I have a hand?!

Joseline has officially discovered her hand. That’s right. Just one hand – the left hand. I don’t think she’s quite aware that she has two. If she’s actively looking at her hand, you can get her to grab stuff, too – I just put a toy up next to her hand and she slowly opens her hand and adjusts it so she can hold on to whatever I’m holding up for her! It is so fabulous. Maybe I will get a video of it (if my little cheap-o camera can handle that).

faces

bobbing along, singing a song…

… on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea!

Yes – that is where our one precious set of car keys now resides. On the bottom of the beautiful briny Pacific ocean.

Thankfully, we are just finishing Dave Ramsey’s “baby step #1” which is getting together a $1000 rainy day fund. That means we’ll be able to replace the keys, no problem. (I think loosing very expensive car keys would qualify as an emergency).

Unfortunately, it was our only set of car keys. That makes replacing them a little more expensive. Also, since we were just finished with our baby fund, we were going to start saving money for oral surgery. But now we’re going to be back at BS1 (get $1000 as fast as humanly possible). So all the extra money will be going back to the baby emergency fund. Which will probably take another 3-4 months. And THEN we’ll be able to cash flow my oral surgery (unless something happens… again).

So, wisdom teeth – you better stay put for another 6-8 months.

*bonus points to whoever can name the movie my title comes from*

Beyond Time Out

I’ve posted about this book before, but I wanted to post again because I found some more things in this book that I absolutely LOVE.

First of all, the reason I like this book above most other parenting books is that it is so consistent. It doesn’t give you 10 different ways to deal with 10 different types of situations. And it doesn’t require a lot of creativity (which is essential, in my opinion – some parents may be naturally creative when it comes to raising healthy, independent children, but more often than not, we sometimes find it hard to respond immediately AND creatively all at the same time). This book teaches you how to respond immediately and effectively.

Okay, so a few little gems from this book.

The author has a specific chapter about sleep. In this chapter she talks about the phrase “go to sleep” and how that is a very ridiculous thing for us to tell our kids. No one can “go to sleep” – your body falls asleep when it is in the right state. You don’t “force” yourself to go to sleep, so why would you tell you kids to do that? Sometime you fall asleep as soon as you hit the pillow, other times you lay in bed for ten or fifteen minutes before you finally fall asleep. The author suggests using the phrase “let sleep come to you” instead of “go to sleep.” If you think about it, there’s not really a “mean” way to say “let sleep come to you” – you can’t yell that and sound at all serious. It’s a phrase that lends itself to sweetness and loving interactions. Anyway, I’ve been using that with Vince now, and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside just SAYING it!

This next part really hit me. Hard. I’m just going to quote her straight up, because I don’t think it’s ever been said as well…

“Mothers have gotten so caught up in the performance mode of mothering, taken on too any obligations, gotten compulsive about the house and the kids and the dog and the yard and the school volunteering, that they can’t ever be in the moment. They have to get things done, they have places to be, calls to make, obligations to fulfill - and their children have become part of the have-to list.Truth be told, more often than not, the kids are treated as if they are interfering in getting the rest of the list done efficiently. ‘You have to let Mommy finish this – can’t you see I’m busy? I have a million things to do, and you are driving me crazy. Go and find something to do.’ Kids are sensitive. They get it. Life would be easier for mom without them.

“Moms, of course, have a hard time hearing this. But I offer it as a much-needed wake-up call. This is no way to live… I instruct…moms to take all of the have-to’s out of their lexicon. It’s time to concentrate on putting some fun back into the routine, to be sure you are connecting with your child for at least twnty minutes a day in what I call a shared joy, where both of you are in the moment, together and feeling good… Spontaneity is an important ingredient. Get rid of the clock and simply enjoy the time you spend with each other. This will quickly help your child to settle down.”

She says doing the above will help your child become “securely attached” instead of “insecurely attached” (if you’re unfamiliar with those two terms, take a class on Child Development, or just Google them).

I love this because I have fallen into that trap with Vincente – telling him to go find something to do away from me so that I can fold the laundry, do the dishes, pay the bills, have a few minutes of time to myself to read or whatever. I forgot about how involved I used to be. I used to let Vincente do the laundry with me when he wasn’t even ONE yet! (basically that meant that he would pull himself to standing on the side of the basket and throw all the laundry out onto the floor) But now that he’s almost 2 1/2 and is actually able to help with some of the household chores, I’m shooing him away.

This advice was very timely for me.

I hope I never fall into that again. I love my kids and I want them to know that they are more important to me than paying the bills or cleaning the house! And that being with them makes me MUCH happier than either of those things!

Oh, What do you do in the Summertime?

Vince decided to read a book to Joseline today. She loved it. Joseline loves to look at Vincente and she is completely content to just lay around as long as he is in the room entertaining himself. She’s entertained just watching him!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baby Becca

I just started scanning in all my old stuff that I WAS going to scrapbook (so that I can just use my digital scrapbooking program). Anyway, I came across this baby picture and thought I would post it:

I think she definitely has Russ’ eyes. I think we have a few pictures of Russ as a baby, but I don’t know if any of them are good enough head shots to tell resemblances – but I promise that those eyes are VanDuren eyes (Russ has his mom’s eyes). I’m pretty happy about that, because ever since I met Russ I wanted our kids to have his gorgeously almond-ish shaped eyes. She has my facial structure, I think (which is also good, since Russ looks like a man ;) )

When Joseline is a little older I want to get a portrait done just like mine. That would be so cool. And dude, I am adorable! 

Vincente Speaking – Part I

“Put it right here.” (while indicating where his second helping of pasta should go on his plate)

“I need some cake.” (speaking of the pumpkin pie we had after dinner… really, Vince, you NEED some pumpkin pie? Really.)

“Clean up the maggots.” (referring to his fridge alphabet magnets when he was picking them up off the floor)

“I like Bradley-Connor.” (of course, Vince talking about his two very best friends, Bradley and Connor… even though he refers to them as one person)

“I see Tehbo.” (translation: “I would like to watch Dumbo, please.”)

“I need choo-choo train!” (his proclamation during the opening credits of Dumbo. He has this strange need to act out the part where the train starts moving at the beginning of the movie… complete with his toy train lifting its front end off the ground and saying “Whoo-hoo!”)

“No, I do it.” (his statement of independence)

He’s started saying such funny things lately, I’ve decided to collect them to post on the blog. I’m sure no one will laugh as hard as we do over some of them (the “put it right here” thing was HILARIOUS – you had to be there, but goodness it was great. So was the “I need cake” statement. Gotta love precocious little two year olds!)

Our Total Money Makeover

I read this book a few years ago (summer 2007) when we were headed up to Washington state to work at a Boy Scout camp. We read it at a friends’ house, and I loved it, but Russ and I didn’t talk about it a whole lot, and Russ never read it, so we didn’t really learn much from it.

Anyway, when Russ went to basic training, I was able to pay off a few credit cards with all the money we were making (since I was living with his folks and didn’t have to pay rent :D ). Well, then Christmas happened (Christmas wouldn’t normally have happened this way, but our Christmas last year happened to include some very expensive plane tickets. We were so depressed about using all our money (and mostly money we didn’t have) on plane tickets, that we stupidly decided to spend even more money we didn’t have on gifts. It was mostly emotional spending, I think.

Well, we’ve gotten over that, and a few months ago, we swore off our credit cards, and we started “power paying” our credit cards. It seemed like we weren’t making any progress, and then I remembered Dave Ramsey’s book, and so I checked it out from the library. Actually, I put a hold in at the library for it, since it was already checked out and about 5 other people were in line before I was!! 8-o

I got the book just last week, and I have devoured it all over again. This time, with Russ, and we are well on our way to having our $1000 Emergency fund set! We’ll be done with our Emergency fund by August, and then we’re going to start attacking our debt like you’ve never seen debt attacked.

On top of that, we’ve decided to wait to buy a house until we can put 100% down (or really close to 100%). Since we’ll already be used to living on nothing (or close to nothing) we’re going to keep living on close to nothing, even when we get real jobs. Then we’re going to save every last penny we can, and eventually, we will have no debt, two cars, and a house – and no payments… I’m stoked. We almost decided to sell stuff to jump start paying off our debts, but then we realized that we really don’t own much “stuff” and the things we DO own help us to spend less money each month – who needs to go to the movies when you’ve got a 47” TV in your living room? And we have our Blockbuster movies by mail thing, so we get to watch all the newest movies in the comfort of our own home, which is much cheaper than Russ buying $5 movies from WalMart all the time. So, we’ve cut down drastically on our budget, allowing us to save more and put more towards our debts. We’ve even started talking about eating mostly rice and beans to save money on food. We’d probably get really healthy, too! ;)

Anyway, so that’s where our total money makeover is right now. Our goal is to be completely out of debt (besides student loans, since the govt is going to pay those for us) by December 2010. Don’t think we can do it?! Watch us. and on a $47,000 income – where about $19K of that is rent because we live in one of the most ridiculous states in the union.

I recommend this book to everyone. Even if you’re debt-free. It will change the way you look at money. The guy is very Christian, too, so he spends almost a whole chapter talking about how when you’re filthy rich, you should be giving away a bunch of money.

Read it. Now.

nothing much

I don’t have anything really to write about tonight, but Russ has finished studying (and it’s only 9:30!!) so he’s writing a few pages in his novel that he’s been working on. My hubby the fantasy writer! He’s actually pretty good! I proof read his first six pages while I was waiting at the Monterey County Offices (too bad I didn’t have more than six pages… I was there for a loooong time).

Anyway, other than that, nothing big is going on here. Oh, well, we are thinking about moving out of the military housing. Downsizing, if you will. We’re trying to find a cheaper place to live so we can start paying down our debts faster. We’ve started our Total Money Makeover – but I’ll put all that in another post.

We haven’t made any definite decisions about moving quite yet. We are looking around to try and find a place that is big enough but cheap enough. We’ll probably end up in a little 2 bedroom apartment, but we’ll save around $300 a month in rent… $300 that will go toward paying off our debts that much faster. We’re “gazelle-intense.”

I will be sure to post again if and when we decide to move. It won’t be far – in the same city, hopefully. We may possibly move down the road to Marina, but so far we haven’t found anything down there. We found a few properties in Monterey, but nothing really what we’re looking for. Plus, we really kind of want to stay in our ward. So we’ll see…

A New Age – part II

Now here is Joseline’s post. She is getting SO BIG! It’s amazing how time flies when they are so little and growing up so fast. She laughs now. Full out gutsy little laughs. It is so cute. And it’s not very hard to make her laugh. She talks and talks and talks. Russ’ company is playing softball and at the game Tuesday night she spent most of the time talking to her blanket. It was adorable. She loves being out at the ball games. I took these pictures of her last night, but the camera was being all freaky, and they originally looked like this:

AH! Anyway, I discovered that changing them to sepia fixed the crazy coloring.

 We love our little Joseline – almost 3  months old! Time is going by so fast here. I can’t believe we’ve already been here for nearly 6 months. That doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but that’s almost half of our stay here! I love being here, and I love the friends we’ve made here. I’m glad that we’ll still get to know these friends when we move back to Utah. Hooah, UTARNG!

 

A New Age

This is an update on Vince, along with a few pictures. I took him to the pediatrician on Monday, but he had actually stopped stuttering ever since Saturday (at least). I think maybe there was a lot of trauma all in one short amount of time, and on top of that, he was going through a growth spurt – the kind that make your child crazy. I was reading a child development book or article or something once that said that kids have a "growth spurt” at their year birthday, and at their half-year birthday, and that it’s like a switch is flipped and they are psycho children for a few weeks. Then, just as suddenly as it started, it stops, and your kid will return to normal, but they will be more advanced in their development. Vince is back to being his normal self, but at the same time, it’s like he is an older version of “himself” – and of course he is older, but you know what I mean – it’s like he grew up over night. He’s a different kid (more mature in a lot of ways) but still the same kid as he was before all the trauma. Anyway, he’s doing great, the pediatrician was really nice and respectful and listened to my concerns, but also reassured me that it was probably normal, and he doesn’t have any neurological damage or anything. She said to bring him back immediately if he starts having problems again.

On that note, he was GREAT at the pediatrician! He got on the scale, he let them measure him, he even relaxed for some reflex tests!! I was SO impressed. My kid has never been so good (okay, that’s not true – in the past 4+ weeks he’s never been so well behaved, and he has NEVER had the cognitive skills to do “complicated” things like “relaxing” (I means seriously, if you tell an 18 month old to “relax” what does that mean to them? He understands what it means to RELAX! Cool, eh?)

So I’m feeling a lot more relaxed about the situation, and I am very much enjoying my new and improved Vince. He’s such a great kid. I am so blessed.

We pulled out Russ’ really old Sony laptop and let Vince play on it. Here he is mimicking his Mamãe – when I’m reading blogs or articles on the internet, I usually put my head in my hand – just like that. Adorable!

st-st-stuttering

As many of you know, I’ve been really worried about Vincente lately. He has become really emotional and has started stuttering really badly very suddenly. All of this started at the same time he suffered two pretty traumatic events – splitting his head open (and all the traumatic ER experiences accompanying said splitting), and being pushed down some stairs.

Unfortunately for me, I can’t tell if the traumatic experiences led to the problems or if they are natural development issues that will work themselves out. Just about this age is where kids start stuttering developmentally, and the emotional thing could also just be a factor of development.

I’m going to take him to the pediatrician on Monday (I hope I like this pediatrician… it’s not the one I usually see). We’ll see what he says.

My gut says that something is wrong. When he first started stuttering, he would say the first word of a sentence over and over again. For example, he would say, “That’s-that’s-that’s a car!” Sometimes he would say the first word up to ten times before the rest of the sentence came out. Just now he said “That’s-that’s-that’s a ch-ch-ch-choo-choo train!” He’s starting to stutter more than one word/sound in a sentence, and he’s also started to not speak at all, but you can tell he wants to say something. He’ll come up to you and look like he wants to say something, but his mouth just stays open and it’s like the whole word, breath and all, gets stuck in his throat, until eventually it comes out, or maybe he changes his mind and says something else. The stuttering also sounds a lot more forced than it did when I first noticed it.

I also can’t help but wonder if the stuttering problem has exacerbating the frustration/emotion issue, and if the speech issue is one of the reasons he’s reverted back to screaming and crying instead of talking.

Anyone who has been through this… advice and words of comfort are greatly appreciated in advance! 8-o

Tummy Time

I am probably the worst mom about the whole “tummy-time” thing. I didn’t realize I was until I looked at some pictures of my friend Anna’s little girl sitting like this in her boppy at 7 weeks. So, since Joseline is almost 3 months old, I thought, oh, Joseline should be able to do that, right?

Ha ha. So Joseline could barely lift her head off the floor. Anyway, I realized that I haven’t been giving Joseline tummy time every day, so ever since that day (about a week ago) I’ve started giving Joseline tummy time every day! Now look at her. And she can do this without the boppy, as well. She just likes the boppy better because she can see more. I also like to give her tummy time on the bed, because she’s higher up so she can look at more stuff.

I think she was strong enough to do this since day one, but she just didn’t know how to do it, since she hadn’t had practice. Now she enjoys tummy time a lot more :)

Here is Joseline on the floor the first time she started coming all the way up like that. I put some toys in front of her so she would maintain interest in holding up her head. Vincente thought that was a great idea, so he started giving her even more toys… what are brothers for!

(by the time I took this picture, Joseline was tired of tummy time… but I promise that she was holding her head up!)

Park Day Pow Wow

At Park Day on Wednesday, we noticed that the kids were all sitting in a circle down by the tennis courts. I went to investigate and snap some pictures.

 

 

When I got closer, I realized that they were all sitting around a patch of flowers. It was the most precious summer-time-park-day moment I have ever seen. These kids range from 2-5 or 6 in age.

 Then the kids started giving the flowers to me. I soon ended up with a handful of flowers. After that, they started giving flowers to all the moms. Bradley came up to me and said, “Thanks for being a good mom,” and handed me a flower. What a great park day! And what sweet kids!

 

 

inspired

I’ve been dealing with some hard things lately since Vincente has become really really emotional and anxious about things. I just glanced over at my bookshelf on my desk and saw a book I was given at his baby shower. It’s called In Praise of Children and is just a little book of quotes about children. I opened it up, just because I don’t think I’ve ever opened the thing, and the first quote I saw was this:

 

At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experiences of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.

~Ellen Kay

the budding photographer

 

Here are pictures that Vincente took at the park today. There is a nice one of his scar from his little ER experience. I was surprised that any of the pictures he was taking came out. Usually he has his finger over the lens the whole time :)

Fathers and Sons

Russ took Vincente on to our Stake's Aaronic Priesthood commemoration father-son campout. This was forever ago (I think the first weekend in May), but I haven't posted the pictures! Crazy me. Anyway, these pictures will be a nice little break from my 3.1MP pictures, since they are from our old camera. In fact, I think I broke the camera just after I uploaded these pics to my computer. Looking at them makes me really really miss my old camera... *tear*

I could tell by the state of Vincente's clothes that he had a great time at the campout. There was no reason he couldn't get as filthy and muddy as he wanted to! Hey, that's what camping is for, right?

Apparently Vince had a great time running around with Bradley and Connor. Of course. Vincente idolizes those boys. They are his very favorite people in the entire world (besides Mamãe and Papai, of course).

There was actually some adventure to this campout. The people Russ was supposed to be sharing a tent with never showed up, and he didn't find out until after the gates had closed at the campground.

Well, after going back and forth between them coming home (which would have been a big bummer!) and me taking them a tent, we decided that I would buy a tent and go take it to them. So I did, and afterward I hung out with Trisha til way late (that was probably the latest night out I have had since before I was married!) and then we went to IHOP the next morning - just us and the baby girls. It was a real treat to have time out with friends without the little kids around and without feeling guilty for leaving our hubbys at home.

Now of course, the first questions I asked when the boys got home were about Vincente's behavior. Was he good for you? Did he like camping? Then about his eating while he was there. Did he eat well? What did he have for breakfast? Geez. I can't even relax about being a mom when my kid is off camping. I am just uptight about knowing everything about my kids - what they're doing, what they're eating, etc etc

We bought Vincente his first sleeping bag - of course it had Lightening McQueen on it! He loved it! I'm so glad his first camping experience was a success - that means that we will definitely be camping more. I hope so, anyway. Funny, my two-year-old kid got to go camping with Papai before I did! It's rediculous that Russ and I both love to camp so much, and neither of us have been camping since before we got married.

Life gets busy, I guess. We were crazy busy before - school, work, and having babies. Now we are in military training where we only have so many days off, and they are all pre-decided. None of this "Let's take a few days off and go camping!"

We even planned a camping trip for Memorial Day weekend that we had to cancel because the Presidio decided that they would use a "training holiday" to train the soldiers... and then they didn't even have to do anything anyway! Russ took a drive on his bike with some buddies. Sounds like they were really concerned with everyone being at the training... ha.

So our camping experience will have to wait. Maybe 4th of July weekend? We shall see... they'll probably do another "mandatory" training.

Dumbo

Vincente has discovered Dumbo. Lightening McQueen? Who's that? All Vince knows now is Dumbo, Casey Jr, and the big top. I just hope he doesn't decide to join the circus some day... I don't know if I could deal with that.

fixing things that shouldn't be broken

This is one of those things that should never have been broken in the first place - our beautiful electric skillet we bought with one of our gift cards back when we were married.

Guess who broke it. That's right - stupid moving people. And unfortunately for us I had 1,000,000+ things to do after we got here, so I never got around to filing claims for things like our electric skillet, the broken dust pan (really, it wouldn't have been worth it for that one), and a few other odds and ends that weren't particularily valueable.

The only thing I wish we had filed a claim for is the motorcycle. They tipped it on the way to the warehouse, and broke off a mirror (granted, the mirror had already been broken off by Russ after he'd had the bike for a while and dropped it under himself when he was turning on some gravel with a bald front tire. He fixed it pretty well with some of that weld-it glue). But the fact that Russ had already tipped the bike and broke the mirror previously gives them no right to dump a bike! Dumping a bike takes a lot of value out of it. How were they to know it had already been dumped? They didn't know that! Anyway, it probably made me more ornery than Russ when we found out it had happened. The bike needs an entire new perch - which costs a lot, and is something that Russ probably can't do on his own, so then throw in labor, etc etc. Well, Russ just welded the mirror back on, and it's hunky-dory now. But man, I sure wish we had filed a claim for the bike... that would have been nice to get fixed, even though it was originally Russ' fault :D

PS - I did not just fix the skillet with tape and paper towels... I glued it together with some of the ultra super glue stuff you get at the craft stores - I think this particular brand was "Amazing goop" - I know, how original. Anyway, the tape and paper towels are just there to hold the pieces together while the glue sets up. I'm not that tacky.

time to go shopping

When my fruit bowl starts looking like this, I know I need to take a trip to the commissary!