Snack time

Tonight Peter isn't sleeping. At least not yet. We did our bedtime stuff at 7pm and he was clearly tired because of the fit he was throwing as I was trying to sing to him. It's now 10:33pm and he is still awake. How is that even possible? All of his toys are securely latched in his closet, so there's not much to play with.

Or so you would think.

We have one of these.In case you don't know what you're looking at, it's a large rug from Ikea's children's section. Peter loves to drive his cars on it. Other than his bedding and his stuffed animal of choice, it's the only thing we leave out of his closet.

Tonight at 10pm I had just put Cooper down to sleep when I heard Peter yelling for me to come into his room. He had rolled up the carpet and put it on the floor against his toddler bed, and was sitting on it with his teddy bear. This is the conversation that followed.

Peter: Mommy, come and share a snack with us.

Me: Peter, it's really late.

Peter: Mommy I turned the light on, see? I turned it on so we could see because it's snack time. Come and sit with us on this bench. (Points to the rug)

Me: (Entering the room and sitting on the rolled up rug) Peter, why did you roll up the rug?

Peter: Because it's snack time. (He comes over and sits on my lap.) Now we have to wait. We have to wait for Grandma Bonnie and Jordan and Aunt Jo to come.

Me: Oh? Have they been invited?

Peter: Uh-huh. They will come and have snacks with us. And we have to wait for Jesus. He will come from his house and have this water and he will sit right there.

Me: Really?

Peter: Uh-huh. He will sit there. Mommy, I'm hungry.

I was too, so we shared a bowl of dry cereal.

Oh, and there is apparently a standing invitation for my brother Jordan and my Grandma Bonnie to join us, the two people in his list that I know read my blog. So, let me know when you're coming. I'm sure Peter will roll the mat up for you.

My Day

Happy Birthday to me.

I love my birthday. I mean, I really love my birthday. Maybe it's the attention that a birthday garners. I don't think it's the presents. I know, I love having a day just for me. Sure, other people have my birthday too (Helen Keller, Ross Perot, Tobey Maguire), but I still think of it as my day. Perhaps this is the reason that, thus far, aging doesn't bother me. Also, I have made a conscious choice to always be happy about the age that I am.

Today I am 28. In 2 years I'll be 30. While it's slightly mind-boggling to believe that I've been around that long, it's also cool to think about how much I've learned and grown. I can remember the wonderful feeling of being completely clean when I was baptized almost 20 years ago. And the mixture of excitement and anticipation and fear of the unknown as I prepared to leave for college 10 years ago. What will I associate with this year?

I love my birthday!

Can We Blame the Media for This?

This is one of Peter's many books. It follows the same concept as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, except that it's about endangered animals. The list includes a water buffalo, a spider monkey, a whooping crane, and a dreaming child.

What?

Is a dreaming child really an endangered species?

Aloha

Someone in Honolulu read my blog for 46 minutes. I feel loved.

Now if only they would update their blog so I can spend my time reading about them...

Superwoman?

Wow, after reading this article I feel kind of lazy in comparison...

One of Many Reasons We Don't Let the 2-Year-Old Babysit

The moment before I grabbed the camera Peter was patting Cooper and said to him, " Cooper, I'm taking care of you. Oh! Do you have bubbles in your tummy?"

Oh man...

Last night while looking for my pajamas in the dryer, I found these:



Oh, and this:



In the pocket of these:



Oops...

Congratulations

I graduated from high school 10 years ago today.

I'm so glad that I'm 27 and not 17.

Good Morning to You

With the exception of my mom, no one in my family is a morning person. My youngest brother used to wander around the house after everyone had gone to sleep, just doing his own thing. Sometimes this meant seeing if anyone was still awake to talk to him. Sometimes it meant trying to bleach his hair in the bathroom with actual bleach. (Thank goodness the smell woke-up my mom.)

Growing up doing theatre, my natural schedule was ideal for late night rehearsals and after-show cast parties. I used to think that being a night owl was the best thing ever. Until college. I remember thinking, "I got up almost every morning for seminary at 5:45, an 8 o'clock class should be easy." Ah, the folly of youth. The only class I ever got a D in was a 9am Geology class. I couldn't get there on time because I had trouble waking up, so I missed too many important quizzes.

After college I worked full-time at BYU's library. I marveled at my coworkers that would arrive between the hours of 7 and 8 in the morning. I was lucky if I was awake by then and I usually felt guilty walking in at 9 (sometimes 10 during the 2 months I worked after Peter was born). When we would discuss the issue of sleep schedules, the morning people in the office would talk about how they felt so much more productive in the early morning and they couldn't imagine staying in bed late, even on the weekends.

On Saturdays Bryan and I could easily sleep in until 11am before Peter was born. Even the boys don't awaken early in comparison to their peers. I know someone whose 3 year-old wakes her up at 6:30 every morning. How does she function? I struggle when Peter wakes up before 8.

I have wanted to become a morning person for a while. They seem so naturally organized, whereas I'm so naturally not. Is there some secret to rising early and going to sleep at a reasonable hour? This article on Slate asked and, at least in part, answered that question. Although, after reading the list of morning people vs. night people, I really think I need to find a way to shift my internal clock forward a few hours.

But not today, because it's after midnight and I'm sitting here, writing this.

The Food Game

How many people that you know throw out leftovers? Let food go bad in the fridge? Decide to go out to eat because they're tired of what they have in the house? Probably more than you think.

Faced with rising grocery bills, we decided we needed to change our habits. I'm usually good at eating leftovers, but I do this weird thing where I don't eat the last serving of whatever is in the fridge. I don't know if I'm saving it for Bryan or just don't want to eat it because then that particular food would be gone. Anyway, we've thrown out way too much food. And, since I hate cleaning out moldy food containers, we've also thrown out a lot of Glad and Ziploc containers.

Our resolution? Eat all the food we make and the perishable food we buy. We've been doing this for a month and have already learned some things:

• We don't all have to eat the same thing for dinner. We've started having leftover nights. Instead of cooking, we pull out what's left from the last few nights and warm it all up.
• We're getting creative. Did you know that a recipe for Baked Cucumbers existed?
• Homemade pasta/pizza sauce is so very good. And your house smells like a great Italian restaurant while you're making it, which is one of the best parts of eating out.
• You can put together foods that you might not otherwise pair. Last night for dinner Bryan made steak salad for us. He had it while on a business trip. It was really good, and because Bryan made it, it was also really pretty. Today for lunch I diced the rest of the cucumber and tomatoes from the salad and added them to our macaroni and cheese, along with the last few slices of lunch meat we had in the fridge. It tasted great! The produce added a nice lightness to the mac n cheese.
• 

• It's like we're playing a fun game. Seriously. It's not the same "what's for dinner?" drudgery as usual. (Bryan cooked for like the first 2 years we were married because I had a tendency to wander around the kitchen saying "What are we going to eat?" until I finally made Raman. He saved us from much sodium and MSG consumption) Instead, it's like I've been challenged to come up with something fun and edible from what we have in the fridge.

It's going well so far, and the more the prices of gas and food go up, the more committed we are to this.

Try it. Let me know what you think.