"Who, being loved, is poor?" -Oscar Wilde

Did you know...that Joseph was the first man I ever kissed? The first man I ever broke up with...and the first man I ever got back together with? The first man I took home to meet my parents and the first man I kinda sorta dumped afterwards? He was my first boyfriend. My first love. My first heartbreak and my first true companion. Joseph was in my first BYU ward. My first student FHE group. He was there when I chose my major...and there when I changed my major...and there when I chose the major that I eventually received a degree with. He was right behind me when I walked across that stage and received my diploma. He was with me when I went through the temple for the first time. He was there when I was sealed. Joe shared my experience of carrying and delivering two beautiful children. He and I have traveled more than 10,000 miles around the country together. We have lived in 6 different houses, in 4 different states. 

We are about to celebrate our 4th anniversary as a married couple, and in looking back on this time I have realized that so many of the most significant experiences in my life have been shared with him. I was just barely 19 when I married Joe, and was so concerned over what experiences I would miss out on by choosing to marry so 'early.' Good times with roommates, crazy dates with boys, significantly more financial freedom...

Well, I was young. I didn't know then that every one of the things that I was concerned about would be fulfilled a hundred times over by my darling, loving husband. He has been the best of my "good times." When he dates me I am not just entertained, I am cherished. And as for having financial freedom, well, I can honestly say that after living on a gross income of roughly 11,000 per year, I now have the skills and the confidence to know that I can care for my family even through financially difficult times. This is true freedom to me: the knowledge that in the future we will not fail, since we have already succeeded in our current situation.

 

I am a better person now then I would have been if I had chosen not to marry my wonderful husband. I am so grateful that I did choose to do so. I am still young, but I know now who and what I am and what experiences are truly and will truly be significant to me. I am a wife, I am a mother. I never knew how much I would want to plan, play, and pray with another person as I do with Joseph. Thank you honey for sticking with me when I didn't yet know how completely you would change my life. "I'm everything I am because you loved me."

Ready, Set...

McKay will be 6 months old tomorrow. I have never met a kid who wants to be mobile as much as he does!
Baby Stats:
McKay is now a whopping 19 lbs.
He absolutely HATES rice cereal.
He absolutely LOVES baby crackers and Gerber rice puffs.
He likes to wake me up every two hours at night still (we're working on that).
He will wake up at 11:00pm to eat whether or not he went down at 9pm for his evening nap or 10:30pm. Makes no difference.
He is extremely dexterous with his walker. He can maneuver that puppy around chairs, under the table and out the other side, around corners, through doorways, and get it turned around inside the limited space of our bathroom. The only hold up is the lip up onto the living room carpet.
He can sit up now unassisted, just don't get him too excited or he will fall over backwards with all of the wiggling.
He is SO close to crawling! He has been getting up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth for a couple of weeks now. This last week he has begun pushing up onto his feet and then walking them in until they almost touch his hands. He looks like maybe he will just stand up and walk one of these days.

 He is a mama'a boy. Joe hates babysitting because McKay only lasts about 15 minutes before he begins to howl for his mama. He's not hungry, not wet, no tummy ache. Just misses little ol' me. Don't get me wrong though, he definitely loves his daddy, he just doesn't know what to do yet without mama.

Cribbage

Joe and I love to play cribbage together. It is one of those few games that is really fun to play with just two people. You can read about how to play it here. We are always looking for good projects to do together in the evening and decided that it would be fun to design and make our own unique cribbage board. We found this blank plaque at our local thrift store for 50 cents and Joe drew up a template for the peg holes on graph paper. He then copied the template to the bored, drilled them with the sweet drill that his parents gave him for his birthday a couple of years ago and then sanded the whole thing to get rid of any potential splinters. Joe wanted to put an old school BYU logo on it to represent how much we love our Alma Mater. I loved the logo but wasn't a big fan of the old color of blue used in it. So we decided to compromise by using the old image but with the updated navy blue coloring. I traced the logo and then free handed the peg stripes and victory panel.
 Here is the template Joe made:

Joe printed the logo and I cut it up to make it easier to trace onto the board:

Here it is with all of the free handed white:

The finished product! I used a silver sharpy to separate the peg holes into sets of 5, and then Joe sprayed the whole thing with several coats of clear varnish to keep the paint from scratching.

When the Kids are Asleep, Mommy Will...Sweep?

I have decided that my least favorite chore (outside of shaving my legs) is sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor. I used to love wielding my broom but that was before it would get caught on graham cracker glue or soiled by juice puddles. It also doesn't help that my darling two year old absolutely loves to 'help' with this project. She will hang on to the broom handle demanding that it be her 'turn' to fling the dirt around. Very cute but not so helpful in the long run, especially when she follows behind me and tries to sweep my already gathered piles with her hands, effectively scattering my efforts. I won't even go into the fun that she can have trying to work the water press on my sponge mop.

And so, I have decided that all sweeping/mopping must be done while the kids are down for their afternoon nap. I was working away yesterday while my babies were sleeping and anxiously watching the clock thinking "Oh no! I only have half an hour before the kids wake up. I need to finish this quickly so that I can have a few minutes to work on my Sketch....or maybe my photoshopping...or maybe my blog..." This train of thought led me to think about what things I am always saving to do when the kids are asleep. Here is the list I came up with:
Draw
Nap
Watch Criminal Minds, NCIS, or Bones
Bust out the hot-glue gun
Eat chocolate...hehe
Fold laundry
Work on family history
Read
Make phone calls
Pick up toys
Blog

What do YOU do when your kids are asleep?

Victory Points

Do you ever go to war again inanimate objects? Maybe devoting ridiculous amounts of brain power to out-witting an entity that will never be able to recognize your superiority? Well I do. And my current foe is my dishwasher. You see I am always fighting with my dishwasher for possession of the sippy cups and all of their accompanying lids and accessories. The dishwasher likes to flip the cups over so that they fill up with yucky water and debris, suck the lids down to melt on the element, and hide all of the little pieces that come out of some of these cups when they are broken down for washing. I spend my day celebrating when a sauce pan is dirtied because I know that the long handle on those babies will hold down at LEAST three sippy cups. Small to medium sized mixing bowls? PERFECT for keeping all of the lids from bouncing around. I have sometimes loaded, and then re-loaded, and then re-loaded yet again just to come up with that perfect combination that would keep my two year old in sippy cups for the rest of the week. Somehow this battle has resulted in the awarding of victory points to each opponents. This week it is

Kym: 4
Dishwasher: 1

Now you know what I spend my time thinking about...

He's a Keeper!

We went to check out our local Farmer's Market this last weekend and were pleasantly surprised to see the great variety that was there. Joe herded Jadyn around to see the different booths while I pushed McKay around in his little red stroller. Joe and I are hoping to set up our own booth in a few weeks, so we wanted to see what products were already being offered. After browsing for a while, I noticed that Joe and Jadyn had disappeared. After scanning the surrounding area for a minute I spotted them over in the playground area across the street. Jadyn was playing on the equipment and Joe was...pulling weeds? I took McKay over to investigate and sure enough my sweet husband was clearing the area of green puncture vines. If you have never come into contact with puncture vines then be sure to count your blessings; These little plants turn into vicious thorns when they dry out in the fall, at which point they are understandably very difficult to handle. Most people choose to rip them out of their yards early in the year while they are still green so as to avoid the painful prickliness. somehow though, this community play area had been neglected and the little green vines were creeping around all of the play equipment and grassy area. Joe spotted the problem and promptly began extricating the plants from the ground and piling them off to one side. He had made significant progress when one of the other daddy's at the park clued in to what Joe was doing and headed over to help. Parents (including myself) stand around watching their kids play all through out the week, and yet Joe was the only one to notice the awful weeds and choose to do something about them. I was so amazed, I think that often times we dismiss problems that aren't easily identified as belonging to us. "The city is in charge of this park. They should clean it up" is probably what most of us were thinking, but since it only took twenty minutes to fix a problem that would become much nastier later, why not step in and serve the community? This incident has yet again affirmed for me that my husband is a keeper.

Cell Phone

Joe and I sat down to figure out our budget last year when we knew that we would be beginning Graduate school. We discussed options for slimming down our expenses to decrease the financial stress that we would be under and one of the ideas that we came up with was getting rid of one of our cell phones and just sharing the remaining one. Crazy!! Everybody needs a phone. Or so we thought. Since switching to a single cell phone we have become so much less dependent on it! One of the first things we notice when we downgraded was that whoever wasn't using the phone suddenly didn't have access to the time. This was an easy fix, we both got watches. After that we were worried about how to stay connected with one another through out the day. After doing some research we discovered that we can send text messages to one another's email accounts and vise verse. Usually when we are apart from each other, Joe is at school and I am at home. Since both places have a computer we can stay connected pretty easily. The cell phone is usually left with whoever has plans to be running around town that day. As the weeks have gone by, we have gone from always questioning each other about where the cell phone is to forgetting about its existence most of the time. Two or three days can go by where it stays on our dresser because neither of us thinks that we need it when we go out. It might seem kind of strange, but we really feel like there is a level of freedom associated with not being so dependent on cell phones. Especially now that many cell phones now come with features that allow you to stay connected with all of your internet resources. It is kind of amusing to watch our friends when they come over, and see them scanning through facebook while we are playing games or checking their emails during dinner. They do not even seem to realize that they are fiddling with their phone while they are doing it! I  can definitely understand how handy internet access would be, but really now, does anybody need access to twitter 24/7?

It's you or me buddy...

I have found that every time I decide to wage war against my children, they always win, so why even try? Last night I decided that McKay was going to stick it out and wait 3 hours between feedings because he is big enough to wait that long and I am so tired. He woke up at his 2 hour mark as usual and I bounced him and rocked him and sang to him and he never fell back asleep. So finally I just gave in and fed him again. Sadly, this pattern resulted in even less sleep for mama. We both woke up this morning tired and frustrated. Maybe I just need to work him up to it gradually like say making him wait 20 minutes longer instead of an hour. Hmm kind of the method used when boiling a frog...I am definitely in the mood for vindictive similes this afternoon...Poor kid, he doesn't even know what he's done to make mama grouchy.

It is so funny to frown at a baby and tell him what a torment he is and just have him giggle and coo at you. somehow I just don't think that this method of avoiding confrontation would work with adults.

Joe: "I hate you Kym!"

Kym: "goo...slow blink...drool"

Joe: "Awww...let me just look into your cherubic face and nuzzle you."

No...I just don't think that it would ever go down like that.

Our cooking adventures

Jadyn absolutely loves to help me cook. She likes to be involved in every step of the process and is very good about becing careful when I let her stir things and staying away from things that are hot (like the oven or stovetop). If she catches me puttering around in the kitchen without her then she will usually demand for me to put my project “On the floor! On the floor Mama!” so that she can see what I am doing. Well this morning she opened the drawer of pans under our oven, pulled out a skillet and said “Mama! Pancakes?” I haven’t made pancake for Jadyn in ages so I told her that of course we could make pancakes. I pulled out the bag of pancake batter and told her to go get a mixing bowl (which she did) then proceeded to hand her measured scoops of pancake batter, water, applesauce (these were going to be ‘fancy’), cinnamon, and egg. She had a blast dumping everything into the bowl for me. When it was time to mix all of the ingriedients together she shooed away my wooden spoon and asked for a fork, (well, why not?) I gave her one and let her try to mix for awhile. My patience for letting her mix is about 30 seconds long, at which point I have to take the bowl, give it a good beating and then pronounce that it is time to cook it.

Ooooohh goody. This is one of Jadyn’s favorite parts. I get her a chair and she climbs up to watch the entire process, occasionally snitiching from whatever might be on the counter near her (This can be a problem when it is a plate of last night’s chili). As a side note, Jadyn is VERY careful about things that are hot. She even freaks out if a shaft of sunlight falls across her, declaring it to be “Hot! Hot!”  I poured the batter into the hot skillet and then went to get a plate to hold the finished product. When I turned back around Jadyn was standing very still, with tears in her eyes. A creeping suspicion about her proximity to the hot burner came to mind as I asked her what was the matter. Blinking quickly she covered one of her fingers with the other hand and looking at me said “Mama…its hot!...its hot.” Oh poor girl! “Jadyn, did you touch the hot pan?” I asked her. Sniff sniff “Mama…hot.” She was so precious standing there, trying not to cry or make a big deal about her little burned finger because she knew she shouldn't have touched the pan. I checked her singed finger and then got out some blue aloe vera, poured it into one of those medicine cups and then gave it to her to stick her finger in. I kind of doubted that she would tolerate it for very long but to my surprise she kept her finger in that stuff for close to 30 minutes, occasionally pulling it out to check and see if it was still “hot.” We went on to make Pooh bear pancakes with the batter and strategically placed chocolate chips. I've got to figure out a way to make the other foods that I prepare as fun to help with because at the moment nothing is as fun as baked goods, and my house doesn't need anymore of those!

Sleeping Beauty

A few weeks ago, I began trying to get Jadyn to stay in her bed and fall asleep on her own. I would take her into her room, put her in her bed and then sing a few songs for her, ending with a hug and a kiss and the words"night night Jadyn! Go to sleep!" She was not a big fan of this new bedtime routine, crying for "Mama, by me! by me!" and then wailing when I left the room and pulled the door mostly shut. I would call back to her from the other room "Go to sleep Jadyn! Lay down and go to sleep, it's bedtime!" Well inevitably, Jadyn would gather up her blanket and pull her door open to come see me. The first night that I tried this I was in the kitchen doing dishes and so when she opened her door I would turn around and go "Uh-oh!" in a stern voice. For some reason this would provoke the bizarre reaction of Jadyn wailing with tears and rushing back to her bed to throw herself upon it. So strange! This response has progressed to her slamming the door and THEN throwing herself upon her bed with me just offering a stern "uh-oh!" funny kid! she goes to bed pretty well now, so long as she gets enough "love time" before we put her down. She needs to feel satisfied that we have paid enough attention to her first, so usually we will go in and sing to her, or read her some stories, or just cuddle her for awhile. She is such a wonderful little girl!