Chaos and Cupcakes

When I took the Christmas decorations down after New Year’s, the blah of the post-holiday comedown combined with the blah of the January skies gave me an itch to want to do some decorating around the house.  Jared hates when I get this urge.  Not only does he hate the expense of my proposed projects, but he is leery of what tasks will be required of him.  When we lived in Louisiana and bought our first home, he did a lot of painting.  First he painted our master bedroom and bathroom (which included many, many hours of stripping wallpaper), but that didn’t hold a candle to the next chore of painting the entire exterior of our home.  That made him decide that he had done enough painting to last him for many years.  So we came to an agreement that if he would tape (I am a terrible taper) than I would do all the painting in this house.  Here are the results of the fruits of my labor (and a little bit of Jared’s).  The pictures were taken at night so excuse the darkness and/or lighting glares.

Powder room (went from beige to green; added new towels, pictures, and switches):

Kids’ bathroom (changed from duck theme to penguin theme; painted an accent wall):

Living room (painted an accent wall):

Hallway (from beige to Tobacco Road):

Family room (painted the back wall; added new chairs and a rug):

Mudroom (from beige to green):

Dining room (Tobacco Road):

Bedroom (no painting done here; just added the chaise and a painting):

And here is a picture of my helpers:

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Today is Jared’s birthday.  It has been an awful birthday for him.  First, we missed the movie we were going to go see on Saturday night to celebrate his birthday, just the two of us.  Then, a bunch of us have been sick, including me.  So he spent today taking care of the kids and me, picking up prescriptions, working, etc.  He didn’t even get a cake since I was too sick to make one or to go to the store to buy one.  I feel so bad.  We were going to go celebrate with my family tomorrow but now since we are sick we can’t do that.  I promise we will make it up to you later in the week, Jared!

I am the luckiest girl in the world to have such a wonderful husband.  I could go on and on about how fabulous Jared is.  He is the best father.  He loves to play games with his kids, to teach them, and he loves to just be with his family.  He works so hard for us and is so good at his job.  He is the smartest man I know.

I would write so much more about how wonderful Jared is, but I can barely stay awake.   Just know that I love you with all my heart, Jared.  Happy birthday!

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After the nightmare surrounding Parker’s birth, my doctor told Jared and me to expect it to take several months before I felt better and “back to normal.”  It has been almost 14 months and I am still waiting.  I feel like a walking zombie 95% of the time.  I hate this.  I used to have so much energy and felt like “Supermom.”  Now I am just “Night of the Living Dead Mom.”  To top that off, my body is falling apart.  I am barely 30, yet I often feel like I am at least 30 years older than that.  No matter how much sleep I get, it is never enough.  I thought after I stopped breastfeeding, my iron levels would go up and I would feel better.  I don’t.  My migraines are pretty much a constant now.  And now I have this stupid torn rotator cuff.  I am so tired of feeling like this.  It is so depressing.

Now, anything you need to get off your chest?!

In lieu of making New Year’s resolutions, I am making goals for 2009.  Why?  For some reason, I think I will be more apt to work on a goal.  You may be thinking, “What is the difference?”  To me, New Year’s resolutions seem to be more trite and often forgotten by the second week of January.  A goal seems more habit-forming and permanent.

1)  Eat out less often.  I like to eat out.  I like someone else to cook our meal, serve it to us, and clean up after us.  The kids get to order what they want instead of having to eat whatever it is I feel like making.  However, the amount of money we spend on eating out is atrocious.  Eating at home can also be healthier than eating out, although when you have children who despise french fries and always order fruits or veggies as their sides, this isn’t as much a concern for me.  Anyway, this goal leads to the next one…

2)  Be more frugal and mindful of our spending.  Jared and I have never gone through the “poor, starving student” stage together.  We have been blessed to have great employment opportunities throughout our marriage.  This has utterly spoiled us.  We want something, we go buy it.  This has rubbed off on our children, much to our chagrin.  We are trying to teach them the concept of saving up for something that they really want.  Now it is time for me to teach myself this concept.  I need to take stock of all that I have been blessed with and learn to appreciate and value it.  This segues into the next goal…

3)   Be content with my blessings.  Instead of wishing I had a 12,000 square foot house with an indoor/outdoor pool and full-size basketball court in the sub-basement on a 10 acre lot but still in a city with a SuperTarget within 5 minutes of my 8 car garage, I should think about how blessed and lucky I am to have the home that I do have.  I should give thanks for the warmth we enjoy inside our home when it is 16 degrees outside and the food overflowing our pantry when there are too many people wondering where their next meal is going to come from.  Instead of raging about the unfairness of being 30 and uterus-less, I should realize how absolutely blessed I am to have the 6 brilliant and beautiful kids that I have when there are women struggling to bear one child.

4) Learn to let things “roll off my back.”  I have always been an (overly) emotional person.  I let things and people bug me and bog me down.  Jared, however, has mastered the art of letting things roll of his back.  He doesn’t let slights and situations bog him down and uspet him like I do.  Consequently, he sleeps much better than I do at night.  Which leads to the next goal…

5)  Learn to become a morning person.  I am NOT a morning person.  At all.  Never have been.  I detest mornings.  I am a night owl, just like my parents.  However, with 4 children whom attend school (early) in the morning, I would really like to learn how to not dread the sound of the alarm clock, to not hit snooze so many times that a indentation has formed in my snooze button, and to not walk around bleary-eyed and zombie-esque all morning long.  That’s where the getting a good night’s rest without rehashing life’s injustices comes into play.  Perhaps instead of counting sheep, I will count blessings.

6)  Become a better scriptorian.  Ask me about any Jane Austen, Jodi Picoult, Chris Bohjalian, Henry James, etc., novel and I will give you a full synopsis and opinion about it.  But my 7 year old delves more deeply into the scriptures than I do (true, the kid is an anomaly and is actually frightening in the depth of his knowledge and wisdom and photographic memory).  However, there is no excuse for someone who is such a voracious and enthusiastic reader to not be a better scriptorian.

So here is to 2009!  Let it be a transformative year!

I’d love to hear your goals/resolutions…

This past Monday marked our 9th anniversary.  The nine years have absolutely flown by.  I am so thankful to be married to the world’s most wonderful husband and father.  Jared is a very hard-worker, ambitious, intelligent, passionate about his job and family, witty, and fun.  He is truly my best friend.  Thank you for always taking such good care of us, Jared!

We celebrated a day late.  Last night we went to The Melting Pot for dinner and then went to a movie.  Dinner took longer than we expected so we didn’t get to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as we had planned.  Instead, my sweet husband (I told you he was wonderful!) took me to see Twilight.

My anniversary gift

Jared's anniversary gift- new sunglasses

Today was a nice, relaxing, low-key New Year’s Eve.  We went to lunch at Chili’s and then did some shopping.  We came home and relaxed for a bit before dinner.  Inspired by our delicious anniversary dinner, we decided to make a new New Year’s Eve tradition– fondue!  The kids loved it!  Taylor asked me tonight if he had to stay up late, because he was tired and wanted to go to bed.  So we had a faux countdown to midnight at 9pm, sang Auld Lang Syne, had Martenelli’s, and sent the kids up to bed.  A funny story about the Martenelli’s– Taylor declined having a glass.  I asked him why and he said, “I don’t drink alcohol.”  I explained to him that Martenelli’s is non-alcoholic sparkling apple cider.  He said, “Can I read the ingredient list myself, please?”  Once satisfied with the “Contains no alcohol” on the front label, he accepted a glass.  I sure love that kid.

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Since Andrew’s diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome over a year ago, we (Jared and I) have become aware that there are a lot of misconceptions about Asperger’s.  I think that people tend to hear about one aspect of AS and fixate on that, without being aware that there are many, many facets to it.  For the sake of brevity, here is a short diagnostic procedural for AS.  It is by no means all-inclusive, as like I said, there are many different facets to AS, but this provides a good, short version of what doctors look at to diagnose AS.

GILLBERG’S CRITERIA FOR ASPERGER’S DISORDER

1.Severe impairment in reciprocal social interaction
(at least two of the following)
(a) inability to interact with peers
(b) lack of desire to interact with peers
(c) lack of appreciation of social cues
(d) socially and emotionally inappropriate behavior

2.All-absorbing narrow interest
(at least one of the following)
(a) exclusion of other activities
(b) repetitive adherence
(c) more rote than meaning

3.Imposition of routines and interests
(at least one of the following)
(a) on self, in aspects of life
(b) on others

4.Speech and language problems
(at least three of the following)
(a) delayed development
(b) superficially perfect expressive language
(c) formal, pedantic language
(d) odd prosody, peculiar voice characteristics
(e) impairment of comprehension including misinterpretations of literal/implied meanings

5.Non-verbal communication problems
(at least one of the following)
(a) limited use of gestures
(b) clumsy/gauche body language
(c) limited facial expression
(d) inappropriate expression
(e) peculiar, stiff gaze

6.Motor clumsiness: poor performance on neurodevelopmental examination

(All six criteria must be met for confirmation of diagnosis.)

So, as seen from this, all six criteria are met for a diagnosis.  An interesting thing with Aspies is that it appears that oftentimes one or both parents have some Aspie characteristics without necessarily having Aspergers themselves.  This is definitely true in Andrew’s case.

I am so sad that Christmas is over already.  It was an absolutely wonderful Christmas- my favorite ever!  The timing of the school holiday was perfect.  We had a few days before the holiday to get the house scrubbed and bake goodies and finish any last-minute shopping.  Then on Christmas Eve, my mom, dad, 2 brothers, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law came over for dinner.  We ate ham, cheesy potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, rolls, cranberry sauce, stuffing, brussel sprouts, chocolate pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and Dutch apple pie.  Then we opened our traditional Christmas Eve gift of pajamas and the kids opened their 2008 ornaments and put them on the tree.  After my family went home, we re-enacted the story of Jesus’ birth with our Little People Nativity set.  Then we attempted to watch Fred Claus thinking it was more of a family movie than it was.  The kids weren’t into it, so we put them to bed and then finished watching it later.

On Christmas Day, we didn’t open presents until around 8 a.m.  It took quite a while for all of us to open presents.  By the time we were all done, we were hungry for our cinnamon rolls!  We just relaxed the rest of the day and played with our new stuff and ate.  We had lots of dips and appetizers and treats that we snacked on all day.

We got more than enough toys to tide us over until next Christmas, or at least till our birthdays!

But more than the presents and food and decorations and fun, I’m grateful for my family and for the Savior.

When I went to go choose the photos I wanted to put in this post, I couldn’t decide from the many cute photos Jared took.  So instead, here is the link to our Christmas photo gallery.

11 days until Christmas!  I am very excited for Christmas.  I have been coming up with some new traditions this year that I am very excited about.  There have been many years where we have been away from home during the holidays and so haven’t been able to cement many traditions.  However, we decided a couple of years ago that we would always spend Christmas at home, as with so many kids it is much easier and more fun to be at home on Christmas.  Last year I had just had Parker and was not feeling up to doing all that I wanted to do.  So I have been really excited about this year and carrying on traditions we have already started and starting some new ones.  These are a few of our traditions:

- A Lego advent calendar.  This is something Jared started with the kids last year and they loved it.  All of our kids are huge Lego fans, as is Jared, and so this is something that is very fun for them.

- Making gingerbread houses.  My kids don’t think it is the holiday season until they have made gingerbread houses.  It is a messy project, but they enjoy it immensely.

- A big Christmas Eve dinner, cinnamon rolls Christmas morning, and then grazing on appetizers and goodies throughout Christmas day.  Last year we switched meals around and had our snacks on Christmas Eve and our big meal on Christmas as we were already doing a meal on Christmas Eve with Jared’s family.

- Re-enacting the story of Jesus’ birth on Christmas Eve.  We did this growing up and it was such fun for us kids, as well as a great way to re-enforce what Christmas is really about.  Last year we did this with all of the Ottley cousins and the kids had such fun.  This year we are adding a new element to this tradition.  We ordered the Little People Nativity Collection.  We will re-enact the Savior’s birth using this set.  I also wanted to have a nativity set that the kids could play with without me worrying about them breaking it and this set is perfect for that!

- On Christmas Eve, everyone gets to open one present from Mom and Dad (including Mom and Dad).  It is always a new pair of pajamas.  This way everyone has cute, new pj’s for Christmas morning pictures.

- Everyone gets a new ornament each year.  This way when the kids leave home, they will have lots of ornaments and memories to add to their own Christmas trees.

- Putting out cookies and milk for Santa.  He works so hard that he deserves some treats!

- Each person’s presents are wrapped in a different wrapping paper specific to that person.  For example, this year I am wrapping all of the presents we are giving to Olivia in a cute Dora the Explorer Christmas wrapping paper.  Then, of course, Santa uses a special wrapping paper for the 1 big gift he brings to each of us.

- When I was a child, my family’s tradition was that we lined up on Christmas morning by age and as we came down the stairs to open presents we sang Christmas carols.  This is something I am carrying on with our family.

So there are some of our traditions.  What are some of yours?

My  Breaking Dawn review is still generating some wonderful discussion.  To date, it has gotten over 11,000 views and over 60 comments.  Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts on the book!  Now I need to get off my heinie and review all the books I’ve planned to write about for several months now!

Today my baby turns 1! I honestly have no clue where the time went. It is so hard to believe he is actually a year old.

I’m not going to write out Parker’s birth story like I have been doing on the other kids’ birthdays because it is already here on my blog.  All I will say about it is that I am so thankful that my sweet, precious baby is here with us today celebrating his birthday.  I am so thankful for modern miracles.

Parker is an absolute sweetheart.  He is a cuddly, happy, smart, sweet boy.  He lights up the room with his smile and his big, blue eyes.  He loves to play with the kids and just adores his siblings.  He also adores his puppy and cracks up when Gizmo comes up to him to play.  He is a tiny boy, only 14 pounds, but is a voracious eater.  He eats and eats all day long and loves all kinds of food.  He doesn’t eat baby food anymore as he loves to feed himself whatever we are eating.  I tried weaning him in October but he wasn’t ready.  But he is ready now and so we are weaning.  He takes a bottle and a sippy cup really well so it shouldn’t be difficult.  (UPDATE:  Guess he is not so ready after all.  He still wants to nurse.)  He is a very fast crawler although now he prefers to pull up and cruise rather than crawl.  He can stand up for a bit on his own but he isn’t quite walking yet.  He can walk holding on to one of our fingers but I think he just doesn’t quite have the muscle or strength to do it on his own just yet.  It will be really soon though, and I am not ready for that!

We all love and adore our baby.  He is such a joy and a blessing.  He completes our family and I am so grateful for him.  Happy first birthday, Parker!  I love you!

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