James' Brain

James had the opportunity to participate in a research study today. They did an fMRI while he watched cartoons and played a "game" (clicking a button to indicate same/different, etc). The whole process took about 2 hours, but he actually really liked it. He got a stamp, a cup of stickers, a model airplane set, $60, an "I saw my brain shirt", and a picture of his brain! In the meantime, Ruth and I played legos and ate hot dogs outside with Dan because his office was just across the street from the imaging center.

6 and 7

 Today marks 6 years married and 7 months pregnant (or exactly 2 months from my due date, to be more exact).

I would choose Dan again today. I love you!

(picture by CB Photography, edited by me)

Projects and Hobbies

I realized this evening that today was a very well-rounded day in the sense that I spent time on almost all of my various projects and hobbies:

exercise: I ran 3.2 this morning. I am getting closer to throwing in the towel, but I did it.

tee ball:  Long story short, I am teaching James and a group of his friends tee ball twice a week this month since he was too young for the local league (picture me reading a book before each lesson to learn things like how to hold a ball when throwing). Today was the second lesson.

reading: The kids and I visited the library, I started my book club's book on CD, I read some of my favorite magazine, The Week (a weekly news digest), and I plan to read at least a little bit of Uncle Tom's Cabin tonight, which I have been slowly chipping away at for weeks.

photography: Started and finished editing a mini session and will spend some more time on another session tonight after the kids are in bed.

project organize my house: organized 2 cupboards in my kitchen. Helped James rotate some of the art work on his art wall. Taking pictures of and throwing away old ones, hanging new ones.

cleaning: picked up dozens of (clean) diapers, 2 shelves worth of books, urine, and vomit following a major 2-year-old tantrum. That falls under the "projects" category, not "hobbies". 

cooking: I actually cooked dinner. It may have been a casserole, but it was not leftovers!

graduate community assistant job: delivered 70 or so door fliers with the kids to advertise for an event this weekend.

sewing: Worked on one of the birth sampler cross stitches for a half an hour or so. Maybe more tonight.

Now if only I had done something for my calling. I guess there's still time to write an email or two! Gotta go, time for stories!

Jumping muscles

This picture doesn't do it complete justice, but check out our little jumper's calf muscles!
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"Smile and I'll Give You a Popsicle"

deal.

If you give a mouse a cookie...

If you look to closely at your house,
you may realize what a disaster it is.

You may develop a not-so-irrational fear of taking anything out of almost any closet,
because you know an avalanche is inevitable.

You will start to do some superficial cleaning,
but realize that there is just too much stuff and not enough space.

You may even discover colonies of dust bunnies and long lost toys underneath your furniture.
This will remind you of how gross the rest of your carpets are from recent potty training and from 4 years without being shampooed.

Hopefully this will inspire you to get on your feet (you are touching that carpet after all),
and start doing some serious "nesting".

First you will organize to make better use of the space you have...(can you believe this is the AFTER picture? The boxes are recycling.)

Then you will find some spaces you could use more effectively. (This spice rack would make more sense in our pantry, unfortunately our pantry door is apparently unusually narrow and won't fit it. Rather than re-buy, we nailed the shoes rack to the wall and put the storage rack on the door to the basement. I'm trying to think of it as having a bigger kitchen instead of having farther to walk when I need things :))

The whole time you will be throwing away anything you 1) didn't know you had, 2) haven't used recently, 3) have had since high school (I'm thinking ahead to my closet).

Your house may seem to get messier during this long process,

but *hopefully* you will eventually find or make a place for everything (even if it is in the trash).

You will have to enlist friends to periodically inquire about your progress to make sure you stick to your guns (please, please, be one of those friends!).

You will then be able to vaccuum and shampoo the carpets,

and maybe even permanently eradicate the lingering mystery smell...maybe.

Case of the disappearing swim cap

This is hands down one of the most mysterious things that has ever happened to me. A twist ending could end up making it one of the stupidest...but for now? Mysterious.

So I swam laps this morning at the university gym. In the locker room afterward, I changed into dry clothes. I picked up my swimsuit (which, by the way, is disintegrating at just the right time making it plenty big for my prego tummy...perfect!), my tank top (which I wear in case aforementioned disintegrating bathing suit decides to suddenly become translucent and to hide the face that I continue to wear such a shoddy suit),  and my swim cap. I carried these 3 items to the water extractor about 4-5 feet away from where  I was changing. I remember contemplating how unnecessary it is to put my swim cap in the extractor even if it is lycra and does hold some water. Despite that, I put all 3 items in, closed it, opened it, realized I hadn't waited that long, and closed it for another 5 seconds or so. Voila! 95% of the water gone out of my suit. I love that machine! 95% of the water out of my tank top! Really,  the will power it has taken to not blog about that machine after every swim! 100% of my swim cap totally MISSING! Seriously, GONE!

The inside of the extractor looks like a cylindrical metal colander, so no place for escape there (not that I didn't eventually get down underneath the extractor and look up the pipe just in case). I turned my suit and tank top inside and right side out repeatedly...nothing tucked in there. I searched the tiny area I'd occupied in all that time extensively (not that there's much to search in a locker room). I stood on the bench for an aerial view in case it somehow got flung somewhere (no worries, I was the only one in the locker room, so no one thought I was checking them out). Nothing!! I'm totally perplexed. I finally had to leave with only the marks on my forehead to prove the cap ever existed. I'm hoping it shows up in lost and found!  Mysterious, right?

30 Weeks!

10 more weeks! Things are good. I have more weird and uncomfortable pregnancy symptoms with this pregnancy than I did with the other two, but I still can't complain! I'm still running 3x/week, swimming 1 or 2x (it's so hard waking up early!), and biking 1x/week, although I'm not going quite as far or quite as fast.

I still have yet to really do anything to prepare for the baby other than make a car seat canopy for her and start a cross stitch birth sampler. I need to buy furniture for her nursery and figure out what else (if anything) I will be doing to the room. I also need to sort through clothes and deep clean our house. I have a couple other crafts I might do for her. The comforting thing to know after having had 2 babies, is that all she will really need is a few outfits, diapers (which I did get some of), a blanket, and me and she'll survive...color coordinated or not.

Dan is yet to come up with any alternate names to Claire....

The Universe Gets Even

What goes around comes around, pay it forward, however you want to say it, the universe got even this time. You've probably heard about this recent baseball game event:



but do you remember this one?



whew, gotta catch my breath from laughing so hard!

Phillies etc

Key ingredients to our week so far: weather in the upper 80s, long bike rides/walks, sand boxes, popsicles, gardening, phillies hats, tee ball, sunscreen, and "bug screen". Summer is approaching!
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Field Day

Have I mentioned how much I love James' preschool? It is an integrated program for children with and without special needs. Not only does this give him experience with a variety of children, he gets some of the best staff and programs you could ask for. His teacher has a Master's in Special Education which means she is especially good at adapting to needs of individual students, special needs or not. There are several aids in each classroom, plus a speech and occupational therapist who do largely "push in" instead of "pull out" therapy. So the kids with IEPs get almost constant therapy and great support for generalization of the skills they're learning, and the kids without IEPs get a great student to teacher ratio with awesome activities planned to help in all areas of development. The gym teacher is a physical therapist. They do small or large group gym twice a week, swimming once a week, music from a music specialist once a week, and lots of other great activities mixed in. All the staff seem to really enjoy working with the children and the majority of students need fewer services upon graduation than upon initial matriculation! Anyway, I can't say enough, I am so glad we were able to participate in this program.

So Friday was field day. James was SO excited and he had a great time. 

 Here's team Blue. They were James' "competitors" but include 3 of our friends from our ward.

 Here's James' class. Go Team Green! The teachers made the shirts. James helped me make green rice krispie treats with green m&ms for their color coordinated snack time. He even had green oatmeal and Kiwi for lunch to get ready for the event. During the games, he would march to the music and cheer "Go Team Green! Go Team Green!" without any initiation from staff or teachers. He was REALLY into it!

 The pictures are in reverse order.

The Awards Ceremony

Victory! I love seeing children with disabilities get such great and fun experiences.

 James getting his medal from his teacher, Lisa.

 Before that, the kids got to throw water balloons at the staff. James had it out for Andrea, one of his favorite teachers in his classroom.

 watching the girls throw balloons:

 This was a hybrid between Red Rover and Sharks and Minnows. The kids ran in groups (Red Rover, send the boys on over) while their gym teacher, Ben, tried to catch them.

 Safe when they reached their teacher.

 Before that, the kids raced around the field in groups of 5 or 6. Everyone got a finish line to break through! I especially loved that they started with aids running the kids in wheelchairs around the track so they could all race too. Everyone was all smiles.

 

 The first event was the tug of war!

And before that, they started the Olympic procession and other "inspirational" music. Too fun!

Camping!

Memorial Day weekend was our first camping trip of the year. We are not planning as many this year, but I am excited to even do a few!

We left after Dan's Friday afternoon lab meeting (4-5pm every Friday, lame!). I got the van all loaded up (because I'm Super Woman), and we picked him up at work and drove to Stony Brook. While Dan set up the tent, the kids and I waded in the brook just behind our site and through rocks in the water. It was SO fun. We've camped here several times, but this was the first time we got a site on the water.

James is looking over my shoulder as I write this and wants me to add that he kept falling. He feel one time in the water and one time he slipped off a mossy rock. That was a sad way to end the fun time in the brook!

 Then the kids changed into warm jammies, sat in their favorite chairs, and roasted marshmallows! I put them to shame with my s'more making and eating, but they're learning! They both were much more accomplished s'mores eaters this year! I was impressed with Dan's fire starting ability, especially since it had been raining!

 Eventually James was cold enough that he asked to go to bed. He crashed, but Ruth took longer to fall asleep. We waited her out in the car while we played card games because it started to pour rain. Eventually I went in to see what she was talking so loudly about to herself and she asked for their kids bug lantern. They hadn't been able to play with it before bed because it gets dark so late and she had been waiting for it to get dark. She fell asleep with the blanket over her head and the lantern underneath with her...and on. In the middle of the night I heard a "click, click, click" and then Ruth was in my bed upset that her lantern wouldn't work. The next half an hour was Ruth trying to carry on small talk from the adjacent air mattress, but thankfully she fell back to sleep and actually managed to stay asleep until close to 7 (with the blanket over her head again).

Packing up the next morning:
We took it easy as far as food goes. We ate some dinner from home in the car on the way there, at leftover dinner for breakfast (I had brought things to cook, but we decided not to since the kids just wanted leftovers anyway), and we made peanut butter sandwiches to bring on our hike for lunch.

 One of Ruth's shoes had been left in the rain, so Dan dried it over the fire while we were packing up. It ended up working great, until the strap melted off. With some creative use of Ruth's hair ties, we were able to get it to be functional for the rest of the day. Well, this was my configuration, which didn't work, but Dan figured out a better method.

 We love the Stony Brook hike because it is so beautiful, fun, and easy enough for the kids (even if there are a million stairs). This area used to be dammed to be a pool, but they closed it last year due to budget deficits.

 Dan doesn't have water shoes/sandals and doesn't care for the idea of getting his tennis shoes wet, so he followed along on the land trail while I hiked in the water with the kids.

 The whole brook is usually much more calm, so that made the hike a little more tricky. Fast moving water, slippery rocks, and 2 kids to keep upright made me really nervous! Usually this is a somewhat calm pool at the bottom of the waterfall that we swim in every year, but it was really turbulent this year too! James wants me to add that there was a tree in the middle of it too! We have had a record breakingly rainy Spring so maybe that's why.

 Ruthie was fearless which was really fun for her and scary for me!

 We followed to gorge to the end of the trail and up all the steep stairs, then took the rim trail back to where we started There we played on a fun playground and ate our picnic lunches before taking off for home.

 Ruth finally fell asleep about 10 minutes from home.

 We got to have Dan's mom in town for the week before and after Memorial Day with his dad joining her for the 3 weekends in between. On Memorial Day, we went swimming at the hotel and then took advantage of some sales at the outlet malls. The kids' favorite part was the rides, of course!

Our next camping trip is a two night trip to Watkins Glen. We already have some friends planning to come with us and are excited for a group trip again.