Gray Knees

On the way home from visiting grandma and grandpa last night, the boys were singing primary songs. My three-year-old likes I love to see the temple and I am a child of God the best. After he finished the first song, he started in on I am a child of God. He's just barely learning the second verse, but when he started to sing "I am a child of God, and so my needs are gray" (or great, it was hard to tell exactly what he was singing), his older brother said, no, no, no, it's "so my knees are gray!".

When I was a kid I always thought it was "and so my needs are gray", which didn't make any sense to me, but who was I to question God?

It fits along nicely with the time my 5-year-old sang about Jesus eating Honeycombes.

Lactose Intolerance

I've always been a little skeptical when someone says that their child is lactose intolerant, so I say this with a little apprehension, but I'm pretty sure that my 3-year-old is (or it's possible that it is some kind of allergy...). Since the time he started eating solid foods, his diapers have never been what I consider normal. His BM's have always been nasty and grainy. Last year, I finally asked the Dr. about it, and she suggested going two weeks without any dairy and then if his BM's improve, try giving him a big glass of milk and see if they get nasty again.

Two weeks later, his diapers had gotten much better, but when we gave him milk, nothing happened. Some time between then and a few months ago, his diapers got nasty again, so we decided to try again. After the graininess cleared up, he ate a quesadilla and had problems the next morning.

Cheese has been a big part of our diets, so I'm trying to figure out what kinds of snacks can replace cheese sticks. I haven't tried yogurt, but I'm hoping he can still eat that (otherwise I'll have to try making yogurt with soy milk or rice milk). I made salmon patties for dinner last week, and the only vegetable that you can eat with salmon patties is creamed peas and potatoes. The only soy milk we have at home currently is vanilla flavored and I didn't want to eat vanilla flavored creamed peas, so I made two pans of it. A small pan with soy milk (it looked nasty, so I made my Mr. taste it), and a pan with regular milk for the rest of us. My 3-year-old liked it and gobbled it up like it was candy.

Criminal Activity at West Valley McDonalds...

From today's Tribune:

A sock-snatcher at a McDonald's playland in West Valley City holed himself up in a plastic treehouse when police came asking about his booty.
The 6-year-old bandit stuffed his pants full of children's socks while playing at a McDonald's restaurant about 6 p.m. Saturday. When he denied the deed, one parent called the police.
And so police came . . . chuckling.
"Make sure to take off your boots if you go into the playland," Sgt. Dusten Hansen e-mailed to a fellow officer.
When police reached the restaurant at 35 S. 56 West, the child fled into the restaurant's playland - his sock stash slipping out of his pant legs as he ran. The boy took refuge in a plastic treehouse.
With the help of an older child, police coaxed the boy down.
"It ended peacefully," Hansen mused.
The sock-snatcher and his grandfather were released without further incident.
jstettler@sltrib.com

New Baby Picture

See Nat, he really is cute! :)

I can't believe people really think like this...

There is a really good post over at Utah Amicus. Here is a link.

It's about the resolution that Don Larson, in Utah County would like to pass stating that it is Satan's plan to destroy the United States by stealth invasion (illegal immigration). If people didn't really think things like that, I'd find the whole thing hilarious (well, it's funny anyway...).

It's things like this that give mormons a bad name...

Not that I support illegal immigration. I think people should come to the US legally, the problem is that our immigration system is so broken that it IS impossible for so many who want a better life to come here. The system needs to be fixed, but in the mean time, we need to have a little more compassion for our fellow men (and women and children).

Edited to add: Somehow I missed another good post over at Utah Amicus... I heard part of this Doug Wright show, but missed the part where Satan called in. Dang. Satan Calls the Doug Wright Show

Please don't feed jam to the gold fish...

Maybe it was his way of telling me that the fish bowl really needed to be cleaned (it did), or maybe he was hoping to recreate A Fish Out of Water, but the other day, my 3-year-old came into the living room saying that he fed the fish. Remembering times when my older son had tried to feed the fish, I immediately pictured the entire container of fish food covering the water's surface. In the kitchen, I was relieved to see that there was only a small hand full of fish food in the bowl, but there was also some sort of pink foam in and around the bowl. I had made strawberry jam the day before, and left the cup of jam-foam* sitting on the counter. I guess my 3-year-old thought the fish might like a special treat... The fish didn't die, thankfully, and the bowl got cleaned.

*Jam-foam: during the boiling stage of jam making, a foam is produced which has to be scooped off before canning.

Obama

I'm skeptical about any politician's motives, especially when that politician wants to be president. That said, I like what I have read about Barack Obama. His background may be a bit short on the political side (which is probably a good thing), but it is full of dedication to helping others. He seems genuine, and I would like to think that it is more than just political staging.

Here are a couple of quotes from his website...

On Families:

Strong families raise successful children and keep communities together. While Senator Obama does not believe that we can simply legislate healthy families, good parenting skills or economic success, he does believe we can eliminate roadblocks that parents face and provide tools to help them succeed.

On Health Care:

"In the 2008 campaign, affordable, universal health care for every single American must not be a question of whether, it must be a question of how. We have the ideas, we have the resources, and we will have universal health care in this country by the end of the next president's first term."

A friend sent me a copy of a New York Times editorial by Thomas Friedman. You have to subscribe to the NY Times to read it, so if you are interested, send me an email or something and I'll send you a copy. Friedman starts the editorial by talking about his wife's visit to a school house in Kenya. On the wall of the school house is a poster of Senator Obama and his wife. He also talks about pictures of Senator Obama at the offices of public officials in Kenya.

Friedman then writes, "Yes, Mr. Obama’s father was Kenyan, but nevertheless, that poster and those pictures got me thinking: when was the last time you saw a U.S. president or politician being held up as a role model abroad? It’s been awhile. And that got me thinking about Mr. Obama. It seems to me that the strongest case one could make for an Obama presidency right now is rarely articulated: it is his potential to repair the broken relationship between America and the world."

The ability to repair broken relationships with the rest of the world just might be a good quality for the next president to have...

The First Baseball Game

My 5-year-old was a little nervous about playing against a "real team" until I told him that this would be their first game too. It's pretty funny, because they don't keep track of runs or outs, they just let the kids hit the ball, run the bases, and throw the ball around.

On the drive home, he was a little disappointed that he still had to have practices...I guess he thought that since he "knows how to play" he could just have games now.


His favorite part of the game was "hitting the ball". The funniest thing about the game was watching kids hit the ball and then not running. They'd just stand there while everyone was yelling Run! Run!. Other kids would be on base, and when the ball was hit, they'd start running all over the place, from second base to home, from first base toward the ball....

Instructional league baseball...good parental entertainment.

Baby Blues, Bad News, Good News...

Bad news and baby blues are not good companions. My poor Mr. must be at a loss as to what to do with me some days. It's actually getting better, which is why I can write about it now. There were a few days when I could hardly open my mouth without crying. It all started when the baby was two days old and had to go to the Dr to get his bilirubin level checked (again). There weren't any appointments, so they "squeezed" me in. I should have recognized that as a bad sign, and prepared myself...

We arrived three minutes early, and sat down in the waiting area. I thought the baby would be getting hungry soon, but figured I'd wait until after we saw the dr. We waited for an hour. When we got into the room, the aide wanted to weigh him. I told her we were only there for his bilirubin test and that I'd rather not get him undressed (he was still sleeping, although I knew any minute he'd wake up screaming). She left and a few minutes later the dr. walked in. It wasn't our regular dr, which makes the next part even more embarrassing... As soon as he asked how we were doing, I burst into tears. It was hard not to laugh while I was crying, which made it sound like I was crying a lot more than I really was.

Oh well.

Bad news later that day didn't help.

Thankfully, my emotional roller coaster seems like it's slowing down a bit. It's also been nice that I've had three bits of good news (actually all of them happened yesterday...).

Two more of my friends are pregnant. In a couple of years (assuming they all live close enough to get together regularly) we'll have a nice group of little kids to play together. There will be 5 babies all within a year of each other. The last bit of good news is that another friend is getting married!

If it's not one poop, it's the other...

After reading about all sorts of ways to make cloth diapering easier (and to avoid rinsing diapers in the toilet), I've discovered something...

It's really not that big of a deal to rinse a diaper out in the toilet. I don't actually have to stick my hand in the poopy-toilet-water or anything. I just hang on to a corner and swish it around a bit until the poop is mostly off, then put it in the diaper pail. My Mr. is not so fond of doing that (and not that I enjoy it or anything), but cloth diapers aren't too bad. Flushable diaper wipes would be nice, since I haven't been able to bring myself to use cloth wipes (I spend all this time trying to get the poop off of the diaper and into the toilet- so why would I want to have more bits of cloth with poop on them?!). We currently just use disposable wipes and toss them in the trash.

I finished cleaning up the 3-year-old's poopy diaper, sat down to read my email, and wham (that's not what it sounds like, but you get the idea), the baby takes his turn.

Thankfully he's in disposables until bits and pieces are all healed.

Cousins

They're exactly one week apart.

Wouldn't this be cool?

...I can say that because I'm not the one who mows the lawn.

Underage Tanning

Sorry for anyone who thought this post was going to be some sort of political commentary... My life is pretty much all-consumed by the new little one.

In the hospital, the little man's bilirubin levels were on the high side, so I had to take him to get retested yesterday. His levels had gone up, so this fancy portable fiber optic blanket (aka biliblanket) was ordered for him and delivered to us at home last night. It's definitely a step up from the grow lights I was under as a jaundiced baby. The main down side, is that now instead of feeling stuck in my house, I'm stuck in a three-foot radius that includes the crib, the changing table and the rocking chair. He doesn't seem to mind (really what more could a new baby want!).

I like to think of it as his own little tanning bed.

Oh cruel world...

Babies don't like bright flashes that go off when they're trying to sleep...

Baby

The baby is here! We left for the hospital around midnight, and the little guy was born at 5:43 am. I'm so glad that my sister and Mr were both there, I couldn't have gotten through the event without them.

The baby has light hair! Both of his brothers were born with very dark hair, so this might be our redhead. The other surprise was his size, his brothers were both under 7lbs. This guy was 8lbs 3oz and 20 inches long.

Pictures to follow...

No News Is No News...

Still no news on the baby front, at least the MY baby front.

A & N's baby was born last wednesday, and I got to hold him for a little while on sunday. He is a beautiful little baby. I love the little faces that newborns make when they are sleeping. Little half-smiles, worried faces... I love them all.

I'd be jealous, except that he was born via c-section, which doesn't sound like much fun to me... The good thing for them is that now N gets to start feeling better every day, whereas, I keep getting more and more uncomfortable every day.

:)

Taking care of each other

Last week I was having a discussion with some family members about whether the government ought to be in the business of providing welfare-type social services. One argument was that those types of services should be provided by private organizations, like churches.

I don't think that taking care of the less-fortunate among us should be viewed any differently than paying for roads and other conveniences that come along with living in a community. It benefits everyone when we make sure that all of our citizens have their basic needs met, regardless of what they may or may not "deserve". During the discussion we talked about the Sunrise Metro Apartments.

My gardening friend Patrick wrote this based on his personal experiences, and I thought it worth pasting here...

The standard litany I used to hear in community mental health services delivery was this, in order of immediate priority:

1) Provide water and other healthy liquids to drink, and healthy foods to eat, when and where and how people will drink and eat them.

2) Provide permanent housing where people will live -- housing that is safe, affordable, and healthy for the people who live there.

3) Provide community support. This can include places to socialize with peers, places to find medical and psychiatric treatment, places to find information about other services and opportunities. Places to fill in the gaps.

4) Provide the necessary supports to find (and keep) decent work for a living wage. Volunteer and part-time work is of value in itself, can be excellent for training and education -- but full-time paid work needs to be the primary goal, for as many people as can achieve it.

Offer those four primary services in effective ways to people in trouble, and many can go on to live good lives. The costs of emergency services (hospital emerg depts., police, fire, etc.) will drop. Jail and prison populations will be reduced. Alcoholism and other forms of drug abuse will decline.

Sometimes, some services need to be offered in creative ways to people who are in particular difficulties. There are many different approaches to filling in the gaps -- ways of adding necessary rungs on the ladders of support, to use a metaphor.

Despite widespread cynicism about so-called "government handouts" and the so-called "inefficiency of the public sector" (as compared to private enterprise) -- the overwhelming evidence I've seen (in short-term and long-term studies; in observation of many individuals and individual organizations; in my own life) has convinced me this is the cheapest and most reliable path to making a better life. For everyone.

Most people accept the necessity of paying for our roads and sidewalks and bridges and sewers. It bemuses and it saddens me, to think we still have conflicts over keeping our people off our streets; conflicts about removing our people from begging on our sidewalks; conflicts about providing our people with enough hope so they won't jump off our bridges -- and conflicts about helping our people to not throw their own lives into the sewer.

We all individually pay for -- and we all individually suffer from -- the suffering of others. One way or another. Personally, I'd rather pay for solutions to the root causes of problems, instead of band-aid reactions to the symptoms of problems.

All the best,
-Patrick

Good at Math

I had someone tell me recently that one of the best things you can do for your kids to help them do well in math is to tell them that they are good at math. I, personally, have never been very good at math. I've "known" that my whole life, but I'm not sure when it started.

My Mr. and I count with our 3-year-old and I've started telling him how good he is at counting and how he's good at math. My 5-year-old likes to work out addition and subtraction problems for fun, so we do that, and I compliment him on his math skills. I guess the idea behind the "you're good at math" compliments is that really, until they are in high school, there is no reason for any child to be "bad" at math, and that if young kids are told that they are good at math, they will be.

My 5-year-old (who is very good at math) has been getting a little bored with the adding and subtracting, so we've started algebra. :)

a+7=9 a=?

Things like that. He thinks it's pretty cool, and I'm afraid that my child-who-is-good-at-math will soon be better at it then I am (I guess I'd better start studying).

Next we're going to talk about story problems.

Smart Husband, Handsome Husband...

I was chatting briefly with my Mr via iChat, and I mentioned how I was feeling tired and just kind of all around blah-like today. (This of course has nothing to do with the fact that I am huge-pregnant and generally uncomfortable, and not sleeping well.) He, being the smart Mr. that he is asked, "Do you want me to comment, or just listen?" I told him comments were welcome. I thought he'd say to go take a nap. Instead he said that I should go clean up some of the piles of stuff that are sitting around the house.

My knee-jerk reaction was to tell HIM to go clean up the piles of stuff that are sitting around the house, but instead I took a breath and thought, hmmm, he's right, if I stopped sitting here and did something that involved moving around PLUS had the benefit of the house looking nicer, I might really feel better.

He's a smart Mr.

My brother-in-law put together a DVD slide-show for my Mr's (that looks like Mrs, but it's not) birthday last week. After we finished watching it, my sister-in-law said something about how he just keeps getting better and better looking. Unable to restrain myself, I burst out with "THAT'S WHAT I THINK!!!". I didn't mean for it to come out so loudly, and everyone had a good laugh over it, but really, my Mr. just keeps getting better and better looking. He's aging very nicely (for someone so young).

He's a handsome Mr.

Plus he rubs my feet/ankles every night. They hurt after a whole day of lugging around nearly 40lbs more than normal (and yes, I've almost gained 40 lbs, but this post is not about me).

Free Easter Egg Hunt!

The North Salt Lake Youth City Council is holding their annual
Easter Egg Dash
on Saturday, April 7th
10 am at Hatch Park in North Salt Lake (corner of Main and Center)
Free for children ages 2-12
Come with easter baskets ready!

Don't be late, because it only takes a few minutes for the kids to pick the fields clean. It's like the Swarm. I hope to see everyone there! The NSL Youth Council has put a lot of time into getting ready for the event. We have around 4000 easter eggs filled with candy and prizes.

It must be a conspiracy

I haven't been able to get on the Salt Lake Tribune website since friday. My web browser tells me that the server www.sltrib.com cannot be found.

What is going on? The part of my brain that thinks my opinions are more important than anyone else's opinions thinks that I have been banned for stumbling onto some sort of governmental conspiracy (yeah, that's it...). Has anyone ever been banned from the SL Tribune site for posting things on their comments sections? (I don't think I've said anything obnoxious, although I'll admit obnoxious is relative...)

I feel like I'm missing out though, the Deseret News just doesn't do it for me.