January is a good winter month for being slow and snuggly...
...for naps by the fire...
...for finally crashing on the floor 2 hours after you were put to bed...
...for curling up together on a cold morning to wait for breakfast...
...and for making a warm, soft cave to hide in.
But my January did not get to be slow and snuggly. 2019 was not my best year for healthy habits. The dogs, the part time work, the Primary, and my own apathy and gluttony all combined together into a net result of "less health." I had some goals for 2020 that I was intending to work on in a gentle way, but a girl in my ward invited me to join an 8-week health challenge that was in line with many of my goals, so my efforts became much more regimented. Thank you, children-playing-with-my-phone, for this candid start-of-challenge photo!
The challenge consisted of 8 things every day: check in with support people, drink 64 oz of water, stop eating before 9pm, eat 2 servings of fruit, eat 3 servings of vegetables, no sugary treats (6 days/week), keep a food journal, and exercise 30-45 minutes (5 days/week). I started swimming Monday and Friday from 5:30-6:30 am at the West Mesa pool with my friend Michelle. We would get home in time to join the high school traffic and see the moon set.
Tuesdays I started playing pickleball with some ladies from the stake, Wednesdays I do a Yoga with Adrienne workout at home, and Thursdays I go to a ridiculously difficult toning class at the stake center.
And pretty much every day, I have a salad for lunch.
So many options. Bo has supported me in my healthiness by making me vegetable-packed Asian dishes, like bibimbap:
...and veggie tempura! She likes to have someone to eat lunch with. I like to be fed. Win! Win!
I have enjoyed my treat days very much. I was looking forward especially to our Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. We invited everyone over and were going to have an incredible feast, then Merrick was climbing on this wall...
...and instead of falling into our yard onto the rubber chips, he fell into our neighbor's yard (where the ground is 2 feet lower) into a pile of sticks.
I was doing dishes and heard him crying. It was just getting to the point where I felt like I needed to go investigate when my neighbor knocked on the door with a limping Merrick in tow. I hoisted him up on the counter to take a look and found several cuts that appeared to be very deep but weren't bleeding at all. They were just oozing this ruby red, gelatinous muck. I had never seen anything like it inside a human body. I FaceTimed my dad and had him look at it, then we headed to the ER. Merrick was a grumpy buns...
Until he got a popsicle!
He had some gouges and punctures on the front of his leg...
...and a long laceration on the back. You can clearly see the red jelly in the picture below. The ER staff thought we had put some numbing gel on it already, but we had not.
They washed the cut out thoroughly, and then it started to look a lot more like cuts I have seen before.
Merrick did not like the washing and the stitching.
He ended up with 10 stitches in all; 2 in one of the punctures, 1 in the other, and 7 across the back. He was a good boy while we waited to be released back to the party waiting for us at home. Out in the parking lot I went to change his diaper before putting him in his carseat, but when I pulled off his little jammie pants I found a rip in the back of his diaper and then...
...I understood why the cuts had been covered in red jelly. When he fell he ripped the back of his diaper, then when he stood up all the little moisture beads trickled down his pants and stuck in the blood on each of the cuts, swelling up and stopping the bleeding. I do love to have a mystery solved!
Back at home Drew had come in clutch and made some incredibly tasty jambalaya and everyone else had brought delicious soul foods and we had a lovely time eating together. Merrick forgot his injury and played hard, popping open all the stitches on the front of his leg. I didn't take any pictures of that party except these with the McEwens after everyone else had gone home. We love them.
But here is a different party! Bo wanted to celebrate the Lunar New Year. We added another family for this party and I was a little worried about space, but we all managed to squeeze in!
Richardson boys and Allen and Bangerter twins opted for the patio seating.
We broke out our little baby chair and the silver spoon for Mr. Brock.
And it's always fun to see how many littles we can cram onto our dining benches...
...but once the littles are fed it's more fun to see how many adults we can fit in! The only thing that could have improved the evening is Jordan and Courtney squeezed in there too. Cue Dad's tear-suppression face.
Last party of January was Bruce's birthday. The Richardsons are brave souls and invited 30-odd kids to the church for a giant party. There were fun rasses and popcorn and ice cream.
And balloons!
Here are a bunch of pictures of us hanging out as a family. Playing Spot It...
...and LEGO...
...and more LEGO.
These counting blocks were a great purchase.
Here is Merrick smashing his siblings in the couch maw.
Here is the box fort Drew constructed in the play room.
It had several passages and towers and even a Great Hall. A box fort any nerd could be proud of.
Sharing a favorite snack of graham crackers and milk.
Here are the kids greeting Daddy when he comes home from work:
Here are the kids practicing our family musical number we did for sacrament meeting.
And here they all are fighting at the same time.
Let's see, maybe some January updates by person now.
MERRICK
The stitches holding together his puncture wound did not hold together very well and I ended up having to take them out after a couple of days because the wounds were starting to look red, swollen, and oozy (we also had Papi call in an antibiotic, just in case). He's pretty well healed up now, but he definitely has some scars.
Here he is sleeping so comfortably.
Merrick's favorite snack is a "spring cheese."
ANNIE
Is still so great at being sad.
And those are definitely her favorite jammies. Enjoy this picture taken by Vivien with the Stage Light setting in Portrait Mode.
January is dry, dry, dry here. Annie had some spots show up on her little back.
Then I think she had a reaction to the lotion we tried on it. Don't worry, it got better. We just go with our trusty tub of Aquaphor now.
The other day Annie wanted a PB&J sandwich, but she said, "I want a face open sandwich!" Here's a little sample of what it's like to eat lunch with Annie:
RAFE
Rafe made this model of "Three bears still hunting. THEY spy Baby Bunting" that I love.
Here is Rafe's Stage Light portrait in his favorite jammie shirt.
Rafe won this basketball at school for scoring highest on the state reading test in his class.
I can't remember what we were talking about here, but Rafe's response seems effective: "I would just keep yelling and boofing them with my Squishems!"
Rafe is very smart, but sometimes he just doesn't concentrate enough for something to get into his long term memory. I frequently have to answer questions several times for him. Drew's Uncle Lee has been going through radiation and chemo for cancer and even after many, many corrections and explanations, Rafe week after week would pray, "Please bless Uncle E that he can have good cancer terms." Whatever that means.
VIVIEN
Here is Vivs with a V decoration.
Here is Vivien in her guitar lesson. You may have noticed that she wears this outfit a lot.
Here is Vivien's ghostly picture,
her umbrella fort,
and her diorama for school. She had to choose a problem in the world and show a solution. She wanted to talk about how we can save walruses by saving electricity. I made her do a lot of research and watch a lot of videos on electricity use and generation and greenhouse gases, and we talked over how it all related to the shrinking ice floes that in turn endangers walrus populations. We talked it over so many times that she may have lost her temper once or twice. But the diorama turned out beautifully.
She colored a polar background and cut out chunks of ice and pictures of all the things in our house that use electricity.
She had many visitors to her diorama. She said even the principal said it was cool! Her bestie Iliana is in the background below, making a silly face.
Some funnies:
"Iliana tells me my drawings are bad, but I don't take heed."
I had a box of fabric scraps out on the counter the other day. I had recently combined all my different stashes of fabric into one place, so the fabric that her Christmas Saoirse's selkie coat is made out of was inside. She walked by and saw the fabric. She reached out and touched it cautiously, and I could see her little face working to process what she was seeing. About a minute later she remarked, as though it had just randomly popped into her head, that sometimes there are things that might convince you not to believe things, but you can still believe them if you want.
Vivien made up a guitar song. It's called AEIOU and I think it's super cute. I tried to get her to play it for Colette when we were video chatting one day and Vivien whispered to me in distress, "I kind of made up that song just to be personal."
I told everyone we were going to do a craft for Valentine's Day coming up using fingerpaint. Vivien exclaimed, "with the cav-nas?!" Her only exposure to the word had been reading it on the packages of art canvases hidden away in the closet and she had not sounded it out very carefully.
Other January things, we started Star Wars!!!
We FaceTimed Courtney while she was at the beach and felt very jealous.
Drew makes dinner the night before I go into work. It is wonderful to wake from a nap to the sight of your man making pizza.
The picture below was from a stake leadership training. The presenter was demonstrating two different kinds of teachers. In the first picture his fishing teacher is holding up the fish in such a way that it completely blocks his students' face. The second picture is from a different trip with a different teacher, where the teacher is not even in the picture and the student and fish are both clearly seen. I thought it was a clever example.
No comments:
Post a Comment