Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We're up in PA with the inlaws today and don't get phone service up here. I'll call Dad and people later today but I'll check the ipad regularly for any skype or facetime calls! So turn Skype on!

First Time Sharing!

I have a longer post with pictures and stuff that I need to get to, but I had to put a little comment up here now. William just shared for the first time. We were sitting on the chaise in the living room and he'd just woken up from a snooze in my arms and was working on destroying a bit of bread he'd left over from lunch. He's actually really good at biting off bits and eating it, but it does meant he chaise and surrounding carpet needs vacuuming rather frequently. Anyways, he's munching away then turns and looks at me and gives me this Smile and holds a bite up to my mouth. He wasn't fooled by mimed nomming and just waited happily until I took a real bite of his somewhat soggy piece. Then he gave me the BIGGEST grin and giggled as he went back to feeding himself. Sorry AnnaMarie, Jesse, Caroline, Jody, and everyone else! I am obviously the luckiest mommy in the world. I might not get much sleep but William is the sweetest little guy and I am so blessed and lucky to have him in my life.

Happy Thanksgiving! (And November)

So a bunch of pictures from November to share!

This is one of my favorite new expressions of his. It usually pops up when he's very intently concentrating on something. 

The quintessential 'Daddy's coming home!' picture! He loves looking out the window and gets so excited when he saw Dad out there.

Daddy gymnastics. Wheee

He's such a camera hog too.

A Thanksgiving baby tryptophan coma?

The boys had a blast scooting around and chasing the dog last night. Ari got very concerned when William gave his walker a go though and wouldn't get off from the side the entire time William was in it. 

William has learned to climb now. That's where he got the little scratch on his nose... tumbling out of his crib. *sighs*

Sleep Training Update

Frankly, while there has been some progress made, we've hit a wall and gone a couple steps back with William's sleep habits. Sure, we put him down between 7:30 and 8, but without fail he's been getting up at midnight again. We'll go in to sooth him and put him back down, often changing a wet diaper along the way... and then he'll cry for another half hour or more regardless of soothing techniques unless I feed him again. Then he'll get up at 3 or 4 and do it all over again. Then 8 or 9, at which point I can't really go back to bed since he doesn't go back to sleep after that. It's very frustrating and while we're getting a bit more time to relax in the evenings, we're not actually getting more sleep. The training has pretty much failed and we're at a loss of what to do. If you guys have any methods that worked on your kids, please let me know. I'm about ready to beat my head against a wall and cry myself to sleep right along with him.

Happy Halloween!

William's First Halloween! I was so excited for this even if it wasn't his first costume. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. What's better than a day dedicated to wearing costumes and junk food after all? Anyways, the day wasn't even over before I started getting calls for pictures of William making his debut as a pterodactyl. And without further ado, here you are!

Pterodactyl man tearing up the food storage/baby castle boxes!

Oh, what's this?

Mommy's iPad? Tasty!

Showing off his wings!

I may have been more excited for him to fly than he was...

Whee!

Chillin' with Dad, getting a break from mom being nutso

He kept looking down, trying to get the front point of his hat squarely in his vision. Of course then he would grab it, pull it down, and slobber it. Hmm.

Watching the movie with Mom and Dad!

Out for a walk! (sorry Peanut, no candy for you yet)

Aaaaand he's out like a light. 

Halloween tradition in our house is to hang out and watch Dracula Dead and Loving It while we wait for Trick or Treaters. We didn't get as many this year as we did the last- probably because our porch light has burned out and needs a new bulb. But we had most of our closest neighbors stop by with their kids!

Night 5: Finale

Probably the last of the nightly sleep updates unless something dramatic happens. Seth is home, William is happy and went to bed at 8 on the dot with minimal fuss, and all is right in the world. Hopefully he'll stay asleep for a good while tonight, but it's 11pm and I'm going to get to bed myself!

Night 4: Surrender

Last night wasn't too bad. He took half an hour to fall asleep at 8, but didn't get up again until 3. At which point I surrendered and gave him an eatly breakfast. Seth is coming home today so I didn't want to fight him too much or else I'd be too tired to drive up to the airport in the morning. He didn't get up again until 7 and then I went in, changed him, fed him for a few moments until he was sleepy again, and put him back down! He protested, but I was still exhausted. I think he caught me mid-sleep cycle. Almost 9am now, and I'm ready to go! And more than happy to have Seth coming home.

Night 3: Missing Dad

Today was good! William was fairly well behaved and I even got some time playing Guild Wars Halloween events while he took a nap in the afternoon. Just one today, but it was a pretty good one. Dinner time around 6:45 was  our roughest. He missed Daddy and let me know in no uncertain terms that he would prefer to be fed by him instead of me. He settled down a bit when we tried (with no luck) to call him and that at leasts distracted him long enough to finish the cup of greek yogurt without making too muuch of a mess. He got put to bed pretty darn quick after that (around 7:30) and fell asleep within 15 minutes. The BEST part is that he didn't get up several times in the night though! He woke up for a change and breakfast from 5-6 and went back to bed until 8! Woohoo!

Night 2: Too Good to be True

Well today went better! Since William went to bed earlier, I got to bed earlier and therefore got sleep even with him getting up twice! Tonight I put him down ten minutes ago around 7:45 and he cried but was so exhausted he fell right asleep. I just finished stuffing him full of oatmeal and a good half a can of mixed fruit so hopefully he'll be full and sated all night? Ha. I can dream. Pear is apparently ambrosia while pineapple was not appreciated at all, by the way.

Still, it's hard putting him to bed so early. Tomorrow night I've got the Activity Day girls (we're making tshirt bags and I got white shirts for the project that they can go to town on with the dye sticks I bought for my Caithe costume. I only need the light yellow and white, so they'll have plenty of other colors to work with. Not like white would show up on white shirts anyways. Coming back to the point though, AD ends at 8 which means getting home around 8:30, finishing feeding William by 9-9:30 depending on how involved he decides to get, and therefore in the crib before 10 if I'm lucky. Which I'm sure will not be helpful for trying to get him down to a schedule, but that's life. I enjoy my calling, but sometimes it's frustrating. I'm still trying to straighten out whether we actually have money in the budget or if I'm having to pay for all the materials myself. Seth tracked down the exec secretary this past Sunday and got told the AD fund was at -$300! Unless someone at the beginning of the year seeeeeriously overspent that's a major error or the guy was looking at the wrong fund since neither of the two AD leaders before me actually ever USED the fund. And sure, the tshirts for the bags this week are only $15 for all of them so it's not like it'd kill our family budget if we did cover them, but I can't and shouldn't have to fund the entire program myself.

Update: 9:30pm
The Beast has awoken. Not even wet.
10:00
Aaand back to sleep. Huzzah
12:55am
He's doing an excellent impersonation of a yoyo. A really loud yoyo.
1:20
Down to the occassional exhausted whimper. Hopefully he'll sleep for real now. I'm tired.
6:30
Still tired. Can't complain about the hour too much though. Poor guy is starving.

Night 1: 45 minutes of sobs.

So I got a book, Sleeping Through the Night by Jodi Mindell. A lot of it isn't applicable to William's age yet, and a lot of it's what we're already doing or stuff I've read before, but we're going to try some changes. Regardless of what time Seth gets home now, I'm going to get him to bed by 7:30- 8. Hopefully the earlier bedtime will help him get the sleep he needs and not mean that he'll wake up ready for the day at midnight. Seth's out of town this week, but once he's back we're also going to try to have Seth get him when he wakes up in the night instead of me. It's the 3am feeding call that's killing me lately and the book says he shouldn't need food in the middle of the night anymore. With Seth getting him, giving him a cuddle, and putting him back to bed hopefully it'll break the habit of wanting to latch on for an hour and then sobbing horribly when I put him back in the crib after he gets his snack. I'm also going to enforce naptime now, whether he cries his head off every time I put him down during the day or not. Maybe if I make him nap he'll do more than take 15 minute cat naps when he gets exhausted.

It's 8:45 now. He went down at 8 and just stopped crying. Let's hope Night 2 of this experiment goes more smoothly. 

Blargh

So the cake was absolutely delicious. Two thumbs up, would make again. Apart from that, Halloween is trying to sneak up on me. William is going to be a pterodactyl and I've got the hat part of the costume made, but really need to find time to sit down and work on the body.

It's really hard to find time to do it with William's lack-of-sleep schedule lately. It's not really his fault. He's teething and that's hard on him, and last night a thunderstorm rolling through at 1am woke him up... and he spent two hours screaming unless I was in the room and holding him. Actually, if I'm out of sight at all he'll usually throw a fit too. He still doesn't nap very well. Just these little cat naps when he's worked himself into a fit and just can't stay awake any longer. These usually involve much screaming and flailing around before passing out.

I'm going a bit crazy, I think. And Seth has to travel for work all next week. Won't that be fun.

On the flip side, my little boy has the sweetest smile and his expressions of pure relief and joy when I come back into the room (after being gone for 2 seconds) are heart melting. I can't get mad at him for loving me. I just wish he'd let me sleep more. We share breakfast up in his room in the morning now. He adored the bread and raspberry jam the other day, and thought the peaches were pretty awesome too. I've got some sourdough from Panera this morning and he finds that pretty interesting too. I'm sure he'll have more fun with the strawberry parfait for lunch.

Mid Conference Cake Update

Omnomberry Cake!

It was a wonderful session of conference that just ended! I listened while I mixed up the cake recipe and Seth kept the Squawker under control- he's been so fussy with teething the past few days! Anyways, the cake batter tasted pretty much like heaven. Miles and Miles and Miles above anything out of a box. They're cooling now and the blueberries are infusing with raspberry juice as we speak! In an hour I'll start making up the frosting and we'll see how it goes from there! But if it doesn't turn out awesome over all, I could seriously just make up the cake batter and eat that raw. So delicious.

Later after William went to bed... So I mixed the frosting while listening to the second session. I got a good kick in the gut at the talk about family history. I really need to do more with that. I got that impression very strongly when I was pregnant with William and now that he's here and I've settled into life with him the impression is back and I have the feeling that that talk was directly for me.

Frosting though! It's delicious. Especially the fruity one. If I did this cake again though, I would double the fruity one. I didn't have near enough frosting to give a generous layer between the cake layers, much less keep 1 cup for decorating the cake. I kept half a cup and the frosting layers were pretty skimpy. The chocolate frosting on the other hand I have like two cups left over to blow my caloric budget on once we get graham crackers. It's also very delicious. I'd also change the amount of cake batter. Maybe increase it again by half, use smaller than 8" diameter pans, or make only two layers instead of three. As it is, the 8" pans made for 1" ish thick layers and I prefer to have them a bit beefier than that. Then again, with three of them it's a pretty decent height. We'll see how the frosting:cake ration works out when we eat it tomorrow though.

My decorating skills need refining. But dang it looks yummy to me!

October Already!

How does time sneak up on me?! It can't be October yet! That's far too close to Halloween for comfort, and the Peanut is not in the mood to give me a few hours of peace and let me sew his Halloween costume during the day. Anyways, the end of September was fun! We went up to visit Grandma and Papa Pease The boys had a blast, of course, and William spent quite a bit of time mauling Grandpa.

In other news, William is still adorable and I think he may have a career as a model if he wants. He's already got the fish lip expression down pat.

We also got a large chunk of food storage this month. We found a great deal on a 1 year (or 6 months, with two of us) food supply at Sam's Club. The delivery guy didn't seem all that thrilled and ended up using a fork lift to dump an entire pallet directly in front of our door, but William's been enjoying the impromptu baby cage in the upstairs living room that it's created. Gives him the run of the living room without me having to worry about him heading towards the stairs now! We do need to get that into the crawl space shelves though. Won't that be a fun project for an afternoon. Seth will be doing it. I know there are hoards of spiders and crickets in there.

We don't have a couch for the living room yet, which can cause some seating issues with more formal guests like the pair of Elder sister missionaries that dropped by the other afternoon but they were at least impressed by our sense of priorities. XD

This afternoon William tried a taste of my apple.

He wasn't so sure of the taste I think, but he had fun with the texture of it!

This weekend is General Conference. Sadly, it doesn't mean being able to sleep in on Sunday anymore thanks to You Know Who, but I've got some other projects to occupy the morning now! I have two choices.

1) William's halloween costume. We went to the fabric store yesterday and got some sweet lizard scale print and some patterns to modify. He's going to be a Pterodactyl! Or absolutely ridiculously unrecognizable. We'll see how it turns out.

2)

Source: gourmetgaming.co.uk via M. on Pinterest

Braving the Kitchen in epic battle and attempting to create this delectable dessert. An Omnomberry Cake! Yummy chocolate with fruity frosting and most certainly more calories than I know what to do with. But I'm going to try to make two this weekend. One to utterly screw up, and one to take to a picnic with friends on Monday to help spread the calor-er- love around! Hopefully if both turn out edible, I've got a Visiting Teachee with a baby a couple months older than I who could probably use some chocolatey love.

Well that's not good...

Someone got into our car last night. This morning the door was ajar, the glove box was riffled through, and the back seat next to William's carseat was dropped flat to access the trunk. We don't think anything was taken. The GPS was still there and we didn't keep any other valuables in the car but it still freaks me out. Seth thinks they might have been scared off by someone, but if they had time to search through the glove box and drop the back seat and didn't take the GPS then what were they looking for? Time for a little more paranoia around the house since I'm home alone with William so much. :(

Things have gotten away from me lately...

As the title says, things have gotten away from me lately. I'm not quite sure where time has gone now that it's starting to get cooler and turn into fall here. The leaves haven't changed yet, but I'm looking forward to it. It's my favorite time of the year. Anyways. Blather about me first and then you can have cute pictures of William to coo over. :)

For the past three months I've been working on losing weight and getting back into shape. To be completely honest, my exercise efforts have been a losing proposition. The time to get out and run or whatever just doesn't seem to be there. I don't really want to spend yet more money on a jogging stroller I'd probably only use for the rest of the fall until snow comes, and frankly most of the gyms around here are outrageously prices (around $100/month) with no baby care for the peanut. There's one I've been meaning to check out that's reasonably priced with baby care, but it's 30 minutes away without traffic and I haven't gotten over there yet- and if I haven't gotten over there yet would I get over there again if I did have a membership? Like I said, my motivation in that department kinda sucks.

On the other hand, I've been doing really well in the diet department! I've changed how I eat (no more munchies whenever I get bored and a lot less sweets!) and I've been counting calories. The past couple weeks I've even left off the literal counting and just try to keep the lifestyle and portion size of what had been in my caloric budget when I was counting. I don't want to spend my entire life checking food labels- I'd much rather be able to make eating reasonably an instinct. I've lost over 20lbs so far! My goal is to get down to 140 (10 more pounds to go!) and fit back into some of my old costumes I outgrew even before I had William. As it is, I'm below my pre-pregnancy weight so I'm really happy and feeling great!

Let's see, other stuff and things. I've been called to serve in the Primary now! I'm teaching the 9-10 year olds as well as being the Activity Days leader for the 8-11 year old girls. I hope it'll be a fun calling and that it'll go well. Teaching makes juggling William a bit tricky now though since Seth teaches the YM. He just got called to be the YM 1st counselor instead of the 2nd where he has been for several months now. But Seth takes him 2nd hour when I teach and then we do a hand off for 3rd hour and I take him while my kids are in sharing time. Thankfully other teachers can keep an eye on them there. William's normal lunch time comes up during 2nd hour so we're going to have to juggle that around and hope he doesn't give Seth too much trouble! This past Sunday he was really good though. He got hungry early so I sat in the hall feeding him, wanted to play with Dad all 2nd hour, and then he passed out and slept all 3rd hour for me! He's too cute.

Sewing Updates!
I've been out of the costuming thing lately. It's the off season for conventions now and William is far too cute and interactive to sit still while I sew these days. I've still got a top sitting on my cutting table half finished because I haven't found the time to get back to it. Really should do that. I even dyed the fabric one afternoon into a soft lavender-grey color.

I still want to make that yellow 18th century dress, but things haven't worked out very well for me to get to the Library of Congress to do the necessary research since William isn't allowed inside. Frustrating, but that's life and I'll get to it eventually. My 18th century corset also needs some repairs done before I can wear it again. So I'm going to take a break from historical for a while. It's sort of devoured my costuming career the past couple years and I've been wanting to get back into more the crazy out-there scifi/fantasy realm of costuming again where being historically accurate doesn't matter and you can go nuts and create something really impressive. The trick, of course, is to create something awesome that is recognizable (even if only by some) rather than an original creation that makes everyone go 'uh, what are you supposed to be?

So my ambition is this character from the new Guild Wars 2 video game. She's a tree. Sort of. heh. The character herself is fun, but she'll also be an awesome technical challenge for me that'll really push me to improve and expand my skills. It'll take a lot of fabric painting (for the plant like textures on her clothing and limbs), prop making (which I've never done much with), alternative materials that have more structure than regular fabrics (like her big leafy shoulder thingy), body painting for the face, and wig making! Pretty much everything I'll be doing will be new and that'll be a ton of fun. Just need to... you know... find the time to do it!

Now onto the stuff you guys actually care about! As I type, William has just stood up on his own for the first time!

Here's William playing in church. I only had my ipad with me, so quality isn't that good.
William has had a lot of 'firsts' this month it seems. He even had his first kiss! Though it's very likely that he and Ari were just trying to bite each others noses off and missed. Still. This one'll go in the file to bust out and tease him with when he's older!

Here are some other fun pictures. These next few are from August actually, that I finally got off of my camera. "You're probably wondering why I called you all here today..."

Good Night Moon is his favorite book.

The power of Spoon

cFirst time eating solids! Carrots are yummy!

"I caught a Dad!"

First time sitting on his own!

These are from September (Yay for getting caught up!) Playing with Dad when he gets home is always a highlight.

"But Cameras are awesome too!" He's such a ham.

"What? Dad won't ever let me fall!"

Dinner time is always an adventure. That's why he needs his pilot hat.

Good Morning Peanut!

Fine, fine, I'll update this darn thing

So here's a picture post. William is sqwaking and crawling around like a fiend. Currently trying to get under the chaise for some reason.

Seth and Peanut playing together!

Playing with Grandpa when we went up there in July while Seth was out of town for work!

Practicing scooting around! He hadn't completely gotten the hang of it at this point, but putting Mr. Parrot just out of reach was good incentive!

Of course Grandma makes the best playmate, and spoils him rotten.

He's also pretty good at helping sit on the laundry.

We finally got a rug in the living room upstairs so he can crawl around comfortably.

Just needed to give it a Quality check! Yup, it's nice and soft for little guys knees.

And back up to see Grandma and Grandpa again once Seth came home from travelling for work! Peanut is so lucky.

We even got to go to their county fair and meet the goats.

And a horse!

And a (stuffed) elk(?)! He wasn't sure what to think about all this.

And lastly in the pictures I've managed to get around to uploading, I finally got the curtains finished in the living room with a blue linen swag. We're planning on finally finishing our living room as soon as finances allow with a TV console (and moving our big screen upstairs and hooking it up to my old computer. A couch and a couple of end tables. The chaise'll squeeze in here still, but the giant poof will head downstairs to the guest room or be sold to a friend. We'll see. Money's tight right now since we're expecting Seth to be furloughed for two months this upcoming fiscal year. Way to go government.