all around! - FUN! Way more fun than toys!

Lily loves the beach, the park, and playing with water. She especially loves playing with and following around her big cousins Evie and Isaac.

 

 

 

 

She is learning more new words all the time now. I read once that after children learn 50 words they start to come faster and easier and that seems about right. I noticed a sudden surge in Lily's vocabulary so we made a list. We wrote down 80 we know Lily understands and uses, and she's learned even more this past week or so. It is so awesome to see her learning by leaps and bounds. I know it's probably not too thrilling to hear parents talk about their kids doing ordinary things that almost everybody learns to do...but when it's my kid - doing it for the first time, learning something new - it is so cool!  I'm sure if you're a parent or work closely with kids you understand. I was looking back through old photos and I can't believe how much she has grown in so short a time! I miss my sweet little baby, but I love my sweet little toddler! It's hard - it can be really really hard at times, but I'm so glad I get to be her mom!

 

 

A Feeling of Fall

I love the crisp feeling in the air! A relief from the heat, but I also get this sense of new beginnings - probably a hangover from all those years of going to school. Plus there is anticipation for fun and exciting things to come...the holidays, and general conference. I love general conference. I always connect it with the coming of fall or spring. Changing seasons coupled with divinely inspired council from prophets of God to help us change for the better - can't top that! I loved being in Utah during conference time. One year when I was at BYU all my roommates were from Utah and went home for conference so I had the apartment to myself. Maybe because it was completely my decision: nobody knew whether I was watching conference or not, or was there to distract me from it - I enjoyed all of it so much more and felt the spirit stronger than I had before. There's this feeling of understanding or connectedness to the other members of the church, because even though you don't know the other members personally you can feel them all getting ready for conference. Rushing around to take care of shopping and errands in between Saturday sessions. Visiting and home teaching or taking a walk on Sunday, but pretty much no one outside when conference is on the air. You feel like wow, there are members of the church all over the world listening to the prophet saying that right now - I wonder if it hit them like it hit me...  I'm so glad I got to experience conference time at BYU because that feeling still sticks with me wherever I am and I really look forward to it every year. 

A Nice Day

    Today was so beautiful! Lily is always asking to 'Go outside' - it's practically the first thing she says in the morning and definitely the phrase she uses most in a day. It's been so hot I haven't wanted to venture out of the air conditioning too much these past couple of weeks. We seriously need to plant more shade trees in this neighborhood. That's something I definitely miss about Center street in Provo... or pretty much any other place we've lived. Especially since lately this girl will only go down for a nap if we go for a walk. Thank goodness for strollers with sun shades.

   
   Today we had gorgeous fluffy clouds sailing around on a lovely little wind that felt just perfect! I didn't even want to go inside. Lily loved it! -- and was in the happiest mood. We all went to the park in the afternoon and fed ducks and rolled around in the grass and played on the playground. It was a blast. Lily is so serious faced around the other kids - just taking in everything they do, but she loves the slides...and throwing the bark everywhere, of course! What little kid doesn't?
 

The Obligatory First Post

Well... here I come to the world of blogging. I think this could be a great way to keep a journal, have some fun, and keep up with friends and family in one fell swoop! (Areas I would like to step up a notch.) I do like to do things efficiently- though sometimes I think things through for so long it's debatable whether it's efficient or not. Anyway, I'm living life with ups and downs like anyone else - I have a wonderful husband and a super cute little girl to blog about...so we'll see how this all turns out.