I'm blogging on Friday night, so what?

Spencer managed to graduate from both high school and college without taking once calculus class, so he is paying for it now by taking a calculus review class this month every Friday and Sunday night for four hours! Laaaaame!!!!

So tonight since Spencer is gone, I did a prenatal yoga video (unfortunately I am not even kidding you, and no, I'm not pregnant, I'm just really sore from running this week and I don't have a non-prenatal yoga video) and now I'm onto blogging...

***Important information!!!*** Last night, we watched In Time (so weird and confusing!) with our friends and they introduced us to one of the most amazing desserts in the world! You put mixed berries in the bottom of a pan, dump yellow cake mix on it, drizzle a stick of melted butter over it, bake it for 375 degrees for I-don't-remember-how-long, serve it with Vanilla Bean Blue Bell Ice Cream and you've got my very favorite cobbler ever!

And now onto even more important information because I know you are all dying to know more about Jack's diet. He somewhat turned on pb&js and ate a whole chicken pot pie this week (minus two slices)! We also bought him animal crackers to try, but then realized that they were more cookie-like than cracker-like so I did him a huge favor and ate all of them for him in three days because I know he doesn't want to develop a ridiculous sweet tooth like his mother. I'm such a good mom.

I'm done with this post now and am going to go read Anne of Green Gables now because (sing with me!) it's Friday, Friday! Gotta get down on Friday!

If you say Friday 10 times really fast it starts to sound really weird.

Some really exciting news

We bought a desk!

We have been wanting to buy a desk so Spencer can study more at home, but have been putting off purchasing one since craigslist catastrophes and Spencer's tuition drained all of our desk buying money. Yesterday, Spencer called me from Walmart because he finally found our affordable desk! He explained to me that it was awesome because it was big, because it was foldable, and because the height was adjustable, which means we could move it out of our bedroom and into the living room to use as a coffee table when he's not studying! I told him he could buy it that very instant as long as he promised that we would never ever use it as a coffee table.

When he brought it home that night and set it up (unfolded it), he was so excited and kept saying how great it looked in our room. I told him that if by "great" he meant "it matched great", then he was right on! Our plastic, foldable, height-adjustable desk matches our plastic foldable chair, plastic night stands, plastic fan, and plastic laundry baskets just perfectly. I would post a picture but is it really that hard to picture in your mind?

Our set up may not be aesthetically pleasing or eco-friendly, but it is the cheapest brand-spanking-new stuff we could find, so it works for us!

Monday is a special day...

There needs to be another verse to that "Saturday" primary song that goes something like:

Monday is a special day,

it's the day we recover from Sunday.

Three hours of church is a long time for Jack to crawl the halls, especially because it's his nap time. It makes him cranky and clingy and fussy all Sunday long, so unfortunately Sundays aren't much of a day of rest for us. Towards the end of sacrament meeting when half of our congregation is out wandering the halls with their babies, I sometimes wonder why a church focused so much on families would make their services three hours long!? Three hours! We must be crazy! 

All I know is that I don't dread those dreaded Mondays anymore because that is when I get my happy napping baby back! Thank goodness we have weekdays to help us recover from weekends! ;)

"I should have been a Broadway singer"

Ever since I saw Les Miserables' Extended First Look yesterday, I have been listening to the music nonstop! I'm so excited to see it this Christmas!!!

If there was anything that my mom made clear to me growing up, it was that she should have been on Broadway. I was very spoiled growing up in that I was able to attend many Broadway musicals. (Maybe we were too young when my parents first took us? We went to Les Mis for the first time when James and I were really little, and after the show when my mom asked James if he liked it, he replied, "I liked every part but the singing parts!") Sometimes after the shows, my mom would say, "Oh, I should have been on Broadway! I don't need a main part, I just want to be a background singer or dancer. When I'm done raising you, I'm going to be on Broadway!" But most of the time, she would actually sing it. She would make up some tune and sing, "I should have been a Broooooadway singer! I'm going to be a Broooooadway singer!" Some sort of dancing was also involved.

She must have transfered or brainwashed some of this desire onto her offspring, because today when I was scrubbing the toilets while listening to the Les Mis soundtrack I thought of how much I would give to be able to be on Broadway marching to "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Mis or singing "Loathing" from Wicked or dancing to "Seize the Day" from Newsies. Just little background parts, you know!? And then the thought came to me! Mother and daughter realize their potential and run away to NYC to be on Broadway!!! That plot could so be a musical of it's own! And my mom already has the opening song and dance "I Should Have Been A Broadway Singer" down perfectly.

Cleaning the bathroom is a lot more fun while you perform Les Mis for yourself in front of the mirror and daydream of being a Broadway singer. 

A typical day in my life (It's epic!)

6:15 am     Jack wakes up
6:30 am     Spencer wakes up
6:45 am     Spencer throws Jack in our bed and I wake up
7:00 am     I feed Jack. (usually half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and applesauce) I figured out
                  that he will actually stay in his high chair if I play Barney on my laptop and I also figured
                  out that he will actually eat if he is served pb&j. (luckily he has no peanut allergies, I didn't
                  know I was supposed to wait until his was one!)
7:30 am     Spencer leaves for school. I continue to feed Jack and watch Barney.
8:00 am     Jack and I go running.
9:00 am     I get in the shower so I don't slime Jack and Jack stands against the wall by the tub and cries
                  and cries.
9:15 am     I nurse Jack and put him to sleep.
9:30 am     I do important things like get ready for the day and listen to Dennis Prager and clean or read
                  or blog stalk or blog or coupon or make Jack's food and eat lunch.
11:45 am   I feed Jack as he watches Barney. (half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and if
                  I'm lucky I can sneak in fruit and veggies and a hard boiled egg yolk.) This takes an hour.
                  An hour!
1:00 pm    We go for an outing! Swimming or library or grocery shopping or park or mall or zoo or
                 take lunch to Spencer on campus. Yesterday, we went to the zoo with Laurie and baby
                 Ruby! (Here, mom, with this picture and my facebook password, you can now put faces
                 to the names of all of my new Alabama friends!)

3:00 pm    Come home, nurse Jack and put him to sleep.
3:30 pm    Clean or read or blog stalk or blog or coupon or make Jack's food or get dinner ready.
4:30 pm    Jack wakes up and Spencer usually gets home and plays with him.
5:30 pm    Dinner and the usual pb&j and Barney.
6:30 pm    Spencer bathes Jack and I clean the kitchen.
7:00 pm    Books, nurse, sing, and bedtime for Jack.
7:45 pm    Spencer's flag football game or my Downton Abbey girls' night or book club (but
                 usually just quality time on the couch together watching Raising Hope or How I Met 
                 Your Mother after Spencer makes nobake cookies) 
10:00 pm  Bedtime!

And then we start all over the next day.
    
Sometimes (usually while I'm a half an hour into round three of feeding Jack pb&j while watching Barney) I wonder how in the heck I got from school and spontaneity and study abroads and working to naptimes and bathtimes and diaper changes (he runs away from me!) and spending at least three hours of my day trying to get food down my child's throat. While my days can sometimes be a little monotonous, I'm grateful for this simple life I'm leading; I've dreamed for this.

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P.S. My mom feels that since I continue to post naked pictures of Jack on my blog, I should let my millions upon millions of blog stalkers out there know that the marks on Jack's arms and legs are not bedbug bites or cockroach bites or some funky Alabama disease. They are his scars from when he got the hand, mouth, foot virus and they are gradually fading, poor little guy!

Quinoa and rain

On Friday, I "liked" California Pizza Kitchen on facebook, then logged onto Spencer's facebook account and made him "like" it too so we could both get their new Quinoa and Arugula Salad for dinner for free! (Go "like" it and get a free salad! The coupon expires on Wednesday I think!) We separately picked up our free salads to go and also shamelessly asked if we could get their complimentary bread and butter to go as well. (Yes, we are those people. Maybe one day when we have money we will stop.) We then headed to the food court at the mall to enjoy our totally free dinner!

Can I talk about Quinoa for a second? It's weird tasting. Our salads were decent (yes, I'm complaining about free salads) and we both agreed that it would have tasted a lot better without the Quinoa. Quinoa seems to be the new health fad, being a complete protein and all, but I would like to know how many quinoa pinners (or is it pinteresters?) out there have actually tried a quinoa recipe that they have pinned? If you've tried it, do you like it? Because Spencer and I both noticed after eating our average tasting Quinoa salad, that we were very satisfied and never got hungry or had sweet cravings for the rest of the night! A miracle! So you Quinoa eaters out there... I want recipes that make Quinoa taste delicious, not tolerable, okay!? Can you please give me good tasting quinoa recipes?

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It rained today, so Jack and I didn't get to go on our usual afternoon outing. Instead, Jack just stood looking longingly out the window in his cute little pigeon toed stance wondering what in the world was coming out of the sky.

So I stripped him down to his diaper, opened the door, and watched to see what he would do. I tried to put a towel down so the wood wouldn't be so hard on his hands and knees but he crawled straight past it, and the lucky kid didn't get one sliver!

When he got to his I'm-so-excited-I'm-going-to-make-an-asian-face-and-giggle-uncontrollably state, I figured it was time to throw him in the bath.

 And what's a bath without lapping half the water up with your tongue?!

Things I am not loving today

• Birmingham's 9 percent sales tax!! So high!!!
• Pinning Jack's hands down as he screamed in terror and pain while the mean nurse gave him shots. Since we were so brave, I rewarded myself with TCBY (still taking advantage of free birthday food!) and I rewarded Jack with applesauce. 

And a couple things I'm loving today too:

• The Aggie win against the Utes! (So what if the game was last Friday and we're just barely getting over the homesickness it caused us?! Tooootally worth it.)

• Brad Wilcox's talk, "His Grace is Sufficient." Watch it right this instant!!!

Birthday

My birthday was yesterday and it was a good one!

• Spencer made the best pancakes and buttermilk syrup for breakfast!
•  Jack and I went running in the rain!
• We maxed out on the free Arby's turkey club sandwiches. Arby's was offering them for free from 11-1 so of course we stopped by the Arby's by our apartment on the way to meet Spencer for lunch at the Arby's by his campus.
• I ordered new running shoes!
• Spencer surprised me with plants for our very bare apartment! (Jack is already enjoying the dirt)

• Jack surprised me with kisses! And a birthday dance. (Again, a video probably entertaining to grandma only)

• I cut my hair short! Spencer has been trying to convince me to cut it for over a year now because he has never seen me with short hair, which is crazy because my hair has been short basically my whole life. I caved because I have been wearing my long hair in a messy bun for four sweaty months straight now. (messy bun meaning I spent 20 seconds putting my hair up after I got out of the shower and didn't look in the mirror while doing it, not those cute sock buns that I never figured out how to do (evidence in video above))

• I got lots of nice phone calls, birthday cards, texts, and facebook messages (why else would I put my birthday on fb if not to get the 'happy birthdays'?)
• My parents surprised me with a gift card to Cheesecake Factory! Our wonderful friends kindly came over last minute to watch Jack and and we had a delicious baby-less dinner of salmon and vanilla bean cheesecake with raspberry sauce.
• And then Hunger Games!!!

Yay for 23!

Labor Day

We had a fun weekend at the farmer's market, at Obama 2016 (yay for babysitting trades!!) (go see this movie!), and at BBQs at friends' houses.

The farmers market we went to was similar to the one we went to in Logan, except for the sticky humid weather and the fresh okra and football crucifixes that they sell here.

 Jack was very temperamental at the farmers market, and would scream unless he could sit in his stoller like this: