Fake-out, and isn't it supposed to be winter?

This morning before Joel left for work, I went to the back to see if he was ready to have family prayer, and he was, so he called for Kailey. We both know that when you call for Kailey, you have about a 25% chance of her coming. This time, she didn't come, so Joel decided that we could just have prayers in the living room. We headed to the front, and when we got to the living room, we found Kailey sleeping on the couch. We decided to let her sleep and have prayers without her. Just as Joel started the prayer, we heard this gasp, then laughter. The child had faked us out! She was awake the whole time, pretending to be asleep. We thought that it was pretty funny. Where did she learn this, and when did she get the idea that she could do this?

Later in the morning, I was getting ready to put Kailey in the bath when Rickey came up frantic to go out. So Kailey and I went to the front to let her out. When we go there, we found that it was raining outside, and Kailey was really excited about it. She wanted to go play in it so badly, so I decided to let her go have some fun. Even though it is late December, it was somewhere around 70 degrees. She had such a good time jumping and hopping around.


Kailey had a great time tonight playing in the box that her kitchen came in. Aren't boxes great?

Christmas Eve calls en espanol, and nesting

Joel and I were actually home this year for Christmas. We spent Christmas eve night putting together a kitchen set. At one point, I was laying down, taking a rest, and the phone rang. I reached over to answer, and after I said hello, the person on the other end said, "Hola, buenos noches!" for some reason when this person said this, it didn't register that that was Spanish, I guess because those are such familiar words, and I was half asleep. Then he started with some sentences in Spanish. It really caught me off guard, so I just said, "sorry, you have the wrong number," and hung up. Well, I guess that that confused him because he called right back. I tried again, telling him that he had the wrong number, but I was awake enough now to know that he didn't understand, so I just hung up, and went into the front to help Joel out. I figured that this guy would get it, and give up. Not the case, I explained to Joel who was on the phone, and a little after explaining the phone rang again, so Joel went and turned the answering machine on. After he turned it on, we got about 4 or 5 more calls, each with a message in spanish. I told Joel that I was going to get the phone, and try to help them understand that they had the wrong number. The whole time I was trying desperately to remember some of the spanish that I had in high school and college, but it just wasn't coming to me. So, they of course called again after a few minutes, and I answered. I got the same, hola, buenos noches, and I explained, "no hablo espanol," I guess this confused the man, so he passed the phone to someone else, they gave me a line in spanish, and I replied with my line, they passed the phone again, and by the end I must have spoken with 4 of them. After I had talked to the fourth one, there was a weird noise and the connection was lost or they hung up. Either way, they didn't call back. On one hand, I felt bad that they were trying unsuccessfully to get in touch with someone, and on the other hand, their persistence was pretty funny.

I would post some Christmas photos here, but I don't have a single one. I used the video camera all day, and didn't get the camera out once :(

I had a normal 2 week check-up today with my doctor, and some strange things happened, maybe the planets aligned, I don't know what was going on. I see a doctor at the physicians tower at Woman's and this morning when I arrived for my 10:15 appt., I pulled into the very full parking lot, and someone was pulling out of the very first spot in the parking lot. I don't know if you have ever tried to park at Woman's, but it is almost as bad as LSU, I usually end up parking in the back of the extension of the parking lot that was added recently. I could not believe my eyes. I walked in, ready for the usual 5 min. wait for an elevator, and lo and behold, the elevator opened right up. I got upstairs to the desk, 15 min. early (I had built in this time for the parking and elevator). I figured I would be waiting in the waiting room at least the 15 min. and probably more like 30. Instead, I went to open the door, and Theresa, the nurse, was coming out, and she says, "I was coming to get you." I went right in, and waited just a few minutes for the doctor. He checked the usual, heartbeat, measurement, etc. asked if I had any questions, and that was it. I was done with my appt. before 10:15. I walked out, and again the elevators that usually take several minutes, opened right up. I made it out to the car by 10:20. It was very strange.

I have a little over a month to go before my due date, and I guess that that and the hormones were starting to get to me yesterday. My hormones have been particularly crazy this week; I have had some crazy mood swings. So yesterday, I was thinking about how little time we have before the baby comes, and I started to think of all of the things that we have left to get. I just felt this urgency to make sure that everything was ready for bringing home a new baby. I made a list so that I wouldn't forget anything, and so that I could start picking some things up while I'm out. Well I guess the combination of the list and crazy hormones were getting to me, because I could not get my mind settled to go to sleep. I had to discuss it all at length with Joel before I could go to sleep. He was probably thinking that I was crazy, but I really had to get that stuff out. I guess that he felt bad for me, because today I was IMing him at work, and he told me to go get a rocker (one of the items on my list, that I was most concerned about).

Kailey's two, and ready or not, Christmas and Eli are almost here

It has been nearly three weeks since I've posted, yikes. Since then, Kailey turned two, and moved up to a "big girl bed" on the same day. She got a tricycle, an art easel, a Winnie the Pooh seat, and a few other gifts. She was really excited about all of her gifts. She calls her tricycle the "cycle," pronounced like the tool that cuts wheat, and the same word as popsicle for her (can be tricky for me, when she says, "I want cycle/sicle," I'm not sure if she wants a popsicle or to ride her tricycle) She went in for her check-up and shots last week. We really love our pediatrician, Dr. Flechas, we never wait long, never too quick to prescribe meds, and great personality. Kailey is in the 90th percentile for height and 25th percentile for weight (25 lbs and 35 in.). She had to have the flu vaccine (nasal spray, thank goodness) and a shot. I was so shocked because she didn't even flinch when they sprayed the solution in both sides of her nose, and didn't cry at all when they gave her the shot. The nurse was and I were both shocked and impressed.

The other day I was thinking about some things that I love about Kailey at this age:
When she wakes up from a nap, and is ready for me to let her out of her room, she yells, "mom....mom!" it just sounds really funny because she usually calls me mama or mommy, and she says it so loudly and abruptly.
I can have simple conversations with her.
She is starting to understand emotion and sympathy more, so if I seem bothered by something, she will ask me what's wrong, and after I tell her, she says, "awww".
She remembers people's names and gets excited to see people that she remembers.
She pronounces the letter J like she is from South America, she pronounces Jamie as yamie (she sometimes calls Jamie "my yamie," which is funny to me, and Joe is yo.
When she does something wrong, she says, "sorry" and this is pronounced, soffree.
She calls herself Kaikey (pronounced cake-e), a combination of Kailey and K-K, I guess.
She loves to help me feed Rickey, the dog, and will even tell me throughout the day, "mommy, puppy unggee (hungry)," in hopes that we can go feed her again.
She is very energetic and free spirited. I don't always love this side of her :)

We have been doing lots of Christmas shopping. I developed a theory on why I do last minute shopping. For so many years, I was in school or working and didn't have much time to shop, so it usually got put off until Christmas break, so now I just do the same thing, wait until a week or so before Christmas to do my shopping. I came up with this theory when Jeni, a friend in our ward, was saying last week that she had some shopping left to do, and was waiting for time off from work. I have decided that next year, I'm going to set a goal to get my shopping done early. Wait, who am I kidding, the main reason that I don't get my shopping done is that I am a procrastinator. It is something that I try to work on it. In college I would do anything to avoid doing homework until the last minute. My favorite thing to do instead of homework was scrub the bath tub, because I felt like I was really getting something done, and it relived stress because it is a physical, mindless job.

Kailey, after a long day of shopping (this was taken at 6 p.m., needless to say, this little nap ruined her 8 o'clock bed time)

This is just a funny picture that I took the other day. She loves to run from me, after I dry her off, but before I get clothes on her, and this time she didn't get very far when something on tv caught her attention)

Like I mentioned before, we moved Kailey to a big bed, and this is her sleeping in it for the first time. I was pretty nervous about how she would do, but she has done great so far. The first week, we had no problems at all, this week she got out of bed and cried a few times after we put her down for the night, because she had late naps that messed her up, but she is back on track now.

Jamie, Jeni K. (I know quite a few Jeni's, hence the initial), Lisa, Allison, Kailey, and I drove to Houston on the 8th for some Ikea shopping. I planned the trip to pick up Kailey's bed and dresser, and when Joel mentioned it Friday night at the ward Christmas party, Jeni and Lisa decided to join us. It was fun to have their company; I'm glad that they came. I hope that they were glad that they came. 8 hours in the car with a two year old and a one year old can be kind of tough sometimes, and we had some difficulty with the cargo. Kailey's bed frame was in a huge box, as expected, but not only was it huge, it was wide, wider than the van, which made it very tricky to secure to the luggage rack on top of the van. We had to pull off of the interstate twice to try to resecure it after it started sliding off. We finally took the frame out of the box and tied half of it to the rack and shoved the other half inside of the van. We had so much stuff packed inside the van, I don't know how we made it home with everything. Poor Lisa and Jeni had to climb back to their seats and had very limited space. It was a long day, but worth it, I love Ikea!
Where else can you get an iron bed frame and dresser for $150 each?

I can hardly believe that we have less than a month and a half before the new baby gets here! I've gotten a few things done that need to be done like working on potty training with Kailey and getting her out of the crib, but I still have lots to do!

Burninating the taco shells and a couple of funny pictures

Tonight Joel and I had tacos (contrary to the menu on the right; the pork wasn't thawed so it had to swap places with the tacos). In preparation of the tacos, I put the shells in the oven as usual. I was feeling a little impatient because my back was hurting, so I decided to crank the oven up a little bit to broil and see if I couldn't get the shells browned up real quick. After I turned them up, I got a little distracted by other things, like Kailey throwing my freshly folded clothes off of the chair. When I made it back to the stove, I noticed some smoke coming from the back right burner. At first I thought that I had turned that burner on by mistake and something landed on it, but the burner was off. I knew that the oven vents through that burner, so I checked the oven. There they were, six little taco shells with 3-5 inch flames. When I tell you these shells were on fire, they were seriously on fire; big blue, purple, red, and yellow flames. I was going to grab the fire extinguisher, but I remembered that we never got one of those when we bought the house. I grabbed the flour and started throwing it on them. After a few seconds I had it under control. The whole time Kailey was laughing and saying oooohhhh. Evidently she thought that the fire was fun and pretty; I certainly did not feel the same. I had to open up doors and windows to get all of the smoke out of the house; it actually felt really good, because it finally cooled down a little outside. Here is a picture of the taco shells and flour sitting on the old dead dryer in our garage (our dryer died last week).

This beautiful picture goes with the title of the blog "burninating the taco shells"

If you are unfamiliar with Trogdor, and would like to learn about him, click here.

Yesterday my post had a section about video games. I completely forgot to include a story from last night involving games. Joel and I went over to Jamie and Joe's for dinner, and afterwards we played some 4 player wii tennis. Well, unbeknownst to me, I get a little over zealous with interactive wii controls. As we were playing tennis, i noticed, or it was pointed out, that I was really getting into the game. I tried to scale it back a little, but as the game got more intense, I didn't notice or try any more. I was sitting in about the middle of the couch and Joe's guitar was propped up at the end of the couch. At one particularly crucial moment, I lunged from my spot on the couch toward the end of the couch hitting Joe's guitar with my remote. I was a little embarrassed, but around the aforementioned company it was more funny than embarrassing. From now on, I am going to be extra careful when I'm playing wii, especially if it is not with close family.


These are a couple of pictures that were on the camera when I got the taco picture off.

Here's what happens when Kailey is left unattended with applesauce.

Allison got a little tired at lunch last Thursday and decided to take a little break (that's what Jamie and used to call it when we would lay on the floor and take a 5-10 min. naps when we were up late at night/early morning working on school assignments that we had put off; we were not very good students, but managed to come out with decent g.p.a's in the end).

A game addiction and whispering

I haven't posted anything in a couple of days, because I rented a game, Beautiful Katamari, for Joel's Xbox. I'm not the gaming type. Joel is into Halo3 right now, but I don't even attempt it. This game is so much fun. It's kind of an odd game, but I like it a lot.




I have a Kailey story, too. We don't give Rickey any table food at all, and we don't let Kailey give it to her either. This just about kills Kailey, she wants so badly to share her food with Rickey. When we are eating, she will look at me with sad eyes and says "puppy ungee (hungry)." Also, I have been trying to teach Kailey to whisper. She can be loud sometimes at church, the library, etc., so we have been working on whispering and using an inside voice. She just doesn't seem to be getting it. Until this week she had never even tried to whisper. I thought that she just didn't understand what I was trying to get her to do. Well, turns out she did, and just chose not to. I was at the computer the other day, and Kailey was in the room with me eating a snack. Rickey of course was right at her feet hoping that Kailey would drop a crumb. After a few minutes I heard Kailey whispering Rickey's name, I turn to look and she had dropped small peices of food, was whispering Rickey's name, and bending and pointing to the food. I just laughed to myself and pretended like I didn't see. I figured it wouldn't hurt if Rickey eats a few crumbs. Then after she had given her a few crumbs I reminded her that we don't feed the puppy our food.


This picture is about a year old, but it was the only one that I could find effectively displays how Rickey spends about a fourth of her day. She follows Kailey around with her nose to the ground sniffing for food. (She's not sniffiing for food here, but that's what she looks like a good part of the day)