6 random things about me

I was tagged by Jenni to do this e-mail, so I thought it would be fun to do this.

1. I LOVE good chinese food. Unfortunately I haven't had any really good chinese/vietnamese/etc. food since I've been in the Seattle area. There was an oriental resturant that I went to with my grandma once on a trip to Seattle, and their food was amazing, especially the fried prawns...mmmm....makes me hungry just thinking about it.
2. I love to cook good food. I like findng really good recipes and fixing them, like Creamy Spinach (or broccoli) and Tortellini or a new one I've discovered, a recipe for Oriental Orange Chicken (I've allready blogged about the tortellin dish, so maybe some time I'll add the Orange Chicken recipe). I also like to tweak recipes to make them taste better.
3. I want to write and illustrate children's books. It's something that i'm continually working at and someday soon I hope it will all come together.
4. I like growing things, like flowers and plants. Someday when we own a house I'm going to go crazy planting stuff in the yard, like flowers and trees. Right now I have 10 pots with flowers and plants in them... though i'm a little worried about my rose bush, i'm afraid it might not have survived the winter.... (ryan thinks it's an ugly bush, so he's hoping it died).
5. When I was a kid I wanted to create something- it didn't matter what. I was constantly coming up with new ideas of what to make, none of which worked out. There was the "igloo" made of plywood and other excess supplies my Dad had from being a contractor (I sat in the igloo for about 5 minutes until i discovered it was being invaded by earwigs); the "slip and slide" made out of black garbage bags, and held down by rocks- that was painful; the "sprinkler"- made using a plastic bottle with holes poked in it- the water wouldn't shoot out , it just leaked out of the holes and down the sides of the bottle. I would try to sew dresses and clothes and halloween costumes, and they never turned out right. I didn't want to follow a pattern, I wanted to do it my own way. My Mom would try to teach me to do it the right way, but I didn't have the patience to learn to do them right.
6. My favorite memory ever was the day I had Ethan. I woke up that morning around 4 or so because the contractions were getting really painful. We went into the hospital around 8 or 9, it was a beautiful sunny sunday morning, and there was barely any traffic (it being sunday morning in Utah). Once they gave me the epideral I was so comfortable, which was nice after 9 months of being uncomfortable. I laid there for most of the day just thinking about my little boy who was about to come, while Ryan read a book. I only had to push for about 20 minutes. As they wheeled me to my room, I held Ethan on my lap and he sucked on my finger. It was so sureal to all of a sudden have this small baby that you were in charge of, and responsible for. The day we left the hospital, I was waiting in my hopsital room for Ryan to pick my mom up from the airport. I picked Ethan up from his little bassonet tray thing, and held him while looking out the window at the beautiful sunset. It had lightly snowed durning the night, and the mountains were lightly covered in snow, and it was all so beautiful, with the bautiful sunset behind the mountains, and it was starting to rain a little. It was definately the best two days of my whole life. Ryan doesn't understand, because he remembers the gross parts of it all, and I remember that, but my little boy was worth all of that.

Crayons, Thunderstorms, and Peonies

I finally got around to buying Ethan some crayons, I know I'm a little slow on these things. He LOVES them. He doesn't like to color with them, he just likes taking them out of the box and putting them back in. Ryan tried to show him how to color with them and he got mad at him for taking one of the crayons. So, we just let him play with them. The box didn't last more than a day, so I spray mounted some cute paper on my band-aid cannister and put the crayons in there.









Today we had a thunderstorm, it wasn't spectacular, I didn't see any lightening, but it was still ncie. I love thunderstorms, no matter how i'm feeling, thunderstorms always make me feel better. Once the thunderstorm was about over, I decided to strap on my roller blades and go skate around for a while. I haven't skated in years, so I was a little rusty, but it was so nice to skate around again. (Ethan was taking a nap, so i thought it would be a good chance to go out skating in the driveway).
The peonies in front of the house are finally starting to bloom, and they are very pretty, so I decided to take a picture of one of them, along with the beautiful dark blue sky that we had after the thundserstorm.

More

Tonight I was feeding ethan pieces of popcorn chicken, and I got him to sign, on his own, the word for more- and he did it twice!! This is the first thing he has signed, so I was pretty happy. He's going to be having a speech therapist come to our house to help him with his speech and communication. Seeing him finally sign something today gave me hope that it won't be long until he says his first word. He has also learned to wave good bye- when Kambree goes to leave he will tentatively wave, and today when the speech/developmental lady went to leave he waved to her all on his own without me telling him to. I know this might not seem like that big of a deal, but it is nice to see him learning and progressing.

Dressing up like dad

Last night I was getting Ethan ready for bed, I had taken off his clothes and went to grab his pajama's. When I came back to Ethan, he was sitting on the floor in my bedroom trying to put Ryan's blue dress shirt on. He had one arm through a sleeve but since the shirt was so big it kept coming off. Ethan decided to try to lay backwards on the shirt and scoot into it. Ethan was unaware that I was watching, so I went and got Ryan so he could see, however by the time we got back Ethan had lost interest. I wish I had gotten a picture, because it was really cute.

baby food and baby gates

Two days ago I decided to re-organize my pantry, as it was getting a little out of hand. As I was stacking canned goods I came accross three jars of baby food. Ethan refuses to eat the creamed baby food as it is anymore, but I didn't want to throw it out. Today for lunch I came up with a great idea of how to get him to eat it. I discovered recently that Ethan loves green beans, esp. with a little cream of mushroom soup, and cheese melted in. So, I decided to try and mix in a little of one of the jars of baby food and see if he would eat it, and he did! I'm going to have to think of other foods i can mix the stuff into so that i can get him to eat these last jars of food. I had heard of mixing creamed veggies like carrots into spaghetti sauce to get vegetables into your children, so I'm thinking I might start doing that a little bit.

I finally have both of my new baby gates installed, and I love them. It's so nice not to have Ethan or Kambree in the kitchen. It's also nice that they are confined to the living room area, it's much easier to keep that area child proof. I took a picture of Ethan and Kambree at the gate, I thought it was kind of cute because you would think they were in jail. :) They both have gotten used to it though, and are pretty good about playing in the living room and not getting too upset about being locked out of the kitchen and dining room.