Kiersten’s Blog

Here's Ashton with his bear at Disneyland.

Ashton has a bear.  I got it as a baby shower gift.  I can’t even remember who gave it to me.  We would be in a heap of trouble of we lost it.  He carries it around with him everywhere he goes.  He can’t go to sleep without it and when he’s tired, he snuggles with it.  The other day he was upset about something.  I didn’t know what was wrong or what to do to help calm him down.  Then he started saying, “beah, beah, beah.”  He wanted his bear.  He woke up at 4:30 this morning, mad because he was snuggling with a different stuffed animal in his crib.  That’s not the first time.  Once the bear was returned, he snuggled right in and went right back to sleep.

We did some shopping yesterday.  One of the stores we went to was Marshalls.  I love stores like Marshalls.  They always have interesting and cool things.  We found a great wall hanging at TJ Maxx for Ashton’s room.  But at Marshalls, we found a tuffet.  Really, it was a small stool that looked like the head of a cat.  It was the perfect size for a little 4-year-old to sit on.  Once she saw it, she got really excited and said, “Mom, look at this cool tuppet!  Can we get it?”  It took me a minute to get what she was saying.  Then I remembered Little Miss Muffet.  One of these days I’ll post a video of London singing about Little Miss Muffet, but right now she’s sleeping and I don’t have it recorded.

This morning after I finished washing Ashton in the tub, I left London to wash herself.  I heard her singing this, “Uh, it’s amazing.  Uh, so amazing” by Kanye West.  I can’t believe I have a 4-year-old who sings Kanye West.  In case you’re unfamiliar with the song, here it is.

I have started sewing a lot more.  It’s good because it takes the place of baking, which is definitely a good thing for pudgy belly.  I guess I always need some sort of creative outlet and since I don’t really play my violin anymore (it’s actually kind of sad that I don’t even think to take it out of the box when I have some down time) I sew.  I enjoy it for the most part, but today I was frustrated with my projects.  I had two projects to do.  First, I needed to make a tutu for London.  She has a dance show tomorrow and needed a black tutu.  I could spend $15 on an already made one, or spend $5 on supplies and make one myself.  I chose the latter.  I figured it should only take me 15 minutes or so.  How wrong I was.  It should have only take that long, but there were a couple of things that slowed me down a bit (one being a 1-year-old who thinks tulle was invented for him to crawl all over).  I was so glad to be done two hours later.

London in her new shirt with Preston, at Mickey's house

Then, I had to zigzag around the applique I put on a shirt for London the other day.  I didn’t have time when I made it, to do the zigzagging.  I didn’t think that would take long either.  I started out using a color that I thought would work alright, but hated it, so I had to pick out what I had done, change the thread, and start over.  Then, the thread broke when I was halfway through.  And as soon as I got it going again, my bobbin ran out.  Once I was finished with the black thread, I had to re-thread for the pink section, which was fine, but my machine’s just not doing the job well anymore.  The black thread works great.  I think it might be because it’s thicker thread.  As soon as I switched to the pink, the bobbin was too loose.  I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how to fix that problem, but it happens with any thin thread I use.  And since I’m a cheapskate, that’s mostly what I have.  I think it’s time for me to get a pedal for my $5 rummage sale deal and see if that does the job any better.  Maybe I’ll be able to sew without getting so frustrated.  At least I have a couple of cute projects to show for my frustration.

Last week I made a cake.  It was a carrot cake from a mix with canned cream cheese frosting.  I planned on juicing a bunch of carrots and adding some pulp, but the carrots were hairy by the time I got around to juicing them and making a cake.  I thought I would make the cake a little more eye-pleasing by baking it in a bundt.  The only problem was, when I turned the cake out of the pan, half of it stuck, and I ended up piecing it together with the yucky canned frosting.  I was hoping that since it was cream cheese frosting it might taste better than the normal stuff, but it’s exactly the same.  So the cake didn’t taste horrible, but it didn’t taste great.  It did, however, look horrible.  We ate some of it and even fed the decent looking part to the missionaries we had over for dinner that night, but as I though about it, I knew I wouldn’t eat the rest of the cake.  It just wasn’t that good.  So I decided to make cake pops.  Bakerella makes them look so easy, so cute, and so yummy.  Well, hers are cute and possibly easy.  They’re not hard to do, but they are time consuming and don’t turn out nearly as cute as Bakerella’s.  I know.  I’ve tried twice.  Even with the cuteness factor gone, they sure taste yummy and I won’t have a problem downing the rest of that cake all by myself.  Curse you, Bakerella.  Instead of throwing away a mediocre cake, I’m stuck eating these delicious cake pops and getting fatter by the second.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go eat a cake pop.

I have a cousin (Rachel) and her husband (Steve) and their cute daughter (Annika) who just moved to Hawaii just because.  Since their car shipped out of San Diego, we got to have a slumber party with them at our house!  We have stayed at their house plenty of times and we were long overdue to return the favor.  Anneka (Rachel’s sister) also stayed.  She drove down from Santa Monica to pick them up since they were flying out of LA.  In the mean time, we decided to take a trip to the happiest place on earth.  Of course we had been there before, but Annika never had, so it was fun for the two little girls to go together.  None of our husbands came, and I left Ashton home with Taylor.  It was nice to go without a baby and just have fun.

You can't even see London in the back because she's so small!

We took the two little girls on the Hollywood Tower of Terror in California Adventure.  I was a little nervous for them, but we tried to keep them excited and not scared, although it is a pretty scary ride.  That’s one of the rides I have never taken London on.  She has asked me about it before, but I’ve always thought she would get kind of freaked out.  Not so.  She loved it.  I can’t believe what a thrill seeker this girl is!  As soon as it was over, she asked if we could go again!  That’s more than I can say for my mom!  I guess there’s no holding London back.  I think it was a great time had by all and we’re excited to go back on Tuesday for more fun with different cousins!  We’re so spoiled.

Ashton is such a funny little guy.  He’s growing up so fast!  I know that sounds so cliche, but it’s really true.  Lately, he has acquired a love of books.  I guess he takes after his big sister.  He gets so excited to read with us.  In the last few days, he’ll grab a book, shove it in your face, all the while really excited and saying, “ba, ba ba!”  That’s his word for everything.  He changes the vowel slightly and sometimes changes the consonant slightly, but I can tell the difference in the words he says.  They’re differences only a mother would notice.  But he says: bath, bear, up, macaw, ball, bat, outside, banana (nana), mama, dada, more, all done (although it sounds just like more, but a different hand sign).  He also makes animal sounds which include: jaguar, cow and monkey.

Today in church, Ashton threw a fit.  Okay, he threw more than one, but at least one of them had to do with the snacks I may or may not have been feeding him.  He was not okay with me just feeding him one fish cracker or one animal cracker at a time.  He had to take handfuls.  It was as if he has never seen food before, but one look at the kid and anyone would know that’s not the case.  I don’t usually even give him a whole animal cracker at a time, but to keep him from making too much noise, I let him do as he pleased and he stuffed three of those things in his mouth!

Soon, I think, I’ll be in for a lot of fights.  Ashton has learned that he can stand up to his big sister.  And she’s much more of a wimp than he.  If she’s in the way, he pushes her and yells at her.  If she takes his stuff, he yells.  He has also learned to pinch.  I don’t know what it is that’s so satisfying to him about pinching someone’s skin, but he likes it.  And he does it.  And it hurts like crazy.  London doesn’t particularly like it either.  And now that Ashton’s almost as big as her, he’ll be pushing her around a lot more, I’m sure.

I’m pretty sure that when I went to Sacramento last weekend, I expected a vacation.  Instead, I got a trip.  I didn’t really mind.  I still got to do fun things, but there were times when I though, “I might as well have stayed home.”  One of those days was Monday.  Sunday afternoon, London was complaining about her ear hurting.  She was also asking me why her ear was “singing.”  I thought it could only mean one thing.  And I was right.  I called Kaiser and got our insurance coverage updated so we could use it in northern California (for some reason it’s not the same system and I had to get a new MR number).  Luckily we were able to get into the doctor that morning and, sure enough, she had an ear infection.  I think it’s the 3rd or maybe even 4th this season.  I guess I shouldn’t complain too much about the tube in her other ear still being there after 4 years because it’s never been infected.  Anyway, the doctor was nice enough to prescribe chewables instead of a liquid anti-biotic that I would somehow have to travel with and keep cold.  The problem is, London doesn’t like the chewables.  Let’s not kid ourselves.  She doesn’t like the liquid either.  The first couple of doses were fine.  She told me they tasted like everlasting gobstoppers.  Then she decided that she doesn’t like everlasting gobstoppers.  It’s a challenge to get her to take the medicine.  I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I constantly forget to give them to her.  I was thinking of any way I might be able to get her to take her pills with a little less coercing.  So I frosted them.  With green frosting.  Not just a little frosting either.  A lot.  And it worked!  Just a spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine to go down!

Then

While I was in Sacramento last week, the stars all aligned and I was able to get together with eight of my close friends from high school, who I haven’t seen since high school.  I think I saw only one at our ten year reunion a couple of years ago, but with the rest, I had completely lost touch.  Until facebook.  It was a lot of fun to get together again and catch up.  Most of us have families of our own now so we met at a park where the kids could play together.  Then the next day, a few of us got together again for dinner.  This time it was just the girls.  We sat at Chili’s and chatted for close to 3 hours.  Who knows how long it will be before we all get together again?  I’m glad we were able to make it work this time.

Now

Thirteen years ago, we had a slumber party and made predictions as to where everybody in the party would be in ten years.  Thirteen years later, it’s funny to read again and see how wrong (or in some cases, close to right) we were.  We even predicted hair styles.  When we got together, there was more catching up than reminiscing.  It’s almost like we just picked up where we left off.  It was sure fun to see those ladies again.  I hope it doesn’t take another thirteen years.

We had a lot of fun visiting family while in Sacramento.  I’ve been wanting to go on a visit up there for quite some time now.  I haven’t been there since I was pregnant so I have family who has never even seen Ashton.  Also, Kenton and his family, and Jana and her husband have bought houses in the last year and I’ve been wanting to see them.  They are both quite nice and I’m so excited for them to have their own homes.  It’s kind of fun that we’re all grown up now!

Bree and I spent a lot of time together with the kids.  Preston and London had a grand time together.  We took a trip to the railroad museum.

Seeing all the big trains was fun, but the kids mostly just wanted to play with the toy Thomas the Trains upstairs.

I wish we lived closer to Kenton and Bree so these kids could play together more often.  We can’t wait for Disneyland next week with them!

funny kids

While in Sacramento I also spent time with my grandma.  She lives right next door to my parents.  It’s nice to be able to just walk next door to see her.  Lately she has been struggling with some health issues and has been in a care facility.  She came home the day we flew in, so I was glad that I could spend some time with her and help her out a bit.  London also loved hanging out at Grandma’s house.  Any time I couldn’t find her, that’s where she would be.  I think she liked the freedom of being able to come and go as she pleased.  She also liked Grandma’s computer games.  More than those, though, I think she really likes Grandma.  And really, who wouldn’t?

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from travelzoo.  I get emails from them frequently and am always curious what deals they have, although I hardly ever use them.  This time, however, I jumped on it.  It was a 1 day sale on Jet-Blue from Long Beach to San Francisco for $9 each way.  How could I pass that up?  Of course there were a lot of restrictions and I had to go soon, but my schedule’s flexible.  So I took the kids and hopped on a plane.

It was a long week full of excitement and it all started the day we left.  London was counting down the days until we left, so when the day arrived, the questions started:  when are we leaving?  can I take a movie?  is there a movie on the airplane?  is it going to be light outside when we get there?  and on and on and on.  Finally 2:00 rolled around and it was time to leave for Long Beach.  We didn’t hit traffic on the way up, so we had time to spare.  We decided to kill some time by eating McDonalds.  After we passed the airport and drove into the McDonald’s parking lot, more questions started: why are we here?  can’t we get on the airplane?  can we just drive through.  I’m not hungry! and on and on and on again.  Finally we finished eating and went back to the airport where Taylor dropped my off with my 2 kids, 2 car seats, 2 suitcases, 2 bags to carry on and 1 stroller.  We checked the suitcases and car seats and headed for security.  I took along my mei tai just so that I could easily carry Ashton through security.  That thing is a life saver at the airport!  Of course we made it to the gate early and had to wait again.  More questions.  Then we pre-boarded and had to wait again.  More questions.  Then the plane taxi’d onto the runway and had to wait for our turn to go.  More questions.  And of course we got the only row of seats on the entire plane where the TVs on the headrest weren’t working.  Eventually one of the three started working and I let London switch to the window seat.  The lady on the aisle kindly moved to another open seat so that we could have the room we needed.

Ashton on the plane (his first plane ride)

London on the plane

Eventually the plane took off and London didn’t have any more questions. . . until we got higher in the air.  Then she was wondering why we weren’t going fast anymore.  We settled in and things were going okay.  I had to keep stuffing goldfish crackers in Ashton’s mouth to keep from taking off.  Then about halfway into the flight, someone starts stinking up the plane.  Yes.  That was my child.  Off to the lavatory we go to change a stinky diaper.  As we are about to sit back down, London tells me she needs to go potty.  I told her to hold it and sat back down.  I wasn’t about to cram myself and 2 kids in one of those bathrooms.  Apparently while we were in the bathroom, the snacks were passed out and London was overlooked.  There she was, wondering why everybody else got cookies.  At least she wasn’t too upset about it and I gave her some more goldfish.  By this time the plane started its descent and Ashton started screaming.  The screaming didn’t stop for probably 10 minutes.  He didn’t even want me to hold him.  Poor guy.  I did everything I could to try to help, but nothing did.  I think it was probably his ears needing to pop.  Finally he stopped screaming and we landed.

As we were landing (and taking off on the way home) London threw both hands up into the air, screaming, “WOOO!!”  She’s such a thrill-seeker!

On the ground, I was sure glad to see my dad and get some help.  Two hours later, we found the car and finally headed to Sacramento.  The good news is, London was so excited to be there, that she didn’t mind walking around for 2 hours, dragging her suitcase.  What a trooper.  It was a long day for all of us.  I was beginning to wonder what I got myself into and how I could do it all again in a week.  Luckily the plane ride home was much less exciting.  Ashton was still crazy, but at least he was happy.  There were no trips to the lavatory and we all got our snacks just fine.