How Do I Bottle This?

Today when my husband pulled out the little hand vac to vacuum up the crumbs from Little Man's cookie, a complete meltdown ensued. When I aked Little Man what was wrong, he said "I help," in between sobs. He was extremely upset that Daddy was not letting him help clean up. The grin on his face when Daddy stopped and let him finish was priceless.

Later he found a wet washcloth that I had used to wipe off his hands after dinner. He got a huge smile on his face and then got down on his hands and knees and began to wipe up the kitchen floor. He actually even did half the floor by himself. When Dad came to check on him, Little Man said, "I clean up the mess," and continued to wipe up the floor until he figured he was done.

I am so grateful that he loves helping whenever he can, even though there are times I wish he was not quite so helpful or would find something else to do while I worked on something. Now if I can just find a way to bottle all this helpfulness so when the time comes that he refuses to help, I can put the helpful spirit back in him In the meantime, I'll just enjoy it while I can.

When Life Hands You Lemons . . . . . .

This past weekend has been an "adventure." It is funny how you do not realize how dependent you become on someone or even just their presence until they are incapacitated in some way. With Jim recovering from surgery and me being pregnant, we are quite the pair.

This morning I was trying to help my husband bathe and change his bandages when I discovered that Little Man had spilled a bowl of water that I had underneath the sink to catch the water that is dripping from our disposal that needs to be fixed. He was trying to be helpful and give it to me because he knew that it was not in a place that it normally would be. After a quick wipe up of the floor and rushing him out of the kitchen, I then went back to my husband to finish changing his bandages and help him put his shirt back on. Shortly thereafter I again heard a splashing of water. I ran to the kitchen to discover a full pitcher of apple juice all over the kitchen floor. He wanted more juice and knew I was busy. Could I have gotten mad and yelled? Yep, and the thought crossed my mind as well as "What next?!"

However, I took a deep breath and helped my husband get Little Man out of his apple juice soaked clothes and in the bath tub. I then went and got the mop and bucket and began the task of mopping up the floor. Half way through I thought to myself, "Okay, how can I look at this differently?" Then realized that I had been meaning to mop the kitchen floor for several days and it definitely was in need. Now instead of putting it off once again, I was getting the task done and able to cross it off my to do list.

So thank you, Little Man. Thanks for helping Mom get her to do list a little smaller. Next time let's find a less messy "helpful" way.

Need a Quick Treat?

If your holiday season is going anything like mine, you are constantly on the run and the thought of one more thing to do just makes you want to cringe. I needed to make some treats and knew that one of the people that would be eating them was allergic to chocolate. I had heard from a friend of mine about Praline Pecan bars, but had never made them myself. However, when I researched the recipe I could not believe how easy it was to make! Plus, with my LOVE of pecan pie, I knew that this would probably be something that I liked. Boy was I right! Even my hubby has given them the two thumbs up and I actually have had to hide them to keep him from eating them all. However, I will warn you these are laden with calories and sugar, but sometimes that is just what the doctor has ordered.

Adapted from allrecipes.com recipe

24 graham cracker squares
1 c. butter
1 c. brown sugar
1/4 t. cream of tarter
1 t. vanilla
4 oz. chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine sugar, butter, cream of tarter, and vanilla in pan and cook until sugar has dissolved. (Do not let this come to a boil.) Once sugar has dissolved, add pecans and let the mixture cool for ten minutes.

While mixture cools, place graham crackers together on jelly roll pan. Once the ten minutes are up, carefully pour and spread the mixture over the graham crackers. Bake for ten minutes. Let cool for a couple of minutes and then remove from pan.

See . . . easy right? This definitely will be a part of our yearly Christmas baking!

December Card

Actually the card for this month was a Christmas tag. When I saw this reindeer shape, I knew just what I wanted to do.



I cut off the antlers that the printed shape came with and replace them with parts of branches I cut off of an aspen tree. I then added red glitter to the little nose to give it some "sparkle."

This was the first time I used the print and cut feature of my Silhouette. I definitely will have to do it again. It made life so much simpler!

About That "Normal" Pregnancy Thing . . . .

Well, just when I thought that things were going smoothly with this pregnancy, we had a small wrinkle. Around 6:30 pm, Sunday night, I started cramping that I had just attributed to standing too long, so I decided to lie down and rest. As the night progressed, the cramping got worse and started coming at more regular intervals until they got to the point that I decided I should head to the hospital.

As it turned out I was in labor and got to spend the next five and half hours in the emergency room being on different types of medications and fluids. Long story, a little shorter, it turns out that they attributed it to being dehydrated from food poisoning that I got from food that one of my visiting teachers brought over from our ward's Christmas dinner. Apparently some of the ham was bad and we got lucky to get some of the bad batch.

Another friend of mine, who is also pregnant, also ended up in the emergency room on Monday for the same reason. She and her family also got the bad batch of ham. Needless to say we will not be wanting any meals brought to us anytime soon.

Anyway, we are now home and I am on bed rest/light activity with drinking plenty of fluids. "Nervous Nanny" (aka my husband) is freaking out and checking on me constantly and is constantly on standby to leave work, especially now that he works over an hour away. Consequently, me being the smart alec I am, have been texting him every hour so far letting him know I am still alive and okay.

The one thing I did learn in all of this is that I am way more worried about what happens with Little Man than I am with this pregnancy. I know that I have doctors and nurses to check on me. However, not many know of his little nuances and quirks.

We also live in a neighborhood with a lot of soon to be or actual empty nesters so they have forgotten what it is like to have little ones around. So while they are truly are hoping to help, it can be a challenge with the basics such as eating. (i.e. Our neighbor who watched him while we were at the hospital tried to spoon feed him yogurt. Two year olds do not want to be spoon fed. They want to feed themselves.) Needless to say, we need to come up with a better plan for the delivery especially since we have no family to help us out. Hopefully, that is far enough in the distant future that I don't have to worry about that for now. I am just glad that we are all home, healthy, and together.

"We Make Plans and God Laughs"

I love that quote. I don't even know where I heard it first or who said it, but I have found it so fitting in my life. I can honestly say that nothing has gone as I had planned and most times it is for the better, but there are also times that I still wonder why now?

Such is our lives right now. As many of you have figured out, we are expecting our second child. I have to admit I am still in a state of shock and unbelief, and if it weren't for the continued "morning" sickness (Seriously, who named it that?) would wonder if it still was real.

You have to understand in May, in fact on my birthday, we were told by my doctor that nothing more could be medically done for us to try to have any more children. We could try invitro, but she was very honest with us and did not think that we would have a different result after she had consulted with an invitro specialist about our case. However, she was willing to help us however we wanted. She also kindly suggested that we should consider adoption, which we started looking into.

After talking with the adoption specialist, who also happened to be a former supervisor of mine, I knew our chances of being approved for adoption were small. Let alone the cost involved was something that we did not have due to the cost of the infertility treatments we had done up to that point had wiped out our savings. Needless to say, we were discouraged and frustrated.

So after a couple of weeks of tears and frustration, I finally decided it was time to move on and decide what was next in our lives. I knew that I was not happy with my health status or my level of fitness, so that is where my focus went. I was working out at least six days a week for one to one and a half hours a day. I felt good both physically and emotionally and even set some goals for myself, such as running a 5K under 30 minutes.

We also began focusing on hubby's work situation since major changes were happening and not in our favor. Consequently, we started making plans as to what we would do after he graduated in December. We even started to discuss moving options such as when, where, and how, and even started researching various areas that were possiblities as to where we would move.

I was well on my way with my goal when suddenly I became extremely tired. I could not figure out why since nothing had changed, except I was extremely stressed out with hubby's work situation. After a couple of weeks of this and some other things, I thought I should take a pregnancy test even though I never thought it would be positive. Well, it was. I was speechless! When I called my doctor's office, one of the nurses, who has been through everything with me, began to squeal in delight and I could even hear my doctor cheer in the background. However, we all admitted we couldn't believe it.

So far the pregnancy has been "normal", which for me is extremely foreign since I have never had one before. In fact, my doctor was even able to find the heartbeat with a doppler for the first time ever at my last appointment which made us both laugh. (Usually, I have to have an ultrasound to make sure the heart is still beating.)

While this is truly a miracle, we still mourn and think often of all our sweet friends that are still struggling with infertility, both explained and unexplained. We truly hope that people don't say to them, "I know someone who had infertility and they quite trying, and . . . ." It truly is not that simple.

So for now we are taking things one day at a time and dealing with the stuff at hand and trying not to worry or think about the future until we have to. If anything we have learned in all of this, we are truly not in charge and sometimes you just have to let fate take its course. Guess we will see what the happens next.