notes on Nursery

We dropped Kiera off in Nursery for the full 2 hours for the first time on sunday. We've taken her in for a few minutes at a time (and stayed with her) before, and she loved it. Steve dropped her off and I went to check on her about 40 mins later. Even after I arrived and stayed to play she was crying-- she just wanted out of there! I hear that the best way for them to get used to it is just to tell them you're leaving, that you'll be back, and then leave dispite protests so I guess that is my plan. It's just hard (for me, Kiera, and the nursery leader too!) It is difficult for me to surrender my daughter to nursery for a few other reasons too:

1. Germs-- As predicted, Kiera woke up sick monday morning. I guess that that's life though and she'll get the germs eventually anyway.

2. Candy-- don't give my 1-year old candy! Espcially not gummy bears or skittles on which she could choke!

3. I am no longer the sole influence on her little life. As I was sitting in nursery trying to play with Kiera I overheard one of the nursery leaders telling a 2-year old "just wait until your parents come-- you are going to be in trouble. They are going to be mad at you and yell at you. Just wait till they come." I don't want anyone ever telling my daughter that! I don't care what she is done, I'm not going to yell at her and I certainly don't want her to dread my coming!

It almost makes me want to be a nursery leader myself so I can protect my little sweet daughter from everything..... but then I realize that I can't go to kindergarten through college with her. I guess it is time I just let her grow up. I'm just not ready to give up my baby!

Should have been born with fins...

Kiera LOVES water so much. There is no puddle she won't personally splash or sit in. When we took her miniature golfing a few weeks ago the course had ponds and fountains and she squeeled with delight when she saw the water. She was way more interested in the water than the golf course or balls.

Kiera had her first experience with rain yesterday. It rained in the morning and I took her outside to stand on the porch to watch. She was so excited about it that I ended up letting her play in the rain. She LOVED it and was mad when I took her inside. This video is of her second experience with rain (we had quite a storm last night!) As you can see, she was very excited about it again.

P.S. I have to say that I love rainy days. Yesterday was the perfect rainy day: we played in the rain, got dry and put on warm sweaters, baked pumpkin bread and cookies while Kiera and I cuddled under her blankie and read books. I love days like that.

Weight Stuff and Money Fluff

1. Today I am officially the same weight that I was when I went into the hospital to give birth to Kiera. (and I'm only 24 weeks pregnant which means this baby weighs about 1.5 lbs) Ouch.

2. I sat down with a calculator today and added up all of the medical bills from this pregnancy thus far. The total was $104,464.86 and we've only had to pay about $500 of that since we have good insurance.

Country Music is true

I used to be anti-country music. Why? Because my parents were. Why were my parents so against it? The same reason anybody of sense would be: in their day country music was horrible! Twang, twang.... I remember a home-health patient of mine who made me listen to one of his favorite songs entitled "There's a tear in my beer and it hurts up to here". Golly.

I'm here to tell everyone that country music has changed and is now a great thing (for the most part-- I admit that twangy music does occasionally mix in with the good stuff). The great thing about country music is that not only do the musicians have actual talent, but the messages in the songs are really great and uplifting. They teach good principles and have nice little stories to them.

There's my opionion. I thought I'd blog about something other than my daughter (that is especially for you Jen).

A long blog on Food Storage

For years the topic of food storage for me was something I didn't really pay much attention to. For one thing, you can't store much food when you live in an apartment that is so small you barely have enough space for the food you normally use say nothing of food storage. Also, it was one of those things that people vaguely talked about in church that some prophet a while back said that we should have.

As you can tell from the pictures of some of our newly acquired wheat pictured above, my attitude has recently changed. It started when I was made aware of the fact that food prices (wheat in particular) were skyrocketing. The price of white wheat is so high in fact that the LDS storehouses/dry packs no longer sell it. There was a wheat-acquiring frenzy that went on in Utah when this was announced and there were severe restrictions placed on what people could buy. I didn't have that problem here in California and I went to my local LDS storehouse and bought the very last of their white wheat (500 lbs of it). According to the church website's food storage calculator, this is only enough wheat for 4 people for 6 months. Since all I currently have for food storage is wheat, my tiny garden (pictured above), and extras of food we already eat, I still have a long ways to go, but it's a start. Since I now live in a house and and room to store it, I no longer have an excuse not to. And considering the fact that we have been told quite a few times in just the past year by our first presidency (in the All Is Safely Gathered In pamphlet) which was distributed to members, and the very straight-forward talk given in April 07 General Conference, I can no longer put off the prophet's counsel.

So, I've learned a lot about using oxygen absorbers and mylar bags as we packaged up our wheat to put in long term storage. I personally don't believe that I will be needing to use it (or any other of the long-term food storage I intend to buy) any time soon, but I'll store it because we were specifically instructed to do so in 2007. In the meantime, I'll have to deal with a little less closet space.

The Guinea Pig

In 3 more days I will be 24 weeks pregnant and I still have my feeding tube. No other pregnant woman in recorded history has had a feeding tube this long so nobody quite knows what to expect as my baby grows (all of my doctors have different theories). Everyone has been waiting for week 24 because it is when my baby supposedly reaches the level of my tube in my abdomen. So, will Cambrie spontaneously combust in 3 days,? will my feeding tube become very uncomfortable from a baby pushing/kicking against it? Will it kink off and become un-usable? Will it rip through tissue as my stomach is pushed upward by baby? Or will everything be fine? Stay tuned for the outcome of my guinea pig pregnancy.

18 months pictures

I'll have you know that between these sweet faces in pictures there were 18 month tantrums going on. I was literally dripping with sweat by the time we were done from trying to keep her in the room (which had no door) because she would dash for it between shots (she wanted to climb on the chairs in the waiting room). But, I must admit we got some good ones, so all of my chasing and jumping up and down to get her to smile was worth it.

Don't come knocking on my door if your husbands get you milk for Mother's Day

THE TAPE OF LOVE

I've had this song in my head for 2 days now. Thanks Brett. What a song.

I'd like to apologize to the people who live near me and have to see me frequently as I'm going to be wearing alot of the same clothes in the next four months.

The picture on the right is the picture of my maternity clothes (pants not included). You'll notice that half of them are long sleeved too so I won't be able to wear them when it get's hot. Sorry people, maternity clothes are just EXPENSIVE and for the amount of time I'm going to be wearing them it's just not worth it. I went shopping last week and bought 1 shirt and 2 skirts and it cost me $100! ouch! Too bad I can't wear maternity dresses with my feeding tube because I have 4 of them : (

The picture on the left is a nice comparison between Steve's clothes (left) and mine (right). Isn't my husband a clothes horse?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

I believe that nobody is completely "normal". We all have some sort of psychiatric disorder of some sort to a small degree. I'm here to admit that I have obsessive compulsive disorder. You see, there is a little bubble-window on the playground of our local park that has been bugging me forever-- little kids (my Kiera included) touch it and put there mouths on it and slobber all over it. It's just got to be totally germ-infested (say nothing of the dirt on it). I keep thinking "one of these days I'm going to clean that little window". Well, I finally did it. I took windex and gave it a good wipe down. Obsessive-compulsive? I think so, but I'll sleep better at night knowing that it has that many less germs on it (at least for a while).

Snow baby.......or not

Kiera and I have been visiting my family in Utah this past week in order to give a little space to Steve while he studies for mid-terms. On May 1st we woke up to snow in the morning (what is wrong with this state? snow in may???!!) I took Kiera out to see what my little California girl thought of snow. She touched it and then got really mad that her fingers were cold. After that she wanted nothing to do with it. The video is cute-- she did NOT want her feet in the snow! Good thing we live in California!