Bath Time Serenade

My kids love to take baths. They know as soon as they are done eating its bath time. “W” says “want to take a bath.” “Sy”, when we get her down from her high chair and say “‘its bath time” she seriously starts running to the bathroom as fast as her little toddler legs can take her.

They love to take baths regardless, but they especially like to take baths when Daddy is in charge! With mommy, its down to business. Get in, get washed, and get out. But with daddy, oh with daddy, they have a great time! Daddy puts some water in the tub, adds the kiddies, gives them a few toys, but the best part; the best part is they get a serenade played for them while in the bath. “S” practices in the bathroom while they’re in the tub! He says it’s good acoustics… Sometimes “W” and “Sy” are done with bath time before daddy. I have heard on occasion, “Daddy, all done.” after 30 minutes or longer, with a reply “Not yet. Just a few more minutes.” “No daddy, all done.” through chattering teeth and severely pruned up toes and fingers, as he’s trying to climb out of the tub himself!

My husband is a violinist. I am a clarinetist. We both followed the rule of 2 hours (at least) of practice a day while we were at Ricks, but whereas I saw it as a homework assignment, Shane saw it as relaxing enjoyment. I practiced so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself, Shane practiced till he perfected the music and it became a part of him. His love for playing has not faded just because he didn’t become High School Orchestra teacher. He’s been in the Albuquerque Symphony for the past two years, and then this spring he became a part of a String Quartet where he is first violin. He has reason to practice.

My kids have grown accustomed to the sound of daddy playing violin. It’s also become normal to hear daddy on the piano working on a new string quartet piece he’s written, or something he’s arranged for string quartet. It is regular background (funny thing I almost wrote bachground instead of background) music to our normal daily activities.

The kids love bath time with daddy because they get to stay in as long as they want, and play and splash. Sometimes they come out of the bathtub and their hair never even got wet! I’m sure they also love the calming sounds of daddy playing violin while in the bath. I just hope they don’t become too used to the idea. I would hate when they are adults, they tell their spouse “oh, I’m sorry; I can only take a bath or shower if there is classical violin music playing in the background. Do something about that.”

Fish Bowl

From July 14, 1997 to October 11th 1999 I attended Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho. Ricks College (now known as BYU-Idaho) was then a junior college. 2 years only. (Though it isn’t uncommon to have found someone that was there for 3 years…) Because it was only a 2 year school, there were only freshman and sophomores. But really it worked out so freshman = freshman, but sophomores kinda = seniors. Even I was there for 2 1/2 years.

Since I was a music major I pretty much lived in the Snow Building. (Eliza R. Snow). The Snow Building was the home of the fine arts departments. My sophomore year I lived there even more so then my freshman year. I had pep band at 7am, different classes throughout the day in the Snow and around campus, then I would have to squeeze in two hours (at least) of practice time, and I also worked as a tutor in the piano lab. I was also the band historian on the band council so it was my job to take pictures of everyone throughout the year. Some days I wouldn’t see my roommates till 11pm. A famous line from my old roommate pretty much sums it up. I had walked in to the apartment at 10:30 at night, (30 minutes after curfew) when she standing there in the living room and said “Hello, Stranger of the world!!!”

The lower level of the common area in the snow building was called the Fish Bowl by all those that lived there. It was called the fish bowl because anyone could see you from the top level, the railing all around the top was clear glass. When you are at the bottom you felt like you were in a fish bowl. This is where we studied, ate, took naps, talked with friends, and had a good cry. At each end of the fish bowl was a small staircase that went up to the upper level. There was a wall of windows on the outside wall of the stairs.

My apartment wasn’t too far away from the Snow Building and on some days I would have a break between classes so I would try to go home for a minute or two. I always seemed to go home by going down the stairs on the north side of the fish bowl and then out onto the street. It had become habit to slide down the railing from the upper level to the landing in the middle before the stairs would turn 180 degrees to go down to the bottom level. The railing between the landing and the bottom floor was too close to the brick wall that made up the top section of the stairs, it wasn’t very condusive for sliding down the banister.

So pretty much every day I would do the same thing(if I had the chance to go home). I would go sliding down the railing of the top section of stairs and then walk down the bottom section. There were maybe 10-15 steps on each section. One day I was in a fairly happy and silly mood. I hopped onto the railing to attempt my normal routine, but this time it was far from the norm! The strap from my backpack had gotten stuck under my legs, this didn’t allow me to slide very well. I lost my balance and tumbled over the banister to the second section of stairs, where I rolled down the stairs to the floor. I just layed there for a minute looking up at the ceiling. At the other end of the fish bowl was Dr. Taylor and a close friend of mine talking. They had witnessed the whole thing. They both came running over to me. I sat up quickly. In my backpack I carried my electronic metronome and tuner for practice time. During the crash the tuner turned on and while I was sitting there on the floor it was playing a very loud Concert A. While trying not to laugh, or cry I sat on the bottom step to open up my backpack to turn off the tuner. My friend said I looked like a rag doll being thrown down the stairs. One second my backpack was on top of me the next it was under. Dr. Taylor was very concerned, but once I stood up and showed them I was fine, he tried not to laugh at the situation. After we were all done wiping the tears of laughter from our eyes I very slowly walked home.

I had quite a few bruises from that ordeal and walked very slowly for awhile. I never tried to slide down the railing again. Even before this accident when I would walk down stairs I would have visions of taking a misstep and tumbling down the stairs. The fact that it actually happened has only made these visions in my mind occur more often and move vivid.

(If you want to read another post about my time in the Snow building please go read Music Lit.)

Turkeys, Dinosaurs, Quartets, Incredibles, and Harry Potter, OH MY!

The first day after a long holiday weekend is always depressing for me. My husband has to go back to work, and any family we had visiting have to go home. Its back to just me and the kids. But I guess because it’s sad when it ends means that it was fun before.

TUESDAY:
“S” and I had been talking about our Thanksgiving Menu for almost a month. We bought our turkeys two weeks prior, and any time the television was on is was probably tuned into the Food Network. Tuesday was our son’s 3rd birthday. For breakfast that morning he got 3 heart-shaped pancakes with powdered sugar sprinkled on top and a candle in each one. He was very excited about his heart-shaped pancakes and whereever we went that day he made sure to tell people about his pancakes.

Tuesday I started cooking. A few of the things that could be made ahead of time. I made the cranberries, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and the spice butter I use to baste the turkey.

I had to make another trip to the grocery store to pick up a few more items as well. Goodness Thanksgiving really takes a chunk out of your grocery budget!

WEDNESDAY:
“S” took Wednesday off to help me get everything ready for Thursday. I had put the turkeys in the fridge on monday in hopes that they would thaw. Didn’t happen. We spent most of the day thawing the turkeys. Yes, we had two turkeys. Each 13 pounds each. I had to redo the sweet potatoes, my sister-in-law had called tuesday when I was cutting them up and I cut them up too small, and then cook them for too long, it was like baby food mush. YUCK. I also made up the brine for one of the turkeys. Because the oven was pretty much going to be in use the whole day on Thursday we cooked up the second ordinary turkey Wednesday night and then cut off all the meat.

THURSDAY:
My in-laws arrived at the airport at 12:30pm. While my husband was picking them up, I was preparing everything for our holiday meal. The turkey that had soaked in the brine for 24 hrs was cooking with a yummy spice butter rubbed all over it, the appetizers were layed out on the table, and the sides were starting to be prepared. The kids were napping, and “W” woke up shortly after they arrived. He walked out in the living room and immediately recognized and named all the new comers. We sat down to dinner around 2pm. Everything tasted so good, and my in-laws wanted recipes for a few of the things I had made to introduce them back into their own families! The rest of the afternoon was spent playing hearts and playing with the grandkids.

FRIDAY:
For not being an overly large city, Albuquerque has a lot to offer. We have quite a few museums that you can visit. We have a zoo, an aquarium, a botanical garden, a children’s science discovery museum, a natural history museum, an atomic history museum and an art museum. All of the museums are centered around Old Town. We decided that on Friday we’d go to the Natural History Museum. On a past visit we’ve taken the family to the atomic museum. We thought “W” would love to see the dinosaurs. We hadn’t taken him there yet. We got there, and we were right, “W” loved seeing the dinosaurs. It was a really great museum! The museum was completely based on things that have been discovered in New Mexico.

After the museum we went to “El Modelo” by request of my father-in-law. Its a whole-in-the-wall restaurant that doesn’t even have indoor seating. “S” had taken his family there the last time they had visited and his dad had to go again this time. The food is outstanding, you go in and place your order, than you can either take it home to eat, or you go outside to the picnic benches along the side of the restaurant.

Friday night “S”’s string quartet had a gig at a BBQ Restaurant. Every time his family has come down they have asked hopefully if he had some concert performance while they were visiting. This time they lucked out. We went to the restaurant and ate while listening to Shane’s quartet play. It was a lovely evening, and even though it seemed kinda strange to have a string quartet at a BBQ Joint it turned out to be a great event. His parents loved being able to hear him play again, and the best part was to hear a few pieces that “S” had arranged himself. (At Ricks, “S” was a music major like April, Proud Mum, Sariah, and I, his instrument was violin, but he was also a composition major, and has a real talent for writing and arranging music for string quartet).

SATURDAY:
I took my MIL, SIL, “W” and “Sy” to walmart. They wanted to get something for “W”’s birthday and also get some christmas presents for the kids as well. (Save on shipping costs). When we got back from Wal-mart, we went to Old Town. Old Town is where Albuquerque originally began. It was the city center when the town was first created. There is the big catholic church across from the plaza, and surrounded by two blocks of buildings. They used to be houses, and things like that. The church was originally built in 1706, (when Albuquerque was first orginated, next year is the 300th anniversary). All the small buildings surrounding the plaza and church have been converted into shops, boutiques, restaurants, and the like. If you come to Albuquerque and you want an authentic souveniere Old Town is where you need to go.

We then took them to another New Mexican restaurant that we really like called “Dona Pepa’s”. They have the best chips and salsa in town, and a ultimate burrito that is to die for. We went to Ethan Allen for a few minutes, and then headed home for the birthday boy’s party. “St” (my BIL) had decorated our house with “The Incredibles” birthday decorations on Friday night. When “W” woke up Saturday morning he knew it was his birthday party day. The whole drive home from Ethan Allen “W” was talking about his birthday party, and as soon as he walked in the door headed right for my closet where I had his presents hidden. He was ready for presents!

We had his favorite meal for dinner; Broccoli Soup, and then I went to go pick up the baby-sitter. Except for the kids, we all went to see Harry Potter #4. It was a great flick, and like Karen, I cried a little!

SUNDAY:
Saturday night I got severely sick. Sunday for me was mostly spent in my bed in and out of consciousness. I don’t remember a lot that happened that day. At 5:30pm “S” took his family back to the airport. “W” was very sad to see them all go. His auntie “J” was leaving him. He was glued to her side throughout the whole visit, and really didn’t want her to leave. Then he got even more upset because he thought daddy was going on the airplane to Idaho with them. It took me a little while to get him to understand that daddy really was coming home. By the end of the visit even “Sy” had warmed up to everyone, and was willingly giving bye-bye hugs to granma and papa.

Papa Snedigar is really fun to have around. He’s a big kidder. At one point during the visit, Papa was pretending to be a dog or something, crawling around on hands and knees. He started to chase after “W”, pretending to try to bite at his ankles. “W” went walking down the hall backwards saying “Papa, don’t eat me!” It was seriously the funniest thing we had heard all week.

Being far away from family makes visits a lot of fun, but it makes the good-byes really sad. The first day of “normalcy” is always very emotional for us. Even the sappy t.v. commericals can make a few tears drop onto our cheeks. So we look forward to, and start to plan the next visit from family. In four weeks, my parents and brothers will be down for Christmas.

My, How you’ve grown

Today is my son’s birthday. He is 3 years old. Here are a few pictures from over the past three years. Isn’t it amazing how much he’s grown?

“Waiter, water please.”

Up until he turned 2 years old, my son always called anything that is liquid that you can drink a “bah-bah”. It didn’t matter if it was in his sippy cup, our glass, a pop can, everything was “bah-bah”. It didn’t even matter what the liquid was, it could be water, milk, orange juice, pop, kool-aid. Anything that you could drink. I tried and tried to correct him, he would ask for his sippy cup and say “bah-bah”, I would correct him and say “No, Sippy-Cup.” He would look at me with the most serious face and say “No, bah-BAH!”

I remember one occasion when we had gone out dinner. It was sometime during the four months between my daughter’s birth and “W”’s 2nd birthday. I had gone to pick up “S” from work, and he decided we should go eat dinner at one of our favorite New Mexican Restaurants “Bea’s”. We sat down and the female server asked us what we wanted to drink, it was water’s all around. “W” got his water in a styrofoam cup with a lid and a straw. He was very excited. The server came back and we ordered our meals. While we were waiting we were talking about “S”’s day at work, and “W” is just downing his water as quickly as he could. We looked at each other and said “Wow he’s thirsty!”

He had drunk enough so that the straw couldn’t reach anymore. The server had already come back to refill our glasses. “W” was trying to get some more water out of his cup, but wouldn’t let us adjust his straw. He held up his cup, and looked around the restaurant. He saw a male server, made eye contact with him, and say “Bah-Bah”. We burst out laughing. We had expected that when he wanted more water he would have asked us, his mom or dad. The idea that he knew to ask the server for more water totally caught us by surprise. The waiter had walked away, so we thought “Oh, he didn’t understand, we’ll just wait for our waitress to come back”. When just then the server that “W” had “asked for water” showed up at our table with a pitcher of cool, fresh water and filled his cup. We apologized profusely to the waiter for the rudeness of our son.

A few minutes later our server brought out our food and we ate our delicious spicy food. But thoughout the meal, we couldn’t help laughing any time we thought about him asking the server “Waiter, I would like some water please”!

(p.s. “W” chose this color.)

new avenue?

I’ve been thinking about starting a cooking or recipe blog. It would just be a place where I’d write about what I’ve cooked lately, and what I’ve done to it to alter it to our tastes. Along with nutritional information of course.

For example:
Last night we had strawberry shortcake. I know, how can you alter that? Bought the regular shortcake cups, and some cool-whip. My husband said I was insane for buying cool-whip, that I need to use real whipping cream instead. He made whipping cream and I got the cool-whip out of the freezer.So I cut up the strawberries, added a little sugar and corn starch, and a little lemon juice. Mashed it up a bit and created triple decker shortcakes using both whipping cream and cool-whip The kids love it immensely.

I asked my husband what he thought about me starting a cooking blog. He said “Don’t you have enough that your doing already?”

I asked Proud Mum. She warned me about copyright laws. Which was very true, I didn’t even think about posting recipes from cookbooks, and the repercussions that could come from that.

I believe recipes should be shared. Good food, plus good friends equals a good time. Everytime I make something and someone asks me for the recipe my gut instinct is to tell them its a secret and keep it to myself. If they like it they have to come to me to eat it. But then I remember something “S”’s grandmother told me. And then I go ahead and give them the recipe.

His grandmother is an amazing cook, and anytime we went to her house in Tempe we where mostly like in for a real feast. She has spent a good part of her life perfecting recipes passed down to her from her mother and collecting recipes from others when she’s tasted something good. She shared a story with me once. She had gone to someone’s house, or a church function or something. This woman had made this delicious dessert of some kind. A cake or something. Mother(thats what we call “S”’s grandmother) was really pleased with it, and had asked the woman for the recipe. The owner of the delicious dessert said “Oh, I couldn’t possibly part with it. Its a family secret.” She has actually asked her a few times, on different occasions over the past 10 yrs or so. It has always bugged her that this woman wouldn’t share the recipe with her.

This last Christmas Mother compiled all the recipes that she’s become known for and published them in an awesome cookbook. (I think she was getting tired of trying to remember the exact recipe when a 3rd generation female relative would call her.) She told me that if someone ever asked about the recipe of something she had put in the cookbook that it was okay to pass them along.

I’m always looking for good, new recipes, and I would assume other young mothers would too. Getting a recipe from someone you know has made it and has had success with it makes it easier for you to try it. I’ve purchased cookbooks, and looked at the black and white on the page and thought “ya but is it good?”.

So if I was to start a cooking blog, kept it private (i.e. can’t find it on the blog search), and gave as much information as to where I found a recipe, would you even be interested in reading it? I love to hear from people when they have made things that I’ve given them the recipe for. Especially when they’ve altered it and made it their own. Let me know what you think about this. Should I go ahead with it or not?

Smell of Wet Dog

Wednesday’s at 10:30am are our regular park playgroup days. Last night we had our first hard freeze, “Sy” didn’t wake up till 9:30am, and I had some errands I needed to run around town so we didn’t go to playgroup. While running around I promised “W” that if he was good and stayed with me, (yesterday while I was putting “Sy” in her car seat “W” took off running down the sidewalk and around the corner of the store. It truly scared me to death.) that we could go to the park after all of my stops.

He kept his end of the bargain, so I had to keep my end. “W” has a tendancy to not like things to end, any time we go to a place he likes, (the park, or volleyball, or even the UPS store with the cool toy) he makes it very hard to leave. I end up having to practically drag him away kicking, screaming and crying. This makes me not want to take him to the park, but I promised. Instead of going to the park we have playgroup at I decided to take him to the park with the dog park. He loves to see the dogs. Its a long stretch with a sidewalk running along the fenced in dog part of the park, and to the other side of the sidewalk is a hill that ends in a type of bowl in the middle of the park. Great for kids to really run and get some energy used up. As we pulled up to the park I noticed that the sprinklers were running on the far side of the dog run. It wasn’t watering the sidewalk part where we would be so I let the kids get out anyway.

“W” was running down the sidewalk, “Sy” clumsily running behind him trying to keep up, and I was walking slowly behind her. “W” stopped to look at some Shar-Pei’s on the other side of the fence. As “Sy” and I were walking towards him, I was close to about 10 feet away; the sprinklers changed their setting. The group of sprinklers turned on right where we were. A long spray separated me from “W”. At the moment neither of us were getting wet (“Sy” was on my hip), but the sprinkler was turning to where “W” was standing. I encouraged him to run parallel to the sprinkler down the hill into the grassy bowl area. He was too freaked out, he just stood there. I kept telling him, “run, run down the hill. You won’t get wet, just run down the hill”. Instead he started to cry a little and back up. The sprinkler that was separating us was getting closer to him, and he was backing up into the spray from the sprinkler behind him. The sprinkler behind him started spraying on him, and he started to cry more. Once that one passed, then the one between us started to spray on him. He started to cry even more. By this point I had a clear path too him, I ran to him and helped him run down the hill between still more sprinklers. We ran up the otherside of the bowl, and started walking to the truck so we could go home. His hair was all wet and his shoulders and the tops of his arms.

He was sad that we were going home, he wanted to see the dogs. I told him all the dogs were going home too because they didn’t want to get wet either. As I was loading him up into the truck I smelled his wet hair. Even though he hadn’t touched any dogs, he smelled like wet dog. It made me smile.

Midnight Robbery

With the thought that my In-Laws are coming to visit next week for Thanksgiving, I started to get quite anxious looking at my extremely dirty carpets. (Imagine; 3 years in the house with young children, and they’ve never been cleaned!)

I have been wanting to get the carpets cleaned for over a year now, but the idea of my family coming and seeing how bad they are really made me jump into action. Yesterday I went to Walmart to rent a Steam Cleaner. I wasn’t planning on doing the whole house just the high traffic area between the garage door and the kitchen, and then the dining room area, so I figured I could do it myself. When I was signing the paperwork I realized that it was only a 24 hr rental, and that it had to be back by 1pm today (wednesday). Tuesday nights are when our alumni group have chat, and since I’m the host, moderator, and creator its important that I be at the chat night. I decided that it was going to be a long night for me.

While I was chatting with all my old music major friends, “S” had fallen asleep on the couch around 8:30pm. I ended my conversation so I could shoo him off to bed and get started on my task of cleaning the carpets. When I woke him up, he was really startled, he didn’t know where he was, or what was happening. I scooted him off to bed, and while he was brushing his teeth I got out the vacuum and starting to vacuum the carpet. I had assumed that Shane would come out and ask me why I was vacuuming at 9pm at night, but he must have been really tired because he had gone right to sleep.

After I finished vacuuming the house I got out the steam cleaner. Read the directions, mixed the solution and turned on the machine. I was hoping that it would have been quieter than the vacuum, but instead it was much louder. I was expecting “S” to come wondering out asking me what I was doing. Every time I turned off the machine to change out the water I would expect to hear one of my kids crying. It ended up being a very quiet night. No kids were awoken and neither was my husband. I had moved some furniture around, and pushed the dining table against the back sliding glass door. I finished up my job around 11:30pm and then went to bed.

This morning when “S” came in to kiss me goodbye, I waited to hear him say he noticed that I had done the carpets. He said “wow, the carpets look really good, I didn’t even know you did that.” I told him I was up till 11:30pm doing it. Later on around mid-morning I called him at work to continue the conversation. I asked him if he really had no clue that I was steam cleaning the carpet last night. I told him I was expecting him to wake up and come out, dreary-eyed and confused.

He told me he hadn’t had a clue that I was doing that last night. When he went to bed he assumed I had come to bed too. He said that throughout the night he had dreamt that we were being robbed. And this morning when he walked out to the kitchen to eat breakfast and saw that the furniture wasn’t in their normal places had jumped to the conclusion that maybe he wasn’t dreaming! He flipped on the light and discovered that everything was still there just moved around, and instead the carpet was really clean.

I have always said my husband was a heavy sleeper, but to dream that the loud noises he was actually hearing in real-life was a burgler is pretty funny. Then this morning actually think that maybe he wasn’t dreaming is even more funny! Even though it had caused him to have weird dreams he was very impressed that I cleaned the carpets myself in the middle of the night.

Silly fears

My biggest fear is that I have done(or will do something) that offends someone. I am always afraid that I’ve said something or done something that will make (or has made) someone not want to associate with me ever again. After conversations with someone I sit and knit pick and analyze everything that was said and look for something that I wish I hadn’t, or had said a different way. I wonder if they’re thinking “geez, she’s not as cool as I thought she was”. I seek out approval, I need that validation. I do something I think is cool, but I can’t wait to hear what others think (blog comments included). Why do I do that to myself? Its one of those things about my personality I wish I could change. Can I? Will I ever? Will I always seek out validation? Will I always care what people think?

If I go for a few weeks or months without hearing from someone I begin to think of things that I might have done to make them not want to talk to me anymore. Is it really my fault? Why do I constantly think I’ve done something?

Please validate that I am not a loser, that I am a cool person, that I do okay things, and that you like reading my posts. Please. If you don’t, of course I will understand…

Proud as a Peacock

Its the right of any mom to be proud of her kids. Just as a warning to all those “Anti-Mommy Blog” people out there, this is one you won’t want to read…

The other day as we were walking in through the front door of the house, my son pointed at the pumpkins by the front door. He said “Look, Mommy, Four pumpkins, 1, 2, 3, 4. Four Pumpkins.” I was so proud! I have been working with him on his numbers for awhile, he knows the names of them all but when it came to actual counting he’d do it his own way. “1, 5, 3, 6, 8, 2, 4, 9…” I know this may not be a big deal for other moms, but it was for me!

For about a week now he has been playing “Peek-A-Boo” with his little sister in the car, and at dinner time. Its so cute, and I love that he’s playing nicely with her. Its what I always looked forward to with kids, the cute things. Some days it seems like there is nothing but yelling, fighting and tears, so on days like this it makes me really happy. Yesterday while trying to get him dressed for church he was playing “Peek-A-Boo” with me. He kept saying “peek-a-boo mommy”, over and over. Then completely and totally on his own he said “peek-a-boo Winnie-The-Pooh”. I giggled and thought, wow, he just found a word that rhymed. Again, no biggie to anyone else, but I was so proud!

“W” has been singing a lot more lately. I’m proud of him just for that. But yesterday at church his Nursery teacher said he did very good. He played well with the other kids, he was nice and respectful, and he participated in singing time. The funny thing is, she said, is that he was always a couple of notes behind. My thought is that he was waiting to hear the phrase before singing. Thats my only explanation for him constantly being behind. But he participated, he sat still, and he sang. I was so proud!