What do YOU see in this picture?

Lately, Layla's really gotten into playing with a certain dollhouse and the figures that go with it (a family that mirrors our own -- dad, mom, little boy, and littler girl). I found her setting them up on our fireplace the other day. The arrangement was, to me, hilarious -- dad lounging on the couch, little girl sitting primly on her chair, boy in the more comfy chair (which he probably claimed previously by force) in the vicinity of the potty, and who knows what's the deal with the mom.



Your time to shine, Rorschach.

[Editor's note: The dad on the couch business is, really, pretty inaccurate, except sometimes on Saturday afternoons when he's watching a game and Layla's playing hooky from her nap -- I'll find him curled up on the couch with Layla sitting with him, reading a book or watching with him or something. I think that's where it comes from??]

a penny spent is a penny spent.

i hate to spend money on un-glamorous things. like water heaters. laundry detergent. oil changes. staples. trash bags. zit concealer (in 10-gallon drums). toilet bowl cleaner. extension cords. a shovel. q-tips. canola oil. a mop. diapers. sometimes i think about what it would be like to go au natural, save a few pennies, and live like they did in the olden days. then i hop into a nice, hot shower and decide that that fresh bottle of shampoo is worth a few bucks after all.

if you liked P&P, you'll love...

dear pride & prejudice die-hards (you know who you are),

i just finished an excellent bbc production that i'd never heard of before, called "north & south." it's based on a book by elizabeth gaskett, and it is FABULOUS. (pretty predictable and similar to pride & pred in principle, acting, and complications, but i'm a hopeless romantic when it comes to this movie genre and loved it anyway.)

a word of warning: it's four hours long, so you'll owe your husband BIG-time if he (a) lets you watch it in the evening or weekend, what with nfl playoffs and nba/college hoops intensity going on, and/or (b) actually watches it with you and keeps his sarcastic comments to a minimum. (note: paul passed with flying colors, although i think the lack of comments was actually due to his sleeping through the last half of it...)

it's available at our public library, so you could check there. please watch it and let me know what you think. i'm serious. my next stop: read the book.

sincerely,

brittney
president of the mr. thornton fan club
est. 2008

Ode to the Bipolar Dynamic of Toddler Siblings

Though my kids are my life and endeared,
I'm the first to admit they are weird.
Their moods don't make sense
(or am I simply dense?)
As I want them to be politely reared.

I thought that when one would turn three
We'd see some more maturity.
Less "GIVE IT BACK! MINE!"
More "D'ya want some more time?"
But, I'm told, "Just you wait til fifteen."

Almost two is the age of the other
Who knows just how to madden her brother.
She'll step into his bubble
Somehow get HIM in trouble
Then pretend she's just "loving one another."

This morning the shouts were out, ringing
I heard them and saw the fists flinging.
But cries, somehow, morphed
Into laughs, problems dwarfed,
I'm listening now to their singing.

Li'l Bounders

that's the name of carson's tumbling class. so far, there are five 3-year-olds in the class, including carson and his cousin ella. the instructor/coach was super nice, and i think he had a good time. (he denied it after the class was over, but he tends to state opposites sometimes. i'm pretty sure that's the case here.) lots of jumping and crawling and trying new things; unfortunately, i think carson's inherited his mother's coordination and adeptness at cartwheels.

"die trying"

that was the bumper sticker i read on the way home today, and i can't stop thinking about it. not that i want to die (quite the opposite), but if i WERE to die, i'd want to die trying. trying to play games with my kids, cook healthy & delicious meals for my family, be more patient. trying to smile when i'm sad or mad, read (even the same books over and over) to my kids, help a friend. trying to read my scriptures more, notice a neighbor, try new things. trying to spend more time with paul, notice the birds, have family popcorn-and-game nights.

i can only hope i'll die trying. that's the fun of life!

p.s. on an unrelated note, who gets into "american idol" and is planning on watching the 2-hour premiere tonight? embarrassingly for me, if it weren't for mutual, i'd be all over that.

weekend sickos

it seems like i'm always posting on here about how sick my family is or has been. i'm starting to wonder if there's a correlation between that and my (lack of) housecleaning skills? nah...

anyway, this weekend has been one for the books. the kids developed nasty croupy-coughs, followed by fevers, lethargy, non-eating/drinking, and pitifully endearing little bursts of attempts at appearing recovered, only to be wiped out by the effort. layla was a day and a half ahead of carson, as far as symptoms go, so that was kind of nice -- we could predict what to expect from him, especially after his waking up one night from coughing and crying out, "my cougher isn't working!" poor kid. i think, over the course of the weekend, he's been awake a total of 9-10 hours. i'm not even exaggerating.

one tender moment: he wasn't drinking or eating anything, and after 2 days of this i was beginning to worry about dehydration, so i started casually and sweetly pestering him about what he wanted me to get him. one particular time, he replied, "i'm not hungwy, mom. maybe latuh. but will you scwatch my back fo' me?" apparently we've stumbled upon a new relaxing sensation for him. good to know.

that, and "hungry hungry hippos." we played a grotesque amount of that game this weekend; i knew i was getting near the breaking point when paul and i started trash-talking each other. but that game was a lifesaver of a distraction for the kids (thanks again, mark & heather!!).

so, while carson sloth-ed it up to feel better, we discovered (not surprisingly) that layla handles sickness much differently. she doesn't like to sleep; she likes to whine and act totally incompetent. (i still love her dearly, of course. just stating the facts.) when particularly sick, she'll sit still on someone's lap and zone out for hours, but she doesn't sleep deeply or for extended periods of time. carson wanted the couch to himself to lounge on; layla couldn't go 2 seconds without being in paul's or my arms or laps. i should give her credit, though -- layla did try to function normally; it's just that her breaking point was about 2 mm from the surface.

she was still awfully entertaining (case-in-point: the little blue toy pedometer that she has stubbornly decided is her very own camera; she'll push it around in her stroller and take it out at random times, demanding that everyone drop what they're doing and say 'cheese'). and she was never too sick to ask, so sweetly "may i have a treat please?" when the notion struck her. (we didn't give in, by the way, because she wasn't even eating real food, but paul got awfully close several times. "how can you resist that?" he says. call me cruella, but i didn't think twice about spooning her up some yogurt and telling her it was a "treat.")

paul and i, thus far, are in the clear. fingers are crossed that that continues, for us and for aunt michelle, who babysat last thursday and is, as i type, en route to the ukraine for the next 5 months. we'll sure miss you, michelle!!!

Peanut M&Ms

Does anyone else, on occasion, feel like curling up with a 2-pound bag of Peanut M&Ms and nearly finishing the whole thing off while watching your beloved Utah Jazz pummel the gloriously under-manned Phoenix Suns? I do.

Half-hearted curses on my darling parents who stocked our shelves with just such a bag. Dah well. Now there's more of me to love, right, Paul?....honey?....

once there WAS a snowman...

but he got buried with another foot of snow that's fallen in less than 24 hours. so instead of taking a pic of the snowman, here are two avid fans of the resident full-time snow shoveller (namely paul). pull up a chair, make yourselves comfortable, kids, and enjoy the show.

new & improved bathroom

oh how i wish we had a "before" pic of our main bathroom, but we don't. just imagine nasty peeling wallpaper, a 70s-orange formica countertop housing a cracked sink and broken faucet, a chipped mirror, and an "amber-vision"-style 3-bulb light fixture mounted onto wood that had old white paint on the side. sounds dreamy, right?

anyways, paul's and my collaborative efforts (okay, mostly paul's), which include venetian-plastered walls, new countertop (a steal of a deal - 50% clearance item), sink, & faucet, new mirror (which still has to be hung better--it's not very stable), and light fixture, have produced the following. nothing crazy, but it's a step in the right direction. (we still have things to do, like replace the shower curtain and add some hardware, etc. etc. etc., but at least it's "functional" now.)

3 working bathrooms, the same as when we bought this house a year and a half ago. what craziness will befall us next?!?!

hi, remember me?

so, in lieu of a posting full of apologies for not finding time amid my very fun and fulfilling holidays to blog, i'll just dive right in as though no time has elapsed...

my stove range went out the other night, right at dinner time, which is awesome timing. fortuitiously (yep) my great parents were in town and my dad spent the next day fixing it up. dads know and are able to do everything -- mine in particular gave the appliance store guy an unspoken run for his money. i also busted my blender that night trying to make milkshakes [editor's note: strawberry milkshakes can, if needed, be produced in a food processor, but this method is neither ideal nor recommended]. my dad looked at that, deemed it irreparable, and bought us a new one. my mom did all the dishes all the time, and they stocked us up on groceries. i AM 28 now, but i don't think i'll ever be too old to appreciate that. they played with the kids, who are totally enamored with them, and it's been a grand time.

they left this morning for denver on their way to texas/ohio to see some of my other sibs & their fams. carson and layla have been asking about them all day, when they're going to come back, etc. tender.

layla's croupy. i can hear her bark-coughing in her crib right now, and it's very very sad. i hope she sleeps okay. my mom thinks layla's hilarious because no matter where my mom was in our house or what she was doing, layla would find her (my mom's) massive purse and carry it to her, saying in a kind of exasperated way, "dahma, your purse, here it is." like she was SOOO tired of "cleaning up" after my mom or something. it was so funny - especially to see layla dutifully lugging the purse up the stairs to give it to my mom.

carson's signed up for a tumbling class with his cousin ella, starting next tuesday. we'll see how he manages. he started sunbeams on sunday and had one major meltdown but other than that was okay before and after. (apparently, one of the kids who was participating in "sharing time" was, in fact, not sharing his presentation materials. carson was heartbroken, insulted, and annoyed, all in one. hoo boy.) oh, and i guess his sunbeams teachers had all the kids draw a pic of what they wanted to be when they grew up. carson drew a zookeeper, but when he was feeling mad a little later in the afternoon, he threw the pic down and yelled, "IT'S NOT EVEN A ZOOKEEPAH, IT'S JUST A BUNCH OF SUH-CLES." i didn't argue with him -- he was right, it WAS just a bunch of circles, but i was sad to see the dream die. coloring/drawing isn't his strong point, but we're casually working on it.

life marches on.