Growing boy

Today I took Joseph to his two month appointment and to get his vaccinations. He's about three and a half pounds more than at his two week appointment (putting him in the 29th percentile for height at 22.5 in, 42nd for weight at 11.5 lbs, and 47th for head circumference at 40 cm).

And let me tell you, that is pretty gratifying. It is nice to know that he is gaining weight.

Why is that? Well, for one thing, I've always thought he's been big. The second thought I had after he came out was that he was huge! How did he fit inside me? (My first thought was, well what do you know, there was someone in there all along.) So when people say "He's getting bigger!" or "He's so big!" I feel like my opinion is validated. (For the record Dad, you've had it backwards. When I was pregnant, you were supposed to say I was tiny and darling [men need to learn this word], not huge. And you're supposed to say that he's big and growing, not "when are you going to start feeding him?")

The other reason is that breastfeeding is surprisingly emotional. It's new and hard and scary and sometimes you're just not sure if you're doing it right in the beginning. So it's nice to know that somehow things have worked out between us two and we've figured it out.

(As a side note, I don't get why people hate on formula so much. It is so much better than it was when formula was the "in" thing to do in the 40s and 50s. Seriously. According to a book I read from the 40s, they recommended supplementing with orange juice so babies got vitamin C since formula was little more than powdered cow's milk and water. Nowadays they make it so that it's almost the same as breastmilk, and I think it's awesome that it's an option for babies who need it. Also, Mayor Bloomberg is a piece of work, and if I ever go to NYC I will feed my baby from a bottle just to be disagreeable.)

But yeah, Joseph is growing well and staying healthy. And adorable.

So we're electrical engineers, part 3

I plugged in the blender today, just to check one more time if we ought to throw it away before we move to Michigan. (It had stopped working one Sunday.)

It worked.

Maybe the trick to fixing electrical devices is just to wait a few weeks. I wonder how much money I could charge for that.

Incidentally, we're hoping that trick will work with Kevin's laptop screen.

Dear World,

Back in the day, you may have said something like "Me 'n Kaylie went to the store." Your mother may have given you a funny look and said, "Mean Kaylie? I think Kaylie's very nice. Don't you mean Kaylie and I?" You may have rolled your eyes, said, "Yes, Mom," and cemented it in your brain that "I" (or "myself") was always appropriate.

You would have been wrong.

Let's say that Jennie comes to the store now. "Jennie went to the store with Kaylie and I." Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!!!! You don't say, "Jennie went to the store with I," so why is it okay if you stick a Kaylie in front?

[Insert grammar babble about subject vs direct object and mention that "myself" is reflexive, so don't use it unless you've already referred to yourself.] If you don't want to be bothered with grammar rules, just remember this: If you're at the beginning of the sentence, use "I." If you're at the end of the sentence, use "me."

Or even better: If you leave the other person out, would you naturally say "me" or "I"? That should solve the mystery.

I believe that if we all fix this problem, the it's/its and your/you're and definately/defiantly/definutly/definitely issues will melt away as surely as the murder rates decreased in NYC when they fixed up the subway windows.

And speaking of murder, every time you use "I" when you should use "me," Shakespeare kills a kitten. Think about that the next time you go to the store with Kaylie.

Sincerely,

a girl who used to read grammar books for fun


ps: this doesn't give all you real English majors permission to peruse my blog for bad punctuation, overuse of parentheses, or bad word choice. It's been a long time since I read those books.


pps: Thanks to Kaylie and Jennie for helping out with my demonstration

Opposition

Before Joseph was born, I blogged about unpleasant things. What I lacked in experience I made up for in perspective. Then again, it's easy to have perspective when you're not stuck in the middle of the trial.

I now have a little bit more experience, and I've learned a little bit, too. Labor hurts. Babies cry. They don't sleep when you want them to. They can be difficult to feed. It's hard being a parent.

I remember when I was visiting teaching one time right before Joseph was born. Both my companion and my visiting teachee had little girls and they talked about baby blues. The hard thing, one of them said, was that when they're so tiny they just take and take and take.

Having been there now, I know what they mean. Little babies don't really smile, they don't laugh . . . some hardly open their eyes! It seems they either just cry or sleep, none of which really makes you feel particularly warm and fuzzy inside.

But it gets better. They start sleeping more. Eventually they learn to smile. And I feel like as long as I know Joseph will eventually smile, I can put up with a lot more crying than I could a few weeks ago (and I appreciate every smile I get). Interesting little concept, "opposition in all things."

Pioneers

When I was little, I loved pioneers.

Leslie, my cousin Megan, and I played pioneers almost every time we got together (the rest of the time we played orphaned princesses or petitioned President Lincoln to save our beloved park). At Megan's house we would play Oregon Trail II; at ours we would play Oregon Trail I or III. When we got a little older and more prolific, we had this game called Pioneer Diaries where we would sit at the computer and take turns writing journal entries about our days as pioneers. Here's my favorite excerpt (I don't think Leslie and I were getting along this day):

Megan (aka Melissa): “Father blessed me before he died. He said that if I would hold to the iron rod I would be able to endure.”
Kyra (aka Katherine): “Father blessed me. He said that if I would hold to the iron rod I would become great and marry a wonderful, righteous man.”
Leslie (aka Jolie): “Katherine is sweet, but she is a few feet down the iron rod. I mean that in the best way possible.”


But that wasn't all. Megan read Work and the Glory at the age of like 8, so I had to read Work and the Glory (or at least read the family charts in the later books so I would know who died without actually having to read them). I loved Pioneer Day because it meant I got to dress up as a pioneer. I loved the Heritage section of the Children's Songbook and loved the "Utah, This is the Place" tape with its songs about pioneers.  I loved pioneers.

During the sesquicentennial celebration. My mom is wearing a 70s prom dress.

That all changed in 2005. 2005 was the year of pioneer and church history overload. It was the year of Joseph Smith's 200th birthday, but since his birthday was at the end of the year we had to celebrate the entire year. It was the year my stake went on trek to Martin's Cove. It was the year we studied Doctrine and Covenants in Sunday School. It was the year my family had to sing a pioneer medley that I had to arrange (actually, it was pretty good . . . wish I remembered it) and I had to give a talk about pioneers. It was the year of the Day of Celebration all about Joseph Smith and pioneers (not that I participated since I was at EFY, which also seemed to be about pioneers). It was the year that every fireside and every talk in General Conference was either about Joseph Smith or the Martin and Willie handcart companies. By the end of that year I was sick and tired of pioneers.


But now . . . now I like pioneers again. As I've learned more about my pioneer ancestry I've come to appreciate them as real people who had to do really hard things. I know that we often say that the pioneers' trials were physical whereas ours were spiritual, but I don't know that that's true. It seems like they had to deal with plenty of spiritual trials of their own. The 1800s weren't PG-rated, after all. 


Furthermore, they certainly weren't perfect. As I've learned more about Kevin's side of the family, I've learned that there were pioneers who worked with his ancestors who were downright annoying and disagreeable. There have been pioneers who have turned out to be spoiled and entitled (Ann Eliza Dee Webb Young Denning, anyone?). But there were also many selfless, brave, and faithful pioneers who basically built the West and turned a desert into a home.


In fact,I feel like their accomplishments after arriving in Utah are just as incredible as their arrival in Utah. When I was younger I thought the pioneers were great just because they walked across the plains. But now I think their main contribution was what they built -- the cities, the forts, the schools, the tabernacles, the temples. They did this despite all the persecution, this time from the US Government itself. They left us a heritage that extends beyond the handcarts and covered wagons.


I think this is why my favorite pioneer hymn is "They, the Builders of the Nation" (I know . . . not Come, Come Ye Saints, though that's a close second).

They the builders of the nation, blazing trails along the way;

Stepping stones of generations were their deeds of every day.

Building new and firm foundations, pushing on the wild frontier,

Forging onward, ever onward, blessed honored Pioneer!

Happy Pioneer Day!

ps: here's a little video I made for Pioneer Day last year.

All about Joseph

Sometimes I can be a pretty proud mama. Yesterday was one of those days, despite Joseph spitting up in my hair at both the beginning and end of the day. (It's worth mentioning only because he does it so rarely.)

But besides that, yesterday was full of fun milestones. Moving up to size 2 diapers, rolling over . . . okay, I'm mostly just proud of him rolling over. So much that I caught it on video the second time. (And yes, I do feel guilty about how upset he was. Skip to 25 seconds if you don't want to see him fussing.)

It's just been a lot of fun getting to know Joseph. I was thinking about "nature vs nurture" the other day and I realized that there hasn't been a whole lot of time for him to absorb the nurture Kevin and I have been giving. So, pretty much everything we're seeing of him is just his nature. And he already has a personality, that's for sure. I can already tell he's opinionated, active, alert, and stubborn. It will be really fun to watch him grow up and see his personality develop even more.

In the meantime, it's just fun to see him manifest his moods through his very vivid facial expressions.

Sad

Sadder (okay, I've shown this before, but I just love his despondent little face)

Happy

Not happy

Pouty

Not pouty
(Incidentally, Blogger likes to rotate the pictures of him when he's wearing his blue and white shirt. Anyone know why?)

And just in case you haven't gotten baby overload, here's one final video.

The Great Cache Valley Food Tour, Part 2

On Monday, we continued the food tour through Cache Valley. Surely this was going to be the day with the Mr. Rogers-esque factory tours.

Crumb Brothers Artisan Bread
Our first stop was at a cute building near Logan High School which was landscaped with native plants. That was my first clue that these guys were probably more environmentally-conscious than the average person. I was right. The building was made with wood taken from an old bridge over the Great Salt Lake. The yeast was wild yeast rather than commercial yeast, which meant it took 3 times as long for dough to rise. The flour was organic and local. The lighting was natural. They had taken every effort to make their bread the same way it had been made for thousands of years.

Except maybe the oven. Imported from Italy, 40,000 pounds of cement . . . it was pretty cool.

And the bread was delicious. So were their pastries.

Bluebird
We made a quick stop at the Bluebird candy store. They didn't do tours on Mondays, so we didn't plan on that, but we still tried to make it feel like a tour.

"What should we get?" we asked, hoping to hear which kind of chocolate was their pride and joy, which may then lead to a story of the history of Bluebird. The lady behind the counter responded with a friendly smile but no soliloquy. We looked around, trying to find things to ask about. I could see some machinery in the back, and by the machinery were the biggest chocolate bunnies I had ever seen.

"What do you make those for?" I asked.

"Oh, we just make them for fun. For Easter." Of course.

On the counter, there was a toolbox with chocolate hammers and screwdrivers and the like. Come to think of it, I should have taken a picture. Oops.

"This is cool. Do you use a mold to make these?"

"Yeah." Of course.

Well, since our tour wasn't happening, we just decided to grab a few chocolates and go. And they were good.

Aggie Cheese Tour
After lunch with friends, we came home and got ready for the Aggie Cheese Tour. When it was about 10 or so minutes before we needed to leave to get there on time, I realized that it had been a few hours since Joseph had eaten, and that when he woke up he would want to eat. So I hurried and began to pump. He woke up just then and I began to feed him at the same time. Problem was, it was one of his rare times where he spent more time screaming than eating. So between burping him, putting him back on, calming him down, and trying to pump enough so that we could dump him on my mom to finish eating, we ended up leaving about 5 minutes later than we would have liked.

"But it's okay," I said. "I mean, all of these other tours have been really flexible, some self-guided. We've been the only ones there. I'm sure that being 5 minutes late won't make a huge difference."

We got there, realized that we weren't sure where to park since it was a Monday and school was in session, went around the student parking lot and then realized there was actual Aggie Ice Cream visitor parking. When we were turning in, we had to wait for two other cars to pull in ahead of us.

"Wouldn't it be funny if those two cars parked in the last two visitor parking spots?" I asked. They did. So then we had to find other parking (we decided to take a risk and park in non-visitor parking in the Aggie Ice Cream parking lot because the parking lot was mostly empty anyway). We then followed a very old and slow man into the store. When we finally got to talk to someone about the tour, we found out that yes, where we parked would be fine, but no, we were too late for the tour. If we joined in now we would mess up the entire world somehow.

"Just come back tomorrow," she said. "Okay," we responded and we grumbled the whole way home. By the end I was mostly annoyed that we hadn't fought harder. If we had said "We're not coming back tomorrow. We're never coming back. We're moving across the country and this is our only chance to ever see how you make cheese (never mind that we've been to 2 other cheese places)," we may have gotten in. But whatever. I decided in my bitterness that I would never patronize Aggie Ice Cream again.

Cox Honeyland
Well, the Aggie Cheese Non-Tour had left a bitter taste in our mouths, so we decided that we had to try once more for a tour. And what better way to get rid of a bitter taste than with honey?

So off we went to Cox Honeyland down the road just a few miles, making jokes along the way about Cache Valley being the proverbial land of milk and honey. (The other pun I'm proud of was unintentional: "I feel so cultured going to all these cheese places.")

Once there, we sat down and watched an awesome movie about how bees pollinate and make honey. And by awesome I mean one of the kids had a mullet. "It's kind of geared for 6th graders," the lady in the gift shop told us. But Kevin and I both thought we would have made fun of the video in 6th grade, too. Still, it was educational and cool to learn about the bees.

When it was done, we went to a glass frame where we were able to watch the bees at work. We saw them spitting the nectar into the honeycomb, dropping pollen, and being kind of cute in an odd sort of way. I never thought I would say that honeybees looked cute.

"They're actually pretty tame," the gift shop lady told us. "They've been domesticated for thousands of years. Farmers generally kill off the aggressive ones. They'll only sting you if you step on them or agitate them." Who knew? (That doesn't go for wild honeybees, though.)

And then we got to sample different kinds of honey. Even though it makes perfect sense, I'd never stopped to think that honey tastes different based on what the bees are pollinating. They were all really good, though.

And thus ended the Great Cache Valley Food Tour. No Mr. Rogers-esque factory tours, but still fun.

Oh, and since every post can be improved with a picture of a baby, here:

I kind of love his frowny faces. Until they turn into screaming faces.

The Great Cache Valley Food Tour, Part 1

So since Kevin, Joseph, and I are moving to Michigan in a month, I decided that we needed to take advantage of all that Utah has to offer, minus the outdoors stuff. (It's just been too hot, and hiking with a newborn sounds about as fun as . . . hiking with a newborn. I think I'll use that expression from now on to describe unpleasant things.)

But what else does Utah have? Turns out that up in Cache Valley they take great pride in their food, and several food places offer tours of their facilities. After seeing a description of the food tour in a Deseret News at Kevin's parents' house, I decided that we needed to go.

Before we went, I felt like this blog post was going to be a Mr. Rogers-esque description of how food is made, complete with amazing pictures. Instead, this is what you'll get. Enjoy!

Rockhill Creamery
On Saturday morning, Kevin and I left Joseph at my parents' house and headed up to Richmond, Utah to see a creamery. We walked up to the building, desperately hoping that the food brochure was enough up to date that the tour still happened so we didn't sound like idiots when we asked for it.

We weren't disappointed.

We learned that Rockhill Creamery makes fancy cheeses--the kind you see French people eating in movies. We sampled the various aged cheeses (Gruyere was my favorite) and then went to the cellar to see a movie about how they made the cheese and see 500 or so cheese wheels stored down there. It was legit.

As we left, my 14-year-old brother Spencer called. "Uh, how do you pick him up?" My parents were gone, my sister Kiana was in the shower, and he was left with a screaming baby and no idea how to take care of him. I tried to describe to Spencer where to put his hands and reminded him to support Joseph's head and that there was milk for Joseph, but finally I gave up and just tried to talk to Joseph over the phone. "Joseph, this is your mommy! You're okay!" (One of the weirder things I've done in a while.) His screams seemed a bit quieter, but that may be because Spencer moved the phone away. He hung up and called my parents, and I decided that my baby would eventually get taken care of. So the food tour continued!

Pepperidge Farm
Since we were already in Richmond, I figured we ought to go visit Pepperidge Farm. When I was in 8th and 9th grade, I got to go visit the actual factory and see how Goldfish were made and how a little robot matched the tops and the bottoms of Milanos, but tours weren't common and I wasn't able to get one arranged. Still, it had a little outlet that sold slightly broken cookies and crackers for way cheap, so I figured we could take advantage of that.

No such luck. There was a sign on the door saying there was no inventory for July 14th. Lame. I had been so looking forward to mint Milanos. So we pressed onward.

Gossner's Cheese
I already knew that there was no tour available for Gossner's, but the brochure said that there were windows that we could look through to watch the action. Except . . . there's no action on Saturdays. So we got to see idle machinery.

On the upside, there were lots of cheese samples in the store, including squeaky cheese. Any trip that involves free cheese and crackers is a success.

Aggie Ice Cream Tour
This one wasn't originally on the agenda, but we decided to go and see if it looked fun. $3 each. Never mind.

("But you would have gotten that much worth in ice cream!" my mom said when we told her that we didn't go. Oh well.)

And thus ended Saturday's adventures.

And Joseph was fine when we got home.

More on Primary songs

I mentioned a little while ago that we listen to lots of Primary songs. Between those and the "you're okay" song (it has the melody from Jingle Bells), we are usually able to calm Joseph down. So we like them.

Even so, we still shudder sometimes at how out of tune the kids can be, and sometimes the songs bring back interesting memories from childhood. For example:


(During "Oh What Can You Do in the Summertime")
 Kevin: I never liked this song. I spent my summers outside working in the heat, so I never got to do any of these things.
(As the song progresses): "Do you fish in a stream"
Kevin: "No!"
"or lazily dream"
"No!"
...
"or drink lemonade"
"NO!!!"
Poor guy.

(During "Shine On" or some other song)
Kyra: I didn't like this one so much. It didn't have a good picture.
Kevin: good picture?
Kyra: You know, the picture on the page. Didn't you judge the Primary songs based on their pictures?
Kevin: . . .
Turns out not every kid looked at the Children's Songbook regularly.

(During "Popcorn Popping")
"Spring has brought me such a nice surprise, blossoms popping right before my eyes"
Kevin: Blossoms? Did they change the words?
Kyra: No, it's always been blossoms. We all just sing it wrong.
Kevin: No wonder I never understood that song. I just thought it was a stupid song. Why would popcorn grow on apricot trees?
Thanks, Mom, for bringing apricot blossoms to Primary when you were chorister. I think it cleared up a lot of confusion.

(During "When My Mother Calls Me" or "Pioneer Children Were Quick to Obey" or "When We're Helping We're Happy")
Kyra: My mom used to sing this to me a lot.

(During "Fun to Do")
"Cleaning my room is fun to do, fun to do to do to do . . ."
Kevin: These songs are full of propaganda.
Another time . . .
Kevin: We're going to make sure this is Joseph's favorite song.

(During "My Flag")
Kyra: This was my favorite song. I used to do that one thing with the translucent pegs where you would stick them in a screen and make a flag and sing this (I know this from family videos).
Kevin: Lite Brite?
Kyra: yeah!
Kevin: I always wanted one of those. Also Power Wheels.
Kyra: I wanted Easy Bake.

(During "You've Had a Birthday")
Kyra: This was also my favorite song. Also, it was the only birthday song I really liked. The rest were weird.
Kevin: Yeah, I didn't like them either. Did you not like them because they had weird words like "zippidy"?
Kyra: Yeah, or "children." You know, "Happy happy birthday, children dear." It was so formal sounding. We were kids, not children! Also, "Feliz." Why did they make us sing that song? The chorister would just mutter some gibberish and we would repeat it, but then we'd forget it.
Apparently we're opinionated about our birthday songs around here.

Anyway, those are some of our reactions to Primary songs these days. Do you have any memories or strong feelings about any songs? Also, did anyone else care about the pictures?

So we're electrical engineers, part 2

So following the events of Sunday, Kevin decided to plug in the food processor one last time.

It worked.

We did nothing differently.

He did finish his master's degree today, so there might be some correlation.

(And good thing, since its warranty was only 18 months. The blender is still MIA, possibly KIA.)

So we're electrical engineers . . .

On Friday, Kevin defended his masters thesis and passed with flying colors. As is traditional, there was food for the committee and audience. Kevin's parents brought a wide variety of foods, including a fair amount of fruit. In addition, they filled our fridge with even more fruit.

Combined with the fact that we have a lot of milk to get through fast, I decided it was time for us to use the blender for the second time in our married lives and make some shakes.

The first was a strawberry pineapple orange juice blend. As we moved the pitcher from the table to the blender base, some orange juice dripped out. We hurried and put it on the base and determined to tighten it when the fruit was blended.

After blending it, Kevin tried to tighten the pitcher. Only problem was, it didn't seem to follow the lefty-loosey righty-tighty rule, so instead as he lifted the pitcher up all of the shake spilled out over the base and counter and microwave.

Not being one to waste food, I grabbed a spoon and began to eat the shake (at least the stuff that had just spilled onto clean stuff like the base). Unfortunately, it needed ice cubes and sugar, so after a few bites we determined it wasn't worth eating and began to clean it up. After going through several paper towels, I had the brilliant idea to rinse off the rest of the base in the sink. I knew enough not to immerse the base in water, but I probably used more water to rinse it off than I should have.

After it was all clean, Kevin decided to plug the base in so we could try again. As he plugged it in, the motor started whirring. It's not supposed to do that. I decided to get any remaining water out by blowing it dry with my hair dryer (on its cold setting, of course . . . we don't believe in setting fires in our apartment). So I dried it and plugged it in and the motor wasn't whirring. I figured it was all fixed so I brought it back. But now it wasn't just that the motor wasn't turning on . . . none of it was turning on. We had broken the blender (mostly me, but I'll share some blame with Kevin).

Well. We still had a lot of fruit and milk we wanted to use up, so we remembered another appliance we had used exactly once in our marriage -- the food processor! We filled this one up with milk and strawberries and bananas and oats and pressed "grind."

Nothing. We tried a different outlet. Still nothing. Checked to see if there were any other switches that needed to be turned on first. Nope. Checked to see if anything had tripped the circuit breaker. Nope.

And just like that, we had a broken blender and a broken food processor. Good thing we never used them! (It kind of put a damper in our homemade salsa plans, but the peppers had already died anyway.) Those are two things we won't have to pack to Michigan!

The blender graveyard

But yeah. Here we both are with masters degrees in electrical engineering and neither of us had a clue how to fix the blender or food processor. To be fair, we both got our masters in radar, not in household appliances. But still.

On a happier note, Leslie was over here and was using my laptop and she kind of broke the keyboard about the same time we discovered the broken food processor, but she figured out the problem. Maybe she should have done electrical engineering.

On another happy note, we did get to eat our shake eventually because our neighbors were kind enough to lend us theirs for a few minutes. And the shake was . . . yummy enough. And healthy.

On yet another happy note, we've been enjoying faces like this for the past week:

I've decided that every post can be improved with a picture of a baby.  Maybe I am a mommy blogger after all.