first time in high chair

Christmas pictures

Sorry there are a zillion pics.

Nathaniel at Pennsylvania Christmas:




California Christmas:











Maryland Christmas:

priorities

I've been thinking about priorities a lot in the past few days. Found this pin:

Source: lindawagner.net via JennyBeth on Pinterest

I could elaborate, but I won't. That sums it up perfectly.

Christmas Eve

We're leaving for Maryland in the morning, but right now we're enjoying Christmas Eve. Carl's family has bunches of Christmas Eve traditions: for one thing, they always have chili on Christmas Eve. I think it was Carl's great (or great-great?) grandfather who worked on a railroad, and Christmas Eve was the day he had to spend with family. So all the kids would come and visit him all day and they would just have a giant pot of chili on the stove people could eat whenever.

They also open all the presents on Christmas Eve. (Christmas morning is just for Santa.)

They also have a big family talent show. This year I was going to do something with Gary Hoey's rendition of Twas the Night Before Christmas, but Carl said that would be "too embarrassing." (Gary Hoey raps the poem and apparently I am too white to rap.) So instead I will be doing Down in Yon Forrest again, with Carl's sister's guitar.

In my family... let's see. On my mom's side, there's the tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve, as like a preview for Christmas morning. We usually read the Christmas story.

Carl and I haven't yet figured out which traditions we'll keep. I think until we had Nathaniel we were both pretty chill about everything--too chill for traditions. But now that we have him, we'll probably have to figure out what kinds of things we want to make staples of his childhood.

I really like this one thing I found on Pinterest, a strategy for gift-giving. For birthdays and Christmas, kids get:

1 thing of want
1 thing of need
1 thing to wear
1 thing to read

I like that.

Anyway. We're also talking to Carl's brother Sam tonight. This is exciting because he's still on his mission in El Salvador and I think he gets to Skype (yay!). Nathaniel will be a full year old before Carl's brother gets home, but maybe Sam can see Nathaniel tonight.

Happy Christmas Eve! Do any of you have any good Christmas Eve traditions?

in California

We got into Burbank on Friday night. Nathaniel was an angel all day. He nursed and slept and played for the entire duration of both flights, and was happy in between flights, too. We were so blessed! Of course, before that he barfed all over my shirt in the airport, so I guess there was a trade-off.

Yesterday was Carl's cousin Caitlin's wedding. It was wonderful. Caitlin was beautiful. Her dress was fantastic. The actual wedding itself took place in the LA temple, where they were sealed not just 'til death do they part, but for time and all eternity.




Carl and I have been married now for almost three years--our anniversary is in less than two weeks. Best three years ever. I am so excited to spend the rest of forever with him. Having Nathaniel has made things even better.

cutest picture from last photoshoot

Our awesome friend Heather took pictures of Nathaniel on Sunday. Here is one of my favorites:



I guess the ornament must have tasted good because he kept on trying to eat it. Silly baby!

Christmas programs are DONE

Here's how all the Christmas things went:

1. Christmas party: went well. I conducted half the congregational hymns, and accompanied the other half. Performed Down in Yon Forest. Later people asked for the music. Guess I'll have to actually write it down.

2. Christmas program: went very well. I am SO proud of my choir. We sang Calm in the Listening Ear of Night, Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, and Lo How A Rose. We filled up the whole program (between them and soloists) and ended right on time. Yay!

3. Christmas caroling: went super awfully. Santa came, so there were a million kids/families to see Santa, and only 3 old ladies showed up to sing. I was able to foist the accompaniment onto another pianist present, so I got to conduct instead, but it was awful because only 3 people wanted to sing. And they wanted to sing winter-themed songs that are not in the CHRISTMAS song book. Sorry. Sometimes a book with the theme of CHRISTMAS just won't include Frosty the Snowman, or whatever. Next year, I hope they don't have community "caroling," just Santa. It was awful.

PS, "carols" are about CHRISTMAS, as in JESUS. Not as in snowmen and baby it being cold outside and holly jolly winter wonderlands. Sorry.

On the plus side, Christmas stuff is done for this year! Now this choir director gets to focus on Easter. Anyone know any good Easter songs we should do this year?

Christmas programs!

Things are just getting crazy in time for the ward Christmas events! I'm the director of our ward choir, and also I am a decent pianist, so that means that I am accompanying about half of all performances this Saturday night for the ward Christmas party, and then I am directing and/or accompanying all the music on Sunday's Christmas program. Then in the evening of Sunday I'll be accompanying a community caroling event in Urbana.

I just decided that for the ward Christmas party, I'll be playing and singing Down in Yon Forest, a cool hymn I just discovered like two days ago. I arranged myself a version of it an hour ago and I'll teach the ward to sing the chorus parts (the 2nd and 4th line of every verse are the same each time). Here's a choir singing it:



So pretty.

Also for the party, I wrote an arrangement of Silent Night and It Came Upon The Midnight Clear as a medley for piano and violin (surprise! I'm on the piano).

For Sunday's program, we'll be singing Lo How A Rose and Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day.

If our choir were an audition-only British boys choir, and they sang a way cooler and more difficult arrangement than we are, this is how they would sound:



I have SUCH A CRUSH ON THAT SONG. I wish we could pull off this... or well, anything by John Gardner.

We are doing an easy rendition I got for FREE (yay free, esp. when you have no budget for your choir), based on this melody featured in Rutter's arrangement:



I also love Rutter. Ah. Love him so much. Wish we could pull off a Rutter, too. Oh well.

I also wrote an arrangement of the Huron Carol for performance in sacrament meeting. It sounds only vaguely like this (in that it has the same words! yay):



And in final news, I decided that next year FOR SURE I want to perform Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion by Handel at some venue.

The end.

Baby's first basketball

Baby D just got coordinated enough to hold a ball like 2 weeks ago. Of course, to make his dad proud, it was a basketball. I took pictures to mark the occasion.





Maybe we should have named him Jimmer after all!

baby and daddy

I love pictures of Carl and Nathaniel. It's just about my favorite thing.

Here they are, ready for dinner:



Here they are, fast asleep... in church:



I had to take the picture. I had to.

Thanksgiving pictures

We had a great Thanksgiving! We spent it up in Pennsylvania at Nana's house. Nathaniel was pretty good for the ride up. Normally it's a 75 minute drive, but on Thanksgiving it was 120 minutes. There were two gigantic accidents on the way that really slowed things down. We hoped that the people involved were okay, though.

Nathaniel loved sitting with Grampy:


And he had fun sitting with his dad:



Family and friends watching Charlie Brown:




Thanksgiving tummy time (don't you love Nathaniel's turkey bum?):




With Nana and Grampy:

bedsharing thought

Nathaniel sleeps between me and Carl, in our king bed. He has a little hand towel he sleeps on in case he leaks somehow in the night, and also so he can have a finite territory to himself.

Every night before we sleep, we put him down in his spot and just marvel at how awesome he is.

The other night, Carl turned to me and just asked: "Why doesn't everybody sleep with their baby? It's worked out so well for us."

<3 <3 <3

So glad to be bedsharing with my baby, and with a husband who is glad about it too!

can't think of a good title for this post

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

Nathaniel has been so cute lately. He's developed an interest in cups--not all cups, just the bright green ones I use. There are two cups in particular that he seems to love. He reaches out for them, and when I bring them close to him he wraps his hands around them and puts his mouth on the rim of the cup just like he sees me do.

Just now I tipped the cup just enough to let a little lick of water into his mouth.

Judging by the look on his face, water is not quite as yummy as he was hoping it would be. :^P

He's sleeping right now, thankfully.


We've started to work out in the mornings, rather than at night. On the one hand, it's nice to get the workouts out of the way. On the other hand, it means Nathaniel is waking up earlier than he used to (because he gets up with us) and his sleep schedule is probably off.

We're all getting way stronger. Two months ago I couldn't do one man pushup; now I can do like 30 of them over the course of an hour-long workout. Yesterday I noticed that I can see my tricep. Pretty sweet.

Let's see. I got new glasses a few days ago; they should be in soon. Glad to have thinner frames! I've never loved the ones I have now, but they were the only decent ones available when I had my emergency need for glasses out in California a year ago (two years? something like that). So it'll be good to have glasses I actually like. It's lame to leave the house and not like how you look.

Speaking of that, my hair is FINALLY to the length I asked for it to be cut to yes, like eight months ago. And it turns out, I don't really love it at this length, either. So, good for me: just got to spend 3/4 of a year with a horrific hair cut, and now I get to wait for another year or two for it to be long enough to like again. Oh well. Learned my lesson. Also it made me more humble, and also less likely to judge people with super awful haircuts.

They can happen to anyone.

My high school's five year reunion is coming up this weekend (I actually graduated 6 years ago, but I was a year early). The reunion is being held in a bar (of course). So will I go? Well, it's doubtful. Though I am curious to see what everyone is up to.

my baby is huge.

Then:






Now:

spicy tuna wrap recipe

Let me preface this recipe with the side note that while I love fish, I don't particularly adore tuna. And in addition to that, I find mayonnaise super disgusting. Everything about it just creeps me out. But this recipe was actually good and I'm excited to have it for lunch today as well.

INGREDIENTS:
- 1 can tuna
- 1 spoonful mayonnaise
- bunches of hot sauce (I used Sriracha, but I bet Cholula would be great too)
- a little bit of chopped onion
- 1 tortilla
- 1 cup brown rice

Mix everything together and stick on the tortilla. Bam. Done.

I think I ended up using half (or 3/4) hot sauce and half mayonnaise to hold the tuna together and it was good. And spicy. But that's good.

on food, part 2

Read the first post on food here.

Since I wrote that blog entry, several things have happened!

Notably, there was Halloween. I know I, for one, ate WAY too much Halloween candy. However, I excused it because I am nursing. Bad excuse, but oh well.

Next up, Shawn T caught up with us. We've all been doing the Insanity workout. We just started the second month (we did the first month for 6 weeks because I went out to that funeral so we did one week twice). Six weeks into the workout, we can really see a difference. And, I think, feel a difference. I can do way more pushups now, and I can see more muscles on myself than I could before. I can see WAY more muscles on Carl, now.

Anyway, yes: Shawn T has caught up with us. In the past, we've done a 40-minute workout with Shawn and then sat down with bowls of ice cream while we literally cooled down. But recently, I have felt strongly enough about eating nutritional food to actually 1) buy it and/or 2) make it.

I started making bread for us (using this recipe). We go through 2.5 loaves per week of my homemade bread, mostly because it is way better than storebought bread so we eat more of it. But making it from scratch saves money and is just generally better. I should have taken a picture of my bread from yesterday; it was beautiful.

I've been reading through health blogs for recipes and I tried one yesterday that was actually pretty good. I'll post it on here in a bit.

We are the only people who control what goes into our bodies. So it's worth it to be intentional about that.

baby stats

Took baby to the doctor yesterday for his four month visit.

Head circumference: 42.5 cm (50th percentile)
Weight: 15 lbs 13 oz (75th+ percentile)
Length: 25.75 inches (75th percentile)

The doc gave us a prescription for his eye gooeys but I'm not sure we'll use it. She said they were optional and massage is the best treatment for a blocked tear duct anyway.

He got one vaccine shot in each thigh and an oral vaccine. He gave a few loud cries but otherwise was happy. I distracted him with a binky and he was fine.

Everyone said that he is such a good, happy baby.

I think we have to agree.

decorating the tree!

Today, my mother, Nana, Grampy, Jacque, Elli, Nathaniel and I all went down to the temple to decorate the Christmas tree for Seneca Stake. We have been excited about it for weeks.

Nathaniel enjoyed sitting with Grampy:



And the rest of us decorated. The tree was clearly tall:



We started at the top of the tree and worked our way down. The top of the tree represents Heaven and it's all glitzy and covered in stars and balls and angels and ribbon. The ribbons represent how we are all tied together as children of God, and how we are all tied to Heaven. The balls represent the planets, that God created along with the stars. Down at the bottom of the tree, the poinsettas are symbolic of the Christ and the fruit boughs are symbolic of the fruits of the Spirit.



Baby fell asleep in the sling:



We had the tree closest to the Christus--prime real estate for the awesomest tree in the Visitor's Center. This is Nana and me, putting lights up around the creche in the center of the tree:



Babies slept. People decorated. Ladders were everywhere.



In the end, the tree looked pretty good (if I do say so myself).



Our tree's ornaments are ones we made ourselves, from creches bought in the Czech Republic. The creche pieces are very small, but we blew the images up and then added beads and sequins. The creche we used is of all the native Czechs bringing presents to the baby Jesus. Here are some of my favorites. Below you can see the artist's self-portrait (he's the one with the art, duh. we actually had to Photoshop the pipe he was smoking out of the picture), a tailor bringing a jacket, a shepherd bringing a lamb, and a musician playing his horn:



Here is the creche, the wise men, some animals and children coming to view the baby:



A band of musicians (I love the cellist) and a baker bringing a birthday cake:




The city of Bethlehem:



The geniuses behind it all:




The tree took 30 manhours to decorate, not counting the many many hours spent hand-creating each individual ornament.

This time, for the first time, decorating the tree was very spiritual for me. I kept looking at the pictures of the people taking things to Christ: the birthday cake, the jacket, music, bread, horses, chickens, piglets, toys. What could I bring Him?

All He asks is a broken heart and a contrite spirit. That's the best gift anyone can bring to Jesus Christ.

But in the meantime, the gifts portrayed on our tree are pretty cool.

Baby's hair--then and now

I just discovered a bunch of pictures. Can you remember how hairy he was when he first came out? Here's a reminder:



He was so cute and hairy--a true Phur:



He had the best turtle face ever:



He had the looks. He had the brains.



He had curls when his hair was wet.



He out-haired other babies:



He had the most Gollumy sideburns this side of Middle Earth:



But then he started pulling out chunks of his own hair (note bald stripe):




Then his mom treated his cradle cap and he lost all the hair in the front of his head--so he had Gollum sideburns AND no bangs but long stringy hairs on the top of his head:



Then his mom cut the sideburns and finished treating the cradle cap. Now it looks a little better and we are all a little happier:



But not that happy. Because he is still bald on the top of his head.