October General Conference

I developed a very personal love of Conference when I was a student at BYU. Since then I dreamed of what I would like conference weekend to look like in my home. All the family gathered around, yummy food, quiet planned activities for the kids. An environment for the spirit to touch each heart, and a time to create wonderful memories. I dreamed of instilling my love for conference in my children. Well, things rarely go as well as you hope and plan they will. Though conference is always wonderful, I've been sort of disappointed over the years trying to create that perfect environment for the family to enjoy it. This year I looked forward to it as I always do, and didn't expect much more than just getting to listen to it. Saturday I woke up early to make French Toast for Mike because he's been working super long hard days this week and had a small job Saturday morning. We enjoyed breakfast together and sent him off with hugs and kisses, and started to clean-up the dishes. Lily says to me out of the blue, " I'm so excited for general conference!" Of course she can just barely pronounce it. I was so touched because I don't think I'd even mentioned it yet that morning, but she was obviously aware of my excitement for it. We were dog-sitting my sister's 2 dogs over the weekend and had them shut behind a gate in the back room where the TV is, and Lily went over and told them: "You dogs go outside so me and my mom can come watch conference!" We didn't kick them out, and conference wasn't for a couple of hours still, but I thought it was funny.

Lily did so well. For those of you who don't know what conference is it's a special meeting of all the members of our church twice a year when we get the opportunity to listen the the prophet and his counselors, the quorum of the twelve, and other church leaders share messages they have prepared by the spirit of the Lord for all members of the church to hear. I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to listen to these inspired messages for our times. There are always certain portions in various talks I feel were meant just for me, and I always come away from it with a strengthened testimony, a fresh hope for the future, and a desire to strive harder to be a better person than I am. So you can understand how I want my children to love it as much as I do. But conference is also essentially extended church. Yes - we get to stay home and watch it in our pajamas if we want to, but it's still long for kids - Two 2 hour sessions, with a 2 hour break in the middle, over 2 days. Saturday and Sunday. Lily can be so stubborn and contrary at times I was blown away by her enthusiastic attitude this year. She did really well. She packed her own little backpack of stuff to bring into the TV room, and sat drawing quietly or snuggling with me and eating candy corn. When she got bored she and Grandpa made their way to the front room and soon as we were listening to the children singing "I Am a Child of God" in the conference center, we heard Lily singing it and other Primary songs over the Karaoke machine. I had no plans to make things extra special this year, but it turned out that way. I couldn't have asked for a better day. I am so grateful for my family and for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!

Lily drawing

Lily explaining her picture to Grandpa

I thought this was a pretty cool drawing. It looks like a couple of many eyed monsters, but it's really a family portrait with some neighbors thrown in.

Me and my snuggly girl

Learning Time

I racked my brains and I think the lost Lily-lingo I had written down might have been this:

For one - Lily often prefaces anything she says with: "Mom, I have a question for you." (Question sounds like it's spelled with a 'c' and usually she just has something to tell rather than ask.)

The perpetual question:

Lily: "What today is it?"
following up with: "What day tomorrow will be?" and "What are we going to do on 'the-next-Day-of-the-week'?"

Lily used to ask this all the time - I was getting kind of tired of it honestly...so I made this calendar (below) for her so instead of answering her over and over she could learn to figure it out for herself. I guess my plan worked because she doesn't ask this nearly as much as she used to! Except for right as I was typing this. Oy Vey!

I still feel like I am missing some cute lost phrase. But, while I am posting something...Lily got her first ever black eye. Or as close to a black eye as she's had before. This is Day 2, and the best picture I have because she was not wanting me to take it. 

Not too bad, though it's kind of hard to even see in this picture. She walked into a wooden post out on the playground and really kind of scraped it more than anything, though it was pretty swollen up at first.

Also, Lily has started drawing some pictures that actually look like something! You'd think with 2 artists for parents we'd have been pushing art supplies on her from the time she could pinch her fingers together, but we really haven't. I am somewhat ashamed at how little I get out stuff for her to get creative with. Today she prompted it herself and we made pipe-cleaner spiders, and drew spider-webs and butterflies. Here's a drawing from the other day:

I can't remember all of what this is, but the big figure is me and right next to me - is a box of tissues with legs. I thought that was pretty funny. If you know me very well I do like to be near my tissues (chronic sinusitis).

Anyway, that is all I have to share for now. Got to go make dinner for my hard-working man! Happy Friday!

Say What?

Becoming a parent changes your whole life. It makes you more appreciative of your own parents, and it makes you say things you probably never thought you would say.

Here are just a few things I've caught coming out of my own mouth recently: ( I know there's been more and crazier ones, but I just can't remember them all, so here you go)

"Less talking more eating!"

"We can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way!"

"Are you going to make me count!"

By the way, I think it so rocks that the majority of the time - just counting is enough to get a kid to cooperate - no other threatened consequence required. A nice rest for the brain in the discipline department. Even kids you've never met before feel the power of it. Of course if you don't follow it up with something eventually it loses effectiveness.

The other day Lily said to me in the car: "No dancing mom! I'll count to 5!" --She was just mad that we wouldn't change the music to Yo Gabba Gabba. (She so needs to broaden her musical horizons.)

Oh, yes - she turns the phrases we use around on us all the time!

Sometimes half of a warning/threat/admonition (take your pick) comes out of my mouth - and the other half doesn't quite make it...It gets mixed up, or falls flat so that whatever I just said just ends up just confusing or lame. I have laughed at myself at times like those. I usually try to clarify my meaning, if we haven't already moved on to something else... Sometimes I think I can't really blame Lily for not being better behaved. Other times I think: Why am I even talking about this with her? But then there are times where it is evident how much more she hears and understands than we realize, so hopefully - with consistency - she'll get all my jumbled lessons eventually!

Random things Lily has said (that I wrote down) over the last couple of months:

"Dad, I have a surprise for you and mom for when you got married because I didn't give you one, so I'm giving it to you right now." (FYI: It was her baby doll stroller wrapped with apron strings). continuing: "It's time for a celebration! I'm decorating!"

Randomly to Grandpa: "My little sister's in heaven - she's getting out soon!" (Maybe she knows more than we do) ...She also asked me about where babies come from, and if they were pooped out into the toilet! She's super inquisitive and observant and she puts so many concepts together on her own it constantly amazes us. It's so funny to be caught up in a conversation with her where she's talking like an adult and then she suddenly breaks into baby made up words and her high babbling baby voice, and you're like: Oh yeah, she's still little!

Lily: "I want to give Grandma a hug!"
me: "I think you missed her...she's already gone out the door."
(Hugging herself) "I'm giving her a hug and a blow-out kiss!"

To Dad: "Why do you have that Barbeque pen?"
Mike (telling me what she asked): "She can read!"
me: "She can recognize a few things. Yesterday she wrote her name...but there was a q in it".
Mike to Lily: "Lily-Q! Hey, Lily-Q"
Lily: "No! (spelling) L-i-y!"
Us: "L-I-L-Y"
Grandpa: "Lily, what does your Dad's shirt say?" (Mike's in the Window Washing business)

Lily: (in her Dad's lap pointing to the letters as she proudly 'reads') "Wash-ing-ton!"

I know I had another scrap of paper I had been hanging on to with a phrase Lily was saying that since right around the time I wrote it down - she stopped. Can't find it. :(

There are a ton of other things that pass by without the time to write them down. It's too bad. But most of the time it's really a good that we don't remember everything! We had a really nice Saturday this week - a super fun party for my niece, followed up by a nap for Lily (Aah, peace for us), and time working with Mike on a project we've been wanting to do for quite a while, and ending up with a nice dinner out just the three of us. It was just lovely - I was telling Mike on the car-ride home. If you didn't take into account the unbelievable tantrum Lily threw over taking a nap - he reminded me. I am so willing to gloss over that!

Re-done

Ever since we re-modeled our living/office/storage room - a change which included a new laptop for me - I haven't been getting on the computer as much. I love our new room, the clean look, the added space, and the easy to clean floor, but it's been hard adjusting to not having a desk. I don't get my computer out as much, and when I do - I don't feel like I can just leave it lying around and vulnerable to being sat on or pulled of the couch by my 3-year old, so I usually turn it off and put it up when I finish a task. Needless to say I haven't been blogging very much lately. We found something at IKEA we thought would be a nice solution, but since I'd never had a laptop before I wanted to wait and see how it went...you know, how I'd really ended up using it before I bought anything for it. Well, I finally decided I do need a desk. IKEA discontinued the one we'd picked out at the store (we found out after driving all the way downtown), so we ordered it online. The online shopping cart wasn't working so Mike phoned it in. It didn't show up on the Thursday they told us it would, or that weekend. Turns out they shipped it through another company. It didn't show up on the Monday it was supposed to...apparently (they failed to mention) we had to schedule a delivery time with that shipping company. The shipping company, when contacted, had no idea where it was, "...maybe it was somewhere in LA -- they would let us know when it turned up..." Several phone calls and days later my package finally arrived! The box was so thin everything was falling around in it and bulging out the package, but it was miraculously undamaged - just covered in greasy fingerprints that were pretty hard to wash off... but elbow grease and a little nail polish remover did the trick. Well, after that frustrating experience (which was making us just want to cancel the order) patience paid off!

I put my desk up yesterday and am typing at it right now. I love it. A little bit of extra storage space just for me, a place I can leave my laptop out without fear, and the best part of all is that it folds away when I want it to, hardly takes up any space, and goes with our other stuff perfectly -it's even smaller than I thought it would be (which is just fine with me). I feel like our room is finally complete! It was done, but missing something before. You may soon see me blogging more...but we'll see how it goes. It's been kinda good for me to have a break from the computer habit, and it seems like life is just getting busier, but I hope to record some of Lily's funny sayings and the never-ending photos I keep taking, and other things that are fun to share or that I don't want to forget! Hello, again :)

As promised

Here's the sound recording of Lily telling her own made-up story:



I guess I should have just done video because I had to make it into a movie to share it, but I think Lily was more herself without the camera in her face. She does start off silly, but then, she does that a lot :) The photos are from August too, but the recording was later - at our kitchen table.

I put the text of the recording below (yes, there were parts where I couldn't understand her either. Lily likes doing weird baby talk frequently these days and sometimes just tries to make it sound like she's talking when she's not sure what to say.):

Lily: Go!
Me: Ok, tell it to me. 
Lily: The race car goed and knocked the... (wierd high pitched talking)
Me: What? 
Lily: (More made up noises instead of real words)
Me: Okay?...
Lily: ...and then, and then the computer knocked it over (More ???...)
Me: I can't understand you when you use that voice. 
Lily: And then an eagle comed from the sky!
Me: An eagle came down from the sky? 
Lily: Yeah! And it crashed everything!
Me: What did it crash? 
Lily: It crashed houses, with people inside them.
Me: Really!? 
Lily: Yeah
Me: That's a big eagle! 
Lily: Yeah, it's the silver eagle (she looks around the room to get ideas for songs and stories - that was referring to a gold painted bronze eagle my grandaddy made long ago.) 
Me: That's a gold eagle...(always correcting)
Lily: ..and then a yackle came..came by..
Me: A what? 
Lily: A yuck (or)/yak (?) came by...
Me: A yuck? What's a yuck? 
Lily: ...It has horns ...it has horns...
Me: What kind of horns? 
Lily: like these horns (gesturing)
Me: On it's head? 
Lily: Yeah, right here..
Me: Uh-huh... And what else? 
Lily: And then it stomped! 
Me: >Gasp< 
Lily continues: ...on the houses!
Me: Oh my goodness...what hap--what did the people do!? 
Lily: They tried to fix them, but they couldn't!
Me: Really, why not? 
Lily: ...because they built rock houses.
Me: Oh... 
Lily: ..and they couldn't fix their rock, and they couldn't fix their rock houses ..so..so they had to live with other people.
Me: Oh! 
Lily: And then nothing came by...
Me: Nothing came by? 
Lily: Yeah
Me: Were people scared? 
Lily: No. They were just happy.
Me: For how long? 
Lily: For 5 years. (5 is the ultimate number in Lily's mind right now)
Me: Then what happened? 
Lily: Nothing!
Me: Were there any princesses?
Lily: No.
Me: Really?...Were there any lambs? 
Lily: No. Nothing. Just nothing to do.
Me: Hmph. Not even eat? 
Lily: Yeah, Everything crashed!
Me: That's an interesting story! 
Lily: Now let's see if it recorded, Okay!?

She started singing this right after she told the story so I had to share it too...I guess she felt bad and wanted to take back all that crashing.



She cracks me up that at 3 years old she is worrying about growing up and living away from us...especially considering our current circumstances! I guess that is why she is always wanting to talk like and be fed like she's a baby. Sometimes, anyway. She's battling between baby and big girl right now...between when she wants our help, and when she wants to do it herself! She's growing up so fast and asking such smart questions!

I love my sweet girlie.