Hurray for Halloween!

This was a somewhat lazy Halloween for me this year. I bought the girls' costumes used on KSL Classifieds with only a little altering needed,
for our special Halloween breakfast I just let the girls eat some nasty sugar, er, BooBerry cereal that I'd bought several weeks previously on sale at the store (which they loved, of course), and I even caved and let us buy a Papa Murphy's jack-o-lantern pizza that was also a big hit with the girls (and their daddy).
Could I have made cute little pumpkin and ghost pancakes, and my own jack-o-lantern pizza, not to mention adorable homemade costumes? I suppose in theory, but it wasn't going to happen this year.

I was pleased with the dinosaur costumes find. I'd been looking for a while for a used, cheap dinosaur costume for Adriana, so it was exciting to find someone who was selling two costumes that her three-year-old twins wore last year. Adriana was very concerned with exactly kind of dinosaur it was. When she asked the seller the poor woman answered, "I don't know. A brontosaurus?" and was bombarded with, "No, the brontosaurus isn't a real dinosaur because it's really an apatosaurus and this is a carnivore because it has sharp teeth! What kind of dinosaur is it?" After having every carnivorous dinosaur I could think of rejected (the arms were too long to be allosaurus or Tyrannasaurus rex, it didn't have the right kinds of bumps on its head to be giganotasaurus, no crest for spinosaurus, the costume didn't have a large foot claw to be some kind of raptor dinosaur.....you get the idea), a quick visit to BYU's Earth Science Museum solved the dilemma. We noticed on their big wall mural a small carnivorous dinosaur named Nanosaurus rex that met her criteria for adequately matching the Halloween costume. Phew!

Halloween also means pumpkin carving. We went along with Adriana's request and design for a T-rex jack-o-lantern ("It needs big eyes, two nostrils, and long, sharp, teeth!"). I'm sure no one else could tell what the pumpkin was supposed to be, but she was pleased.
These are the pumpkins the girls made at a toddler time activity with some people in our ward. Miriam's used to have a mouth but that got lost somehow by the time we made it home.
And then, of course, there was trick-or-treating. "Trick or treat" was apparently too difficult for our two-year-old to say, because at most houses Miriam would look up solemnly at the person who opened the door, hold up her bucket, and said, "Anna tan [can] say it." We visited Grandma and Grandpa's house, trick-or-treated at Uncle Ken's apartment, and then afterward we were home for the evening some cousins came to visit.
So that was our Halloween. I hope that yours was just as fun. Now on to Thanksgiving!

Am I Terrible?

I am tired of having guinea pigs. Yes, the whole situation has been worse since I've had a nasty first few months of pregnancy, and just walking in to Adriana's room and smelling them (even if their cage has been cleaned recently--by Kendall, of course) has made me throw up on several occasions. And yes, it's harder to feed them fresh veggies every day now that we don't have all the fresh produce from our garden and prices at the grocery stores have gone up in the colder months. And yes, our "babies" just aren't as snuggly as their parent guinea pigs were. They're quite wild, actually. I'm sure it's because of their age, but they like to run around and around their cage as fast as they can, and jump and wrestle. It would be amusing to watch if it didn't constantly rain guinea bedding down on Adriana's floor. It will literally fall down on me as I'm sweeping it up. I'm sure that can't be sanitary.

There are other reasons, not the least of which is wondering who will take care of them each day when I'm in the hospital and first home with a newborn, but the bottom line is that I'm tired of having guinea pigs. So am I terrible that I've been slowly working on Adriana, describing how happy the guinea pigs would be at a home with older kids, and how much more fun a goldfish would be, and wouldn't it be nice if she didn't have guinea bedding all over her floor and getting in to her dresser drawers all the time? I certainly don't want to teach her that it's OK to back out of responsibilities, but I am very ready for the guinea pigs to find a new home. I want her input, though, since they are "her" pets. We'll have a family council about it later this week. Wish me luck.

Ahh, Autumn

This is a picture I just took of my front lawn. I'm so glad that I raked and bagged the entire thing less than three hours ago.

Miss Smarty Pants

Adriana spelled this word with her magnetic letters today, without copying it from anything and without any adult help. I love how she thought to improvise and turned "m" letters on their sides when she didn't have enough "E's."

She then made up (wrote?) an elaborate story about a Halloween bed and herself and a turtle. I didn't get a picture of the final creation. That's our funny girl.

What Else Can I Try?

I apologize that I have often made this blog a place to ask general questions ("Who knows of a good mechanic?") or to ask for favors ("May I borrow a mini muffin tin?"), but I've had good responses so I'm probably not going to stop. :)

The problem is thus: Short of waiting until I'm not pregnant anymore, what can I do for nausea? Any ideas? I'm open to any old wives' tales you may have and I'll try anything that would be safe while pregnant. I've tried Zofran (usually just throw it up, but even the few times I've kept it down I'm still really nauseous and it makes me dizzy), and things like vitamin B and ginger in various forms have not helped. Not all days are as bad as others, of course, and when I haven't been able to even keep liquids down for more than 24 hours I can take a nice little 3 1/2 hour trip to our friendly local hospital for some I.V. therapy, but even that hasn't really helped after about a day and a half (well, I suppose it rehydrates me, which is a big plus).

Of course, there is the hope that things will magically get better once I'm through this first trimester soon, but seeing how things have been progressively worse each week and I've already been sicker than I was when I was carrying Miriam (which is saying something, and that didn't go away for a big chunk of my pregnancy), I'm not holding out much hope. In the meantime, with a house that is an absolute disastrous house, a family who really hasn't been eating very well the past month or so, and a mommy who is too often crabby or impatient with her kids, I'm desperate to try anything.

OK, I'm done with my whining rant. I know that things could be much, much worse. The baby appears to be healthy, I'm not hospitalized or on bed rest, no one in my household has swine flu, Kendall has a job, and on and on and on. Even so, life would certainly be easier if I could just stop throwing up!

Adriana Night

For family home evening tonight we had an "Adriana night." We had Adriana's favorite dinner (OK, her third choice after being told no to just having "treats" and only having cherries for dinner) and let her choose the family night treat (and nope, not content with brownies from a mix or an ice cream cone--Adriana wanted me to make cherry pie). Then for our lesson we talked about how Heavenly Father has given us families and we were so grateful that Adriana was a part of our family. We talked about the story of her birth and looked at pictures from her life, and then we all talked about things she is good at and things we love about her. We would have gone to the Bean Museum for our activity, per Adriana's request, but Miriam was running a temperature and we had to postpone that part.

Not surprisingly, the evening was a big hit with our 4-year-old. Of course, when I mentioned yesterday what I was planning, Adriana was quick to suggest that we should have an Adriana day and she milked it by asking for a special breakfast, lunch, and convincing me to take the girls to the dinosaur museum before lunch.

Next week we'll have a "Miriam night." Wonder what we'll end up having for dinner?

When I Grow Up....

During preschool today we were talking about acorns, how they grow in to seedlings, saplings, and eventually large oak trees. We also did an activity talking about what each of the children wants to be when he/she grows up. For those of you who may know all of the children in our preschool, it's probably pretty obvious who said what. Even if you don't, though, can you guess which answer was Adriana's?

When I grow up I want to be.....
-A ninja
-A cheerleading teacher
-A mom who fossil hunts with my kids
-Diego

Yep, that's my girl. I had each of the children draw a picture of themselves grown up. This is Adriana with her two kids, who are both boys (she often tells me that she will only have boy kids when she's a mom, although she only wants girls in our family--I think she may be setting herself up for disappointment). They are each holding shovels.
It's a little difficult to tell now, but here Adriana drew pictures of several dinosaurs (the "fossils"), and then she scribbled all over them because they had to be covered in dirt.

Hey, I am definitely one to advocate that you can have family as a priority, wanting to be a mom, while still keeping your dreams alive. It's easy. Just take the kids along!