Perfect Saturday

On Wednesday, Janssen wrote about how she had a perfect day the previous Saturday. I am not kidding when I tell you that I was planning on writing about the same thing. We also had a perfect day on Saturday. Yet again, I am a much lazier blogger than Janssen (who is not a lazy blogger at all), so even though she wrote about this topic before me, I'm still going to write about it now. Besides, my perfect day was different than hers.

First of all, Ike hasn't been sleeping through the night consistently ever since getting some teeth a couple of weeks ago. I think he's just gotten into some bad night waking habits. Blah. So, he had woken up at a few points in the middle of night, and I'm pretty sure I ended up nursing him at about 5 in the morning. (Um, this is not the part where the day was perfect. Not at all.) After that, he ended up sleeping until 8, and that was awesome. So I got up and nursed him, then I handed him off to Eric so I could go back to sleep. Only, I couldn't sleep. I popped out of bed, went downstairs, and told Eric we ought to go on a hike or some such before heading to his parents' house to watch the BYU game.

So, off we went to drive the Alpine Loop. We thought we might be a little late to get the fall leaves (and truthfully we were a bit late), but it was gorgeous!

Then we headed to Eric's parents to watch an astoundingly boring BYU football game.

After the game, Eric and I decided to go on a little hike. We went to Rock Canyon and walked for a while on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.

 

Then we took Ike back to Eric's parents' house so they could watch him while we went on a date. I had received a gift card to The Olive Garden from work, so that was our restaurant of choice. (I like the restaurant well enough, but good heavens, why is it so crowded? If it weren't for the gift card I'd just assume have gone to anything but a chain restaurant, but that's another post for another day.*) Our food was great, and it was nice to eat out since we rarely do that together these days.

Then we sauntered over (read: nearly jogged) to the Movies 8 theater to see Super 8, which we both really enjoyed, especially for only paying $4 for it. (Why is the dollar theater now $2?)

After that we went back to Eric's parents' house, picked up the kid and headed home.

Perfect Saturday.

*A post that will likely never be written.

How to Survive a Bad Day

Twice in the last week or so people have blogged about topics that I plan on blogging about. I will not be deterred. I will blog these same topics too!

If you don't read Miss Nemesis, you should. If you do read her but were too lazy to watch the Guy On A Buffalo YouTube videos that she linked to last week, you need to get with it. (Or maybe you didn't think they would be particularly funny. You were wrong. See, second opinion that they are hilarious. Actually, they were sent to me and Eric by our brother-in-law, so there's your third opinion. And Eric makes four. Just watch them, already.) Look, I've even embedded them:

And just to reiterate, I had planned on blogging about the hilarity of these videos before Miss Nem. She's just a less lazy blogger than I am, so she beat me to the punch.

Also, these videos were the only thing that got Ike and me through The First Tooth. It was a beast.

On Husband Bashing

I'm sure we've all noticed the trend in marketing and media that portrays men as buffoons and women as very clever. Comedians have commented on it, and people whined about it extensively. (Brian Regan has told some very humorous jokes about the stupid husband ads, but I can't find it readily. Too bad.)

One thing I've observed as a married lady is the tendency women have to get together and, well, husband-bash. It's usually fairly good natured, so "bash" may not be the best word. Still, as we sit around and gab, we can usually find that our husbands have a lot in common, and they are things that are easy for us to poke fun of. Things like not being organized, not asking for directions, being messy, being totally absorbed in tv/computers/sports/etc. that they don't notice the children making huge messes, making huge messes themselves, not noticing new hairstyles, and the list could go on. Like I said, these tend to be things that men have in common, so when we get together as women it's easy to point out these things that men (as a whole) don't do so well. And then we chuckle to ourselves about how different men and women are.

So, yes, I've been party to these chats, and I've chimed in about how it mystifies me that Eric doesn't do X, Y or Z in the exact way that I would, and doesn't he realize how much easier his life would be if he just obeyed my every order and changed the baby/fed the baby/washed the dishes/drove the car/etc. exactly like I do.

The only thing is, my husband is actually really awesome at a lot of stuff, and I want to shout from the rooftops that Eric has got some skills.

When women complain about how their husbands aren't good at cleaning, I love to chime in that Eric is great at cleaning! He is super helpful and is often the one who proposes that we do some tidying up around the house. He's really effecient, too.

Eric can cook lots of great things. He's a great help around the kitchen, and I love to cook with him.

Eric notices how I look. He has preferences and opinions about how I do my hair and the style of clothes that I wear. I like that he's willing to give his opinion, particularly when I can't make a decision.

He can do pretty much all the baby-caring stuff that I can do. Nursing, of course, is the lone exception. I do not know how women used to take care of their children when the husbands didn't help as much as they do now. In fact, on the rare occasion when our kid wakes up in the middle of the night, Eric is the one to respond to the cry (when I wake him up and tell him to go take care of whatever Ike wants).

Eric is great at saving us money. He asks for discounts on things like car repairs, and he is a team-player when it comes to budgeting and saving money. I do not know what I'd do with a husband who couldn't control his spending.

My husband is social, and I love that. He's usually the one who suggests we should have people over, and he's the main reason we have been making more friends in our neighborhood.

So next time I'm in a husband-bashing conversation, I'm going to think back on this post and mention a few of the things my husband does well.

Rock Stars and Parenting

I've seen this little video shared on Facebook about 150 million times in the past few days. I finally got around to watching it today. It's the lead singer of the band The Killers talking about his Mormon faith, and it's a nice little video. I've put it at the bottom so you can watch it if you haven't yet.

I think the thing that really struck me was this short quote about being a parent:

 It's like there's a chamber in your heart that you don't know exists that opens up when you have a baby. You know, it's been such a great experience. I'm overflowing with that love that I didn't know was there before.

Every day when Eric and I are getting ready for bed we talk about how much we love our little guy. I always knew I'd love my kid (and I'm sure I'll love my future kids too), but I never could have comprehended just how much I'd love him.

Ten Months

My baby is becoming quite the boy! Ike can do all sorts of tricks now like toting around two binkies while he has one in his mouth, finding tidbits of food left on plates that have been loaded into the dishwasher and smashing his fingers in file cabinet drawers.

His babbling has advanced quite a bit this month. In addition to babbling with his mouth shut, (I'm 100% positive the pacifier has stunted his language skills, but I continue to shove it in his mouth anyway.) he also started saying "mamamamababamama" and "dadadadayayadayayaya" this month. Neither of those repeated syllable combos necessarily refer to his favorite people, but they bring us joy nonetheless.

Ike is obsessed with other children. He gets a kick out of just watching them play. Sometimes in the afternoon we will sit outside on the lawn so he can watch the neighbors ride their bikes up and down the street.

He likes to eat whatever the people around him are eating, and he knows if you try to trick him into eating something else. (The kid doesn't have the wits to wave or clap, but heaven help you if you try to feed him Cheerio-like cereal while you are having a grilled cheese sandwich.)

Ike has an affinity for being naked, and loves to make us chase him after diaper changes and baths.

He has learned to dance. And by "dance" I mean bounce up and down whenever he hears music. If he notices that you are observing him, he will stop. If you try to dance to encourage him to dance, he will stare at you like he doesn't know what on earth you are doing.

His favorite toy is a xylophone that Eric got for him at a yard sale this past month. If we want to be honest, the xylophone isn't nearly as interesting to Ike as the plastic xylophone mallet, which he carries around with him and waves in the air with great triumph. He tries to use the mallet to play the xylophone but usually ends up just throwing the mallet.

Speaking of throwing, that is another of Ike's favorite things to do. He throws pretty much anything. Then he goes and picks it up and throws it again. Unless he's angry - in which case he just throws things as soon as you hand them to him.

Ike pulls himself to standing, occasionally stands without support for very short periods of time (about 3 seconds), and walks along furniture (and with the help of foolish grownups who think it's fun to teach him to walk - myself included). I think he'll be walking by the next month's report.

He also loves to climb stairs, but he hasn't figured out how to come down. And if I leave the dishwasher open, he'll climb on the door. The first time he did that and I noticed I said, "Oh, you are doing that thing that all babies do at some point! How clever!"

Game Day

I'm a reasonably passionate BYU football fan. (Why, yes, yes this has been a rough year so far. No need to rub it in, thanks.) I haven't been to a game in quite a while, but I feel very passionately about one thing about people who do attend the games: choice of t-shirt color.

Is it that hard to wear a t-shirt in either blue or white? Really? You'll shell out heaps of money for your season tickets (or even just one ticket!) but you can't spend another $10 to pick up a t-shirt of the appropriate color at any local grocery store?

There's always those few people in the middle of a sea of blue and white wearing green or yellow, or worse - red. What's with those people? It is something I seriously cannot comprehend.

I understand that in the winter time if you are attending a game in the cold you might just have to wear your coat, and your coat is probably not white or blue. I'll give leeway to for that. But in the middle of the summer, can you not find a white shirt in your wardrobe? It doesn't even have to be a BYU shirt. It just needs to blend in, for crying out loud!

The season ticket holders (i.e. the old people) are the WORST. I don't know what's going on with them. They cause me to scowl with their non-spirited wardrobe choices. And this year, we have plenty to scowl about with the players. We don't need lousy fans to add to our indignation.

The George Saga

Remember George from last fall? He was our pet praying mantis. (Only, it turned out that he was really a she all along. The odd thing was that Eric knew it from the beginning but just referred to her as a male, so I assumed that she was a male. Then I was quite baffled when she began laying her eggs.)

This year Eric caught a new George. He wasn't as big as the one from last year, and we were pretty sure he was a boy. We had a hard time finding a suitable home for George, but eventually we found a decent vase at a thrift store. We put a piece of cardboard over the top as a lid, and then Eric put a little bottle of Ike's vitamins on top. I, of course, did not realize that the vitamins were there to weigh down the flimsy cardboard lid, and, silly me, I removed the bottle of vitamins at some point when I was giving the vitamins to the baby.Then, the other day I noticed that George was gone. I assumed Eric had let him go that morning. I instant messaged Eric and asked him why he let George go. He said that he didn't let George go and that he must have escaped. Ugh.

That evening Eric found George within about five minutes of coming home from work. He was about eight inches from his vase. It was a huge relief. We found a different object to set atop the cardboard lid. It wasn't particularly heavy, but it was heavy enough. It was the lid to one of Ike's bottles.

Yesterday we were visiting Eric's folks, and Eric's dad found a huge grasshopper in the yard. Eric put the grasshopper in a bag so we could take it home and feed it to George. In the morning I noticed that George hadn't eaten the grasshopper. I assumed it was because the grasshopper was too big. Then I assumed that when Eric got home he would release the grasshopper into the yard, or we could take it to our neighbors across the street who, after seeing George, adopted their own very large praying mantis that they named Bernice.

Later in the afternoon I came into the kitchen to find that George was resting ON TOP of his lid, which was quite askew on the rim of the vase. I thought about putting George back in his vase, but I'm actually pretty freaked out by George. Then I looked around and found the large grasshopper hanging out on my living room floor. I gave him the stinkeye and then took Ike outside to hang out in the front yard with me.

Eric came home from work later than usual. He put George back in his place (this time with no grasshopper to do the heavy lifting of the lid). Then we proceeded to find the grasshopper. He was not where I last saw him, but I spotted him pretty quickly. Eric performed some deftly maneuvers, and we headed across the street to offer the grasshopper as a gift to Bernice.

Only, when we got to the neighbors' house, the neighbor informed us that Bernice had eaten two praying mantises in the last few days and was acting pretty lethargic. Our neighbor had gotten worried that Bernice wasn't doing so well in captivity, so he let her go. He took us to the place in the yard where he'd released her, and we found her diligently working to lay her eggs. Eric then released (and stomped on) the grasshopper.

Yes, there is more to the story.

As we were headed back into our house, I saw another praying mantis. This one was significantly bigger than George. So Eric caught him. I asked him if we would let the Old George go, and Eric said that we would feed the Old George to the New George. And that's what we did. And then we ate dinner.

I never thought I could possibly have so much to say about pet praying mantises.