Eating this January

Eating has been getting a lot of attention around here.  Maddie has been eating solid foods.  She loves cereal.  I have never had a child eat cereal like she does.  She will eat any fruit and vegetable, as long as it is mixed in with cereal.  I just started feeding her lunch and dinner, so 2 meals of solids a day.  She has a pretty quirky way of eating.  She sticks her 2 fingers in her mouth after each bite and sucks on the for a few seconds.  Then she pulls them out to let me know she is ready for another bite.  She ends up having a pretty gunky face and hand by the time she is done eating.  It gets even worse if she rubs it on the high chair or on her face.

I have been doing the January diet and exercise thing. Well, kind of.  I spent some of the fall starting the healthy lifestyle, took a bit of a break for the holidays and this week I am back on track.  I always feel so good when I eat right and work out, so why don't I do it more often?  Oh yeah, because of the stupid physical draw of being lazy and eating tasty junk until I am over full.  Well, at any rate I had an awesome week and hopefully I can keep it going.  My biggest goal was a salad for lunch everyday.  I have cut down my carbohydrates to one at breakfast, one at dinner, and a couple of pieces of fruit each day.

Kaylinn frustrates me with her eating habits.  She would eat Ramen three meals a day if I would let her, and when I push her to eat something else, she usually chooses bread or pasta.  I can usually get dairy down her, but fruits, veggies and proteins are nearly impossible.  I actually have eating fruit and vegetables on her chore list.  I find feeding that girl very emotionally frustrating.  Tell me that someday she will have better eating habits.

In other Maddie news: she has started doing the army crawl (you know: knees and forearms).  She is getting more mobile by the second it seems, which means I better start being better about cleaning the floors.  She finds every little thing that hasn't been vacuumed up, and straight into the mouth it goes.  She is actually my first baby that eats everything she sees.  Kaylinn and Logan never really did that.  She has also started sitting on her own. She has a few balance wobbles, so I have to stay close by when she is sitting, but she sure loves it. 

Kaylinn spent the week sick.  It ended up being an ear infection, but the first part of the week was a doozy (fever, chills, gunky cough, throwing up, ear ache).  Now that we have the awesome pink medicine going on (Amoxicillin) things are getting much better.  I just about went stir crazy, though.  I am not a stay at home person.  I like to be out and doing things.

We went to see the Carl Bloch Exhibit last night on a real, honest to goodness date. Between an hour in the car where we actually got to talk to each other, an awesome art exhibit, and dinner, it was so much fun I might do it again.  They had i-pads to rent, and that was so worth it.  It made a whole multimedia experience that was really interesting.  It took us about 2 hours to go through the exhibit which was rather small, but I think it would have been way faster without the i-pads.  After we drove through The Colony (where Mike and I met) and went out to eat at the Brick Oven (can we say carb overload for my body that is so not used to it at this point.)  This was my favorite paining at the exhibit (by the way this picture doesn't do it justice...you've gotta go see it!)

Carl Bloch:  Christ In Gethsemane - 1879

Before I go I have to leave you with my favorite new recipe this week:  Microwave Risotto
Seriously tastes just like you spent all that time stirring in liquid, but you really didn't.  It was a very fancy, but easy addition to a weeknight dinner. 

Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011

It must be new year resolution time, because here I am actually blogging and so far I have been eating right.  If I start exercising tomorrow, it will be a trio of attempted good habits.  Well, here's to hoping all goes well.

I really do love the beginning of January.  I mean, I really don't like the January blahs, and I don't like the inversion and yucky weather.  Here comes another New Year's Resolution (hereafter referred to as NYR's as this is getting ridiculous).  I should spend at least 3 or 4 days up in the mountains this winter.  Get some beautiful sunshine and mountain air.  Where was I when I started this paragraph?  Oh yeah, the beginning of January.  I feel partied out.  The house is one big Christmas explosion.  I am so ready for a normal schedule and a clean house.  I like the relative calm of January once it gets here.  Of course pretty soon the shut in, non-social schedule gets old and I am so ready for the warm outside gardening of spring.  That, of course, is the beauty of the year,  Once I get tired of one thing, the next thing comes along.  The traditions always bind it together without things getting old.

Our week in review:
All about the family and the parties.  We spent so much time with family and it was wonderful.  It was Allen family heavy.  This is okay though, because in 2 weeks we will be going to Disney Land with the Humphrey clan.  MaryIrene and Jeff were here, so we were trying to get together with them as much as possible.  We saw Tron with them (liked it).  We had a dinner at Fuji with Mike's siblings and parents. For some of them it was the first time going to a Japanese grill so it was so fun to watch their reactions.  We played Band Hero/Guitar Hero with Jeff and MaryIrene.  We had a New Year's Eve party at Steve and Jen's (I made it to midnight).  We had a New Year's Day Party with the extended Allen family (with a giant bounce house and slide...the kids were in heaven).  In between it all, I did my first sewing project with my new sewing machine that I got for Christmas.  I embellished a shirt and I think it turned out really cute: so proud of myself.  We played with Logan's new Lego game, and with his new Lego sets.  Kaylinn got lots of cats for Christmas mostly.  She has been happily playing make believe with them. 

Madeline update:
She is so close to crawling.  Just in the last couple of days she started sitting almost completely by herself.  She just has a bobble occasionally that send her over.  But it won't be long until she can do it completely by herself.  She has started pushing herself up to her side so that she can check things out from a higher vantage point.  She can scoot herself quite a bit now to get at what she wants.  My baby is almost a crawler.  It also means she is finding less pleasure in just sitting and cuddling with me.  I find each of these milestones to be bittersweet.  I am so happy for the strides she is making.  I love that she is growing right, but then I think how sad I am to reach these milestones for the last time.

I guess I better add take more pictures of the family to my list of NYR's as I have no pictures to post right now.  I have been a very bad archivist this Holiday season.  Yea for resolutions and the chance to start fresh in a new year!

My Christmas Letter

I got about half way through my Christmas card when I decided it was too much of the same old boring stuff. So I switched gears. Before I did, though, I thought I would finish my standard letter and post it here in case you are interested in all the gory details of our past year. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas all! Of course the most exciting news of the year is the new addition to our family. Madeline Elizabeth Allen was born on May 25, 2010. She was 6 days late (we only have babies late in this family), but came about 8 hours before a scheduled induction. She came after all day labor (although not intense enough to bring her here until the evening). It has been a very pleasant adjustment. We just love having her in our family! She is a very happy baby. She loves to reward anyone who will pay attention to her with a smile or a big belly laugh. She loves to sleep and eat, which keeps mom happy. She should begin crawling any day now.

We have been a busy family this year. Logan was baptized in August and started cub scouts. In October he got his purple belt in karate. Also this year he has played soccer, flag football and basketball (all three sports with the same team of friends). Kaylinn had a ballet recital in the spring and played soccer for the first time this fall. We now have Kaylinn and Logan playing the piano. Between their practicing and Jessica’s piano students, it is always very musical at the Allen’s house. We spent the rest of our days swimming at great-grandma’s pool after our weekly lunches in the summertime, celebrating the holidays with family traditions, and visiting fun vacations around town: places like the hot air balloon festival, the canyon, Thanksgiving Point Gardens, a couple of musicals, and more.

With the birth of our new baby, vacations were sidetracked a bit this summer. We went camping a few times, including a memorable trip to Yellowstone over Labor Day weekend where we saw our first snow fall! We went to bear lake for a long weekend with the Allen family just in time to skip the 100 degree weather in Salt Lake City and enjoy the cool mountain air. We also spent a week in Park City this fall, hanging out with the Humphrey side of the family: playing games, swimming, crafting, letterboxing, shopping and riding the alpine slide.

We have been very blessed this year, and look forward to 2011 and the new adventures it brings!

Love, Mike, Jessica, Logan, Kaylinn, and Maddie Allen

Welcome Madeline

Beautiful Madeline Elizabeth

Okay, I know I totally fell off the face of the earth. There were lots of things that I left out of my life while I have been pregnant. I just have very little energy so I readjusted my priorities, focused on things that I felt were most important and left everything else out. Besides I have never been really good at and consistent journaling.

I wanted to write down Madeline's birth story. She was 5 days late. As this is my third time being pregnant, as well as my third time going over my due date, I tried to be optimistic about the long and late pregnancy. I wasn't always successful, partly due to the pregnancy hormones. I would find myself being content with it one morning and upset later that afternoon. But I think I did a pretty good job. I didn't do much more than sleep at the end though. Being over thirty and having a job and other kids certainly took a toll on me this time around. My family was very helpful and understanding about everything.

So I had been having Braxton-Hicks contractions for weeks by the time she was born. They just kept getting more frequent and more painful. I kept thinking it couldn't go on much longer without me popping. At 5 days overdue, I woke up at 4 in the morning with pretty rough contractions. I usually have them mostly in the late afternoon and evening, so I was really surprised by the timing. It made me wonder if this was really it. I spent a couple of hours waiting for them to speed up to closer together than 15 minutes before I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up they were gone, but they didn't stay gone for long. I spent the majority of the day enduring painful contractions every 15 minutes apart, but they just weren't getting any closer together. I knew that I should wait until they were about 5 minutes apart before pulling my husband home from work and rushing to the hospital. So, without anything better to do, I just went about my day. I was supposed to be induced the next morning, so mostly I was just tying up a few loose ends and trying to pass the time. I went to my sister in laws house where they were tying a quilt, I played with Kaylinn. It was my last scheduled day for piano lessons and I toyed with the idea of canceling them all day long, but as the contractions wouldn't speed up, I just kept them. It was tough having a couple of good contractions through each lesson. I would try and turn the kids attention to the piano and as quietly as possible wince through the pain until it passed. I hadn't really eaten since lunch. I had no appetite. I had intended, to make dinner that night, but was feeling pretty worn out from the day. So Mike took the kids out to Carl's Jr. for dinner and I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to take a bath. My core muscles had been taking a beating all day and I thought it might give me some relief. Turns out that was all that my body needed to really progress. By the time I got out of the bath the contractions had jumped from every 15 minutes to every 5. I had already sent Mike to young men's at that point so I called him to come back. My mom came and got the kids and we were at the hospital by about 8:00. The first thing I did was request an epidural. That came about an hour after being there and was so marvelous. Labor went pretty fast at that point, she was born at 9:49pm on May 25, 2010. She weighed a whopping 9 pounds and 3 ounces (my biggest one by a whole pound) and was 21 inches long. I have gotten the most comments about her chubby cheeks. She really does just look like Logan and Kaylinn did as newborns. You can tell they are siblings. I do think she has dark hair, unlike the other kids that had red hair from the beginning. And that's the story. So now I've had it all three ways...Logan was induced, my water broke with Kaylinn, and I went into labor with Madeline (just fyi it's pronounced with a short i).

I love being not pregnant. I have my energy back and my appetite back. The heartburn and indigestion are gone. My back doesn't ache so much. There are no more weird cravings and aversions. From almost the minute they are born I feel so much better and just like myself again. I love the kids, but sometimes the process to get them here is a real pain.

A couple of weeks happenings

Been an eventful couple of weeks. We spent the first week at home because Logan had the flu. He was sick with a fever, cough, sore throat, etc. for about 5 days. So I canceled all of my piano lessons and we holed ourselves up in the house and mostly drove each other crazy. Glad that's over and the good news is that no one else caught it.

It was also my birthday this week. Probably my favorite gift was a whole set of aprons homemade by my mom. They are all really cute. She made one for me and a matching one for Kaylinn. My mom took me out for lunch on my birthday and we we went out for dinner that night (Mike, Logan, Kaylinn and I) to a Hibachi grill. That was the kids first time and they really enjoyed the experience. It was a pretty low key birthday, but I thought it was perfect--just the way I wanted to celebrate.

I felt the baby move for the first time last week. It's starting to increase in frequency so that is exciting. I don't know whether to be happy about it or not. I am excited about the new development, but it gets old fast, so I'm leary that I am experiencing this for the first time at 14 weeks.

I watched the documentary Food Inc. this week. Really disturbing, but informative. So if you are interested in being disgusted about what you eat, but learning a lot I would recommend it. I wouldn't recommend it for the weak stomach, though, because it was pretty graphic at times. I had known most of the information already, but having a visual with it was pretty traumatizing. As a consequence I made my own bread this week (first time since I've been pregnant, so that was productive).

We had the Allen clan over last night for pizza and a UofU football game. The Utes got smashed, but it was still fun to hang out together. Speaking of large gatherings, I volunteered to host Thanksgiving dinner this year. It will be my first time so we will see how that goes. That means I get to cook the turkey (first time for that, too). I also get to organize everything else. Mike keeps telling me that I am crazy because I am pregnant and all, but it is a small group this year and I figure I can squish everyone in my house so I might as well right. Bring on the adventure. I will keep you posted on how that goes.

I was almost lost and gone forever

Well, the most embarrassing thing about coming back to blogspot was looking and seeing that it has been almost 5 months since my last post. So here are my excuses. First: it was summer. The summer was so crazy busy, I didn't even have time to think (or rest for that matter), let alone blog. I had the kids signed up for everything possible (mostly it was a defense against too many video games). Five days a week we were going and going. So here is the abbreviated version of our summer activities. For June and July Logan went to Arts in the Park 2 days a week while Kaylinn was at Preschool Arts and Crafts. This is when I did my grocery shopping and also tried to squeeze in as many other errands as I could. We went letterboxing one morning a week with our Allen cousins (look it up if you are curious, it is lots of fun). Logan did track and field which was 3 afternoons a week plus track meets (He placed 3 times in the 1600m and the long jump). Kaylinn had a dance recital in June, I had a piano recital for my students in May. I trained to run a 5k in June--placed first in my age division. We had playgroups--Kaylinn on Friday mornings and Logan on Friday afternoons. By August I was starting to feel pretty run down. Some of those activities were over, but they were replaced by a solid month of swimming lessons every day and our vacation of the summer--a family reunion in Montana. Add into that mix both Kaylinn's (Fairy Party) and Logan's (Spongebob Water Party) Birthdays.

Kaylinn Swimming Lessons

Logan Track and Field

So that is my first excuse. And honestly, I had vowed to start blogging as soon as the fall came and things went back to normal calmness. And then I decided to work more. SO the fall promise got delayed a bit. I went from the 10 students I had last spring to 20 this fall. Logistically it was quite crazy. I spent a lot of time and the music store trying to straighten out materials for the whole crew. I spent lots of time on the phone trying to straighten out times and answer parents questions. It took a good month before that was all straightened out and things settled down.

And then came the morning sickness. About September I first started feeling really crappy. Okay, maybe I should back up and make the announcement: I'M PREGNANT! WOOHOO! I am 13 weeks right now...due May 10th. And I'm planning on not finding out the sex of the baby. I would like to have a surprise in the delivery room. Okay, back to the narrative. So I pretty much spent the last two months napping or laying around. I Read lots of books and watched a lot of TV. It's been the last couple of days that I've started feeling better(hallelujah!). I had my first appointment last week. I had an ultrasound and saw the baby and it's heartbeat. It is so amazing...even the third time around. The baby was laying on its stomach and kicking around a lot, it looked like a turtle. A cute turtle. My cute turtle. So the baby has received its first nickname.

Brekenridge 2nd Honeymoon

Obviously I wrote this a while ago and it was just sitting around in my drafts folder forever!

Breckenridge Mining Hike

This is a special remote post from Breckenridge Colorado where Mike and I (with no children) are enjoying a relax, rejuvenate, and reconnect vacation. It has been so mellow and relaxing. We are loving it!

But I wanted to talk a bit more about the gardening. Mike suggested that I bring it out further and take out some of the existing lawn. I said sure, but I'm not sure why I did it. It's a lot of hard work to pull out grass, so that was quite a project and then I had all this space that I needed to fill. I about doubled the size of my vegetable garden. So I decided to intermix flowers and vegetables (mostly because I didn't know what the heck I was going to fill all that space with). Then I just kept planting more and more things. In the end I have 23 tomato plants (half of which are roma), 12 bell pepper plants, a few eggplants, some tomatillos, anaheim peppers, popcorn, beans, three types of squash, peas, beets, rhubarb, onions, and there are probably more that I am forgetting right now. Then I have marigolds and petunias, a good 100 gladiolas, a poppy, a wildflower mix, and a sunflower house. I also planted the beans, corn and one of the squash as a three sisters garden. I decided to make my garden more organic and interesting looking. Instead of a square, I made more of a B shape with the border flowing and curving. I took a gardening landscape class and talked to a professional about my design ideas. She rejected them. She told me I shouldn't do it...but I did it anyways. I have to admit that it was a little disappointing to me. I had spent all this time working on the garden and when I had pretty much finished planting I turned around a looked at all my hard work and it so far amounts to some small seedlings and clear dirt where the seeds have been planted. Not the big beautiful garden that I had in mind yet, but I will have patience and wait for it to grow and then I will be happy with the fruits of my labors.

Then there is the other garden. My parents have a piece of land that my mom decided would make a great garden. So she and my dad cleared away 1/4 acre and she invited all of us to garden together as a family on the land. I like to call it the family plot (my mom keeps asking who is getting buried there, hehe). I have been out there a few times to work on it with my mom. We have done snow peas (4-75 foot rows) and corn (3, soon to be 6-75 food rows). We also have 3 varieties of watermelon, 3 varieties of pumpkin and 3 varieties of winter squash. So I am here to tell you that this is gardening in mega proportions. I may have possibly bitten off more than I can chew with this gardening business this year. When the late summer and fall comes and I am buried in produce you can all come back and say I told you so. But I am very happy with it. I have found great joy in my garden. It is nice to go out there and tend to the garden. I kind of get to step away from the craziness that is life and being a mother and find peace in my garden. I am very proud of it and of the hard work I have put into it. Also my new favorite author for gardening books is Sharon Lovejoy. They are fast reads bursting with great ideas so you should check them out.

My other big yard goals this year have been about furniture. Well first of all to get the deck finished. By fall last year, the floor was done, but Mike still had the stairs and the railing to go. As of Memorial day weekend the stairs are done. Mike's 2 brothers Fuzz and Steve came over and helped him get it done in one day. Their help was invaluable. Steve's family came over as well and the cousins played all day while Jen and I chatted. Then we topped the whole day off with a birthday party for Taylor. I also that same weekend became the owner of a porch swing. I am so excited about this. I am already loving just sitting and swinging. Plus I finally have a place to sit on the front porch. The next thing on my list is a patio set so that we can eat meals outside on our new deck. I have also been working on getting non-plant accents for the garden. My favorite place to shop for them has been DI. It's been a slow project, but that's okay because I have been getting things as I have been finding them and getting them really cheap. So yeah, things are moving forward well and on schedule and I am happy for what our yard is becoming.