Swim Suits

Every Easter "Nanie" (Jay's mom) gives the kids swim suits (which they wear at the lakehouse when we visit each summer) and we finally got a day warm enough to break them out in the yard!! (The Frog and Peach have already worn them several times at the pool...)

I was particularly excited for Hazel to try hers on, and since the neighbor kids were over, I thought it would be fun to get a big group shot.

As you can see, Hazel's sitting position isn't exactly reliable yet...

No biggie.  I'll just ask The Frog to hold her. He does it all the time...  (and our neighbor, S., lost interest...)

Me: "Can you look around her so I can see you?"

The Frog: "She got too heavy."  :S

I gave up and went for a solo shot in Hazel's "happy place".  (once she had regained composure after being dropped on her face....)  As you can see, no permanent damage was done to this cuteness :)

It's hard taking decent pictures when you're watching 5 kids under 6!

Stroke of Genius!

I had one of those moments where I decided I had a problem and my life would be much better if I could fix it. Suddenly, the solution smacked me in the face so hard that I had to keep from giggling about how absurd it was that it had taken me so long to figure this out:

Claw clips to tame cords in my drawer...

Simple, yet amazing!

Kid Conversation

I was playing with Peach in her doll house and the following played out:

Me: How about the mommy is cooking dinner and the daddy is doing the dishes.
Peach: No, daddies don't do dishes, they sit down and wait for their food.  
Me: (Me getting all feminist...) That's not true!  Our daddy does dishes all the time!
Peach: How 'bout the daddy looks at the sky?  (Lying the daddy down on the floor and using her high-pitched pretend voice)  I'm lookin' at the sky!

Not sure if I should laugh or be upset.  Calm down, Libby...

Alphabet Quilt!

I've been taking American Quilting's Saturday Sampler quilting "class", which is basically, you get a couple of quilt block patterns and fabric each month, you can sit in on a 15 minute explanation (which I never did, because I was always in a rush with someone waiting the car for me, usually...) and you must turn in your work the following month on time, or you have to pay $5 to get the next patterns.  I just got my last blocks and couldn't help but hurry and finish them last week!  Our final class is in June and we find out how they are all supposed to fit together!  I'm so curious, because they are all different sizes.  I thought it would be fun to show them all off here, before they are assembled.

This year was called an "alphabet quilt" because we got patterns for each letter of the alphabet.

A is for Album

B is for Bachelor's Puzzle

C is for Chimneys and Cornerstones

D is for Duck and Ducklings

E is for Evening Star

F is for Friendship

G is for Grandma's Choice

H is for Hayes Corner

I is for Illinois

J is for Johnnie Around the Corner

K is for Kansas Star

L is for Log Patch (or Lincoln Logs)

M is for Morning Star

N is for Night & Noon

O is for Octagons

P is for Pineapple (my favorite!)

Q is for Quartered Star

R is for Rambler

S is for Shoofly

T is for Turnstile

U is for Union Square

V is for Virginia Reel

W is for Whirling Whirlwind

X is for X Block

Y is for Yankee Puzzle

Z is for Zigzag

Something this class taught me is how much I value picking out my own fabric.  It was at times annoying to spend so much effort working on something with fabric I never would have picked out myself.  Because of this, I probably won't do another class, but it was great to have an excuse to sit down and sew every month :)

I'm planning to quilt it at Jay's parents' house because his mom just bought a long-arm quilting setup!! wahoo!!  I'll show the final product once it's finished :)

Family Photo?

We dress up every Sunday for church, and we don't have any family photos since Hazel had her baby blessing...  I just took matters into my own hands and took a family photo yesterday before church, right before we walked out the door (despite my bad hair day.... hence why I pulled it back...)  We took 20 pictures (the self-timer would do 10 in a row.  good call, Libby....) and this is the best one:

Not bad, but I've decided to just keep doing it until we get one I love.

How do you get your family photos on the cheap?

The Cat in the Hat

2 things worth remembering:

Thing 1)  Peach adores her "Lamby", sometimes also referred to as "Missy Baby" (after the baby Missy in "Amelia Bedelia and the baby" a frequently requested read around here...)  I often find little lamby: 

-buckled in Hazel's car seat

-sitting in Peach's play stroller

-buckled in the infant swing or most frequently

-lying in Peach's bed with her "blankie" on top for covers.

My favorite is when she tells me on her way up the stairs- "Lamby is crying too much. She needs a nap!"

You can always tell when Peach needs a nap because she can be found on the sofa like this:

Thing 2)
Hazel can sit up!  (kinda...) It doesn't last for minutes on end, yet.  I admit I had to prop her up and move my hand at the last second for this picture.  But she was doing a great job before I brought out the camera. :)

The problem is, her feet look so tasty, she ends up folding in half trying to suck on them and it makes her flop over on her side.  I can't blame her- I have a hard time not eating those toes too...

Kid Conversation

A month or so ago, The Frog came downstairs after dressing himself in a brown and orange striped turtleneck with white/blue/red plaid shorts.  It was then I knew we needed to have the talk.

The talk about how to match clothes.

Then last week, this conversation happened over breakfast when The Frog tried to tell a joke he made up himself.  (unfortunately, I can't remember it.  It probably wasn't funny...  he's still trying to figure out what makes a joke funny...)

Me:  Where did you get your funny genes from, eh?
The Frog: I'm not wearing jeans! I'm wearing pajamas!
Me: No, do you know what genes are?
The Frog: Yeah, they're blue and they go with everything.

:)

6 Month Comparison

People keep coming up to me and saying that Hazel looks just like Peach.  However, when she was born, I thought she looked just like The Frog, so I've had it in my head this whole time that she would look more like him (and her dad).  I decided, one-and-for-all, to do a comparison of the 3:

The Frog at about 6 month

Peach at about 6 months

Hazel at about 6 months

 What do you think?

Family Jammies?

Most of what the girls have worn so far have been hand-me-downs from our "california cousins" as I refer to them.  We have two girl cousins who are 2 years apart in age like Peach and Hazel are, so we also inherited a few sister-sister things:

These jammies have been the first matching thing they've been able to wear!

A week or so after taking this picture, The Frog asked me, "Mom, when are you going to make my matching pajamas?"  Isn't that cute?  Poor kid is feeling all left out...  maybe I'll have to pull off something like this.

PS  I know there are plenty of matching family pajama photos on awkwardfamilyphotos.com but in my googling, I could only find ones (note the plurality) where the family was in pajamas, and the dad was naked.  what the...??

Excuses, Excuses

Sorry about the hiatus...  Between watching my two nephews Friday-Monday (littlest cousin A somehow didn't make it in the photos...)

Catching a stomach bug and dealing with it in the two cousins + Peach  (we went through soooooo many diapers last week...)  The whole weekend would have been pretty fun, otherwise...

"Luckily", I was up all night with it the night before mothers' day, so I had extra reason for Jay to let me sleep all day Sunday...  However, this bug partly caused this

A clogged main pipe, which caused a leak from out master bath through to the ceiling below, right by the front door.  (which means we get to explain what happened a lot...)

Then, Jay was gone when the kids ate breakfast and didn't get home until after they were in bed because he hosted a computer science conference at BYU last week,

so I never really got caught up last week.

Hopefully I can get back on the posting band-wagon :)

Kid Conversation

At Family Home Evening this week, we were talking about the 2nd Article of Faith and so we needed to review the story of Adam and Eve.  I asked The Frog if he knew who Adam was and this was his reply.

"Yes. He lived with Eve, right?  And they lived in...  I think it's called the Jungle of Eep."

I think everything would have more exciting names if The Frog had been the first man on Earth ;)

Recipe FAIL: Cheerio Treats

This may surprise some of you, but I have never made Rice Krispies Treats before.  I didn't even realize it until last night, when my kids (okay okay, and me too) were asking for a treat and I needed to do something quick.  For some reason, my first thought was, Rice Krispies Treats!

Since I had never made them before, I had to look up the recipe.  Funny enough, I didn't actually have any Rice Krispies cereal (or any fakey counterparts) and so I googled around to see if it was common to sub-in Cheerios instead.  (because what LDS mom doesn't have Cheerios on hand at all times?)  Turns out, I found this recipe- basically the same as the other, but with Cheerios in place of Rice Krispies.

Score.

Except...

I'm still trying not to eat dairy for Hazel, so I decided to sub out the butter for coconut oil.

I go to my closet and check on the marshmallows.  I have one almost-full bag of regular marshmallows (the campfire ones) that I'm pretty sure I bought over a year ago when Iris was still living with us, that we only whipped out once to roast some (probably a grand total of 6) over a fire.  Alternatively, I had another, unopened bag of fresh, new, mini marshmallows I just got, in case we ever had another hankering to make some marshmallow-toothpick sculptures.  (because I discovered at conference that the ones we had were pretty stale and hard.  As you can see, we're not typically a marshmallow eatin' family.)

So, of course I pick the old bag of large marshmallows, so I can get rid of them.  (Jay always makes fun of me for proclaiming, "we need to get rid of this, so we're having it for dinner."  Waste not, want not!)

These powers combined resulted in a large mass of clumpy, gooey marshmallow mash that refused to melt and started browning and toasting.  I was pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen, so I just decided that this must be as melty as it gets (although it wasn't the vision of "melting" that I had foreseen) and plopped it in with the cheerios in another bowl.

Well, it shouldn't surprise anyone that I ended up with a giant, white, gooey glob, now coated in cheerios.  So, I did what any logical person would do (oh wait.  they'd probably throw it out at this point.  waste not, want not!  carry on...) I started stretching it apart, two handed, trying to get some of the Cheerios inside the glob, hoping to make the mass a bit more homogeneous.  Satisfied that I had done my best, I quickly spread/mashed it out into a pan while nearly breaking my teeth, trying to scrape some of the hardened goo off my stirring spoon.

The Frog wanted to add his finishing touch and dumped a bunch of chocolate chips in the middle portion of the pan.  (which I quickly tried to spread around before they all melted there).  There were tons of unincorporated Cheerios left in the bowl, and for some reason I felt like they belonged with the others, so spent some time spreading those around, hoping they might stick as well.  (theyyyy didn't)

Excited by our scavenging success, we all sat around the table with our plates, awaiting our Cheerio creation...

Let's just say it was sometimes dry and crunchy (and gum-scratching), sometimes stretchy-gooey-yummy, but mostly hard and tooth-removing sticky.

After we devoured our bits of disaster (The Frog actually proclaimed it to be "fantastic", clearly excited to show off a new word he learned recently, though I know the truth, since neither child finished their portions...) I put the kids to bed (after a good tooth-brushing session) and promptly threw the rest in the trash.  (sorry, no photo)

After a bit more googling, I discovered that there are a few things that can go wrong with Rice Krispies Treats:
1) don't use margarine (and maybe coconut oil either?)
2) fresh marshmallows melt better (oops)
3) mini marshmallows melt better than campfire ones (oops)
4) browning marshmallows = bad.

Yep.  I love to bake bread.  And now pie.  I can make a roux in my sleep, yet I royally screwed up "The classic, original, no-bake dessert that is easy to make" and have still never made Rice Krispies Treats.

The end.

Hazel Accomplishments!

Jay was gone all last week, and most of the week before, so I'm a bit lacking in the photos etc. to share this week, after being in "survival mode" for so long.  But, I'm excited to say that Hazel has:
1) started scooting backwards!
2) started spending quite a bit of time in "crawling position", though has yet to figure out how to actually crawl yet.
3) been doing great with her baby food eating!  Yesterday she set an all-time speed record- less than 10 minutes to eat her serving of sweet potato plus 1 T baby rice.  I feel selfish for celebrating such a feat, but baby food feeding gets really tedious and messy and isn't one of my favorite things about having a baby...
4) been taking terrible naps lately (as in, for the last few months) and I've finally decided it's time to help her out and get her on a more predictable schedule.  She finally took a long afternoon nap yesterday, and after crying to sleep last night, she only woke up once to eat!!  I'm sure I'm celebrating too early, but it looks like a longer chunks of sleep might actually be in my future!  (if I could just get The Frog to stop wetting the bed... through his pull-up...)

Baby Food Friday: Easy No-Cook baby foods

Prunes!
I love prunes! I know they have negative connotations associated with old people and... certain issues... BUT they are delicious and naturally very sweet.  I especially like to have some ready to go on hand, in case all this solid food makes my baby constipated.  It's a great natural fix for that.  What's even better?  They are sooo easy to do.  No cooking needed:
I'm sure I just bought whatever was cheapest...  Notice they are being advertised as "dried plums" more and more, probably in an attempt at getting people to not be scared of "prunes".

put some in a container and cover them in hot water.  Let them soak until you have time to get back to them.  (at least 30 minutes)

 blend and I don't usually fill the ice cubes.  I just put a blob in, because they are so effective and babies are so small- I don't want to evade one intestinal problem and get another.

They are great to add to a food that maybe your baby wouldn't eat because of not being sweet enough.  And as I've said before, if you end up with extras, they are great in smoothies :)

Here's another easy (slow-cook) recipe that I make fairly often that uses prunes.  And here's one I want to try.

Other easy, no-cook baby foods:

just add warm water (or formula or breast milk):
baby cereals (I always start with single-grain rice because it's supposedly easiest to digest)

ready to eat:
no sugar added, apple sauce
canned pumpkin
plain, whole milk yogurt (I usually mix this with other foods)
ricotta cheese (I usually mix this with other foods)

mash fresh with a fork:
banana
avocado

put through a baby mill: (or do a large batch and freeze extras)
canned peaches/pears in juice (not syrup)
prunes (dried plums) soaked in hot water until squishy (at least 30 minutes)

great finger foods- 9 mo +: (or put through a baby mill for earlier feeding)
canned green beans
canned black/kidney/pinto/etc. beans
frozen peas (especially great when teething)
diced melons (can freeze for a great teething treat too)
I'm sure I'm leaving things out...  suggestions?

Happy Birthday Gampie!

The kids helped me make a movie for Gampie's birthday on Monday. 

 Check it out!

Hazel Eats!

Last week, Hazel turned 6 months old!!  I was going to wait a few days to give her solids (because I really don't look forward to this time.  Nursing is just so quick and easy...) but The Frog and Peach were playing so nicely outside together, I had some time and she just happened to need to eat... 

What the heck?

Here she is, sitting in the high chair for the first time.  She could tell something was up, not not really sure what.

 She quickly discovered the munchability of the new addition to her outfit.

 It was tricky getting her to keep it out of her mouth...

 As you can see, some of the baby rice cereal did make it into her mouth.  (at least briefly...)  Despite what this picture shows, I don't think she particularly enjoyed it.  She made a lot of funny faces that I wish I could have captured on camera.

In the end, I let her have the spoon as a prize.

Happy May!