FIVE YEARS OLD

I have written out FIVE random things about Jack that make me smile. He is a wonderful kid and It blows my mind that God would give him to a crazy lady like me. This was my proudest moment. The moment I became a mother. The happiest day of mine and John's life.
1: Where in the heck did all of the time go? One day we was my perfect little baby and the next I am negotiating Oreos with him. He demamnded a minimum of six I said that we were more likely to be talking about 2. He settled for 3 Oreos but theres a caveat: He wants to know where they are hidden. those are his terms. "If I give you one more Oreo, I get to keep the location secret... deal? "Yes mom but next time you might want to start lower." "thanks for the negotiating tip, big guy."


2: He still sleeps with his bed time pull up on (and incidentally, Star Wars toys). Sweet Mercy, when does this end? It is soaked every morning and I am thankful every morning that it is not the bed which is soaked. Less thankful when I have to buy them at 15 bucks a pack and the least thankful when he decides to discard it at the foot of the bed right before I stand up. Please Heavenly Father, don't let my boy start high school wearing diapers at night.

3: Speaking of sleep, I sleep with him a lot lately and he still sticks his lips out all the way to sleep. This is so cute to me, Sometimes I even catch him suckling his tongue.This is Jack asleep in the car with the bird on his shoulder suckling his lips. I couldn't resist the photo. even though he has no memory of being breastfed by me, It will always be one of my fondest memories. When I see him suckle in his sleep I say...oohhh...he loved it too... thanks for letting me be your mommy, Jack Jack. And by the way , thank you to Dude for being our patient bird. Not all of our feathered friends appreciate dangerous toddler love, like you do. Thanks for not biting Abe's fingers off when he tries for wet open mouth kisses. You are a pal.

4: Most people say that Jack looks just like his daddy, but I am undeterred. He looks like me. And not just a little. He looks JUST like me. I can't even glance at him without seeing the Haws cheeks and the Arnett eyelashes and the little staci mouth. He is a much more masculine version and actually much better looking, but looks wise, the kid is MINE. Please look at the following pic and tell me I'm right.

5: Jack is a genius. I hateto state this because I know that everyone thinks their child is a genius but its his birthday and so I'm coming out of the closet on my belief that my first born might cure cancer or become an accomplished scientist or something along those lines. They say that when you hear a parent tell what traits their children posess, they are really telling you what traits they personally admire, not what the child actually has. I swear this is true. Start listening for the comments. ..."My new niece is so exceptionally beautiful. "..... "You gotta see my son. Hes only one day old but he was kicking so hard I can tell he is really athletic".... My mom used to tell everyone that Lauren was born bilingual.

Since learning this truth I keep it in mind when I think about telling people that he has a complex understanding of how storms form, or how a super nova explodes or why the guy in the ice cream truck must be poor because he will probably be tempted to eat the ice cream all day long. Also his lifelong ambition to be a sasquach hunter by trade because-and I quote- "you only have to catch one."
Look how happy he is experimenting, I used to do this as a kid. Mom found rotten science projects all over the house .
This is an experiment about which solutuon would clean the pennies most effectivey. We worked all day long for this one and we were determined to find which substsnce cleaned the penies best. We set up a hypohtysys and decided which methop would clean the best , It was olove oil, desolveit, Dr Pepper, soap, Pine Sol, Tabasco sauce, oxy clean,and water. It was so fun to get our resuts. In case you're curious, the best was vinegar and salt. A close second was just soap. Avoid oxy clean. It turned the pennies yellow. It was a lot of fun.

So there you go. I admire intelligent people and funny people, therefore, Jack is a genius and Babyham is a comedian. I'm a mother to the core. there you go.

I had to post this last pic of Jack because it shows his true nature when he is speaking his mind. lets just say that he errs on the side of drama. Where did he get that from? Could have been anywhere.

Light Rail: a taxpayer's nightmare; a four year old's dream

John has Mondays off and so every week he tries to go on an adventure with Jack. This is one of the things I appreciate the most about my husband. He is such a fun and involved daddy. Last week he took Jack to ride the brand new Light Rail. They drove to the Bethany Home station and parked and then rode the train all the way into Tempe to meet up with Grandma and Grandpa Kramer for lunch.


Jack was thrilled with the whole trip and especially liked going over the bridge at Tempe Town Lake. John had to of course call me every now and then during the trip and express his political outrage that this tax boondoggle ever got built in the first place. He also noted that at a few points they got passed by a pedestrian who was walking the same route.

John's new love

For as long as I have known John he has wanted a Styr Aug. It is a rifle from... uh, some european country and he just has an obsession with it. He has never had one (which is odd). The man owns literally dozens of AR 15s and AK47s. He even has 2 Sig 557s and an FS2000 but no Styr Aug. Finally this week his dream came true and he got one. For those of you who have husbands who are gun nuts (Carey, April... you know who you are) Then you can probably relate to me when I say that I have crawled into bed twice this week to find this gun in my spot in bed tucked into the covers resting on my pillow. Also, John spends a lot of time stalking unseen bad guys around the house and theorizing how it would all go down if the bad guy were ever real. 

Banana Bread Quest

I buy bananas everytime I go to the grocery store. Sometimes they all get eaten immediately, sometimes they sit in the kitchen untouched until they are brown and attracting fruit flies. I always feel so guilty just throwing them away when there are starving children blah blah blah. To curb my guilt and be a more domestic goddess I have taken to making banana bread with the extras. The only problem is that I could not for the life of me find a good recipe. I tried allrecipes.com and even old ward cookbooks and each time my results were mediocre. Finally today I would like to announce that I have found the perfect banana bread recipe. It is easy and delicious and if you pack it up you can send it to the starving children of the world much more easily than black bananas.



Here it is:
preheat oven to 350 F
grease two small loaf pans with shortening
mix dry ingredients and set aside:
1 3/4 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda

beat together till light:
1/3 cup shortening
2/3 sugar

add one at a time beating till smooth between additions:
2 eggs
2 Tbs. milk

in another small bowl:
smash 1 cup of ripe bananas
1/4 c sugar

add dry ingredients and banana mixture alternately, mixing until smooth between additions.

fold mixture into the two greased pans

bake for 30 minutes at 350

serve sliced with butter

My Best Birthday Ever

This week I turned 32 years old. Jack planned me a whole surprise party complete with a cake and dollar store party games.

He got me this necklace which he picked out all by himself. Well my mom did drive him to the store and have a chat with him about the fact that I will not probably want a toy for my birthday, and she did pay for the necklace but he was so proud to give it to me and I absolutely love it. The gift also came with a package of marshmallow Peeps which are my favorite.

my new child named Canon

I got my new camera this week. It came UPS and I was like a little kid waiting for the delivery. I was so excited to be a photographer. Little did I know that you need to be a certified cameraologist before you can even start using the thing. I have since spent hours reading the manual and messing with it just to get to the point where I can take simple snapshots. The frustrating thing is that it takes me an hour to read and learn what someone could show me in two minutes. I am totally committed to getting really really good at using this camera though.

We went to the park this morning and I brought the camera to take some shots of the kids. It literally felt like as much work as having an additional child with us because I was so protective of it and so worried that it would get touched, stolen or injured. Abe is already so sick of having the thing in his face that he runs the other way when he sees me take it out. Jack has the opposite reaction. He wants to pose it elaborate unnatural psoitions with a big fake grin on his face. I'm hoping that eventually they will both be a little more moderate with their reactions to the camera.

Jack has also declared that he wants a camera just like mine for his birthday later this month "Not a kid's one. An expensive one just like yours, and I'm not going to let you touch it." He's not so much interested in photography, he's just got revenge on his mind.

In this one Jack is trying to physically make Abe smile. This is one of the only times in history that this technique actually worked.

Abe Loves swinging. He doesn't even care if you push him, he just wants to sit in there for hours.

having a camera around and taking pictures all the time has shed some light on the fact that my kid's faces are almost always filthy. Funny I had never really noticed before. Luckily for Abe, his blue eyes outshine his dirty little cheeks.

Bath tub horrors

Before I was a mom, I would have never believed how much time and energy a person could spend on poop. I have seen groups of moms get on the topic for hours on end. I have personally cheered when Jack filled his diaper after a bout of constipation and I have more than once discovered that I was unknowingly wearing poop on my clothing. With this said, I am going to tell you my latest poop dillemma. If you are adverse to hearing about fecal matter in your free time than I suggest you stop reading.

Babyham had developed a penchant for pooping in the bathtub. It started a few weeks ago when he was a little sick and the poor thing just couldn't help it. I was totally horrified. I sprayed him off and disinfected the tub. The next day, same thing. Except this time Jack was in the tub with him when it happened and Jack was understandably even more horrified. Now we rarely have a bath without a bowel movement.

The problem is that now Jack REFUSES to bathe with Abe and although I can't really blame him for being scarred, it creates some logistical problems. We have to do totally seperate baths now and I am so sick of bleaching out the tub after every bath!

Today I decided that I would wait until right after he pooped in his diaper before I gave him a bath. I sat in the bathroom reading a magazine while Babyham played in the water. Jack walked in and said, "Mom, why are there blueberries is baby's bath?" Needless to say, those weren't blueberries. Seriously, how many times a day can one tiny human poop? I honestly wonder if he has developed some kind of a Pavlovian response to bathing.

Maybe its time to switch to showers, Babyham.

Canon EOS Rebel XSi digital SLR... I don't even know what all of those letters mean

I don't usually get excited about posessions but John ordered this camera for me for my birthday and I am so ridiculously excited to get it. The best part is that he came up with this gift idea all by himself and even sold one of his rifles to pay for it. Okay, let me just repeat that last part again. He even sold one of his rifles to pay for it. If you have ever met my gun-nut husband then you know that this is equivalent to him selling one of our children. I am still shocked by the sacrifice and the thoughtfulness of my sweet husband.