There's a thing on the wall that moves when I do...

Today Alex and I were playing with a little (soft) bat and ball in my room. The curtains were open and the light was casting two shadows of Alex onto the wall he was standing by.

I would hit the ball with the bat and he would run and get it and bring it back to his spot to throw it to me again. As he would return to his spot, he'd walk parallel with the wall that his shadows were on. Every time he walked by he would look over at the wall and watch with fascination/confusion as this dark spot on the wall that was about his sized moved with him.

It made me smile - especially because he did it every time. I could just see him trying to figure out what the heck was moving on the wall.

Another video of Alex today

We were on a video streak.
Sadly, our battery died before we got the Jon and Alex duet of "Coming to America". Sorry Dad. It was so adorable that you can bet we'll be filming that as soon as the battery is back up.

Hopefully, Alex will cooperate. He was on one today (as you can see from this video). I'd like to think it was the eclair cake that he got to eat with Mama after his nap today. :)

Anyway, here we are playing with a bouncy ball, one of Alex's new favorite toys (thanks Grandma!). I tried countless times today to have him just go bounce it by himself in the kitchen, but he's very insistent on Mama playing with him.
When this involves balls, especially harder ones, it can be a little dangerous seeing as Alex has recently improved his throwing arm and underestimates his ability in how far/hard a ball can be thrown.
Most of his throws are done from up close and you never know how exact they will be. You could end up with the ball barely getting to you or with it hitting you in the face. Hard.
This explains much of the camera shakiness. Turns out that trying to get a decent film a kid and make sure your face isn't pummeled by a rubber bouncy ball is one of the harder things in life to do.

Enjoy, and click on the HD button down along the bottom of the video to actually see it in HD.

Alex doing StarFall

For those that don't know, StarFall is an online interactive learning website, which we are big fans of in this house.
We got Alex a little mini laptop mouse from DealExtreme (best website EVER. Cheap stuff and free shipping. It just takes 2-3 weeks to get to you.) so that he could work the mouse better and it has been awesome! I highly recommend it to all with little kids.

Anyway, here is Alex showing off his StarFall skills.
As always, click the link below to take you to the actual HD video.


Alex doing StarFall from Jon M on Vimeo.

Alex on the medicinal qualities of light

Alex loves turning lights on and off. The switches at grandma's house are lower, so Alex spent hours going around turning lights on and off and LOVED it.
Weird, I know.

So today I was going to the bathroom and Alex came in and stood on his stool and turned the lights on and off. It almost always happens, so I'm pretty used to it. He knows that when he turns the lights off, Mama can't see (not that it's that important) and will usually say so.

When he turned the lights back on today he said, "maybe turn em on will make it all better".

Noodle CRAZY

Alex eats noodles like it's nobody's business.
This is how many I cooked up for him today

He ate them all.
Plus 13 penne's we had leftover in the fridge.

And then he asked for more.
I made him a chicken nugget.

The transplanted bushes all made it!

Remember a couple months ago when we transplanted bushes? Well they are all still alive! One of them nearly died and then I hacked off all of the limbs that were dieing and it pulled through! So that one is looking a bit bare, but the point is that it's alive.
Why did I have to hack limbs off? Because we lost some roots off of the root system when we moved it, so the roots couldn't support all of the branches that needed to stay alive. So when we cut them off, the root system didn't have as much to support and could concentrate on the branches that were still alive.
I wish we would have known that with the bush that we transplanted last year that ended up dieing.

We still have our out of control flowering Oleanders to move, but those will have to wait until fall since they are in full bloom and moving them now would be quite a shock to them.

This means that new bushes/plants won't be put in until the fall. I'm okay with that (as is my budget :) ).
I just don't quite know how the transplanting and planting will work with me being either super pregnant or just having had a baby. Should be interesting!

A weird thing about me.

I love the smell of Pull-Ups.
Runner up is Luvs.
The Luvs infatuation goes back to my day care days. I changed 4-7 diapers every 2 hours. I knew my diaper smells. And Luvs won (and still does) hands down.
Mmm....
There is a Pull-Up sitting on my coffee table that is permeating my nose. I should start sleeping with one by my pillow or something. :)

Picnic Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

Holy Crap! I love this!

Picnic Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

cute things alex does that I love

He will randomly ask about random objects, "whas his naaame?". This is usually with cars, but yesterday he was doing it with finger puppets. He'll ask me what random people's names (like that we walk by in the store) are too. Usually I say, "I don't know... what IS his name?" and usually get a little chuckle out of his answers.

Along the same lines, we were on a walk the other day and at every house he would ask, "whose house is dat?". My line, "I don't know!"

One thing he picked up while we were in Utah was calling out for whoever he was looking for. So, "air awe ooo dam-ma?" He now walks around our house saying "air awe ooo mama?"... even if he knows perfectly well where I am or if I'm just in the next room.

I also love it when he randomly starts yelling in an excited voice, "run away! run away!". He usually runs into the laundry room and back out. It's very silly.

And as much as I hate being told to "come back" whenever I leave a room, I think it's adorable and can't refuse going back as soon as possible.

Here are some for real family pictures

I'm working on photoshopping more to be coming later!

...

Jon is bringing eclair cake to work on Monday, as is customary for celebrations. :)

My small appliances are multiplying!

We picked up this little guy online last week and made some tortillas with it last night.

It's awesome.
I like making tortillas but hate rolling out the dough, so this is something I've been wanting for a while.
I'm especially excited that I can make wheat tortillas. We're all about wheat in this house, so yay for that!

Now... to figure out where to put it.
For those who don't know, our kitchen is seriously lacking on cupboard space. I was going to describe, but a picture is so much better!

So, you can see all of the upper cabinets in this photo. One of the upper cabinets is little and high (above the microwave). The one on the right is dinnerware. The one to the left of the stone hearth is misc paper/office type stuff. That one may need to have it's contents relocated so we can use it for kitchen stuff. it's also a pretty skinny cabinet and is tall, so I don't want to put frequently used items up high.

As for lower cabinets, there is one below each of the uppers. There is then one on the inside of the island where we have our garbage can and then just the one under the sink.

My appliances are mostly in the pantry. I could do some better reorganizing in there to make things fit better. In there are the wheat grinder, my crockpot, and the rice cooker. The toaster was in there before Jon took it to work. The blender is on the counter. The waffle maker and Foreman are in the lower skinny cabinet to the left of the hearth. And my Bosch? Under my kitchen sink. There just wasn't any other place it would fit.

So with the addition of ANOTHER small appliance, I'm left wondering where this guy will go. For now he's in the bottom of the pantry with my onions on top of it.


Note to self: reorganize kitchen. :)

An Alex Funny

We have a bunch of empty Easter eggs that Alex likes to play with occasionally. The other day, he opened one up and said, "whas in dare?..... mashed potatoes!"

Not the traditional Easter egg filler, but I guess if that's what you're imagining, then that's fine. :)

(no, we've never even suggested mashed potatoes in eggs, so who knows where he got that from)

If you eat Kashi and soy milk...

Target (at least ours) has a fun little thing going on right now. You buy 2 boxes of Kashi Go Lean Crunch packaged together for $5.49. They have a coupon on the front for a free Silk Soy Milk, which is about $2.75.

Jon LOVES Kashi (as does Alex - he's a very healthy breakfast cereal eater since that's all we have in the house) and Alex is still drinking soy milk for whatever digestive issues he still may have, so this is a wonderful deal for us since we'd be spending at least $2.50 on soy milk anyway.

It makes the boxes of Kashi equal to about $1.50. We can definitely live with that.
Now, if you could find a Kashi or Silk coupon, you'd be even more set. I think I'm going to do some searching...

Apparently, I have a way with birds.

Back story:
Back when we lived in Utah I had this great wreath. It big and twiggy and has clear plastic sparkly bits on it. I typically put it up from winter until spring.
Well it was a nice early spring teaser day in March and I had the door open to let in some fresh air. After a while, I noticed that some birds were coming freakishly close to my open front door.
This was a little scary seeing as I did NOT want to chase a bird through my house, so I closed the door.
The next day I discovered the beginnings of a nest between the wreath and the door.
The wreath came down immediately.

Then we moved and winter came and I put up my wreath here in Texas. March came around and the wreath was still up. Which was fine. It really is a pretty neutral wreath and it looks awesome on my door.
We don't use the front door a whole lot and I was too busy with a 5 month old to notice any frequent bird happenings.
The SAME thing happened. Birds freaking built their nest between my front door and the wreath. Umm... talk about an inconvenient place to build a nest.

The problem this time is that we didn't catch the birds when the nest was just started. This was a full on nest.
Well, me being the homewrecker I am, took the wreath inside.



The next day I had two little blue eggs on my front doorstep.






Talk about heartbreaking! I could just see the distressed mother wondering where her nest she had prepared with such great care for her babies flying around frantically trying to figure out what the heck to do.

I vowed to always take my wreath down before spring- or at least always watch for signs of a nest being built.
My wreath was down in February this year (because I have a cute heart one), so I thought that nesting birds wouldn't be a problem.

We just got back from Utah tonight and I was walking up to the door and noticed a large amount of bird poop in one area below our hanging lantern.
GREAT.
I looked up and...
2 freaking birds sitting up there. 9:30 at night and just sitting there calm as could be, even with us standing right there.

I'm annoyed.

How do you get birds to not make your porch their home?

Mike is home!

Mike Getting Home From His Mission from Jon M on Vimeo.

Note: No need to watch much past the first couple minutes. Though if you've nothing to do feel free to watch it all.

Presidential Conference

We were watching conference on Saturday morning and Alex looked up at the tv when President Monson started talking and tells Grandpa, "das Barak Obama!'"

Wrong president Alex.

Please excuse the crappiness of my BELIEVE poster- I was working without photoshop. I'll do a redo once Jon gets to Utah with my laptop.