Friday the 13th.....or why I hate Risk

I went to geek school starting in 5th grade. The program was called A.L.L. and I don't remember what it stood for. Something about Learning.

A lot of people (the cool kids) made fun of us (the geeks) and they called us the "All Lindon Losers". 11 year olds are very creative when they need to be.

But mostly I didn't care because I made some awesome friends from that class. And we (the geeks) all liked us.

Annette, Joanna, and I were totally inseperable. We played together at recess, worked on group projects together, and Annette was my companion for my very first "just drop us off at the mall and pick us up in a few hours" trip. I heard that they had cameras behind the mirrors in clothing store dressing rooms, so I made sure to turn backwards when I was changing so nobody could see my nakeds.

One of our favorite traditions was a sleepover on Friday the 13th. We always got together for the 13th. We watched movies, played games, ate pizza and did normal sleepover stuff.

But the night I remember best is the night we played Risk. Rather they played Risk and I watched....because I'm such a loser.

I had never played before (which was unheard of in a geek class full of 11 year olds who cared about politics and were into strategy-take-over-the-world games) so they kindly agreed to teach me.

I remember struggling to figure out why it mattered if you rolled the red dice or the white ones. I remember not knowing where to invade first and trying to kill off my friends with one little man when they had a whole cannon in their country. I couldn't figure out where all of the countries were (Geography still isn't my strength.) and I couldn't see how they could go clear across the board in one turn. The worst was that I had to decide when I was done with my turn. How was I supposed to know whether I should stop or keep going?

With their careful advice and my uncanny ability to roll 19 1's in a row, I was out after the first hour of the game. The two of them continued to play....for 5 more hours.

I'm sure I was a very gracious loser and didn't pout at all. But I've been pouting ever since. Josh constantly tries to get me to play, I constantly refuse. Maybe that's why we have so many games - so I can distract him from Risk. And that weekend is why I hate Risk.

On the flip side I love Friday the 13th. It's not a real Holiday and it hapens all the time so nobody does anything big, but somehow I was ALWAYS allowed my traditional sleepover "because it's tradition!"

We haven't celebrated Friday the 13th together in years....but I still always think about Annette and Joanna when it comes around.

The man I didn't marry

Tonight we're staying in Fillmore. Which reminds me....


Josh isn't the only boy who proposed to me.

Quinn proposed to me once. At my Grandpa's house. We were taking a walk from the clubhouse in the backyard toward the trampoline where we'd meet up with the rest of our friends. Somewhere near the woodpile he told me he thought it would be really cool if we got married and asked if I'd marry him please.

I think I blushed. And told him yes.

That didn't really pan out for us though. We wanted different things in life. (He wanted to marry me so he could be brothers with his best friend - my little brother. I wanted to marry him because I'd get to wear a big white dress and look like Cinderella.) We changed a lot. We grew up. (He was 7, I was 10.) He moved away and I haven't seen him since.

His mom and dad made him move to Fillmore with his 4 little sisters. By the time he moved we had drifted apart. He and Nate were still best friends (right Nate?) but Quinn fell out of love with me within a week. I think 7-year-olds are fickle and unprepared to make lifetime commitments. Rude. I wondered for a long time if we were really going to get married when we grew up. I don't wonder anymore.

So while I sit in this hotel room in a town with a population of 12 - or something close to that - I can't help but wonder where he is tonight. And what he's doing with his life. And if he even still lives in Fillmore, or if he's proposed to some other girl and has married and moved on with his life. Maybe his mom is still here....

Mom Olympics

Kristina can change the sheets while her twins are jumping on the bed. I can't change my sheets because I'm still in bed.

Nancy can type one-handed....sort of. Something I'm still working on but find completely infuriating because it's so. dang. slow. Plus there's that whole "shift key" thing.

Wendy makes two-day treats. Without neglecting her child. I can't make easymac without neglecting my child. Seriously.

Katy does man jobs. Willingly. No comment.

I can read a book with my eyes closed. At 2am. Actually the only evidence of this would be the "teach your child to sleep" book I borrowed from my mom....judging by the fact that I'm up and "reading" at 2am maybe this isn't really true.....

It seems that motherhood comes with a very unique skill set. So why don't we get our own Olympics?

I bet I could get a gold medal in one-handed bottle making while bouncing a screaming child, holding a binkie in his wide open mouth - (wait. Why do I do that? I just  realized that he's screaming anyway....I could let him scream on the floor and use 2 hands....do other moms know about this??? Must share this mothering tip as a Christmas gift.) and bossing his dad around.

What would your gold medal be for?

Caption Contest

When you take 200 pictures in one day, every once in a while you catch a really great face just crying out for a really funny caption.

So we have a contest on our hands. You all try to come up with a great caption for this photo, and later I'll tell you all what actually triggered this face. We'll all get a good laugh, I promise.

Mesa temple

For yesterday's field trip we went to the Mesa temple grounds and Visitor's Center.

Temples with cactus gardens are cool. Way cool.

We're not sure what this is, but Josh saw a door and of course had to walk through it...just to check.

I love family outings like this.

Thomas: 1 Month

Yesterday Thomas turned 1 month old.

Now that he's all old and mature he doesn't like me blogging about his eating/pooping habits anymore. Kids these days...fortunately sleeping snot sucking are still fair game.

Now that I'm all experienced and wise in the world of mothering I do things like pick up the binkie off the floor, blow it off and put it back in his mouth.

At 1 month, Thomas:
Focuses on my hands.
Naps for 4 hours at a time...just not at night.
Kicks his legs HARD, especially when getting his diaper changed.
Smiles.
Grabs anything near his chest. Fingers, bottles, hands, pacifiers, blankets.....the list goes on.
Has almost outgrown his newborn onesies.
He's still sporting the bishopric hair. And he has the ability to sleep sitting up. All he needs is a tie and a sustaining vote.
Is madly in love with mommy and daddy. Daddy because he holds him over his forearm. Mommy because she's good with the mid-night feedings.

And 1 month later I'm:

Terrified we'll run out of formula or diapers.

Walking 2-3 miles a day (with the blessing and encouragement of Dr. Man).

Amazed at how awake a person can be at 2am.

Making peace with the snot sucker of death.

Loving my new "stay at home mom" status.

Still 100% whooped over this little one.

How could I not be when he's this cute?

Hot air

When we saw these hot air balloons right outside our hotel window, we got a little jealous.

Because this is what Lake Powell looks like from a hot air balloon. Did you know that it's like 160-something miles long? I had no idea.

Then Josh pointed out how unsafe they were because "the air is already hot...how do they even work in Arizona anyway?" And I'd like to say he has a good point, it's like 9 million degrees here. Or 85...same thing.

Grand Canyon

Dear Thomas,

Don't say we never took you anywhere. OK?

One thing I love about hotels

One thing I love about hotels is that we leave to go to church at 10:45 and I come back at 12:30 to a clean room with fresh towels, a made bed, and this view.

Also giant waffle makers....do you think mounting one of those to the 2 ft of available counter space I have would be a wise investment?

15%

It's only 9:30 and I've already seen 15% of the 7 wonders of the world today.

What have YOU done with YOUR morning?

Josh and I tried to name all 7 wonders of the world.....we got to 3.5 - how many do you know?

On traveling with baby

Turns out that Thomas's insistence that the hours between 10am and 6pm are "the middle of the night" is really great for road trips.

Not so great for the night before driving the 2nd half of our journey.....but hey, let's look on the bright side. You know...because I am a natural optimist....ppfffshhthtt .

When you have a baby on a road trip and you're paranoid about people contaminating him with their germs just by looking at him, you learn to appreciate the finer things in life....like drive thrus. And pay at the pump. How did my mother raise 5 children without pay at the pump? How does anyone in Circleville function at all without pay at the pump?

So far Thomas has shared his adorable bare naked butt with about 5 small towns between Payson and Page. And as far as I can tell everybody who lived in these towns was at the gas station while we were there. What is it with small towns and gas stations? I specifically remember hanging out at Walker's all the time back when Lindon was a small town - you know, BW (Before Walmart). But I have no idea why. What did we do there?

When you walk into a hotel carrying a baby in a carseat, everybody looks at you like you've just killed their grandmother right in front of them. I feel like I should wear a sign that says: "Yep, he probably will cry all night long. Sorry about that. Enjoy your vacation." Hey. At least he doesn't pee in their beds...it could be worse.

Being on vacation makes me a much less responsible mother. I'm not telling how many times he spit up all over himself and I just wiped it up with a burp cloth and let him sleep in his own filthy clothes. It's just that I was too tired (and lazy) to dig through the suitcase for a change of clothes. His clothes are so tiny and the suitcase is so big.....and my life is so hard .

In all Josh and I are pleasantly surprised with the success of our roadtrip so far. Here's hoping today goes as smoothly as yesterday.

Packing for baby

Really I have no idea what we should have packed for the child.

I have no idea how much a week's worth of diapers is (or even what size diaper he'll be in by the end of the week). Or a week's worth of formula.

There's no telling how many blankets and onesies he'll soil in such a long time.

All I know is that we brought his nighttime essentials - baby soap and lotion, nightgown (do you think he'll be traumatized when he realizes he spent the first 6 months of his life in nightgowns?), and blankets - and filled a small suitcase with enough diapers to float all of us accross the Great Salt Lake. Do diapers float? If not, why do I think they do? And I'm sorta hoping that everything else is gravy.

I'll let you know at the end of the week how we did.

Surprises

It's been a week full of surprises around our house. Well...as surprising as life gets when you spend 12 hours a day trying to keep the baby awake, 12 hours trying to get the baby to sleep and 13 hours of the day feeding the baby and changing his diaper/clothes/sheets.

It all started Monday night when I started having contractions. Who knew you can have contractions stronger than those during labor 3.5 weeks after the baby is born? Which freaked Josh right out...

Tuesday I told my boss that I'm inheriting my sister's business which allows me to work part time from home and still be Thomas's mom. I cried when I wrote the e-mail and I asked Josh 20 times to remind me that we knew this was the right thing for us. I will desperately miss my job. I also cried when I thought of how many prayers this answers. I'm overwhelmed by how life works out.

Wednesday the contractions continued and Josh told me he was either dragging me to the ER or I was going to take something for the pain and swear I'd call the Dr. in the morning.

Thursday Josh's boss called and asked if he wanted to go to Arizona for a week.

Thursday I called Dr. Man's office and asked if contractions were normal at this point. They told me to come in and he's make sure there wasn't any "foreign matter" still in my uterus that didn't belong. I may or may not have told Josh there could be a twin in there that is still trying to get out. He may or may not have rolled his eyes while we thought of all the "foreign matter" that could be in there.

Thursday we visited Gramma Reilley and packed for Thomas's first road trip.

This morning we packed for Thomas's first road trip (you know...because he peed on everything he owned in the middle of the night and it had to be laundered before the final packing).

Now we're in The Middle of Nowhere, Utah enjoying the scenery and the road trip food. Josh loves trail mix. I love wheat thins. We both love slurpees. Thomas loves formula.

Is it irresponsible to take an infant on a road trip just because you want to? Probably.

We sorta figure that since we'll be celebrating Thomas's 1 month birthday this week we ought to be somewhere cool. Cool = not my living room. Really this is a lame excuse to go on a road trip, but it sounds much less selfish than "I'm bored of Utah." so I'm using it anyway.
We also figure that Thomas should get used to life in the Redbox car if he's gonna be in this family.
I figure that life in a (free) hotel with my husband is much better than life in our house without him. And I'm right. I can't do all of the night shifts AND the morning shifts, AND the day shifts.
I also figure that there's no point in being a stay-at-home mom if you can't say "sure, let's go to Arizona tomorrow" anytime you want. Mothering is all about spontaneous vacations, right?

Baby Belly: 4 weeks later

Much better, don't you think?

I win! (the first night's sleep)

Last night was good.

Like really good.

In the history books when they talk about the ideal newborn sleeping arrangement, you will see our night last night.

My baby slept.

By himself.

In his crib.

For 3(ish) hours at a time!

He woke to eat, and went back to sleep when he was finished.

He didn't whine when I put him back in bed.

He didn't cry when I walked out of the room.

He just went to sleep.

And I will love him forever for it.

See usually he looks like this all night long.

Except when he looks like this

(turns out I don't have any other screaming pictures.....it's because of our deal.)

But last night he looked like this

Now I'm not saying the first pictures aren't cute (they are) but doesn't this look so much better?

Yes. Yes it does.

I used to drive a station wagon

I learned how to drive in an '85 station wagon which we affectionately called "Big Brown". Because it was big. And brown. The wood paneling on the outside was.....stunning? no. beautiful? no. Trendy? no. (certainly not in 2001 and probably not even in 1985.) Unique? yes.

The seat belts were so old they didn't adjust...they were stiff and crusty and it took my dad's strength to move them.

The "hump" in the middle was mostly useless, but I do remember a time in my life that "sitting on the hump" was cool. Was that even legal? Probably not, but my parents were the essence of rebellious.

The "way back" was only cool to ride in until I was about 12. By the time I was driving Big Brown the way back was just cool to talk about. "Yeah? Well the back of my car folds down to a bed...what does yours do?"

Big Brown was no competition for Kolbein's convertible Rabbit like this (ever seen a couch fit in a Rabbit? I have.), or Ashley's Miata. But it did have 4 wheels, and it never got lost in the mall parking lot.

Plus it served as great training for driving a Costco cart with a carseat on top.

Yesterday Thomas & I went to Costco - all by ourselves! Thank you thank you.  - which I've never done in the middle of a weekday before.

Did you know that going to Costco doesn't always require waiting in line for 20 minutes? Sometimes there is a checkstand with an open conveyer belt, just waiting for you to haul all 50 pounds of your laundry detergent on it.

Sometimes there's a parking spot close to the building.

Sometimes you can stop in the middle of an aisle to get something off a shelf without getting run over!

Sometimes the free sample ladies are waiting for people to take their stuff instead of people crowding around waiting for them to make their stuff.

It's just that none of these time are on Saturday.  The things my mother never taught me..... tsk. tsk. 

We did pretty good considering the situation. "Pretty good" meaning I didn't run over any little kids, and only ran into 1 old lady and "the situation" meaning I couldn't see anything over the carseat which (when mounted on top of the tank sized "cart") was taller than I am.

I'm afraid that the new and improved Costco (with parking spaces, room in the aisles and plenty of free samples) might be my new hangout....now if only I can get out for under $100.

I take it back

Today I napped.

I may never go back.

Much better

The Babe loves his medicine - I kindof want to taste it to see why he sucks it down so fast....is that bad? - and is pooping regularly and puking much less violently AND less frequently.

Who knew a mom could love a poopy diaper so much?

Signs I'm doing OK

During the week I would've told you I knew nothing about being a mom.

I would've told you that I had no clue how to communicate with this little one. (Does he have a "hungry" cry that is different from a "mad" cry or a "pay attention to me" cry?)

I would've told you that I had learned nothing from our 3 weeks together.

I would've been wrong.

And here's how I know.

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On Saturday morning Josh was feeding Thomas and needed another hand. Could I please grab the burp cloth? And oh yeah he forgot to get the binkie too. And since he was holding the baby and couldn't really walk across the room would I mind changing the music?

I helped because I knew how. And I felt good because I do all of those things all by myself all day long.

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On Friday I jumped in the shower when Thomas was asleep and as soon as I started to shampoo I realized how stupid that was. I knew very well he wouldn't sleep through my shower. This was NOT his good napping time and I knew it. He was going to wake up crying long before I was clean.

My heart sortof sunk.

And then I realized that he has a "good nap time"! And I knew when it was! My kid has a schedule (sortof) and I know what it is.

And my heart soared as I realized I've learned things, and that I'm not a horrible mother who "just can't get the hang of things".

Then Thomas started to cry. And I rocked and conditionered my hair while congratulating myself on my mothering skills.

And I didn't even feel bad about shaving my legs while he cried.
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Blue bulb of death

Last week I braved the fingernail clippers (No blood, shorter nails. That's successful if you ask me.) and this morning I used the blue bulb of death.

I didn't even puke.

It's all about the little victories.

Josh took back the bed

Josh learned to sleep on the edge of the bed during the past 9 months....because he had to - there wasn't room for him AND me in our bed.

Now he's completely forgotten how to sleep on the edge.

And he's slowly forgetting how to sleep on his side.

Each time I come back to bed throughout the night he's closer and closer to my side until I return from feeding Thomas at 5am with toes like popsicles and the shivers that make him think I bought a vibrating bed and he has completely abandoned his side of the bed in favor of my side. 

Part of me thinks "oh how sweet - he's warming up my side for me" and part of me thinks of all the funny ways to make him move while he's still asleep and only the teeny tinsiest part of me thinks about just getting in on his side. Clearly logic and reason are not my biggest sides.

I suppose it's only fair....he donated his side to "the cause" for 9 months....I should be able to trade sides....you know, for "the cause". Or maybe as a Thank You for letting me use his legs to warm my popsicle toes and his neck to warm my fingers.