baby havin babies

half and half

2012-01-23T21:44:00.000-08:00

inspect the above picture. what are you noticing? serious cuteness? how much she looks like lily as a baby? how much she resembles her mother's ancestors on the right side of her face and how much she resembles her father's people on the left? that's right- mia has one caucasian eye and one asian eye. mia's left eye has been blessed with an eye lid fold (something that many non-asian people take for granted!) and her right eye... not so much. it's football shaped. some kids have their mom's mouth and their dad's nose, our sweet mia decided she would take one of each of our eyes. so sweet ;)

the kids in the striped pajamas

2012-01-19T07:24:00.000-08:00

ok. this post has nothing to do with a concentration camp, although maybe topher and lily sometimes feel like they are living under a crazy dictatorship. i dunno. but this post has everything to do with some seriously recycled and well-worn and well-loved pajamas.

here is topher wearing a pair of red striped pajamas when he was a wee little one:

after he was done with them, those pjs got sent to korea and sunha wore them. i really wish i had a picture of her wearing them. i actually think those pajamas may have been sungu's now that i thnk about it. if i can get a pic of that too, that will be amazing.

and now, these pajamas are back in arizona and mia couldn't be happier about it:

man i love this face!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! mia's smile literally melts my heart. what's that you're saying? that's the wrong use of 'literally'? i don't think so. when she smiles i can actually feel my atrium turning into a pile of fluid, meshing into a mess with the lower ventricle and in a few seconds, there is a pool of vessels and valves that used to be my heart, but is no longer. it's so wonderful! and this happens about 20 times a day, if not more.

so i am a sucky blogger these days. but it's cause i try not to blog when the kids are awake, but there are rarely times in my day when all three kids are asleep, so right now mia is asleep and the two big ones are playing nicely together, so i decided to steal a couple moments for myself this morning to reconnect with the outside world! but now mia is stirring, so i am out!

happy 2 months!

2012-01-10T21:24:00.000-08:00

today is mia's two month birthday and i remembered!!!!

i had every good intention of making a big deal about mia's one month birthday last month- but i honestly forgot when december 10th roled around. blame it on lack of sleep, lack of brain cells, or both. but you cannot blam it on a lack of love cause i am overflowing with that!

mia continues to be a sweet, chubby, happy baby. she had her doctor's appointment yesterday and is weighing in at 11 lbs 3 oz (60%ile), measuring 23 in (72%ile), and her head circumference is a mere 15.25 in (50%ile)!!!! craziness. she is wearing most of her weight in her cheeks, but not in the rest of her head, like brother topher did.

here's a sweet little video of our girl, hanging out with her dad. mia really loves to smile at everyone she sees, but she gets supertalkative and happy whenever her dad is around:

happy two month birthday my sweet little baby!

bigger isn't always better...

2012-01-06T19:12:00.000-08:00

but in this case- it is!
for the first time ever we have a FULL family picture of chris' side of the family. this does not include any aunts or uncles or cousins. this is straight up all brothers and sisters:

the top row consists of chris' sister breanne and her husband scott, and chris' brother josh and his new bride aly. the next row is chris' sister andi, her beau jason, and her kids david and christina. then there's barb and jerry, and kim and wes. on the bottom row is chris' brother justin and his wife jen and their daughter zoe. then there's chris and me and our litter, and then chris' brother robert, and wife lindsay and gabe, corban and emma.

thanks so much to amy roberts for having the patience to capture this wonderful moment in time for us!

merry christmas from 2011 in 2012...

2012-01-03T20:10:00.000-08:00

christmastime for us watsons was busybusybusy. the kids are busy playing with the plethora of christmas presents they received, i too am busy with some of my awesome new toys. christmas as an adult is 100% better now than when i was a kid. the main reason is cause i have kids, and the second reason is cause chris' family is amazing and they get me great stuff for christmas!

ok. i just tried to upload a ton of pitures but it did not work out. there's 10 minutes of my life that i am not going to get back... maybe next time folks. (i did just upload the picture up top... i will try this endeavor again...)

anyhoo, my top two presents i got for christmas this year were cash and a kindle fire, from my two awesome sets of in-laws. with some of my cash i got a new pan that i used this morning to make crepes. it was so magical. nothing stuck to the bottom of the pan, the crepes were thin and perfect! yeah for cash! and the kindle fire was a very unexpected and generous gift. i love it. i have already read two and a half books on it in a week. that's one and a half more books than i read for the entire year before i got my electronic reader!

what have i been reading on my kindle you ask? the hunger games. chris and his family are crazy about the books, and the upcoming movie, so due to some serious peer pressure, i too am crazy about these books. (and yes, if my friend jumped off a bridge, i would in all likelihood jump right after them. as long as it was off of a bridge into a vat of marshmallows.) speaking of crazy, these books are making me a bit insane as i keep thinking that people, namely the capitol, are watching me as i cook, play with the kids, and read my book. and when i'm not paranoid that president snow is judging my every move, i think that maybe someone is going to jump out of the bushes, or out from under lily's bed, and shoot me with an arrow. i know you're out there katniss...

so besides some serious paranoia, christmas this year also brought a ton of wonderful new memories for me to store in my crazy brain. lily and topher were SO EXCITED to open their presents on christmas morning. lily kept gasping for air as she ripped her presents open. it was too funny. topher, totally unprompted, declared: "best christmas ever." it was especially funny to me cause i had just watched the Glee christmas episode where they kept dropping that same line. topher is so with it and he doesn't even know it.

if you were to take away all the presents and extra fluff that surround christmas, we watsons still had a supergreat time. we saw our whole watson family, including chris' brother justin, and his wife jennifer, and their daughter zoe. they flew out from alabama, where they are stationed, and we hadn't seen them in over a year, so it was superspecial having all of lily and topher and mia's watson-related cousins with them. we even managed to have a photoshoot on the 26th with all of chris' parents, the six kids, all the their spouses, and all their kids. that's 27 people. 18 adults, 2 teenagers, and 7 kids under the age of five. i haven't seen the pictures yet, but i am interested to see if there is a single one with all eyes open and looking towards the camera. i am going to guess not. but that's ok. it was just so great (and a miracle!) for all of us to be together. pictures to follow one of these days...

and of course, the reason for the season is our Lord and Saviour's birth. we sang happy birthday to Jesus, complete with birthday cakes and cupcakes, twice. topher kept saying he wanted to see Jesus and we told him he would one day. then he asked if Jesus lived in our hearts, and we told him that He does. then topher asked if God lived in our hearts too and we said that Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit live in our hearts. then lily corrected all of us, in a way that only first borns do (ah sparks of a mini-jeehon!), and she told us that they lived in our stomachs cause we ate heaven. i don't know where that came from, but there you have my four year old's theology. at any rate- Happy Birthday Jesus. again. cause even though christmas was 9days ago, it's still worth saying and celebrating today and every day. thanks for being born Jesus and thanks especially for saving me.

look! pictures uploaded too!

merry christmas from 1984!

2011-12-24T20:50:00.001-08:00

it's christmas eve and i am watching Notting Hill with my bff, chris watson. actually, he is listening to/"reading" the third book of 'The Hunger Games' in one ear and watching this movie with me and enjoying a cup of chai. multi-tasking. it's just how we live now. and we love it!

so, i found this wicked good picture from 1984-ish:

that's jeehon in the ballet outfit. and my older brother is the strapping lad to the left. the weird looking one in the middle- that's my other brother. just kidding! that's me! and the tree isn't a funny homage to a charlie brown christmas or anything, it was just our christmas tree. we were such funny immigrants.

hope you are having a wonderful christmas eve with your loved ones, and an even more wonderful christmas with even more of your loved ones. yeah for love and yeah to the Father who shows us what love is. happy birthday Jesus!

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." 1 John 4:9-11

six weeks

2011-12-22T20:52:00.000-08:00

christmas is 3 days away and i haven't finished making one of my presents (hair clips) and i have not wrapped a single present. i also meant to make and deliver cookies to all of our renters but i just finished the baking part today and we will see if any of the decorating or delivering will happen before sunday. at this rate i am guessing NOT. oh well. i tried.

though i am busy and my monkey children are all asleep, which means my time is money right now, i wanted to post some pics of all my kids at their 6 week stages. (happy six weeks of being alive mia!!!) lots of people ask me who mia looks like- and these pictures don't do her justice, but i think mia is an exact replica of lily. for people who knew lily as a baby, they say that mia is lily. so precious. i cannot get enough of my new baby. and my old babies aren't bad either ;)

quick story- lily LOVES her little sister. she has been so helpful and wonderful. if mia starts fussing when someone else is holding her, lily comes over to me and whispers in my ear: "mia needs you mom." it's so sweet. anyway, i left mia on my bed so that i could throw out a diaper. lily was sitting next to her and i told lily to make sure that mia didn't roll of of the bed. not that mia can roll or anything. just wanted to give lily a task. anyhoo, i come back 30 seconds later and lily is sitting with mia in her lap. very dangerous, and i told lily not to do that again, yet so cute!

here's a pic of some supervised big-sister-little-sister time:

the other day ago chris and i were saying how lily and mia are so beautiful yet gross. this week both of them passed gas right in chris' face. topher would not do that. he is too proper (sometimes.) when he poops and it's gross he yells at me: "get out mom! it's too stinky!" he's so considerate.

anyway, hope you are all enjoying these wonderful holidays!

lily:

topher:

mia:

not quite a walk through the park...

2011-12-18T21:51:00.000-08:00

having 3 kids is not quite like a walk through the park. maybe more like a walk through the forest- most of the time i am on a well-traveled trail. but occassionally i get derailed and i am just staring at a bunch of trees. like last week when i found myself sitting on the couch and all three kids were crying at the same time. it only lasted a minute. and i actually started laughing because the whole thing was kind of ridiculous. but that was definitely a 'derailed' moment.

i just noticed that i only have 2 posts for december, and it's already the 18th. i don't know where time is going. i bought an InStyle magazine last week, and i am still only 3/4 of the way through it! i am trying to relish my moments with my mia as best i can because i definitely realize how quickly this baby phase passes. lily and topher have been so great at entertaining each other that i find i really do have a lot of time to spend with her. and mia, on the flip side of that, sleeps a lot still so i have time to hang out with lily and topher. we've done a ton of baking this week, and even managed to get in a reading lesson! we are working on words that end with 'at'. there were many times when i felt like hitting myself with a bat, or wishing a fat rat would come in with a cat and slp my kids, but then i remembered my kids are 4 and 3, and that i haven't done any schoolwork stuff with them since the end of september...

i heard the transition from 2-3 kids was going to be very tough. cause you go from a man-to-man defence to playing zone defence. but it's not been that bad for me. i am no super-mom, my kids are just so much easier to handle right now. admittedly the transition from 0-1 kid was an adjustment. but not too terrible. the adjustment from 1-2 kids was- to be frank- an ass-kicker. i did not think i would ever recover from that! which is why mia came 3.5 years after topher. but what a blessing to have our mia in the mix. life is very good right now. very very good.

chris' birthday is in an hour and 6 minutes. which means our anniversary is in the same amount of time. so crazy how much life has changed in just 6 short years. last night we went to Some Burros, a cheap mexican restaurant, with some good friends to celebrate chris' birthday. all we did was eat, come back to our place for some ice cream pie and decaf coffee, and then everyone went to pick up their kids by about 9:30. and as people were leaving and hugging, everyone kept saying- "this was so fun!" we didn't do anything! but it was so fun! it was so relaxing and quiet. man we are getting so old! but it's so nice to get old with so many wonderful people by your side!

i had a really random 'daydream' today that i am going to share with you. chris told me i was a 'warrior' after i told him about it. that's because he often runs scenarios in his head about what he would do if something terrible happened- like if a crazy person opened fire at church, or something like that. so my 'daydream' occured in payson, a town an hour north of us, and we were there celebrating chris' cousin's daughter's birthday. and i got to thinking that if something terrible happened to us on our drive back down to the vally, like if we got caught in a storm, or crashed into the woods, that i could/would breastfeed my whole family to help us to survive. weird, eh? maybe i need more sleep.

mia is starting to stir, so i should go. but i will take this brief moment to wish my stunningly good looking husband a super-happy 32nd birthday, and a big ol' happy 6th anniversary! thanks for sticking so close by my side these last 6 years- with all the size and hormone changes that have occured along the way. i love you so very very very very much christopher joel watson! you have matured and grown so much in just 6 years, which has caused my love and respect for you to do the same.

(dang! i just re-read this post. sounds like i have serious ADHD, or like i may be high on meth, or both. ah to be the mother of a newborn again!)

4 weeks of magical goodness

2011-12-08T21:21:00.000-08:00

i cannot believe mia is already 4 weeks old today! time is flying. i also cannot believe that i managed to blog last week. i feel like it's been forever. i am pretty behind on my posts. my girlfriend Jenny Bishop took some PHENOMENAL newborn pics of mia, and of lily and topher too, and i still haven't posted those. mostly cause i am using a bunch of those pictures for our Christmas card this year, but also because i have not really been on the computer much except to finish up my christmas shopping (Amazon.com is the most amazing thing since sliced bread. i don't really like to shop online but they made buying my last 3 presents ridiculously easy and painfree!) and the fact that i didn't have to load and unload three kids to get those last presents has almost fully converted me into doing all of my shopping online!)
anyhoo, i am also not going to post them today because i don't have the disc with me right now, and mia is going to need to eat soon so i have to wrap this post up sooner than later. but those pics are coming so just hang in there!

but for now i will post some awesome pics that my mother-in-law Barb took last week while my parents were out here. i told everyone to look nice for the picture and as usual, my overachieving husband showed up looking better and fanicer than all the rest of us ;)

three weeks

2011-11-30T21:22:00.000-08:00

my mia (mee-ah. people have been asking so i am clarifying. not my-ah) is going to be three weeks old in about ten hours.

it's been a phenomenal three weeks! our little peanut girl has already gained about a pound and grown an inch and pretty much does not fit into any of her newborn-size pjs! this pretty much means that she is now the size of lily at birth. yowsers. my crotch hurts just remembering that... mia is pretty much still just eating and sleeping and pooping. but the few minutes that she is awake during the day, she smiles and stares and is just the sweetest looking little thing you ever did see! i love to stare into her big steel-grey eyes. they are so innocent and honest. mia has such a sweet temperament and easy-going disposition. i can't be mad at her even when it's 5am and i am changing the third poopy diaper of the hour- she's just too cute!

chris is STILL home from work (thank you scottsdale!) which means i am still living in a fantasy world and i do not know what life with three kids is really like. topher has reverted to acting like a baby for a few minutes everyday, but he's already toning it down quite a bit. mostly cause we ignore him when he whines and insists on being carried. but for the most part lily and topher have been INCREDIBLE and i feel super-blessed that i had them super-close together and that we waited quite a while to have mia. best of both worlds!

my parents have been here since saturday and they have been so great. they are beyond in love with their newest grandbaby, and thoroughly amused by the antics of their older grandkids. and my mother has been cooking and stocking up my fridge and freezer with korean food. yesterday chris, my dad, my mom and i all made homemade dumplings (aka 'mandoo' in korean, 'gyozas' in japanese, 'potstickers' in english...) funtimes!

today we went to Bass Pro for some winterwonderland funtimes. we met Santa, wrote him a letter, and rode the free little carousel twice. and looked at their creepy variety of creepy gigantic fish. so fun. i love love love our family.

and tomorrow our family is going to grow with the addition of one more member as chris' youngest brother gets married to the lovely miss alycia hall. we are THRILLED to be witnessing the union of two adorable, sweet, and loving kids (at 21 and 20- you guys are definitely still kids in my eyes!) yeah for family and love and marriage.

here's a smorgasboard of pics from the last week or so:

Mi amor

2011-11-23T22:20:00.000-08:00

i started writing this post about a week ago. mia's 2 week birthday is tomorrow. it's kind of all over the place, but i just need to post it! if you can read this whole thing- you get a prize ;)

my mia is amazing. i cannot even believe how amazing she is. though i was very very upset with her when she would not come out to meet us earlier, she has proven to be a very good and obedient baby in her own way.

having a baby when you already have another kid is a pain in the butt to plan. because you can't really plan anything cause like the end times- you don't know when anything is going to happen. i asked mia to not come between the hours of 12 am and 6am. why? cause i really didn't want to have to call anyone to get out of bed and come to our house during those hours. sure lindsay and robert, and my friend grace who lives 2 minutes away from us, were more than willing to get out of bed for mia's arrival, but i just didn't want to have to harass them at such ungodly hours. and my wonderful mia started 'the process' at about 5:30am on thursday morning last week, and i ended up calling my midwife and lindsay at 6am. yeah! 6am is early, but 4am is earlier, so i think everyone was ok with getting the call.

so we got to the hospital at about 6:45am with my contractions coming about every 10 minutes. i was still on board with myself for this whole 'natural-drug-free birth' at this point. why did i want to do this? i'm not really sure to be quite honest. and would i do it again? probably not. but maybe. i don't know. the whole birthing without drugs is painful as all get out, BUT feeling everything in retrospect (and only in retrospect) is kind of amazing. like i could actually feel mia coming down the birth canal. very strange. and very amazing.

we got to triage at about 7am and i was already 100% effaced and 7cm dilated. surely i was going to pop this baby out asap styles, right? we got into our delivery room at about 7:30am, and i was kind of a hurting unit. chris was there, as was his mama, and my midwife, and a nurse. and that was my birthing team, unbenownst to me. i guess i should have talked more with my midwife beforehand to know what to expect. the only thing that i specifically talked about with my midwife was that i really really did not want to tear. i tore a ton with lily and almost not at all with topher. my midwife told me i was not going to tear with an uncanny degree of certainty, so i just went along with it.

basically, i don't know why i had this baby naturally. would i do it again? probably not. but here's the thing- i did not tear! it was amazing. my midwife was amazing. even though i felt like she didn't do anything for 80% of my labor- but apparently that's what midwives are there for- to not boss you around and let you do what your body is telling you to do. unlike doctors who are there to catch your baby and stitch you up. if for some crazy reason i have another baby- it will be via midwife with drugs. cause that's an option, and probably the best one out there. but my midwife also told me that recovery in general is much faster for people who don't have drugs, and though it is almost two weeks out and i still have some pain and discomfort in my back, i did feel 'pretty good' (considering a human being emerged from my body) hours after mia was born. the jury's out on whether we will have more kids and whether or not drugs are the way to go or not.

all i know is that life is good right now. chris is home and will be for another week and a bit. he has proven to be a ripe and mature seasoned veteran of a dad and husband. he is all over waking up with the older two so that i can sleep in every day. he empties and loads the dishwasher. he takes lily and topher to the gym so that i can hang out at home with mia. he also hangs out with mia and lily and topher so i can have moments entirely to myself. what a stud and a champ! i am surrounded by awesomeness and i feel so very very blessed.

people ask if i am sad that mia couldn't wait an extra 15 hours to be born on 11/11/11, but truth be told i really just needed mia to not be inside my body any more. and 11/10 happens to be the Marine Corps' bday, something that chris- a former marine, likes to celebrate every year. and every year i usually get him a gift, or a cake, or something to commemorate this special day. but i had nothing prepared for chris this year. until mia showed up! so happy belated Marine Corps bday my beautiful husband. and happy birthday to my sweet mia.

here are some of my favorite pics of my awesome husband and my awesome mia.

wait no more!

2011-11-11T20:04:00.000-08:00

we had our 7 lb 2 oz baby yesterday morning at 8:52am. i'll blog about the birth story later (you can skip that post lindsay!) but today is just pics:

so happy to have our baby girl out in the world with us! welcome to the outside
Mia Joelle Sunju Watson!

still waiting...

2011-11-09T06:13:00.000-08:00

ok. i just posted a post that i wrote five days ago. and nothing has changed.
except that i had a doctor's appoitnment on monday afternoon and discovered that i am 4.5cm dilated and 80% effaced. i was so excited cause i thought i was surely going to have a baby on monday. surely. SURELY! right? no. it's wednesday. still pregnant.

chris had been off of work since friday night. this weekend would have been a great time to have a baby. as we waited, chris and i went on two more dates on saturday- one luunch date for a friend's 39th birthday (thanks for watching lily and topher barb and jerry!) and then we went on a serious date- dinner and a movie, while our friends brian and carrie kept lily and topher overnight. thanks SO MUCH brian and carrie! (those are hobey's parents. i love them so much!)

but this morning he actually left for work, so i am home with the kids. i am going to do a while lot of sitting and hanging out. and then when he gets home i will probably do some jump squats and lunges and maybe find a trampoline...

mia is already proving to be a stubborn little monkey, much akin to her sister lily when she was in the womb. i have tried to ask her to come out very nicely, i have been walking around like crazy, i even did something according to doctor's orders to get labor started... and nothing. i have also been eating spicy food like it's going out of style, but i don't know if that counts being korean and all, and usually consuming a fair amount of spicy food on the regular. but i have to mention that chris 'made dinner' last night, which means he ran out to a korean restaurant and ordered kalbi (phenomenal short ribs), jap chae (noodles), and kimchi chigae (kimchi stew) all by himself! the korean lady at the restaurant was very impressed that he ordered without a menu and asked if he was mormon. interesting thing to ask another person, although not uncommon here in gilbert arizona.

oh yeah, i went to starbucks on monday night on my way to bible study/hoping to be on my way to the hospital, and there was a lady in front of me who told me i was so cute. very nice of her. she also asked if she could refill my drink for me (i had a almost empty starbucks cup, cause i had been in there 2 minutes earlier, but chris spilled 90% of his drink in the car so we turned around to get another one.) but the starbucks guy was nice enough to remake my drink for free. so much kindness and love in that starbucks! she then offered to buy me a pastry which i also declined, but it was my first 'stranger offering to buy me something' experience and it was so sweet! especially since this woman said she had 8 kids (EIGHT!) and that she loved being pregnant but was all done and therefore liked to live vicariously through other pregnant women. craziness.

anyhoo, i have been waking up a lot in the middle of the night to eat crackers, which has been so annoying, but i guess it's better than getting woken up 10 times a night to feed someone else. i know life is going to be very different and kind of exhausting once mia finally does decide to show up- but i just want her to show up already! chris is way stronger than me, and it's his turn to carry her now!

waiting. not patiently

2011-11-04T21:44:00.000-07:00

today i am 37 weeks and 5 days. topher was already born by now. my friend erin, who was due a week before me, just had her baby on tuesday morning. i met the littlest dezago and he is amazing! congrats erin and co!!!

i was so happy for my friend that i thought i was in labor tuesday night. chris and i were out on a hot date to one of our favorite 'mexican' restaurants- abuelo's. i love it there. the food is never too greasy and it's always delicious. so great. but i was having contractions during dinner and most of our conversation that night revolved around- "wait? was that a real contraction? when was my last one? is this really happening?" and the answer was: "NO." this was not really happening. i prayed for lots of wisdom cause i did not want to go to the hospital and not have a baby, but the situation seemed so perfect because the kids were already at lindsay's and she was more than ready to have them spend the night. she is such a great sister-in-law! i really truly do not know what i would do without her!

anyhoo, we picked up the kids and went home and nothing happened. obviously. cause i'm still pregnant. but i am so thankful for the date that chris and i were able to have. in fact, i am so thankful for all the 'last' moments i have been spending this week. especially with lily and topher.

wednesday morning topher was in a picky mood and said he wanted banana bread for breakfast. i figured that eating cereal for breakfast everyday could get boring, so we went out for muffins! it was fantastic! extra fantastic cause we all got to wear sweatshirts! yeah for fall weather. my kids are so amazing and i am definitely soaking up these last days of ease and leisure with my two OLD kids.

halloween funtimes

2011-11-01T13:50:00.001-07:00

there are some things that my awesome husband takes very seriously- his faith, his family, his health, football, and halloween. kind of in that order.

halloween has never been a particularly big thing for me. We had a convenience store growing up, so getting candy was never a big deal. My parents didn't have a ton of time planning out our halloween costumes, plus we lived in Canada so we always had to wear our winter jackets over our costumes anyway. Halloween was fun, but it wasn't a big event.

i'm not sure why it's such a big deal for my husband, maybe his parents made halloween a very special event for their family. or maybe it's just cause my husband is just a child at heart. at any rate, chris loves halloween, and when we decided to have a small halloween gathering, chris was very very excited.

we had a very small gathering with our friends on sunday night. part of it was as small as it was because i was a little afraid that i might have to cancel the party due to an early baby, but fortunately/unfortunately that did not happen. and even with just five families represented at the party, there were 10 kids (plus two baking)which made it feel like there were a lot more people in our house than there were. what a blessing!

i don't know what order these pictures appear in, but i know there is one awesome pic of the 10 kids- ranging in age from 3 weeks old to 4.5 years old. always a fun challenge trying to get 10 kids to pose for a picture together.

schnepf farms

2011-10-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

here we are at schnepf farms 2 years ago. look how little my lily was! and topher and that bald giant noggin! so precious.

i am at 36 weeks, so from now til i have this baby, expect lots of 'flashback' pics cause i am feeling mighty nostalgic and sentimental!

anyhoo, thursday morning the kids, barb, and i headed down to queen creek to go to schnepf farms. it was great fun, if only it hadn't been 95 degrees that day. where are you autumn?!?!?!

i believe the farm is only open thursdays-sundays. and it's $15 per person (ages 2 and younger are free) which is kind of steep. which is probably why we didn't go last year... but it's $12 if you get your tickets at Fry's, but they also have 2-for-1 coupons on SRPs' website, or attached to your SRP bill. you can only use it on thursdays in october, which means this thursday is your last chance to use that coupon, so if you want to go- go this week! and it's actually supposed to dip WAY down to 82 degrees by the end of the week! yeah fall weather!!

you can go to the farm for relatively cheap, after you actually get through the gate, but we dropped more money on the train ride and pony rides. whatev. we probably won't go next year, so we were living it up big time this year :)
the petting zoo is free, and the kids had lots of fun in the also-free playground. we also managed to watch some pigs and goats racing which was pretty funny and out of the ordinary. all in all, a great time was had by all, and the kids walked away with pumpkins that they got to pick from pumpkin patch themselves. (for a small price of $2 per pumpkin.)

here are pics of our great day: (i have also included one pic of me in all my very pregnant glory.)

more chris love

2011-10-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

my beautiful husband is in hawaii right now. and i am not. sadness! he is in paradise for a friend's wedding. i would have gone too if i wasn't 35 weeks and 5 days pregnant. us and our timing! boo... but because i miss him, i am dedicating another post to him.

on monday, chris' day off, he got called in to work. he left the house at 5:30am and did not return until about 11pm. that's a lot of overtime! thanks for that Jesus. a lot of that time was spent sitting around and waiting and watching. not that fun. for a normal person, working 17 hours does not make for a great day. but chris' day ended off with him tackling an unaware criminal who was so surprised that he peed himself. chris got pee on his jeans as well, and this made for a great day at work. so gross. so crazy.

speaking of chris' work, if you think about it, chris sounds a lot like a marvel superhero. he even has a kinda secret identity. but he goes off in his special car and fights crime and puts bad guys in jail. a lot like, say batman. and chris has actually convinced our poor son that he is in fact batman. topher is really into superheroes and really into his dad, so having his dad be a superhero is a major bonus.
me: "topher, who is spiderman when he isn't spiderman?"
topher: "peter parker."
me: "who is ironman when he sisn't ironman?"
topher: "tony starks."
me: "who is batman when he isn't batman?"
topher: "my dad."
no joke. chris has really brainwashed this boy!

lastly, i showed this picture to lily a few days ago:

it's a picture of lily and her cousin zoe.
i guess lily hasn't seen this picture in awhile, even though we go through old pictures fairly regularly. zoe lives in alabama now, and lily hasn't seen her cousin in over a year.
anyway, when we look through pictures, we always play the "who is in this picture?" game. so, i asked lily when we looked at this picture, who was in it. lily looks and says: "there's me, and there's dad's other baby."
i have never before heard lily make the distinction that daddy is caucasian and i am asian. but she fully thought that this caucasian kid in the picture was her dad's. so hilarious. and so wrong for so many different reasons.

man i love my kids and i love my husband! come back home soon chris!

the worst gift in the world

2011-10-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

a few months ago, my dear friend mary beth decided to buy her hubby a groupon for sky diving. she didn't want him to have to go alone, and there was no way she was going to go with him, so she asked if my crazy husband would be interested in joining in on the fun. and of course my crazy hubby said yes. so i bought a groupon too.

chris has been sky diving before- in argentina before he went to antarctica. if he was going to die sky diving, it probably would have been there. he was in a foreign country, he was up in a rickety old plane, and who knew if his pack had a chute or a bunch of burritos. fortunately there was a chute. and it worked.

so chris and jeff ventured off to maricopa to get on a plane, only to jump out of it. they were both pretty excited.

mary beth and i joked about living together if they should happen to die. but surely, they would not die. lots of people go sky diving all the time and don't die. except for this 75 year old lady who went sky diving last week. she and her instructor died as both their primary and emergency chutes did not work. i only found out about this tragedy after chris' jump.

anyhoo, i went to church with the kids and i texted chris to text me when he landed safely back on earth. he texted me (praise Jesus!) but this is what he wrote:

"my first chute exploded so we had to use the emergency chute. i'm fine though."

omg people. chris is a major jokester, but i knew that he would not joke about that (he's trying harder to not play jokes on people that result in tears.) so all morning i kept thinking about how i almost killed my husband with this gift that i had bought for him. the WORST GIFT IN THE WORLD. it's like buying someone a pet shark. or a live grenade. or something equally horrible and dangerous. the bottom line: do not buy someone you love, or even like, a the gift of sky diving- aka almost dying.

Dogtober

2011-10-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

this month has so far been over run with four-legged animals.

our friends, the vogts, went on the disney cruise last week, so we had the pleasure of watching their gigantic english mastiff, mally. if you've been a reader for a while, you know that mally actually used to be our dog. so we really couldn't say no when they asked us to watch her. the kids were happy to have her here. so was chris. pug was so happy he peed all over the living room, again. and as for me... whatev. dogs are not my favorite things in the world.

here's a picture of lily feeding mally. mally is a big big girl. this picture does not do her girth justice:

and even though dogs are not my favorite things, you would think they were cause i actually made a halloween costume for pug. there is a fun thing that the city/town of gilbert puts on every year called Barktober. supercute. especially if you really like dogs. my kids really like dogs, and my friend lainey really likes dogs, so we go, almost every year with lainey and her two dogs. this year chris tagged along, which was awesome, as did pug.

topher really wanted pug to be a superhero, and i saw these ridiculously cute superhero costumes at Old Navy, but was not about to drop $20 on a costume for my dog, so i made a super-ghetto version of the Old Navy costume using felt. i spent less than $1 on three pieces of felt. that's a great deal! i actually had a ton of fun making the costume, and also had a ton of fun hanging out with my friend, my family, and my crazy dog at Barktober:

the magic of felt and an old t-shirt (for the cape)

batman-pug

batman-topher and batman-pug

lily and lainey and grendel and griffin (who were dressed up as converse shoes. super cute!)

woody, toaster, eating mia

2011-10-06T21:16:00.000-07:00

monday morning, robert and lindsay headed out of town, leaving their three little monkey children behind. i am so happy for them! they really needed a break. they come back tomorrow and i am looking forward to hearing about all the sleep that they got, and all the hot food they got to eat that they didn't cook. a giant village of people stepped up to do what robert and lindsay do with the three kids every day and night. i had a very short shift from monday to tuesday. i started off with just emma, which was nice cause chris took lily to ballet, so just topher and i hung out with emma and it was quiet, and calm, and lovely.

then lily, topher, emma and i headed to the other watson house where gabe and corban were napping. when the boys woke up from their nap, chaos ensued, but it was a very manageable chaos. having the five kids awake together for an hour was ok, but had it been for much longer, who knows what would have happened. but it reminded me of my incredible mother, because the age range from lily to emma is about the same from my sister to my twin brothers. how my mom had five kids, raised them, and didn't kill any of them is amazing. props to you mama ham! you are amazing.

anyhoo, corban, who is 2, is hilarious. he has this hilarious little voice and speaks in an interesting way. he is much easier to understand now than he was about 3 months ago, but he still says things in his own way. for instance, i just noticed this week that he calls lily 'woody' and topher 'toaster'. it has made me laugh all week just thinking about it. i love that crazy kid.

then yesterday i went to the hospital to see my beautiful friend cindy who just had her second baby girl. so awesome! praise Jesus. i will do a separate post about that later. but i brought lily and topher to the hospital with me, and my superpregnant friend erin had her son, greyson, with her, so we took turns visiting our friend and waiting in the lobby with the kids. great times! when i came out from my visit with the brantons, the kids and erin were looking into the nursery where a little newborn was under the uv lights, wearing tanning goggles, and chillin like a villain. so cute. lily loved it!

when chris got home, she told him all about it. this is their conversation:
lily: "we saw a tiny ittle baby and it was wearing sunglasses and it was so cute!"
chris: "when mia comes out of mommy's belly she will be that small too. and then you guys can meet her. aren't you so excited to meet mia?"
lily: speechless. look of horror on her face.
chris: "aren't you excited to meet mia? your baby sister?"
lily: "what??? we can't EAT mia! she's my baby sister!"
chris: "i didn't say EAT. i said MEET. we will not eat your baby sister."

i love little kids cause they say, and i guess hear, the darndest things :)

ps. have i ever mentioned before that we are naming our baby Mia Joelle? maybe i have, maybe i haven't... i'm losing my mind... if i haven't- now you know!

a kind of disgusting week

2011-09-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

one day last week, i was having dinner with lily and topher at home (chris was working) and i sneezed. for normal people that's fine. i am no longer normal. i totally peed in my pants. not a lot. but enough that i had to excuse myself from the table so i could change my underwear and shorts.

but then that evening my girlfriend cindy came over to hang out for a little bit. cindy is also pregnant (maybe having a baby today? tomorrow? definitely this week!!!) and she has the sweetest heart. i told her about my dinner-sneezing-urination fiasco. she laughed and came to sit on the couch with me to give me a hug. but when she did that, she knocked over a bottle of water that started to get her butt all wet. she laughed nervously at first as she jumped up. she looked at the couch to assess the situation and was relived to see that there was a bottle of water spilling water on my couch. she thought that i had another 'outburst' and that i was peeing on her! amazing. that would have brought our friendship to a new and very different level.

then on tuesday, i was getting ready to go out with chris and some friends, so i put on a t-shirt and was doing something in the kitchen by the sink. i just happened to look over on my shoulder and what should i find perched there but a scorpion! A BIG OLD DISGUSTING SCORPION! omg. i almost died. i started screaming for chris to come and help me (he was giving the kids a bath) and so he comes running and i am for some reason trying to get the scorpion off of my shirt by running water on it. but then it started crawling into the arm hole and chris was yelling at me to take my shirt off. not something that happens often ;) so i finally took my shirt off and my brave husband proceeded to kill the scorpion with my tshirt. my kids were safe in the tub. though they were very interested in the commotion.

how did the scorpion get on me? did it crawl up my leg and back and find a nice resting place on my shoulder? did it fall from the ceiling? or was it in my closet and already on my shirt when i put it on? i am banking on it being the latter, so i have already told chris i need a new wardrobe.

in other disgusting creepy crawly news, i also found a gecko and it's dislocated (though still moving) tail in my newspaper last week. it's been an interesting and kind of disgusting week. i'm glad it's over. happy weekend people!

being a mom rocks my socks

2011-09-29T20:56:00.000-07:00

being a stay-at-home mom is great. and sometimes not so great. some days are better than others. i just read my sister-in-law's blog, and it sounds like she had one of them 'others' kind of days. sorry lindsay! corban will stop being a two year old one of these days ;)

as for me, we had plans to have lunch with a friend, but she cancelled, so we had the day to ourselves. we went shopping, we had lunch at home (fiscally responsible!), we had ice cream cones and sat by the pool (the fill-up yourself kind), and then we watched 'Despicable Me' and ate Cheetos. i sat and watched the whole thing with them. dishes and laundry be darned! then we did our sticker books and puzzles, and then we had dinner at home- and chris even managed to join us for that! yeah family time!

it was just a really great day. the calm before the storm. not a bad storm- but having a newborn in the house again is definitely going to feel like a storm.

here's the video of my kids doing the Lord's Prayer. i made the mistake of trying to take this video while the kids are eating ice cream. topher is not focused! and my camera may be kind of broken cause the volume is no bueno. but turn your computer volume way up and try to enjoy!

what up watsons

2011-09-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

chris: has been a working fool!!!! in fact he just got called into work- on a monday night! poopers. but as annoying as it is to have my husband whisked away to deal with criminals when all i want to do is watch some tv with the guy, we are so thankful for the overtime! thank you Jesus! and when chris isn't working, he is being crazy. chris did another triathlon yesterday. this one was a sprint, which means he only exercised for one hour and forty minutes straight, as opposed to the last time when he exercised for three and a half hours in one go. he's so stinkin crazy! why he does this to himself, and pays people money so that he can do these things- is beyond me. but i had a great time watching him, and his equally crazy brother, robert, racing for no reason. even though we woke up really early to support these boys (and their other crazy friend dan) i had an awesome time hanging out with barb and lindsay.

me: i am 32 weeks pregnant and i waddle around like a pissed off duck. it's not attractive. the day before the triathlon i felt like i had shrapnel in my crotch and couldn't walk. it was creepy. i am trying to be productive and all that, but i waste a lot of my time playing sudoku while laying down. i had a terrible week last week- my allergies nearly killed me, and i had to take the 3-hour glucose test. i do not have gestational diabetes which is great news, but fasting for 12 hours before the test, and not eating for the 3 hours during the test just about killed me. lots of dramatic 'near death' experiences for me last week. (i am becoming weaker and more dramatic as this pregnancy continues...)

lily: she has a new-found love for the asian baby doll she received for her birthday 6 months ago that was supposed to replace 'Jun Lee', her creepy asian baby doll that she has had since she turned 1. this new baby doll is now named 'Mia' and lily loves putting her to bed and getting her dressed and pulling her hair and swinging her around by her ankles. it is sweet and terrifying to watch. it's good though because then we have a chance to talk about what is ok and absolutely not ok for her to do with her little sister. here is a video of our latest project- working on the Lord's prayer. we introduced it to the kids a few weeks ago and they have latched onto it and won't let go! which is so great. you may have to turn the volume way up. my camera is kinda crazy.

topher: is loving Christian music right now and really pays attention when we are listening to Klove (a Christian radio station). he asks great questions about what he hears and i am just amazed at his brain and heart. the other day 'Manifesto' by 'the City Harmonic' (a canadian group- happy almost thanksgiving to my canadian friends out there by the way!) came on, and i told the kids that the Lord's prayer was in it. when that part of the song came on, they were riveted. i actually just purchased the song on iTunes- the only song i have payed for on my iPod! your welcome Apple, use my $.99 wisely... here is topher saying the Lord's prayer:

i lied. no videos. you can't really hear the kids. so i will retape em and repost em. maybe tomorrow. we'll see...

back to cupcakes

2011-09-20T21:36:00.000-07:00

it's been a seriously long time since i have had a cupcake post. i made some cupcakes in june for robert's and for sungu's birthday, but i never really bothered writing about them cause they weren't stunning (sorry boys. there was lots of love in them, but they just weren't that pretty.) i don't even have any pictures of the cupcakes that i made for robert that had a 'words with friends' theme to them, cause quite frankly my brother is addicted to that game. here are two pics i found from sungu's birthday party. yeah for decorating for a four year old- they don't really care what the cupcake looks like, they just care that they are eating a cupcake! sungu did request batman cupcakes, and that's what he got:

so, since june, i have done no real baking and therefore no decorating. until we celebrated grandma's birthday this weekend. grandma said she liked chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. easy! it took a while to figure out how to make chocolate frosting special, but then i remembered seeing people make cupcake bouquets, so i decided to look that up. it was pretty easy! i didn't have the necessary supplies to make the bouquets (flower pot, styrofoam ball, etc) but i will make one of those one day! but i did have the right tip to frost the cupcakes the way that i wanted to, and i also had pretty qhite pearl-like sprinkles which helped to add a little more pizzazz to my chocolatey treats. i was really happy with the way they turned out, and this was probably the fastest and easiest cupcake-decoarating endeavor i have ever undertaken. maybe i will add a video or step by step pics on how to do this cause it was really that easy. someone just needs to have a birthday and needs to request that i make flower cupcakes for them...

here are my kids helping me/helping themselves to a lot of sprinkles:

and these are the cupcakes i made for grandma's 80th birthday.

80 and greaty

2011-09-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

ok. that might be my worst title ever for a post. but this is a post to commemorate my fantastical grandmother who just turned 80! as most of you know, this grandmother of mine is actually chris', but being the possessive person that i am, i have claimed his grandmother, as well as most of his family, as my own.

grandma, also known as GG (great grandma), and Jaye (lily's middle name!) is truly one of the most incredible women i know. i love spending time with her because she is always full of great stories, encouragement, and wisdom. she gets this wisdom from being in the Word daily, and listening to sermons on her computer while playing solitaire (i think it's solitaire she plays.) i really cannot believe how tech savvy this woman is for an 80 year old! she has a facebook account and everything! i am hoping to be half as sharp as she is when i am 80, though truth be told- it's probably not going to happen, because at 30 i feel like i have already peaked and am on my way down!

one of grandma's best qualities is her love for her husband. she and grandpa did our premarital counseling, and it was such a blessing because they have such a beautiful and healthy marriage for us to look up to. they continue to counsel us by giving us reading materials, and just checking up on us to see how we are doing. 6 years of follow-up! that's premarital counseling at it's best!

anyway, i just love love love my lovely grandmother and wanted to take this moment to wish her a happy birthday and to remind her that i love her and think the world of her. here's to another wonderful 80 years grandma! (i raise my bowl of butter pecan ice cream up to you, another excellent thing that you have added to my life!) if anyone can live to be 160- it's you Jaye Watson! i love you! happy birthday!

getting schooled

2011-09-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

this year i am teaching the kids some pre-school stuff at home. i won't call this homeschooling cause what i am doing is not even close to the calibre of stuff that my serious homeschooling friends do with their kids. and unfortunately, i have quite a few friends who are hardcore homeschooling their kids so i really know how short i am falling!

i try to do an intentional lesson with them every monday, wednesday, and friday, and hopefully still teach them a thing or two on the other days of the week as well. mondays we try to focus on our korean, wednesdays we do the alphabet and phonics, and then fridays we do numbers and basic math.

you can judge how smart my kids are by the things that have happened this week and the conversations that we have had:

- i taught the kids chris' phone number a few weeks ago so that they could call chris if they ever got lost, or to call him in case i had an emergency. i felt like this was better than teaching them 911, because 1. i don't want them to abuse the power of 911 (aka i don't want to pay any fines for prank calling 911) 2. if i was in a serious emergency and the kids were able to relay that fact to their dad and he was at work, he would show up as fast as the real 911. anyway, we have practiced calling chris a couple of times and it's been great. then today topher had my phone and called chris without my knowing. chris loved getting a call from his son who really just wanted to chat with his dad. it was pretty dang cute.

- we aren't really doing anything 'sciency' though i am thinking i need to add that in because of this convo we had in the car yesterday:
lily: "do whales eat fish?"
me: "yes. lots of whales eat fish."
topher: "we eat fish too."
me: "yes we do topher. and dolphins eat fish also. so do penguins. and some other animals too..."
lily: "whales also eat Jonahs."
me: "no. only one whale ever ate a man named Jonah. God had a special plan for Jonah and for that whale. if a whale eats a person that person usually dies."

- we aren't really focusing on learning any spanish right now, and really the only spanish the kids know are their numbers and colors. trying to now learn their colors in korean is starting to mess with their heads. topher seems to think he can speak spanish because he asks if he can pray in spanish very often, and eveytime it goes like this: " (long pause. probably trying to think of any spanish words.) then- Dear Jesus... hahahaha!" ah the sense of humor of a three year old.

up since 4:30

2011-09-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

my husband is the worst.
he decided to go running with his uncle this morning and got up at 4:30am. who does stuff like that?!?!?? so, he tried to be quiet and stealth and all, but his alarm clock was loud and i heard it. so i tried to fall back asleep, but i failed. i tossed and turned (that makes me sound light. i actually mean i heaved and rolled my giant body about on the bed like a beached whale) and tried and tried to fall back asleep. but to no avail. i had to pee. so i peed. then i went back to bed and closed my eyes and started to pray. i prayed for some of my friends. i also prayed for more sleep. i hope my friends feel blessed today cause if God is only answering one prayer at a time- it was not the one about more sleep that He chose to grant.

and then i realized i was really hungry. so i have already taken down a banana and my toast just popped out. let me throw some jam on that real quick...

delicious.

anyway, i don't have a ton to blog about. or maybe i do. i just noticed that i haven't blogged since last monday. where does the time go?!?!

you didn't miss much last week though. i did a ton of laundry last week. topher had been awesome about waking up with a dry diaper for quite a while now, so chris and i finally decided he was ready to sleep in undies (with lots of protection on his mattress). he did so great for over a week. and then he had three accidents in a row. argh. and of course one of those accidents was on my bed, on my comforter. good times.

but last week topher showed some real interest in his new baby sister. he sat on my lap one night and just started reading a story to her/my stomach. that was really cute, but the cutest thing was that it was a story about chris playing on the phoenix suns. it's a book that chris got as a gift from his dad about 20 years ago, and there is a picture of chris' head on the body of a basketball player, and topher thinks that it's real. so toph was introducing his sister to their dad, the phoenix sun.

lily has been delightfully surprising chris and i with her awesome brain. i have to admit, we have already pinned our kids as 'lily the jock' and 'topher the brain'. that's probably bad. but lily has been spewing back stuff that i am trying to teach her like nobodies' business! in the summer when jeehon and i would take turns teaching the kids stuff, lily was the least interested in learning. but now she is all over our korean lessons and learning the Lord's Prayer and other wonderful things like that. i am so proud of her! and for some reason, lily is also really obsessed with the car being parked backwards. gotta love the mind of a four year old.

so, that's about it. like i said, you haven't missed much. chris is getting ready for a sprint triathlon with his brother in 2 weeks, so you can look forward to that post. as for me, i am just getting ready for a marathon, aka childbirth and everything that comes after that.

meeting our favorite pig

2011-09-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

saturday morning we headed over to our favorite bookstore- Changing Hands Bookstore, and we met our favorite pig, Olivia! it was awesome. except that i guess the person inside of Olivia can only see through a patch in the costume's neck so Olivia's head was always tilted pretty far back. i couldn't get a great pic of her:

see?

anyway, we heard two Olivia stories and got to hug Olivia herself. the kids were in awe, and i really wonder what they thought of her. surely they know it's a person in a costume- right? right? i couldn't ask though. i don't even know how i would bring it up.

anyway, this saturday the 10th there is another event with another pig theme. apparently the guy who wrote "Where the Wild Things Are" is releasing his first new book since "Where the Wild Things Are" was released in 1981! The new book is called "Bumble Ardy" and is about a pig who decides to throw himself a birthday party. The story will be read, and there will be pig crafts and piggy cupcakes too! yeah! the fun starts at 10am. for more info you can go to

baseball firsts

2011-09-02T21:10:00.000-07:00

eons ago, when lily was an only child (for a brief 373 days), she went to two diamondbacks game. the first one was with me, her uncle robert, and our lovely friends mike and cindy. then we went to a playoff game as a family- just chris, lily, and me (with topher baking in my oven).

here are the pictures i dug up of those two momentous games:

then, three years later, we finally took topher to his first baseball game. what kind of terrible parents are we that we haven't taken our son to a baseball game but we took our daughter to two in her first 6 months on earth??? i repent.

anyway, tuesday august 30th was the big night. and topher was not that thrilled. probably because it was baseball, and baseball is not that exciting. but what was exciting was 'the sandlot', an area for kids to play on slides, or to play wiffle ball, and basically not watch the game. another major highlight was seeing the giant-headed baseball players. i can't describe them any other way. but there is a picture below. i am so glad the Diamondbacks were running a promo where they were selling seats for just $5. i am all about my kids experiencing new things, especially if it can happen for the same price as a starbucks drink.

so you know you can dance

2011-08-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

monday was a momentous and wonderful day in the watson household. dance lessons started!!!!! we signed lily up for ballet lessons and topher for an all boys hip hop class through the city of gilbert's parks and rec. i think it was $35 for 8 45-minute lessons. kind of an incredible deal! lily started off dance day with her lesson in the morning. she looked SO PRECIOUS in her new little leotard that she actually got for Christmas last year (thanks nana!) and her little black tights and pink ballet shoes. to the chagrin of every mother there, we were not allowed to sit in the room and watch our girls dance. and the window on the door was very small which is why i didn't get any video footage of the lesson, just a few terrible pictures. i will take more next time! i didn't want to be a window hog though. lily loved pointing and twirling and had a great time in her class. yeah lily!topher was a sweet little brother and asked if we could go in to watch lily dance. he's so precious. i love him. then the afternoon rolled around and it was finally time fro topher's dance class. he was so very excited. he really wanted to wear his ironman costume- since lily got to dress up for her class, but i told him the polyester that his costume is made of was not breathable and would probably burst into flames as he tore it up on the dance floor, so he agreed to leave his prized costume at home. we got to his lesson and it was so cute. 9 little boys ranging from 3-5 years old just shaking what the their mamas gave 'em! again, we were not allowed to stay in the room, but we all loitered around the windows and door quite a bit. it was too funny. the kids were dancing to very age-appropriate music (i think they were basically ducks quacking to a beat) which was GOOD, but i wouldn't mind if they end up doing their final routine to a little Ne-Yo or Kanye or something like that. we'll see. anyway, be prepared for more dance videos and pictures over the next two months. enjoy what i got from their first lessons:

more eating. MORE sleeping

2011-08-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

i spent the most wonderful 24 hours away from my kids this weekend!

chris and i dropped the kids off with our saint-friends: jeff and mary beth and their 2 girls on saturday morning, and then proceeded to drive for two and a half hours up to heber to hang out at chris' dad's cabin with 10 of our closest friends. it was magical. chris and i sipped our starbucks and chatted about work (his), life (ours), and the awesomeness of being alone together. i love my hubs.

the weather was incredible. during the day it was in the low 90s, which may seem hot, unless you are escaping 117 degrees. then 90 is perfect, if not almost a little chilly. our friends started showing up about an hour after chris and i got there and the party started.

we had sandwiches for lunch, then we had ladies' craft time, boys' golf and shuffle board time, and no kids were around to ask for more chips, or to complain that they don't like turkey, or to cut their hair off with any of the six pairs of very sharp craft scissors that were littered on the table along with burning candles and lots of flammable rayon material. it was a nightmare for children, but a dream come true for mothers without kids.

we ate, we laughed. A LOT. we played games. we had smores. we put on sweatshirts. and we slept. A LOT. i think we all went to bed after midnight, and woke up after 9am. NINE AM! phenomenal stuff! everyone there, except the suiters, have young kids. but the suiters are made up of a teacher and a high school pastor, so they have over 100 kids between the two of them ;) and actually, greg left at 6am to take care of his kids, so i guess that makes him a better parent than the rest of us lazy bums who slept in!

anyhoo, it was a much needed 24 hours away to recharge our batteries, laugh about inappropriate things, and reconnect with friends that we don't get to see enough of. we are so blessed to have these incredible people in our lives. so super blessed.

thanks wes and kim for letting us use your pimpin cabin. and thanks to the village of people who watched the 9 kids that we left behind.

eat. sleep. repeat.

2011-08-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

apparently i am not in my third trimester yet (i'm at week 27. i don't actually know when the third trimester starts!) but i have no second-trimester energy or pep left to speak of. my kids are awesome and they let their tired mama nap for at least 10-30minutes everyday.

life has calmed down since our houseguests left. having four toddlers in the house for the summer has truly helped me to appreciate my two. there are still moments when i want to punch myself in the face, cause they are still 3 and 4 after all- complete with tantrums, attitudes, and needs. but they are my 3 and 4 year olds and i love love love love love them!!!!!!

of late, i have been feeling contemplative... nostalgic... i don't know what word i am looking for. but i have been starring at my kids in an almost-stalkerish kind of way. i do it cause they're beautiful- stunningly beautiful- their doe eyes, perfect mouths, button noses. i also do it cause i am so curious as to what our third child might look like! but i only do it when the kids let me, which is not often, cause i think they are starting to get creeped out by me.

when i hold them, one in each arm, i wonder who is going to get ousted when baby 3 comes out. but let's be real, lily's probably going to do most of the caring for her little sister. she's been 'changing her dolls' diapers' lately, and even rolls the 'dirty' one up when she is done with it. so hilarious. i can't believe how big my little girl is getting! complete with her beautifully chic layered hair cut ;)

i am feeling lots of things these days- discomfort, perpetual hunger, bouts of narcolepsy, and eternal gratitude. i am so blessed. thanks for my family Jesus!

some recent pics of my beautiful crazy kids:
(the one of lily in the rocking chair is my favorite because she is wearing socks with a bathing suit, and holding 'renew my heart' a devotional that she was pretending to read before i took the shot.)

costco treasures

2011-08-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

i just found two amazing things at costco that i wanted to share with you today.

but before i do, i just want to say that my son is so dang cute, and last night he said to me: "mom, pop out my friend so i can play with her!" he was talking about his little sister. so crazy. so cute. love that monster.

anyway, the first thing i found at costco, via my m-i-l Barb, is a sticker book. but it's not just any old sticker book- it's a learning adventure sticker book! the ones we have are 'my little pony' and 'dora the explorer'. the dora one is actually a bit better than the other one, only cause there are more numbers and 'math-type' pages. but both of them cover simple things like seasons, completing patterns, matching shapes, etc. lots of fun! topher and lily will sit for about an hour doing the different pages. great times, especially when it's still over 100 degrees outside!
the books are $7.99 each, and i think it's a worthy investment. just make sure the kids don't try to do the books by themselves, otherwise they will probably use the wrong stickers for the wrong pages and then you will just have a jumbled mess. i would not pay $8 for a book with stickers, but an educational one- yes. i will, i have, and topher finished his dora book so i am going to get him different one.
(i have also seen a superheroes book, sesame street, and i think there was a barbie one too.)

here is a page of the seasons. it's not right-side up so i apologize for that. but this is great cause my kids, who have lived in arizona their whole lives, cannot get a grasp on the concept of seasons. they know winter is cold, but they don't know when that actually ever happens.

here's another page. i think it's a page of completing patterns. so fun to watch things click in the kids' heads!

here's what the cover of the 'my little pony' book looks like. i'm not getting paid by costco to advertise these things, though i really wish i were. i would accept payment in the form of coloring books, giant bottles of salsa, or even bags of beef jerky.

the next awesome things that they have at costco right now are superhero costumes. and they are only $16. this is great since i was going to buy topher an Ironman mask at walmart for about $10 and then spend money-time-stress on making a jumpsuit of sorts for him for halloween/everyday-dress-up-funtimes. these costumes come with a mask, gloves, and a bodysuit that has built-in muscles! so awesome! topher wears his every day, even though he knows he needs to be supercareful with it so that it doesn't rip before halloween shows up (in two months and 8 days).

they have two transformers- optimus prime and bumble bee (already bought the bumble bee one for sungu!) and then they have other superheroes like thor and spiderman, and then they had one or two other random things too. they have two sizes- 4-6 and 7-8. good luck getting the 4-6. they are selling like hotcakes!

topher showing off his abs of steel! or highly-flamable cottong stuffing stuff...

here's topher in his Ironman alter-ego, working on his dora sticker book. he is strong in body and mind. so proud of him!

hair today, gone tomorrow

2011-08-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

lily really wanted short hair. yesterday i trimmed topher's hair around his ears, and lily said she wanted her hair cut short too. i told her we would cut it at the end of summer (octoberish here in the desert). she said ok. we were going to go swimming at chris' cousin's house so i just wanted to keep damaging her hair with chlorine and sunshine, and then cut it once swimming season came to an end.

so we went to chris' cousin's house and had a great time. lily even got a piece of gum from their fancy little gum ball machine. she loved it. she chewed that tiny little gum ball for almost an hour. and i don't know how it ended up in her hair when that hour ended, but it did. so, i cut her hair,much to the chagrin of her father who really loves long hair. but i told him he should be super thankful because i almost cut her hair that morning, and she probably still would have gotten gum in it anyway, and if she had, i would have had to cut her hair even shorter. he was very satisfied/relieved that lily looked adorable with her new shoulder-length hair cut. i didn't take any real pictures of it. wish i had.

then today happened. nothing special at first. then chris left for work in the afternoon and the kids had quiet time. i think my kids must really hate quiet time cause they do their best at destroying things during it.

lily had quiet time in my room today. i fell asleep on the couch for about 15 minutes. then i played some words with friends. then i decided to go check on my kids, cause it sounded like they were both in my room, even though topher was supposed to be in his room. so i opened the door and found lily holding a pair of scissors and chris' deoderant.

i tried assessing the situation in a hurry, but i could not. there was too much going on. lily was wearing her ballet outfit (she is starting ballet classes next monday!) so she looked supercute. but then there was hair everywhere, and i couldn't decide if it was hair from yesterday;s haircut (i'm gross, i know. i didn't clean it up yet.) and then there was the mystery of why she was holding chris' deoderant. and then i really looked at her hair. and i saw that she had cut off the ends of her little front pig tails, and then i saw that she had just haphazardly cut out chunks of her hair. it was a seriously serious disaster.

as i stroked her hair, more chunks kept falling out. it was craziness. and her hair felt pretty weird- she had put deoderant on her head. weirdness. she got deoderant on topher's head too. fortunately she did not cut any of his hair. not that that treally matters since a simple head-shaving could fix any damage she could have caused to his hair. but things were going to have to be a bit more methodical to fix lily's locks.

lily cried and said she was sorry. that was sweet and all. but sorry was not going to undo what had been done! i guess sorry never actually undoes anything. but i reminded her that sorry means that we will never again do what it is that we are sorry for. lily, in as innocent a voice as she could muster, reminded me that she wanted to have short hair and that i did not cut her hair short yesterday. YOWSERS! so i guess i was asking for this?....

anyway, we got in the car and drove to Lollilocks at val vista and baseline. supercute little salon for kids. the hairdresser there did a great job of giving lily layers (lily did a really great job of giving herself A LOT of layers too) and a shorter new hair do. i am a big fan, though chris is not just yet.

here are pics from our special adventure today. we are all reminding ourselves that it is just hair and it will grow back. and once i start slipping in some of my prenatal vitamins into lily's diet, her hair will grow back even faster yet!

a tangled web

2011-08-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

i have been surrounded by lies for the last two or three weeks. no. longer. and i have lied to so many people in the past few weeks that i guess i am surrounded by lies cause i have been telling some myself.

it all started at my 21 week ultrasound 5 weeks ago. and it progressed into a disaster that blew up on saturday.

here's the thing- i lied to you that we didn't find out the gender of our baby. we weren't going to. we really weren't. and then my weak husband started to cave. he said he was starting to lean a certain way towards wanting a particular gender, but that he didn't want to lean that way if that wasn't the gender of the baby. we wrestled with the decision to find out throughout the length of the ultrasound. our tech was very patient with us. finally she said that she would put the result in an envelope and that if we wanted to find out we could look in the envelope, but if we didn't want to find out then we could just discard the envelope and the wealth of information inside.

my self-controlless husband and i looked in the envelope as we waited to see my mid-wife five minutes later.

chris thought it would be HILARIOUS to not tell anyone that we knew what we knew. he thought it would be funny for me ot blog about the whole thing two or three months later. then he thought it would be even funnier for us to not tell anyone until the baby was born and then tell people that we had known the gender of the baby all along. so we decided not to tell anyone for the time being, except for my sister because 1. she knows all and 2. sunha was having surgery the next day and i wanted to give her a morsel of information that would make her happy.

then jeehon and i decided it would be awesome if we actually told some friends and family what we were having and not tell chris that we told them and then throw a surprise baby shower for him. chris has played many tricks on my sister and my friends, and it just felt like the right thing to do! in the eight years that i've known chris i've only thrown one surprise party for him and never played a real trick on him. the time had come.

so the plan was to have brunch at chris' mom's. our friends and family would get there at 10 and we would show up sometime after that. but of course our van wouldn't start that morning, so we got there quite a bit after 10ish. just as well. it was the perfect way to start off the gong show. we got there. everyone said 'surprise!'. chris looked surprised-ish. we ate, we chatted, then chris opened his presents and handed me an envelope.

inside the envelope was a letter for me, from my terrible husband, telling me that he had known about this surprise party for the last two weeks, and that my heart was too pure to be able to pull a prank off. what a jerk! he ruined everything. everyone at the party felt equal parts surprise, disgust, and amazement. detective watson ladies and gentlemen. that's who i am married to.

so, in short, i cannot pull a prank against my husband. he is too smart. but i will get him one day. when he is least expecting it. i'm gonna go ahead and blame this catastrophe on pug, just cause i can.

ps. we are having a girl and we are very very excited!

superheroes read

2011-08-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

if you have never been to the scottsdale library- you need to go. it is the best library i have ever been to! the kids' area is like a castle- complete with a tower that you can sit in and read, there's a little bridge and a moat and everything. adorable! there is also a puppet theater and an interactive computer that reads books to your kids. so great! i have been outside of this library so many times and never once went in during the six years that i have lived here and loitered around that building waiting for chris. it seriously has to be the best library in arizona.

and another thing that makes it superawesome is that they have a display room in the middle of the library where they are doing a feature on comic books with superheroes. the kids loved it so much. especially since they are really really into superheores these days. there were costumes for them to try on, and lots of different photo ops to be had. so here are a couple pics we took from our fun superhero adventure:

if you or your kids are into superheores, i strongly recommend you make the drive up to scottsdale to check out their exhibit on comic books. it's going to be around until september 2! let me know if you are planning on going- topher loved it so much he really wants to go again.

here are some more details:
-it's free!
-scottsdale civic center library
3839 n. drinkwater blvd
-check out

too many wee-wees = lots of pee pee

2011-08-07T22:01:00.000-07:00

the last two or three weeks have been urine-filled ones for me.

we watched chris' dad's dog a few weeks ago. it was just for a few days and everything went really well for the most part. d.c, my dog-in-law, and pug got along really well. maybe a little too well. they were boyfriends by the end of their time together. i guess that's better than them hating each other. yikes, did i just say homosexuality in dogs is better than a little animosity?... that's not what this post is really about.

what this post is really about is a lot of urine. the day after d.c. left i noticed a pee stain on the carpet in the living room as i was picking up some toys. then i noticed another stain. and then another. and then another. and yet another. i think i found 6 pee stains on the carpet in the living room and 1 in the kitchen. it was so anti-awesome. i brought out my handy little carpet cleaner, but that was not enough. so after i used my little carpet cleaner, i busted out the big bissel carpet cleaner that i borrowed from lindsay a while ago. i am assuming that pug peed everywhere to show d.c. that this is his house and that he is the alpha dog. maybe it wasn't all pug's fault, but at this point in my life, i like to blame everything on pug. if someone has strewn trash all over the living room, i blame pug. if there's nothing in the house for me to make dinner, i blame pug. if the kids are acting up and the internet isn't working, i blame pug. you get the picture.

anyway, i was a very very unhappy dog owner while i was getting urine out of my carpets that had been professionally cleaned a month ago. i also wasn't happy wiping pee up off of the floor, off of the walls, some toys, and my couch. but this is my lot in life- urine cleaner.

and now that sungu has been here for a bit more than two months, the bathroom that the kids use the most was really starting to smell bad. i would spray and disinfect and wipe and spray and hope for the urine smell to disappear. we also tried masking some of the smell with scented oils and such. some days were better than others. but the other day ago was much more than me and my ultra-sensitive-pregnant nose could bear. my bathroom smelled worse than a public bathroom! horror of horrors.

so i went to target and bought a butt-load of new cleaning supplies. i got a chlorox bleach spray, and something that looks and smells like a bar of soap that sits on the side of your toilet bowl. success! urine smell gone! for now. i heart bleach very very much.

i was feeling really great about my victory against my evil bathroom until topher and sungu came out of my bathroom and were giggling about making an 'x'.

"what is an 'x'? what are you guys talking about???" i demanded.
"we made an 'x'! we made an 'x'!" the boys squealed with delight.
"what is an 'x'? did you pee on the ground and make an 'x'? what are you talking about????" furry and confusion.
"no! we both peed and made an 'x'!" the boys were very proud of themselves.
i told them that that was absolutely unacceptable behavior and that they needed to take turns peeing one rainbow, with all urine making it safely into the bowl.
and this is perhaps why my bathroom smells the way it does. too many wee wees, too much pee pee.

week 24. or something like that

2011-08-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

it's been awhile since i wrote anythnig about being pregnant, so here it is.

i'm 24 weeks along. or maybe just 23. i'm not sure. sorry third child- i don't love you less than lily just because i followed her through every week of her pregnancy. i had no idea what was going on during your brother's pregnancy either if that's any consolation to you little one. i don't shower often or hardly ever know what day of the week it is either. it's not you baby- it's me.

so a baby at week 24 is about the size of a corn on the cob and weighs about a pound. and my uterus is the size of a soccer ball. yup, that all sounds right. i feel the baby kicking and punching in two very different spots at the same time, and i used to worry that there was more than one watson living in my womb. i guess i didn't realize how big the little one has gotten! and i definitely look like i stole a soccer ball and put it up my shirt. remind me to stay away from sporting good stores till i give birth.

even though i look like i am stealing a soccer ball, it feels like i ate a bunch of weights, and those weights start taking a serious tole on my butt and crotch. sorry male readers. you can stop reading now if you'd like. but seriously, i feel like my stomach is going to fall through my crotch, or my spine is gonna pierce through my backside. maybe i should start wearing a jock strap, though for reasons other than why guys wear jock straps. but apparently all this pain and discomfort is normal for being pregnant with your third child, and gets worse the more kids you decide to have. that piece of information is the only kind of birth control i will need after giving birth to this watson. i am looking into getting adorable matching twin beds for my husband and i when all is said and done ;) anyway, to end off my list of body pain and complaints- my feet hurt when i am standing on tile for too long- you know- pregnant and barefoot and all, and my general stamina for walking around is not worthy of being called stamina at all. the end.

otherwise, i am feeling very blessed to be carrying around this little monster in my womb and cannot wait to meet him/her in november. here is the baby's face from our last ultrasound 3 weeks ago. it looks like a robot/skeletor. i haven't shown it to the kids for fear that they might think their sibling is going to come out looking like something out of a bad sci-fi movie:

three crazy shrimps

2011-07-31T22:09:00.000-07:00

the kids are in the middle of their second session of swim lessons this summer. i never got around to posting about their first session that happened a little over a month ago. but you didn't miss much. the kids started off in the 'shrimps' class, and that's where they still are because they can't float on their fronts and backs for 5 seconds yet. but that's according to me, their swim instructor, and anyone else who can see that they don't know how to swim. but according to lily, sungu, and topher- they are really great swimmers!

lily's best trick is that she jumps into the water and then turns around and 'swims' to the side of the pool and grabs on to the wall. sungu is getting pretty good at floating independently and may be the first 'shrimp' to move on. topher is fearless/clueless and was the first to start swimming/looking-like-someone-who-is- drowning. he tries to kick but doesn't get very far very fast. but he tries! and it's awesome.

if you haven't ever checked out the aquatics program through the city of gilbert (town, whatever) you should! it's $25 for 8 lessons (monday-thursday for two weeks) and each lesson is 25 minutes long. 25 minutes seems like a pretty short amount of time, but as a parent who has to sit outside and watch her kids- 25 minutes is plenty long!!!

here are some pics of the kids during their lesson, and some pics of lovely miss sunha, who often also sits poolside with jeehon and i. even in 110+ degree weather, she manages to look so cool 9thanks for the hair flowers cindy!!!)

catching up

2011-07-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

last week we hung out at a resort in scottsdale, and i didn't have free wi-fi, which is why i didn't blog. sorry folks. but you really didn't miss out on much!

jeehon turned 33 on sunday (the last time i wrote. i hate writing on the ipad so much that i couldn't even throw out a 'happy birthday!' to my sister. happy birthday jeehon! you're so old.)

chris learned to braid hair. just another skill to add to his already impressive resume.

james, my brother-in-law, was here. but now he's gone. it was such a huge blessing having him here for the duration of sunha's surgery. he got about 3 hours of a sleep a day for the 5 days that they were in the hospital, which allowed my sister to get more. and he was just great to have around. lily and topher love their imoboo. and they are also really fond of his ipad. too fond for my liking.

and finally, sunha showed us all how incredible she was all week! she was out of the hospital on saturday afternoon, and she was greeted by her brother and cousins who were very very concerned about the big 'owwie'. i didn't think she was going to be able to handle all the noise and craziness that comes with being around sungu, lily, and topher, but she seemed to really enjoy them! weird!
the best thing about the 3 kids is that even though they noticed that sunha looked different, no one verbalized it. sunha was still a bit swollen on saturday, and her head looks crazy with the staples in it. but none of the kids said anything. i was really proud of all of them, especially since the words 'gross' and 'weird' are in their volcabularies.
sunha was out and about on thursday, and she did great. she wore a hat to cover the staples and didn't try to take it off even once. we walked around barnes and noble, hung out at a splash pad, and even had lunch at the cheesecake factory. a great outting for all!

sunha is getting her staples out tomorrow, which is great for everyone. seeing her recover, and her body and skin recover from everything it went through two weeks ago makes me more and more astounded at the crazy, creative, and detail-oriented God that we serve.

thanks again for checking in with us so much during surgery and recovery. it's so great to know we are so loved and supported!

Sunha staycations

2011-07-17T17:56:00.000-07:00

Su nha came home from the hospital yesterday and is doing so great!
We are in Scottsdale right now staycationing it up with the malloys.
I am actually typing on an iPad which I am not a huge fan of, so this is all I'm gonna write for now.
Thanks for the love and prayers. God is so good!

sunha strolls

2011-07-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

today i got to hang out at the hospital for about 2 hours with my sister and my niece! and sunha is doing so great!

her face is still quite swollen, but she can open her eyes, which is so wonderful for everyone! yesterday when she couldn't see, jeehon said she was clawing about, reaching aimlessly in front of her. i think maybe she was looking for the light switch. poor little thing. but even in the midst of her blindness, she was very responsive- opening and closing her hands while jeehon sang one of her favorite songs, and making her adorable "huh?" noises when she thought people were talking to her. so precious.

she has been taking many strolls around the pediatric intensive care unit, in the wonderful little wagon they provided for her. nice to get some 'fresh' air. she also tried crawling around today, but kinda failed at that as her head is really really heavy. jeehon caught her 3 times, but the 4th, she kinda ate it. you live and you learn.

so we are all really really hoping she can get out of the hospital tomorrow. the doctor removed the dressing on her head that was covering the staples. i fortunately did not throw up when that happened right in front of me (did i mention i threw up at the hospital when i brought the malloys dinner two nights ago? i don't do that great in hospitals actually.) hopefully tonight will be a great night, with minimal pain meds, and optimal sleep, and then maybe the malloys can finally relax and get some good rest.

would you please continue to pray for speedy head-healing and very little pain for sunha? the doctor said all the scary post-surgery stuff is over, so thanks for the copius prayers you all threw up during the last few days.

sungu and my kids have been busy doing a bunch of swimming and movie watching and general mischief-making. today james took them for two hours to play in a splash pad at a resort that he booked for sunha to recover at. this is what happened when the kids were finished playing with their uncle/dad:

swollen sunha

2011-07-14T08:11:00.001-07:00

good morning! sorry for the lack of updates yesterday- busy busy day.

we actually were able to go to the hospital for lunch. the kids obviously didn't see sunha, but i got to sneak in for a sec. her face and head are quite swollen now and she is not comfortable! i went to see her at night as well, and her face and head had swollen even more in the 9 hours since i had seen her earlier.

sunha is on quite a few different pain medications, but she needs to be off of the big stuff in order to be able to come home. hopefully they will be home tomorrow, but it all depends on how today goes.

the nurse said the swelling should go down a lot today and that she would be a new baby when that happened.

would you please pray that her sweeling foes down very quickly and that her pain dissipates, without the aid of too many pain meds?

jeehon and james are remaining sane and strong despite being confined to a pretty small room. thanks for going on this crazy journey with us! where would we be without prayer?

strong sunha

2011-07-12T13:10:00.001-07:00

it's 1:10pm. sunha's surgery was scheduled for 7:30 this morning and the doctors said it would take about 3-4 hours. the malloys got to the hospital at 5:30am and were rip roaring to go.

the doctors took sunha at about 7:30, but had to draw blood and do some other stuff, so they didn't actually start until about 9:30. but they still managed to finish at about 11:30. amazing! the doctors came out to talk to jeehon and james and they said sunha did great and was already up and trying to get out of bed. silly girl!

so james and jeehon saw sunha and she just had a bandage on her head around her wound, and her face hasn't swollen up yet (that's supposed to happen later today-tomorrow), so that allowed jeehon to not freak out at all. yeah! she still has an IV in and a couple other tubes, but james has been holding his little girl and she has been sleeping peacefully on him since.

so the basic gist of the surgery is this: they shaved a bit of sunha's hair (so imagine her with a 'hairband of baldness') and cut the skin, pulled it back, pulled out the back of her skull, broke it into three pieces, put that back in, and sewed her up. craziness. she is supposed to be in the hospital anywhere from 3-5 days, but should be fully recovered in less than two weeks. again- craziness.

thanks so much for all the concerned texts and e-mails today! and for pretty hair things to help keep sunha extra beautiful while her hair grows back :) i will keep y'alls posted as recovery continues to happen. chris and i will be going to the hospital to see the little trooper later tonight. (thanks in advance for babysitting j and a!)

AND happy birthday to my sweet little nephew corban!

craniosynotosis

2011-07-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

here is my beauitiful little niece holding out her hands, asking for your prayers. at her 1 year appointment, 2 months ago, the doctor noticed that sunha's head was kind of awkwardly shaped. so they got some x-rays and the doctor saw that her skull was fused together. for the most part, baby's heads are not supposed to fuse together til they are closer to 2 years old. needless to say, sunha's skull needs a little breathing room, and she is going to get just that on tuesday morning at about 7:30. jeehon found a really great surgeon here, dr. moss, and he will be taking care of my sweet little niece on tuesday. i will post his info in a later post. but would you please pray for my sweet little niece sunha (her english name is emma if that is easier for you to say!) that she would have a successful surgery and VERY QUICK and as-painless-as-possible recovery. would you also please pray for my sister who is just emotional, as any mother would be, under the circumstances. she is being very strong and all that good stuff right now, and we absolutely praise Jesus that James, her hubby, has been out here since tuesday last week, and will be here for the surgery and most of the harder recovery. thank you for that Jesus! please also pray for dr. moss, and the other folks who will be fixing up little sunha. i will send updates as things progress. i really appreciate your faithful prayers and love and support in this, and all the things i blog about when i ask for prayer. we feel em! God is good. here is a video i took of sunha when i was hanging out with her (and obviously topher, who makes a lot of cameo appearances in the video) on saturday. enjoy!

more ham

2011-07-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

here are some more pics of some older hams- as in my parents.

again- i have pregnancy-brain so in no particular order there is a picture of my parents with their 4 grandkids, a picture of my whole family minus Edwin who was at the store, a picture of the kids with my parents enjoying a little picnic, sunha and my mom, and... i think that's it. enjoy the asian invasion to my blog.

ham time

2011-07-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

i never post pics of the Hams cause i never have any! but now i have plenty! so many that i actually have to split it into two separate posts.

here is the younger post- my brothers and the kids.

i can't remember how i uploaded these pics, but in them you should find one of each of my bros- Alex, Edward, and Edwin. in another pic is my sister and Topher and i. and another pic of Chris paddling a giant swan that is holding him, Edward, Sungu, Lily, and Topher. he's so strong. :)

five minutes in a bad bad bad place

2011-07-03T21:28:00.000-07:00

we are back in arizona and we brought some rain! yeah!

we had a really really great family vacation in toronto. we hung out with my brothers, and my sister, and my parents, and our friends too. it was a delight. until the last day.

friday was Canada Day. happy birthday Canada! it's the first time i have been in canada on it's birthday for years and years. so to celebrate our country's birthday, as well as our last day with our family, we headed to Ontario Place, a little amusement park type place. we saw Thomas the train on stage, rode a little roller coaster, played in a freezing cold splash pad, and lost our poor daughter.

yes. i lost my lily. and it was my fault. we went into this crazy area where there were two levels with gun-type things that shot out nerf balls, and other contraptions that when you out the balls back in the contraption they popped out and spewed out from the ceiling. it was craziness. there were kids and adults all over the place. chris had topher, jeehon was on sungu, i was on lily, and my brother edward was rovering about. it was a pretty flawless situation. or was it?...

lily loved the craziness. she would climb up the stairs, throw some balls, go down the slide, go back upstairs, go back downstairs, etc etc. i followed her as best as i could, but she could care less that i was stalking her. so i stayed 'upstairs' and caught a severe case of attention deficit disorder. i started picking up balls and throwing them at my unsuspecting sister below. then i saw topher walking around aimlessly so i brought him upstairs, and even got him hooked up with one of the ball guns. then we went to hit chris with a bunch of balls, only to have him hit me with a bomb of a question: "where's lily?" hmm. stumped, i said i didn't know and that i hadn't seen her in a while. panic. we split to find our girl and informed jeehon and edward that they needed to start looking too, whilst keeping topher and sungu safe at the same time.

i stayed inside and went back upstairs to get a bird's eye view of the place. kids running everywhere. i could not spot my little girl. i even jammed my chubby pregnant body down the slides just to make sure she wasn't hiding in there. i hoped against hope that she was hiding in a corner somewhere, but there weren't that many corners to hide in. things were going through my mind that made me want to rip my brain out and shoot it out of one of the ball guns. what if someone took lily? there was not a whole lot of security in the place, very easy to walk in and out. what if i never saw my lily again? what if the baby in my belly never knew it's older sister? what if what if what if???? i didn't go outside cause i knew my lily would not leave on her own, and i was even holding her adorable little yellow polkadot flip flops. i clung on to those flip flops with a giant prayer in my heart that i would be able to put them back on her precious little feet.

chris is fortunately a much less emotional dramatic mess than me. maybe because he's a cop and he does serious stuff like this all the time. he went outside right away and didn't see lily. he came back inside and looked around. no lily. he went outside one more time when a man approached chris and asked if he was looking for his daughter. chris said yes and was directed to the store next door and found our hysterical little lily crying her eyes out!

apparently she had come outside and was calling out for chris and i. and then she was brought to the worker in the store. i don't know why she wasn't directed back to the crazy ball room. and i don't know why i wasn't deadset focused on my daughter. so many unanswered questions. fortunately we found her and she was safe in our arms and i was able to place her flip flops back on her feet.

we've had many discussions about how we never leave somewhere without mom or dad, and how we never leave somewhere with a stranger- whether child or adult, and even more discussions about how much we love our lily and are so thankful for her. we had even discussed in the car on the way over to the amusement park that we had to be so careful to stay close and that if the kids could not see us, then we could not see them. ah! if only i had taken my own advice.

the next day we were on the plane and i spit out so many prayers of thanks to my good Lord for letting me have my daughter sitting next to me. there are so many things about her that make me want to die because of her cuteness. her heart is so special and sweet and loving and sassy. and she's hilarious. as we were getting ready to take off, lily asked in a very loud voice if we were getting ready to blast off, causing all the people sitting around us to laugh. and she is such an artist! this is one of my favoritest things about her right now, and she drew this incredible (though slightly rated R) picture of me in the shower:

(yup, water showering me and my boobies, belly, and belt. i don't ever wear a belt in the shower, but lily thought she should add one. artistic touch.)

what would i do without this picture? and what would i do without my incredible lily??? i have to finish this post cause i am going to start crying. i am thankful that my lack of attention was nothing more than five minutes of terror followed by hours/days of giant hugs and kisses and prayers of thanks.

here!

2011-06-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

we are here! thanks so much to everyone who prayed for chris and topher to get here in one piece and in one day. it worked! God worked it. it was a long day of traveling, but it was awesome. chris got to toronto around 10pm, and i got here at about midnight. we were all asleep by about 2am and awake this morning at 10:30am. so glorious to be on vacation!
chris and i even managed to golf today with my parents, which was a great treat especially cause there were moments when i was kind of cold. so great.
we also ate incredible chinese food with a bunch of my olf church buddies and my brothers.
great times.
no pics right now cause i am exhausted and trying to figure out how i am going to sleep on this queen size bed with chris, lily, and topher... i love being on vacation!

leaving on a jet plane. again and again and again

2011-06-25T05:41:00.001-07:00

it's 5:41am and i cannot fall back asleep. i have about a hundred other things i could be doing right now but i am trying to bore myself back to slumberville by sitting in the dark (it's not dark. the sun is out. dang you desert sun!) with my computer.

i was awoken in the middle of the night by topher who had a bad dream: "sungu drank all the water and didn't leave any for me. wahhhhh! can i have more water?" topher's nightmares often involve other people taking his food or beverages. frightening! so i slept the rest of the night with him. then i woke up at 4:40 to send off the boys to the airport. we are all going to toronto today. but not all together.

we have a friend who works at US Airways, and she very kindly gave us two buddy passes. which were about $300 less than the tickets that lily and i had to buy, but still a ton more than what buddy passes used to go for when Jeehon used to get them all the time when she worked for the airline five years ago. ah the good old days!

Jeehon and her kids left our house for toronto on thursday night at 9:30pm. they did not get to my parents house until almost twenty hours later. Jeehon was also flying stand-by on buddy passes. yowsers. apparently there is a lot of 'weather' on the east coast, so trying to get there was a disaster. fortunately- chris and topher are on the exact same route! they are going to go to dallas, then to philadelphia, then hopefully get to toronto some time this week. if things go really great- hopefully today! if you're bored- would you please pray for my hubby and son to make it to toronto today? and if you're really really bored, please pray that they make it back to phoenix next weekend when we try to fly with lots of other 4th-of-july-weekend commuters.

lily and i bought really wonderful expensive tickets. though paying for them hurt our feelings and our wallet, i am happy to know that Lord permitting, we should definitely be getting to toronto tonight.

we have a long day ahead, but it will be one full of stories, adventure, and prayer! i am really looking forward to blogging from one of my favoritest cities in the world, with my mom's phenomenal home cooking in my belly, surrounded by my brothers and parents, my sister, her kids, my chris, and our kids. it's gonna be a great week! i'm gonna come back ten pounds heavier, i promise! see you on the other side.

weapons of mass destruction

2011-06-23T14:10:00.001-07:00

the most terrible thing happened last week.

my kids were having their 'quiet time'- which has replaced 'nap time'. the 'quiet time' from the day before was pure wonderment. the kids did what they were supposed to do- be quiet, read books, and hopefully pass out. the kids passed out in front of their bookcase, dead asleep on a bunch of books on the floor. it was sheer adorableness. i was so happy that i had such great, obedient, studious, and tired children. life was grand.

then 'quiet time' came around again the next day. the kids were very very very quiet. but they were not good at all. they were the absolute opposite of good. extreme, polar opposite of good.

you know how anything can be a weapon in the wrong hands? that's what happened. but it's not like the kids were using innocent things like books, or knitting needles, or cotton balls to wreak havoc. no. they used something beautiful- nail polish, to destroy themselves, and their bedroom carpet and wall.

sure, this picture doesn't look that bad, but that's how the carpet looks AFTER i already got a lot of the nail polish out. and there's more nail polish on their dresser. and on some of their clothes and blankets...

and of course, they got a lot of nail polish on themselves. a lot. some on their faces, lots on their legs, feet, hands, and some even managed to properly land on their toe nails.

lily had taken two bottles of my nail polish days ago and hidden it in one of her little purses. lily is a hoarder and a sneak. so, she didn't leave the room during her quiet time, which is why no one knew what she and topher were up to. until the smell of nail polish wafted through the house when the air conditioner kicked on. and boy was that smell potent! the kids got seriously disciplined and will hopefully never ever again use something as wonderful as nail polish, which is to be used only for the beautification of things- not for the destruction thereof.

clean up time was not superscuccessful (as you saw from the carpet picture) but that's mostly because i ran out of nail polish remover. after about a whole bottle and maybe 100 cotton balls later, the carpet still looks like junk and the kids have remnant nail polish on their toes. pink nail polish of course. on topher. of course.

here's a picture of lily trying not to pass out from the fumes from the nail polish remover. the fumes that are pissing her off the most are probably from the nail polish remover that was used on her face. chris was very good about finishing up with clean up duty when he got home from work.

gotta love these crazy crazy crazy kids...

fathers day

2011-06-20T20:49:00.001-07:00

today is father's day and i am sitting quietly in a cabin up north in overgaard,
hanging out with my sleeping niece, and waiting for everyone else to come back from a walk. i kinda feel like it's mother's day!

i feel superblessed to not be in the phoenix area today for a couple reasons. 1. i am wearing a long sleeve shirt and am worried that my kids are too cold on their walk right now, whereas if we were home, i would be worried about nothing because we would definitely not be outside on a walk, and definitely not be cold. 2. i am hanging out with two of my favoritest dads- chris and wes!

here are chris and his dad playing tether ball together yesterday:

that was a hilarous and wonderful snapshot of yesterday. a wonderful father's day moment we had today was when we were rolling dice to see who would go first while playing Farkle. kim and i lost. chris and wes both rolled a six. so it was a roll off. they rolled again. both rolled a 1. roll again. both rolled a 3. roll again, wes rolled a 5, chris rolled a 4. adorable.

chris and wes are a cute couple of men. i may have already mentioned this before, but one of the most incredible things about these men, and pretty much all the watson men (grandpa and robert)- is how freely they throw out: "i love you". and mean it! they all say this to each other quite often- grown men saying "i love you" to each other all the time. as a korean woman- that's crazy to hear. the first time i knew i was joining a different kind of family was when i was on the phone with chris after he moved back to arizona and was briefly living with his dad. wes came in to chris' room to say good night and they chatted for a second, and then they exchanged "i love yous". they were just going to bed. they were going to see each other in the morning. it's not like they were going off to war or jail or into the lion's den. they were just saying "i love you" as if it was something they always said. again- for me, it was weird. and now that i have been part of this watson clan for over five years, i am used to hearing it. though it never fails to warm my heart everytime i hear chris getting off of the phone with his dad, or brothers, or grandpa, and saying: "i love you."

i want to clarify that most korean people are not superverbal about their feelings whether they be good or bad feelings. my family does not throw out the words: "i love you" a whole bunch, but that doesn't mean that i don't think my parents, brothers, and sister don't love me. i know they do. funny enough, my parents actually say "i love you" like it's going out of style to lily, topher, sungu, and sunha. i don't know why they say it so freely to the little ones and not so much to their own kids, but that's their perogative. i feel the love from my parents through their outpouring of verbal love to my kids.

so, one of my favoritest lines in any movie is from 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." Mr.T (yes, the guy from the 80s with the mohawk and gold chains) is the voice of a dad who loves his son very much. there is one time when he tells his son: "i love you son." and to that his son replies: "i know dad! you tell me everyday!" that's how it's supposed to be! fathers telling their sons, and daughters, that they love them, every day, and kids just knowing that they are so very loved.

my kids are very fortunate to be part of a family that expresses their love for one another very very openly. chris loves loves loves his kids and he tells them and shows them just how much, every day. and lily and topher know that their dad loves loves loves them and are going to be two very confident, well-adjusted, secure, and happy kids because of that love.

just look at the love:

happy father's day to wes, chris, and all the other wicked-great dads out there. much love and respect to you all.

princesses and boy princesses...

2011-06-14T22:16:00.000-07:00

on saturday morning, we went to Changing Hands, a wonderful little bookstore in Tempe (or is it Chandler?...) they were having a fun morning for princes and princesses with stories, cookies, and crafts. it was pretty awesome. the kids are finally at the age where they sit through storytime. or at least 80% of it. and they are also old enough to understand threats to get them through the last 20% of it- no sitting for stories=no cookies. so we sat through one whole story and then got to the good stuff- crafts and cookies!
another great part of the morning was that the kids were swinging their magic wands in my face and saying they were turning me into a 'witch'. well kids, your magic spell worked! now to figure out how to get me to not be a witch anymore... muahahaha!

the princess

decorating cookies!

eating cookies!!!

topher and lily showing off their crafts. topher made a tiara. he makes it look good.

showing off more crafts- crowns, wands, more tiaras! the crown actually makes topher's head look small for once! what a great great morning!!!!

who you gonna call?...

2011-06-13T20:19:00.000-07:00

BATMAN!

i know, that is the ghostbusters song. does batman have a song?... "dananananana batman!"... not nearly as catchy as the ghostbuster song.

anyway, last week we met batman. and it was awesome. though it took two days. my sister and i went to the mall early in the week and saw that batman would be there on saturday and sunday, so we decided to come back to meet the caped crusader, because Sungu and Topher and huge batman fans. have they ever seen a batman show or movie before? no. how do they know batman? they don't. but they love him. kind of like how we have never seen Jesus but we love Him cause we have heard great things about him. man, i never realized how spritually savvy our kids are.

so saturday afternoon, we all got in the van and were pumped and ready to meet batman. the boys were dressed in their batman best- matching t-shirts that say 'batkid'. adorable, right? so we got to Arizona Mills, a wonderful little outlet mall here in the valley, at about 1pm. we were going to meet up with chris' brother's wife's sister, Sarah, for lunch too. but then we saw a sign that said batman would be around for pictures at 5pm. yowsers! there was no way we could keep our kids entertained for 4 hours. and worst of all- we had chris watson with us, and there was NO WAY he could stay in a mall for 4 hours. no way. so, we had to abandon the plan to meet batman. chris made up a story about how batman was stuck fighting crime and beating up the penguin, and that he wasn't going to be able to make it today. the kids were very disappointed. until they got to ride on the carousel!

and then we ate at mc donalds. done deal.

but things weren't right at the watson/malloy home. so we decided to give it another shot. so after church on sunday, we got back in the car, and went to meet batman. and of course we didn't bring a camera with us, but fortunately chris had his handy dandy iphone and was able to get this picture:

doesn't he look like val kilmer/michael keaton??? very professional. very nice to the kids. great time had by all. especially jeehon who maybe has as big a crush on batman as her son now.

tent time

2011-06-08T22:07:00.001-07:00

chris set up our tent in the backyard on saturday. the kids were very excited about it! the three big kids, chris, and i were planning on sleeping in there. we all got in the tent, armed with blankies, favorite dolls and animals, and some water. it was pretty warm. so we sat outside, in our giant tent, read some stories, said some prayers, looked out the tent window, and then the troops dispersed.

first sungu said he wanted to go back into the house, and then lily said she didn't want to sleep in the tent with just topher. we reminded her that mom and dad would be in the tent with them, but it wasn't enough.

so i took lily and sungu back in, and chris stayed outside with topher. inside i was praying with lily, she wanted to ask Jesus to help her to be brave. so we prayed for her to be brave, and for topher too. when we said 'amen', lily said she was ready to go back outside. when i told her that her decision was premanent- stay out or stay in, she decided Jesus could make her brave in the comfort of her own bed. i ended up sleeping in topher's bed, making it that much easier to be brave in her room.

meanwhile, chris was outside with topher. topher asked about giants, and the copius strange noises that were lurking on the other side of the thin tent wall. chris told his son that it was absolutely ok to want to sleep inside the house. but topher was resolute. he was going to sleep outside like a brave boy. as long as chris did not leave his side! so they stayed in the tent, looked at each others' teeth, hung out like best buds, and topher fell asleep clutching on to chris' arm for dear life.

little did our brave little boy know that chris managed to free himself for long enough to come inside, enjoy some air conditioning, and a game of scrabble, before he went back to topher's side. topher had a great time in the tent, and woke up a little bit after the sun, at 6am, much to his father's chagrin. chris, sore from sleeping on the ground, was awoken by topher saying: "look dad! the sun is up!here it is! (opening up one of the tent 'windows') and look, it's on this side this side too! (opening the other 'window' on the other side of the tent)"

setting up the tent took about a half hour, and that's about how long lily and sungu lasted in the thing. but topher's bravery made the ordeal worthwhile.

cousins!

2011-06-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

i'm not sure how a whole week has passed since my last post, but we have been busy and exhausted here with our on-slaught of extra family members. what have we been busy with? i'm not sure. we have gone to a good number of malls, been dressing lily and sunha in matching outfits, and have gotten wet every day (steady 100+ days are here to stay). buying a kiddie pool at walmart was the best $20 i have ever spent. really, i have nothing new to report. we did meet batman on sunday, but that deserves it's own post. otherwise- nothing. nada. i have actually tried to post for the last 3 or 4 days in a row, but either i have fallen asleep, not been able to find my camera, fallen asleep, or not been able to think of anything good or special to write about.

so, what to do when you have nothing to write about? post pics of a bunch of crazy kids. so here you have it- more pics of my kids and their crazy cousins.

they are here!

2011-05-31T15:19:00.000-07:00

it's been awhile!

we've been mucho busy around here now that the malloys are here!
the malloy invasion happened on saturday afternoon, and it's been so great.
i haven't seen my sister and nephew, sungu, in about 15 months. and in that time of seperation, my sister had a baby girl, sunha, and i hadn't met her until saturday! sadness!!!!!

sunha is now about 13 months old, and is a serious bundle of cuteness! she has a couple of cute tricks, like reaching for the sky, but the cutestest thing she does is snuggling with her uncle chris. she just loves hanging out with chris! it's so stinkin adorable i want to die from cuteness overload.

and it's been so great having sungu back in the fold. he has developed into a very smart and hilarious giant boy. he's turning 4 next month, and at this rate, he will probably be taller than me when he turns 5. he weighs in at a whopping 40 lbs! big boy. it's been so funny hanging out with him cause sometimes he has a weird accent when he speaks english, kinda british, kinda english-as-a-second-language-ish. i am a giant racist jerk for making fun of him. maybe i will stop soon... maybe not. looking at sungu also makes me laugh, cause he looks a lot like one of my brothers. the Ham gene (ham is my maiden name in case you have no idea what a 'ham gene' might be) is strong in these malloy kids. much stronger than in mine.

i baked some muffins the other day, and i gave one to sungu for breakfast. he was really happy to see it, and then he asked: "did the muffin man come here and make these?" welcome home sungu! that is one of the funniest things i have ever heard.

anyhoo, jeehon, sungu and sunha will in all likelihood be in a lot of my posts for the next three months, so get used to it now.

here are some pics of the happy kids from the last couple of days. i would just like to give some major props to my gay minivan. as lame as my minivan may be, it is the ultimate driving machine with 2 boosters in the back row, with room for another adult to sit in the middle, and 2 more car seats in the captains' chairs, and still room for me and chris too. it's not cool, but it's pretty dang efficient!

crossing the line

2011-05-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

something happened the other day ago that has never happened before.

this is the third child i am carrying at present. the third of chris watson's flock. and he did something that he has never done before. he didn't think before he did it, and i don't think he was thinking when he did it. but he did it, and it can't be undone.

what is this heinous crime that my otherwise wonderful and perfect husband committed?

he came home from work, put his lunch cooler and water cup down on the counter, came over, gave me a kiss, poked me in the belly, and then went to find the kids to give them hugs and kisses.

yeah people, he poked me in the stomach. like i was the pilsburry dough boy! can you believe that? sure, my belly is protruding and almost asking to be poked. but just cause it's asking for a poke, doesn't mean you should poke it!

i do not care when people touch my stomach. it doesn't really bother me. i actually am a stomach toucher myself. i think baby bumps are beautiful and adorable. but poking a baby bump? never! unheard of!

so, if you see me around, you can touch my stomach. as long as i know who you are. but if you feel so inclined as to poke my belly, please be aware that i will probably be so inclined to punch you in the face. yes dear husband, i am talking to you! ;)

too sudsy

2011-05-23T21:52:00.000-07:00

crazy thing happened today.

actually, about a month ago our washing machine started leaking. or something started leaking everytime i did the laundry. this made an already ridiculously tedius job all the more annoying because i would have to lay out a towel or two to catch the water, and then need to do the laundry again soon after to wash those towels. vicious vicious cycle.

chris started to inspect the laundry as it would run to see what the real issue was. he said the washing machine started leaking near the end of the cycle as the washing machine was draining. i had no idea what he was talking about and was convincced he was just avoiding buying another washing machine. i started looking on craigslist.com and he kept preaching about the wall.

then we bought some 'liquid plumber' cause chris read on the internet that sometimes there can be a clog in the wall. so we poured that in the wall and waited. (you like how i used 'we' in the last two sentences, when clearly only one of us bought the stuff, and the other actually poured it into the wall. you can figure out who did what.) no change. flooding? check. dreams of a beautiful new washing machine (aka one that doesn't pee all over the laundry room and leak into the kitchen)? check.

so, chris did something we should have done a month ago- called a real plumber. the guy showed up today, did this thing and that and then declared the wall was clog-free. then he asked me if we had changed laundry detergents while this was happening. and though i thought it was an absurdly absurd question for him to ask, when i took a second to think about it- i had changed detergents at PRECISELY the exact same moment that our flooding issues began. i usually use Purex or Arm and Hammer (cause i get coupons for them! and chris doesn't have an allergic reaction to them) but when i ran out a month ago, i started using a detergent that has like triple concentration. and apparently that backed up the drain! and thus the flood! who woulda thunk???!?!?!

so after the plumber left, i ran a load with some new detergent that i had just bought yesterday (cause i was running low on the evil detergent) and VOILA! no overflow of water. just a nice clean load of laundry and dry dry floors.

so, if you are experiencing the same heartache/hatred i have been experiencing the last month or so with your washing machine- try using a different detergent instead of buying a new washing machiine. this little tip might just save you $200...

more pics of the crazy man

2011-05-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

i just got a disc of pics of chris from his traithlon from last weekend. the pics are awesome cause barb is awesome, her camera is awesome, and of course chris is awesome.

here's chris in the water about to start his race. every time chris caught a glimpse of us, he would smile like a fool. i love this fool:

here's a shot of the serious swimmer at work:

maybe he worked too hard. looking pooped after the first event... but alas, the almost-ironman pressed on for another 2 hours and 45 minutes.

chris on his bike. we support him, he supports us. love the smile and the wave.

here's a shot of chris running across the lake. he's like 2 miles away. how great is the orange shirt and the camera???

chris actually stopped running in the middle of his 10k run to give me a hug and a kiss. he really appreciates fan support! i on the otherhand got my shoulder completely drenched. it was worth it.

running the last few meters/yards with uncle matt. matt didn't cross the finish line with chris. he didn't want to pull a 'robert' (check my post about chris running his san diego marathon...)

the craziest man in the world. big smile cause he is all done! for now...

esQUse me?

2011-05-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

thanks for all the blog love the last two days! and thanks for all the congratulations i have received via e-mail and facebook.
for the record- i have no more old posts hidden away, so this is all me in real time. i am really 13 weeks and 5 days pregnant, and i really look more pregnant than that. but i am ok with it. really. now to get some of my old maternity clothes back...

so the other day i was giving the kids a bath and we have bath letters, so i decided to quiz the kids on the alphabet. lily's got everything down pat (yeah for paying $200 a month for preschool...) but topher sometimes gets things a bit jumbled still. like 'W' is always still 'M'. close, but not really. anyway, i picked up a 'Q' and asked topher what it was. he got it right. then i asked him what word starts with the letter 'Q'. he thought about it and then said: "esQUse me." he's a genius. i love him.

lily is out of school as of tuesday. she had a really great first year of preschool, and i am so thanksful that she had such a wonderful and caring teacher. one thing that she didn't learn in school, but that she has not been able to kick (bad habits are hard to break) is using the phrase: "last night i..." as in: "last night i was a little baby and i lived in your belly" or: "last night i was older and i could drink that." (that being coffee, soda, stuff i drink that she is not allowed to.) when my friend lainey watched the kids last week, she was crocheting and lily proudly said: "last night i was older and i could use those sticks." funny girl. i love her.

and finally i would just like to send out a shout out to Jesus for His awesome healing powers. a month ago chris' grandpa was in the hospital for a few weeks, and we found out chris' step-dad had a malignant melanoma, and a close family friend had a benign brain tumour (benign or not- a brain tumour is a brain tumour!). things were looking kinda bleak. but a month later, chris' grandpa is up and at em and you wouldn't think that he was in the hospital for as long as he was. jerry had surgery to see if his melanoma had spread into his lymph nodes, and it didn't! cancer-free! and the brain surgery happened on monday and our friend is already home recovering. you can pray that recovery continues to happen quickly, but we are so very very thankful for the millions of answered prayers that have occured just this month alone. Jesus is awesome. i love Him.

medium shrimp

2011-05-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

week 13, like week 10, 11, and 12, is kicking my butt. next week is the beginning of trimester two and i am hoping things turn around in a drastic way.

this week our baby has finger prints! and if it's a girl it already has 2 million eggs in her ovaries. talk about babies being able to make babies!... that was disturbing. forget i said that. all this baby-baking business continues to blow me away, even though this is my third time around.

i had a regular doctor's visit this week on monday. everything was fine until they couldn't find the heart beat with the doppler. twice. panic overtook about 45% of my brain. i was at my appointment alone, cause chris was home with the kids and i told him this was not an important visit for him to come with me. wrong! so they were able to squeeze me in for an impromptu ultrasound, and there my little medium size shrimp baby was! good strong heartbeat and all. this baby is getting a serious time-out when it's born for giving me a heart attack. i have a new white hair and i also blame the child for that one. add a minute to that time-out.

so, even though the appointment didn't start out the way i wanted, we did get to see our little baby, and that was a huge blessing:

chris thinks the baby looks like a girl. i think it looks like topher:

it's the giant head ;) (this is topher posing like the baby)

the ultrasound tech asked if i wanted her to check out the gender of our child. i had to pause for a second before i said "NO!" cause chris and i have decided we want to be surprised with this one. but i did think for a second how funny it would be if i knew the gender and NO ONE else did. but then i realised it was more messed-up than funny, and that chris might see the messed-up part of it more than the funny part.

so being surprised with the gender isn't the only different thing we are doing with baby #3. i am under the care of two AWESOME midwives and am going to try to do this birth as naturally as possible. though still at the hospital. topher was born sans epidural, but that was more by accident than anything else. but that birthing (and recovery!) went infinitely better than lily's birth (AND RECOVERY!) did. so that's why i am doing this. the midwives and i are on the same page with lots of different things so i am really excited to be on this journey with them. if you are interested in having a baby via midwife and you live in Arizona, check out Valley Women for Women. they have plenty of doctors and the two midwives i am currently seeing.

having our new ultrasound pics has really helped lily and topher see that there is a real, live human child in my womb. lily looked at the picture and said: "oh, the baby is swimming!" she tells everyone that she is having a baby sister, which has caused some people to get very excited. but then i squash those peoples' hopes and remind them that lily is 4 and does not know what she is talking about. if you chat with her for longer, she will explain that i am having her baby sister, and dad is having her baby brother. oh how i would love for that to happen! anyway, yesterday, lily said: "mom, i am so excited to meet the new baby!" and it made me more excited as well. just 6 more months to go!

might as well be an ironman

2011-05-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

on sunday chris participated in his first olympic triathlon.

and it was phenomenal! my husband is crazy and incredible!

chris' day started at about 4ish, mine started at about 6ish. as did my lovely friend's, lainey, who very kindly came over by 6:20am. and barb showed up moments later to come and pick me up. lainey hung out with my crazy kids till 12 and i could not be more grateful to have such a helpful friend! i was very happy to hear that toph didn't wake up til 8 and lily didn't come out of her room til after 7. it took a team effort to make sunday awesome, and all the team members did so great!

so, barb and i drove down to tempe town lake for this triathlon and were not sure what to expect. chris was supposed to start at 6:55am, which is about when we parked the car. when we got to the race area, we still had no idea what was going on. some people were swimming. some people were getting on their bikes. it was craziness. then i texted chris' uncle Matt, who mentioned he would come out and support chris, and low and behold, he said chris was in the water and about to start his race in minutes! so barb and i jumped up to the bridge where Matt was standing, and there was my chris watson treading water below me!

the race started and chris was off!he looked great! apparently in the first few minutes of 'death swim' chris got kicked in the head and punched in the neck. chris in turn hammer punched some guy in the butt. great times in dirty polluted tempe town lake.

here's chris emerging from the water after a brisk 30 minute swim. i stole this picture from uncle Matt's facebook album, and his caption for this was perfect: "Chris coming out of the water with his hand on Jesus' shoulder."

so glad Jesus was with my hubby this morning!

then it was off to the bike! we got to see chris hop onto his bike and breeze down Mill Ave. by the time we got to Rio Salado (a half a mile away from the trainsition area), chris had already done a turn and came by us again! i was really beginning to love this whole triathlon business! especially cause us fans were able to take a little break to fuel up before going out to cheer our hearts out again for another hour and a half.

here is chris in the transition area getting ready for the last leg- the run!

we actually caught the butt-end of chris' bike ride. literally. as we were walking back up from starbucks, we stopped to see if we might catch a glimpse of chris again. we were looking down the wrong side of the street when it occured to me that maybe he was almost finished. so i turned and looked the other way and saw chris' butt turning the corner and going back up Mill to the transition area. i screamed. chris heard me. he was encouraged. and biked on.

here's chris starting his 10k (6ish miles).

here's my hubby running and smiling. why are you smiling crazy? you just swam 1500 meters and biked 25.2 miles and ran over 3 miles and still had 3 miles to go. clearly my hubby is on crack.

so chris finished his race in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. absolutely amazing. i don't know how people can exercise for that long. i had a seriously wonderful time hanging out with barb and matt all morning and catching glimpses of an incredible ironman in the making.

we went home (after we FINALLY found our keys, which was a 1 mile walking detour...) took naps, and went out for steaks (a great recovery meal!) with two of chris' biggest fans.

the reasons i came back

2011-05-14T21:58:00.001-07:00

sometimes as a stay-at-home-mom, all you want is some peace and quiet and for no one to touch you or talk to you or ask for anything or anything. going to orlando was a great break for me. but now i am back and jumped right into the thick of things thursday morning as i watched both hobey and zane and, of course, my two little monkey children. it was crazy! but it's great to be back. to be asked for, to be needed, to be hugged, to be kissed, to not have too much time to myself.
cause i do love spending time with these crazy people, and that's why i came back!

by the way, i had the best mother's day on sunday, the day before i left. my kids were sweet and wonderful, but my hubby always makes sure that i feel like the queen of the universe on mother's day, and i did. thanks so much family. you guys are 1 in a million.

the reasons i left part 2

2011-05-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

what does orlando have that phoenix (mesa/gilbert) does not?

1. a chance to eat beautiful dessert with my girlfriend kendra. no kids. no hubbies. just kendra, me, and an absurd amount of chocolate cake. (there was also an incredible strawberry shortcake that is not pictured.) the child in my womb kinda ruined the experience. i actually tried to throw up in the restroom at the restaurant. then i almost threw up just thinking about throwing up in a public restroom. but the experience all in all was still wonderful :)

2. they are over-ruled by disney. we went to 'downtown disney' which is near disneyworld, but not quite. we walked around and posed for pics. like this one in front of the Lego store where they had the most incredible pieces of art- all made of legos. i felt like i was cheating on my kids by being there without them. bad mom! thus ezra is trying to poke my eye out...

3. florida has alligators! and i don't think i've ever seen one before. we went for a walk around a little lake and kendra said that we probably wouldn't see one cause it was starting to get too hot (i didn't leave to get away from the arizona sun. the florida sun was just as aggressive!) but Jesus had a different plan for me. near the end of our walk we saw something in the water that looked like a log. but it was moving. and it was a tiny little toddler-sized alligator.

4. kelly lives in florida too! kelly is the blond in the pic. she and i worked in korea together for 1 year, as did kendra and i. thoguh kendra and kelly's years did not overlap, they met at my wedding and both ended up in florida VERY RANDOMLY (beither they, nor their husbands are from florida, yet they all live there). so they have become friends, and i have managed to stay friends with them both (even though sometimes i REALLY SUCK at being a long-distance friend). we met for lunch and had a rockin great time. kelly came with her two boys- silas and james (silas is pictured in the second picture below, james is the little guy on my lap in the third pic) and kendra and i came with the ezster. it was lovely to be surrounded by my friends and their kids, and to see how much God has done in our lives since we were all single girls living in korea 8 years ago.

5. kendra is married to this lovely guy named jon. jon actually lived in korea for a year too (korea is kind of a post-college hot spot!!) though he actually was friends with kendra in college. they got married and i met jon at their wedding in michigan 4 years ago, but that's it. i never got a chance to know him. until this week! what a guy! great dad! as soon as he got hom from work, ezra did not leave his side. i love this pic, though i don't know if you can see how engaged ezra is in the book his dada is reading to him. so precious. jon is great at his job, he loves Jesus, his wife, and his son. what more can you ask for?

6. and last but not least, i went to hang out with kendra. friend of my heart. the year i spent with her in korea was amazing. she was kind of my first ever accountability-type partner. we would go out after work on mondays for 'magical mondays' where we would just talk about Jesus and life over some wickedgood coffee. she got me through lots (chris breaking up with me! chris trying to get back together with me...) and really helped me to grow as a Christian. i haven't seen her since she came out to phoenix 3 years ago when topher was born. she came out to meet my new boy, it was only fair for me to go out and meet hers. and oh what a boy!

the reasons i left. part 1

2011-05-11T21:32:00.000-07:00

this is the first of at least two posts. i just got back, like two hours ago, from a great 50hour trip in orlando. i left superearly monday morning and like i said, just got back a little while ago. and it was wonderful!

my beautiful friend kendra (the stunning red-head pictured above) and her delightful husband jon, adopted stunning little ezra (the stunning little man pictured above) 4 months ago, when he was 4 months old. God is so awesome and has brought this wonderful little bundle of awesomeness from haiti to two incredibly incredible parents. he has already undergone so much in his little 8-month life, and he has done it with much joy and grace.

i love you little ezra! this post is entirely dedicated to you and your incredible cuteness!

Tuesday with Topher

2011-05-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

it's friday! but i started this post on tuesday, which is why it is called 'tuesday with topher'.

this morning we dropped Lily off at school and then topher and i proceeded to a birthday breakfast for Papa Jerry. Papa Jerry was working so we actually had a birthday breakfast without him, but you were missed Jerry! and happy birthday! so the 'party' consisted of barb, grandma, grandpa, and our wonderful waiter, who happened to be african american. this wonderful state of arizona is in SERIOUS need of some racial diversity. why do i say this? because as we were waiting for our breakfast topher started asking: "what's the black man doing? where's the black man going?" OMG. mortifying. my son is racist. or something terrible like that. i actually had to shove his face into my shoulder to muffle his obsurdly loud voice, and whisper in his ear that we NEVER say stuff like that. fortunately he listened, like a good boy. i have to admit my heart stopped when our nice waiter brought our food for fear that topher would say something crazy like: "thank you black man."

then we went and picked up lily from school and went to our cousin's house for lunch and a playdate. i am loving playdates with my 3 and 4 year old these days! they need such little supervision! or do they...

near the end of our time together, i was talking to topher and noticed something colorful kept poking out of his nose as i he was talking to me and breathing. i asked him if he stuffed something up his nose and he said: "yes." so then our cousin googled: "how to get stuff out of your kid's nose" i was trying to get him to blow his nose into a tissue, but a tiny corner of whatever that was stuck in my son's nose kept peeking out and i couldn't grab it. tweezers! needed tweezers. so chris' cousin went and grabbed tweezers and then topher started freaking out. they were shiny and pointy and topher did not think those belonged anywhere near his nose. so he started crying and stuff, and managed to blow the thing out of his nose (while i held the other nostril closed). what was it? a blue, flat, foam star. where did it come from? how long had it been there? all good questions, with no answers. oh my tophy. such a boy.

so that's all the stuff that happened on tuesday with my boy. but lately he has been killing me with his requests that i leave my hair down. he hates when i have my hair in a pony tail! i don't know why. sometimes when he wakes up and i have my hair back, he starts to cry, and immediately stops if i take my hair out of the ponytail. it's crazy and i don't understand it. maybe there is someone who has beaten him and traumatized him who had a ponytail. maybe that person was me. i don't know. he says i look handsome with my hair back and beautiful with my hair down. i am wondering if he really knows what 'handsome' means, even though he is very aware that i think he is a very handsome boy. i don't know. all i know is that i love my sweet little topher even though he is a little bit racist. but we are working on that! and on not shoving crafts up our noses.

bookkeeper no more

2011-05-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

so, i am blogging as present-day jihae for today. i am so glad i had all those old pregnancy posts saved up! i have not been in a writing mood lately. this kid in my belly is driving me crazy! last week really sucked, this week, week 11, is not looking much better. oh well. such is the life of a pregnant person. i am lucky to be feeling sick and carrying a healthy growing little human being. thanks Jesus. i will TRY to quit whining so much.

anyhoo, today was a momentous day, so i thought i would blog about it so i can remember it in 20 years from now. i have been a bookkeeper (how i wish there was a double 'p' in the word!) for the last five years and though i have not been a fan of the work, i have been a BIG fan of the place where i worked. as many of you know, i worked for chris' dad who is an accountant. chris' uncle also is an accountant, and also works there. as does chris' sister, bre. and a great family friend, jennifer, who has been at Watson & Watson CPA for over 20 years. craziness.

my bookkeeping job has been the longest i have ever stayed at a job, even though i managed to have two kids in between it all. and not only had two kids, but had them in the middle of tax season! i think i took a week off with lily, and then started to bring her into the office with me (much to the serious delight of grandpa wes and the other office members). and i believe topher was born on a thursday and i think i may have gone to work on monday. those tax returns were not going to assemble themselves! (though someone would have assembled them. but i just felt like that someone should be me and my new infants.)

this is kind of a side note, but did i ever tell you about the time i lactated through my shirt at work? i even had topher at work with me i think. or maybe it was lily. i was DEFINITELY wearing a light blue tommy hilfiger polo shirt. i remember this because of how BRIGHT and NOTICEABLE my milk rings were when i looked down at my shirt. i must have just been working and working and working, and then i brought some papers into chris' dad's office, and then i sat down, took a breath, looked down at two very large circles of wetness on the front of my shirt, and i died in my chair. of serious embarrassment. no one said anything. chris' dad loves a good joke, but he was so good about not saying a thing! thanks wes! i left very very soon after. and i maybe never wore that shirt again.

so today was pretty anti-climactic. i went in to finish one last thing and answer any questions my replacement had for me. superlow-key. but an hour into my work day i hear too much noise to be a client or even a herd of elephants, and soon i am greeted by my kids and hubby with flowers, balloons, cake and a card. sperlow-key no more! there is a very very strong possiblity that i have the most thoughful husband in the world. his card was the sweetest as he just wanted to tell me how much he was looking forward to our new family-funtime-mondays. i love him! and he got me a pot of gerbera daisies (my fave) and a mint chocolate cake- since i (usually) love mint chocolate (the child inside is not a fan of sweets! it wants me to have NO FUN!)

thanks chris for being the best and most thoughtful husband a girl could ask for. and thanks to the wonderful staff at Watson and Watson CPA for having made my last 5'professional' years really really special ones. goodbye bookkeeping, hello getting ready to be a mom of three kids (omg... what am i doing??...)

here are some pics of lily working it at the office when she was a tiny little munchkin. she was a great secretary, bookkeeper, and box-inhabitor. i feel like a terrible mom for not being able to find any pics of toph at the office with me, but i am just thinking i didn't bring him nearly as often as i brought the lilster.

week of the raspberry

2011-05-03T22:56:00.000-07:00

we are at week 8. i really can't remember what we are doing this week- maybe making fingers and internal organs and more facial features? whatever the case is, it's been whooping my butt. i have taken at least one, although most days 2 one hour naps, a day. so glad my kids love tv and sit watching while i snore loudly beside them. good times.

a lot of the websites that i've been reading say i shouldn't be showing yet. shouldn't, eh? i've already been told that i am showing on more than one occassion. not nice. although chris tries to do his best to tell me that i look great, his defense for my early pooch is: "what? i have big sperm." really??? he's 31 people. i can't even imagine the seriously inappropriate things he must have said as a teenager. (and he made this big sperm comment in the middle of lunch with some friends, their kids, and ours. need to buy the guy a better filter.)

and just to jab at my awesome hubby one more time, the other day i was wearing a huge sweater cause i was cold. chris said: "hey, nice sweater." so nice of him. i told him i was wearing it because i was freezing, and to cover my fatness. to that he replied: "IMPOSSIBLE." and as my jaw dropped and hit the ground and shattered, chris looked at me with horror in his eyes and said: "wait! you said HOTNESS, right?" omg watson.

i guess it doesn't help that all i want to eat are chips and fruity snacks (and fruity snacks constitute those sour rope things which are ridiculously awesome!) i am aiming to only gain 20 lbs, which is what i gained with topher (my 6'4oz baby) and not 30 lbs, which i gained with lily (my 8'3oz crotch-destroying baby).
we'll see how that goes.

anyhoo, we had our 8 week ultrasound earlier this week and it went so great. the heart beat was strong and perfect, and there was only one baby, not twins, so that was a delight to see as well. pretty much, God is awesome, and we are excited to meet baby raspberry in november.

and tomorrow, i will attach our week 8 ultrasound pic! or i will try to...

week 7

2011-04-30T21:15:00.000-07:00

this week we made webbed hands and feet to go on the ends of the arm and leg buds that started forming last week. so crazy. a little baby duck is cooking in my belly! and it's the size of a blueberry.

chris and i had a great weekend to cap off a really crazy work week for him. friday night we went out for some wicked good chinese food with our friends charles and grace. they are my map to eating yummily in the valley. i have actually been to this restaurant with them before, and it was good before, but this time- it was phenomenal. grace really likes this sizzling rice soup, which was mad delicious. i myself love sweet and sour soup, though many chinese restaurants manage to mess it up. not this restaurant though. it was SO GOOD. a shockingly great dish was the walnut shrimp dish, which is basically a bed of walnuts with shrimp that has been fried and then covered in mayonnaise on top. sounds horrid. tastes like heaven. so good. the name and place of this ugly yet incredible eatery is WONG'S (can you get more chinese than that? i think not.) and it is located on the south side of baseline, east of mc clintock. let me know if you want to try it out. i want to go to there.

the next night we had another date night planned (chinese food is maybe all the more delicious when you are pregnant and not sharing your food with a picky 3 and 4 year old). we had no idea what to do. we didn't really want to just go out for dinner, and we definitely didn't want to go out to a movie. i had the genius idea of going to the driving range to hit a bucket of balls and maybe getting dessert afterwards. chris was initially very excited about the plan until his amazing daddy-intuition kicked in and he said it was a bad idea. when i asked him why, he said that since swinging a golf club is such an ab exercise that maybe we should hold off till i was out of the first trimester. what a great dad! and a great golfer. i don't actually think i use my abs when i golf, but i just agreed with my genius husband and we didn't golf.

so that was week seven. still tired. still not loving smells. still not feeling incredible, but enjoying the peace that comes with that.

easter with the watsons

2011-04-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

around here, we try to talk about Jesus a lot and help the kids to realize what holidays are really about. it's hard, especially when you walk around target every few weeks and all you see are decorations and giant signs marking the next holiday, even if it is months before the big day.

so, since right after valentines day, we have been talking about easter. (thanks for that target). which is good. if you ask the kids what Easter is about, they will most likely say: "Jesus died. and then He came back!" and then they will mention something about heaven. they are not sure what heaven is about, but we have explained to them that Jesus died so that we can go to heaven and be with Him one day.

on easter sunday, we went to church with our lovely friends, the hartmans. aka hobey and his family. they actually have started going to a church in tempe, which is SO great but we thought we would invite them to ours so that the kids could go to sunday school since the tempe church doesn't have that up and running yet. since i am not entirely sure what they think of the gospel, i listened to sunday's message as a 'non-believer'. and to be honest, it all sounds kinda hokey. someone loves me so much that they died for me? Jesus touched people with leprosy? who cares? i can do all things through someone who is going to give me strength? weird. God is full of comapssion? i don't believe it.

man! it was really easy to not believe! it's easy to disregard everything you hear at church as being a nice story from a really big book of stories, and that's it. but the thing of it is- it's all real. it's really real to me. so much so that i feed these stories to my kids and i pray that these stories transform the way my kids live their lives and give them hope in a pretty hopeless world.

i love easter. we definitely celebrate it in a very commercial way. we have an easter egg hunt at nana's and papa's and the kids love it so much. when we were getting in the car to go to barb's topher asked if we were going to heaven. we said we would one day, but not at this very second. he absorbed what we were saying to him and then he asked: "can we go to nana's house first? and then go to heaven?"
oh my boy! so precious. i just hope he realizes one day that heaven is actually better than going to nana's house for funtimes with the family and a bucket full of candy. although that sounds pretty good too.

hope you all had a wonderful easter. praise be to the One who loves, touches, heals, dies, and comes back!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:3-5

week lentil bean

2011-04-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

week six, my baby is the size of a lentil bean and is working on it's facial features, arm and leg buds. again- amazing.

the beginning of the week marked the arrival of the super-sensitive-pregnant nose. no more scented lotions, or anything for that matter. topher woke up tuesday morning with an over-full-of-pee diaper and i almost threw up on him when i caught a whiff of it. changing zane and hobey's diapers this week was a special challenge, as it will be for the next few months :)

then the dreaded/much anticipated morning sickness arrived. yeah and boo!!!!! so i finally feel pregnant, and it is exhausting and terrible and so reassuring! one night i needed to eat some soft tacos from taco bell. i've never seen chris so happy to run out and 'make' dinner for us. a major perk of being pregnant. then this morning i really really needed to eat some pancakes, so we went to Denny's. so great. sure our bank account may take a hit this month on my wanting to eat everything and not wanting to cook anything, but this is the last time we are planning on being pregnant, so i am just going to live it up.

but the strangest thing happened this morning as i was drinking my decaf cup of coffee. i was NOT enjoying it. i don't know whose baby is in my womb, but this baby does not like coffee! what the what!?!? so crazy. even though i am a pretty serious coffee drinker (anywhere from 1-3 cups a day) i have not had any withdrawals from my gradual change from regular to decaf, and now decaf to no-coffee. this journey just keeps getting more and more interesting as the days go by.

another perk/downfall of being pregnant is i took a serious two hour nap today. chris was home so i enjoyed the nap without any fear that my kids were somewhere drinking bleach. on days when i am watching lots of kids, and by myself, napping turns into an artform, where sometimes i close my eyes for a few minutes while everyone is having a snack, strapped into their chairs at the table!

in two more weeks we will have our first ultrasound! i definitely feel like things are going well, but i know a good handfull of people who have gone to their 8 week ultrasound and had bad bad bad news delivered on that day. so i am being cautious and prayerful and still not telling lots of people. we especially haven't told lily and topher cause 1. nine months is a long long time to wait for a 4 and a 3 year old. and 2. it's no fun telling people you aren't pregnant afterall, i really don't know how i would tell that to lily and topher.

***real time moment- this is present jihae, not past-jihae from 3 weeks ago. we have told lily and topher and they are not necessarily as excited as i thought they would be. but lily is convinced that there is a baby sister for her living in my belly :)

week 5

2011-04-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

i wrote this post almost five weeks ago! hope everyone had a great easter weekend :)

at week five my baby is the size of a grain of rice and is forming it's heart. how crazy is that?!?!?!?! look at a grain of rice. and imagine that rice being a person with a heart. that is sheer insanity.

this week i had moments of narcolepsy mixed in with lots of moments of feeling totally and completely fine. which sent me off of my rocker. i guess you can say i freaked out that i didn't have morning sickness yet and was yearning for it (idiot!). i had my first doctor's appointment on monday the 21st, and there they proclaimed that i was 5 weeks pregnant. i was having a good amount of cramping, which they said was fine, as long as it wasn't very sharp and only on one side. the pain was pretty well distributed. safe. and no spotting. also safe. but my pregnant brain played lots of evil tricks on me this week, and it was a daily struggle to lift up my rice baby to Him and ask for proctection and health.

it's been FIVE years since i was pregnant with lily. i am not remembering anything clearly, but i am trying to enjoy the fact that i am not sitting in front of the toilet puking my guts out, like i did with lily. the journey begins! again!

watermelon time

2011-04-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

i love watermelon. so juicy and delicious. it is the fruit of summer and summer is here in arizona. i just ate 1/4 of a mini seedless watermelon by myself. like 2 minutes ago. cause everyone is napping. and i didn't have to share it. and i loved every second of it.
but now i feel like i need to share this:
turn up your volume otherwise you will miss it. and don't blink, cause the video is only 9 seconds long.

this video is real and was taken about 5 weeks ago. chris' smile at te end is the best which is why i love watching it over and over again.
that's how i like to make big announcements- make lily do it for me. she delivers it with great poise and cuteness. i especially love how chris says: "really?" and she answers: "yes", but she actually has no idea what she is talking about. she never asked me what "pregnant" meant, and didn't find out herself until chris and i had our first ultrasound last monday.
everything is looking good- baby has a nice strong heartbeat and i am feeling gross, tired, and all around kind of terrible. yeah!!!!!! i am an early-show-er, and already have a good baby bump though most articles i have read say: "you aren't showing yet, so take some pictures of yourself now to compare during the rest ofyour pregnancy." too late. now that i am announcing it, i feel like i can proudly display my growing midsection.
so i am due november 20th, but will be doing my best to push this baby out on 11/11/11 at 11:11. surely there must be a prize for that, right? but in the much nearer future than november, be looking forward to an avalanche of posts concerning my pregnancy as i have been blogging-without-posting for the last 5 weeks. i am happy to be living up to my name of 'baby havin babies' though i think chris thinks it might be time to rename the blog 'midddle age woman havin babies but definitely still acting like a giant baby'.

thank you utah!

2011-04-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

thursday morning, chris and robert hopped on an airplane to go to salt lake city for a few days for some brother bonding time (aka running away from their wives and young children time). many people have asked why they chose to hang out in salt lake city. cause there was a half marathon there on saturday, and these crazy boys wanted to run while on vacation. i don't understand it. but that's just me.

so they left and they did all the things that i do not like to do. namely go to the movies and watch crazy, scary, bloody, movies. they did this. every day. thursday. friday. saturday. sunday. and then they came home on monday. before they left, chris lookde up the top 30 things to do in salt lake city. i think #9 was: "check out the library!" oh dear. i knew chris was going to be just fine on his man trip.

so, the funniest thing that happened was, in the midst of the abundant boredom, the boys went shopping. chris went to barnes and noble and bought books for the kids. two early reading books for lily (she doesn't know how to read yet) and a batman book for topher. they were so very very happy with their gifts. i too was very pleased with the great gifts chris chose for our kids. after chris gave the kids their books, he handed me a lovely little gift bag and inside was a beautiful shirt. so sweet! i love it. but more than i love the shirt, i love the story that goes with the shirt:

-chris walked into this store at the mall on a sunday in salt lake city. the place was deserted. the girl who was working there was trying to help chris cause he was the only human being she had seen that day so far. she asked if chris was looking for a shirt, or an outift, or something else. chris said "outfit" with confidence, though he was unaware that he was in a pretty expensive store (i was surprised when i saw the bag!) so the girl lit up like christmas (commission much?) and started showing chris some outifts. the shirts were all about $20, but the bottoms were all about $70. i don't normally pay $20 for tops, but i NEVER pay $70 for bottoms. chris made a pretend phone call to robert, started muttering something about how many pants and shorts i already owned, and then told the girl that he would just get me a shirt.

i don't know why. i just pictured the whole thing and it was hilarious. my beautiful, yet cheap, husband. (that's not a jab at chris. i am cheaper than him.)

so, chris came back on monday, happy to see the desert sun (it was cold in salt lake),and his family. there is no time for boredom in our house! the kids were all over him, and were so happy to have someone to play tag with (i don't know why, they never ask me to play tag with them at the park, and i guess i never really offer...) and then when we came back from the park, chris announcedthat he was going to teach our kids how to read, so he got one of the books that he bought for lily and started to teach her how to read. "lily, what letter is this? what sound does it make? what's the next letter? what sound does that make?" and so on and so forth. he tried really hard! it was a beautiful sight to see!

so, thanks to salt lake city having nothing to do except go to the library and run, my hubby has come back a healthier man who is obsessed with reading. this is the kind of man trip i am happy to support.

the evils of water

2011-04-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

when chris was in iraq, i was always so happy to meet people who had come back from iraq, safe and alive. now that chris is a cop, i really enjoy meeting retired cops, people who have served for 20+ years and are safe and alive. these days, i am enjoying meeting adults/teenagers who have grown up in arizona and are safe and alive.

did you know that there are 90 pool-related deaths in arizona every year? and they occur between april and august. two weekends ago, a little 7 year old boy died in a canal, while his 6 year old brother, also in the canal, managed to survive. this weekend on saturday, one 3 year old and one 7 year old girl died in swimming pools. the 3 year old was in a pool full of other kids, the oldest one being 14. the 7 year old died at her grandparents house in an above ground pool. there wasn't a ladder on the pool, but there was one close by, and the 7 year old pushed it over and drowned. my heart breaks for all of the families that have lost their children in this horrid month of april.

but heart is also divided between being sad and being extremely angry because drowning is so preventable! i feel like it should be mandatory for swim lessons to be free in this state. is that crazy talk? i am pretty sure i took free swimming lessons in canada at the local rec center. and they were great swimming lessons. i became a lifeguard. i think i even took synchronized swimming lessons for free (that didn't last long. the lessons. not the free-ness). sure that was EONS ago, but can't we just do that here in the land of the 6 month long summer? i mean, there's about 2 months, max, that you are swimming outside in canada, and yet we have free swimming lessons. i knew 1 person with a pool in their backyard growing up. 1 person. that's it. and i can't yell at parents on this blog to go out and pay a ton of money for swimming lessons, especially if they don't have the dough for it. but then at least be ridiculously vigilant about watching your kids near water and letting kids know that water is EVIL AND DANGEROUS! ok. it's not always. but young kids don't do great with 'exceptions to the rule' so for now, lily and topher have been getting an earful about how dangerous and evil water is.

these last two weeks have put me in a quandry. the boys who fell in the canal were on a bike ride. their dad started looking for them after they had been missing for quite a while. but they were on a bike ride. that's safe, right? something they probably did every weekend, if not every day. but they had an accident. i don't know all the details to this story, but i can only hope they didn't intentionally go into the canal, especially because it was freakishly cold last saturday. so does that mean i still shouldn't trust lily and topher to be outside when they are 7? that's not old enough, but then what is old enough? at this point, the kids are going to live with me for the rest of their lives because they won't have nya friends cause i won't let them go anywhere or do anything cause i can't trust them. oh evil water.

but i guess not all water is evil. ok. i know it's really really not. this weekend was baptism weekend at our church and many people were baptized. one of my 'young' friends (high school student)that i volunteer with jumped out of her seat and got baptized at the last second. it happened to be at the service i was attending and i was so blessed to have been at the same service as her. what joy it is to watch people give their lives to Christ. to go under that water and emerge as a new creation. i guess water is evil if you don't emerge from it.

the baptisms were the highlight of my day yesterday. i guess this is an angry post because i found out that the 7 year old who drowned at her grandparents' house was one of my students in my special needs class. she was the sweetest little angel who had a plethora of different afflictions, one of which was not being able to speak. i have been praying for her family in this insane time of loss and mourning and grieving, and i guess instead of ranting about how our state should offer free swimming lessons, i should just be asking you to please pray for this little girl's family. i have hope and faith that this little one is in heaven, communicating ever so clearly to our heavenly Father, and they are laughing and sharing some inside jokes, and He is delighted to have her with Him. she is in a better place. and now we pray for her family to try to get to a better place mentally and spiritually.

life change

2011-04-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

the best thing happened to me last week. or maybe it was two weeks ago.

it started with a trip to walmart. i don't love walmart the way i love target, but it's half a mile away from our house. so that's why we were there. but i digress.

we were in the market for more sleep, and were looking to get it by way of room darkening shades. here in the desert the sun shows off its beautiful rays at about 6am. it's only april. it's going to get worse ie. earlier. which is not ok.

so we were shopping the copious aisles or walmart and we found some curtains by the brand name of 'Eclipse'. clever. i think they were $10 a panel. we had to get two. but it was a very very worthwhile investment!!!!!!

eons ago i bought a blackout shade for chris when he was a rookie cop. eons ago! i think we spent like $40 plus for em. they were good. but unattractive. and it probably would have cost more to cover the kids' gigantic window. then last year when we lived in the apartment, i bought some 'blackout shades' that were essentially paper folded into honeycomb hexagons. they were supposed to not only darken your room, but also save you money on cooling and heating your house. those sucked. a lot. i don't know how much money i spent on that. i was at bed, bath and beyond so i am pretty sure i got 20% off (cause they are always sending those coupons out!) but i still wasted 100% of my money.

now these Eclipse curtains i bought did not pay off on day 1. the kids still woke up at 6:30ish, the time i was resolved to waking up for the rest of my life. but then day 2 and 3 and 4 and beyond happened and we slept in until 7:40ish one day! sure we all went to bed at like 10 the night before, but it was still so incredible! the kids have been sleeping, and even napping, like little exhausted champions.

so if you have some crazy early risers, and you fear the culprit is the giant ball of fire that rises too early for anyone's own good, then head on over to your local walmart and pick up some Eclipse curtains and experience the same life change i have. good luck and good night. and great morning :)

2011-04-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

lily and topher got some colored bubbles for their birthday. they love it. i am ok with it. it fortunately stains the concrete and doesn't stain clothes or skin.
well, instead of blowing bubbles, they spilled the bubbles on the ground and slipped around in it.

they made a giant mess, had a bath, and all was well. except the poor dog got some pink and blue bubbles on his hair, and he did not have a bath.

then this morning chris took Pug to get his junk snipped. chris left our pink/blue haired dog with these wonderful people at teh humane society for a few hours, and then when he went to pick our dog up, this is what he got:

someone at the humane society saw Pug's colorful hair and decided to bling our dog out even more. they added these glittery string things that high school girls actually pay money for to get tied into their hair. and our dog got it for free! take that high school girls. and i guess it's appropriate that now that our dog no longer has his manhood that he should be looking like a high school girl.

come, let us return

2011-04-12T15:01:00.001-07:00

i know i must surely have shared this verse in the past, but i can't seem to find it in my old posts. but really, you can read the Bible a million times over and find new amazing truths in it every time you read it.

one of my favorite verses comes from the book of Hosea. if you are not familiar with the Bible, Hosea is a book in the old testament and he was a prophet. the coolest thing about this book is that it is a reflection of God's absolutely insane love for us, his sinful people. God commands Hosea to take a wife who is a prostitute and to deal with it. we are like the crazy dirty prostitutes that are married to a sinless beautiful spouse who loves us unconditionally, and who eventually lays his life down for us and redeems us of our pasts. Hosea. if you haven't read it before, bust it open, and enjoy.

so i was just reading this passage again today, because there are many who are near and dear to my heart who are in the midst of some pain and suffering. and they/we need healing, peace, rest, comfort, Jesus.

"Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.
Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth."
Hosea 6:1-3

spring rain! it finally rained this last weekend in the desert. i know it probably ruined/altered at least 3 weddings that i know were planned for outside on saturday, but the rain, especially here, is so refreshing! where gross patches of dead grass have been laying in our front and backyards- green grass is now starting to grow! it's amazing what a little refreshing rain can do for the earth, and for the spirit.

God is good and He has a plan. Lots of people have Jer 29:11 as their favorite verse in the Bible. it's a good one for sure. Most versions I have heard start out: "I have a plan for you." but i was just reading this verse last week in our High School small group meeting and my version (new king james) says:
"For I know the THOUGHTS that I THINK towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." how lovely is that? that God thinks of us and has good thoguhts towards us!

if you are in a place of hurting or know people who are, i hope these verses have brought you some comfort, cause our God is a God of love and compassion and He cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7)

time for teeth

2011-04-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

on monday lily and topher had their first ever dentist appointment. this was brought on by our doctor's visit last week. i've been meaning to send the kids to the dentist for a very very long time now. some books that you read say that kids should go to the dentist as soon as their first teeth arrive. other books say 18 months, and others say later than that. lily is 4 and i really have wanted to take her to the dentist before monday. it just never happened. the road to cavities is paved with sugar and good intentions...

so my pediatrician recommended Pediatric Dental Specialists, P.C. they are located at Greenfield and Guadalupe. their phone number is 480-558-0777 and their website is www.chewchew.net (clever). they actually have a whole train theme going on at their office and it is very nice (you can see a giant train in the wall behind lily in the top pic). the kids enjoyed being in the dentist's office and felt like it was a superfun place to be. it also helped that there is a playground right outside of the office. you can see it from most of the dentist's chairs that the kids sit in to get their teeth checked out. it was great for me cause i kept telling lily and topher they could play there after our visit.

everyone who works at this office (or everyone i encountered) was very very nice and really great with my kids. they explained what everything was so that nothing would catch the kids off guard or cause them to be scared. even when they put on their little rubber gloves, they let the kids feel them: "these are really soft, see?". really great! topher was just fine with everything until they actually tried to clean his teeth. you'd think the kid has never seen a toothbrush before. he even has a spinning electric toothbrush that he loves, but the cleaning tool that they had was not ok with him. after me getting into the chair with him, and lots of bribes, we had no luck getting his teeth cleaned.

we looked over at lily and she was in the middle of getting her teeth cleaned. she was SO GREAT! she was just laying still in the chair, with a pair of sunglasses on (that they provide to protect the kids' eyes. so cute!), mouth wide open, enjoying getting her teeth cleaned. she even did great when they took an x-ray of her mouth. when topher saw his brave big sister he asked: "when's my turn?" so we went back to his chair and he sat in it upside down, which the dental hygienist did not mind at all, and he let her clean his teeth, and paint some flouride on to boot. lily is the best Judas Cow in the world. if you need to take your apprehensive child to the dentist, you can borrow lily for a few hours so she can show your kid there is nothing to be afraid of!

the night before we went, we read a book that we have which is called: "Just Going to the Dentist." it's a Little Critter book. very cute. i don't know if it helped get the kids to feel more comfortable at the dentist or not (it probably didn't help topher all that much) but it was nice to prep the kids for something they had never experienced before. if you need to borrow my book- you can do that too :)

so that's it. we actually had a really really great time at our first dentist visit. i was very happy to hear that they usually recommend kids to come in for their first appointment when they are 3 (only a year behind with lils!). and i was happiest when they told me neither of the kids had cavities! yeah!!!!!!

time for feet

2011-04-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

yesterday was a great day.

i told lily that we were going somewhere supfun with Nana and Aunt Lindsay after church. topher asked where he was going. i told him he was going to hang out with dad. "are we going on a boyadventure?" he asked. "you have to ask dad." i don't know where he got boyadventure from, but it's my new favorite word. when chris woke up, topher posed the same question to his dad, and chris said: "of course." he had no plan but how can you say no to a boyadventure???

so after church we parted ways. topher and chris went to Peter Piper Pizza, a cheaper version of ChuckECheese (is that how you spell that?...) and topher was so happy with the boyadventure that his dad had chosen for them.

the ladies on the other hand made it over to Elite Nails on Val Vista and Elliot for pedicures! we were celebrating Barb's birthday which was last week. happy birthday Barb! where would i be without thee???? you are the wind beneath my wings :)

when i had called the day before to set up our appointments, (480-507-6900 if you're interested!) i told the receptionist that there would be 4 of us but that one of us was a child. so i asked how much that would cost- $25 for the adults and $15 for the child. hmm... a bit steep considering lily's 10 toe nails are the size of my big toe nail combined, but chris said you can't put a price on the experience and to just go for it. what a great dad!

so we got there and lily LOVED it. i told her she could pick whatever color she wanted and she said: "GREEN!!!!!!!" ok. so she picked out a minty green and she was ready to party!

lily sat in her own chair for a little while. then sat with nana. then sat with me. the salon people looked at her and were wondering how they would get her feet to reach the tub of water. i told them not to bother, cause there was no way to make it happen except to have her just stand up straight in it. while she sat on Barb's lap, they sprayed her feet with the little hose, and they took off the nail polish that was on her toes already.

then she sat with me and when the guy (possibly the owner?) finished with my feet he started his work on Lily's little tootsies. he threw on two coats of the green. ok. not worth $15. then he busted out some pink nail polish and put a cute flower on both big toes. ok. that was cute. then he got out some glitter and fancied those flowers up some more. ok. $15 was kind of worth it after all. but then we paid for the whole shabang and the guy only charged me $5 for lily's toes! THE BEST $5 I HAVE EVER SPENT!!!!!

afterwards we went out for some Starbucks. lily had a little pink donut and the rest of us had some wonderfully cold beverages. it was a perfectly lovely ladies' afternoon with 3 of my favoritest ladies.

no fools today. yesterday- plenty!

2011-04-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

i had the lamest april fools day today. no pranks. no nothing. i guess my poor husband has better things to do than play practical jokes on his wife. we are officially an old, boring, married couple. ;)

but yesterday was full of much tomfoolery and i just wanted to share some of that with you today.

-i went to pick lily up from preschool. her teacher said that she had another bad day cause a kid tried pushing her off of the slide. no good. her teacher said that because lily never cries or whines at school, her heartstrings really get yanked at when she hears poor lily cry because she has gotten hurt. really? my daughter? never cries or whines? hmmm...

-after school, the kids had their 3 and 4 year well-checks at the pediatrician. so nice being able to go once and get everything done in one visit. the doctor came in, grabbed a book, and immediately started quizzing the kids. i started to sweat. what color is this? what color is this? what is this? what letter is this? yowsers! i did not know there was going to be an exam associated with this doctor's visit! fortunately the kids got all the answers right! topher even threw in an 'amarillo' when she asked about the yellow jelly bean. good boy! but then more question came- do you know how to ride a bike? do you wear a helmet? do you eat chicken nuggets? do you eat broccoli? lily, like the perfect little girl that she is answered 'yes' to every question which made the doctor very happy. me too. even though lily lied about every other question... (in my defense- we only ride our tricycles in the backyard and i get serious heartburn when i eat broccoli! i make other vegetables!!)

-just a follow up of the previous paragraph- topher is weighing in at a 'hefty' 29lbs and is 36in. they have stopped measuring how big his melon is. he is at the 25th percentil for weight and height. lily weighs 33lbs and is 38in tall, putting her at the 50th and 25th percentile respectively. they each got one booster shot and handled it like... little screaming babies! many looks of sympathy and relief were given as i was exiting the office. i could never work in a pediatrician's office. there is always at least one kid screaming bloody murder in there. and when i was there, there were at least 2...

-the grand finale for my crazy day yesterday- we went to barb's for pizza for dinner. chris and i drove seperately to get there, but going home, we caravaned. he was in the van with the kids, i was in the truck by myself. in the truck that has a blown out tail light. in the truck that caught the attention of a bored DPS officer, who thus pulled me over and gave me a ticket and a warning. a warning for the tail light and a ticket for not having my driver's license on me that was in the minivan in front of me. sadness!!!!!!!!! the worst part was that i also didn't have my phone on me, and chris had seen me getting pulled over, so he pulled over a few yards ahead of me. i thought about mentioning the fact that my hardworking husband is a police officer too, but i just kept my mouth shut. but then chris told me that i absolutely should have mentioned that i am married to a fellow man in uniform. argh. then i felt even worse. but then chris researched my ticket, and if you are driving without your license on your person in scottsdale or mesa, you can have the fine revoked if you later show proof of a valid driver's license, which is what i will be doing ten days from now.

so in my list of fools from yesterday: me, for having raised the perfect angel- for preschool only! the doctor, for believing every single 'yes' that came out of lily's mouth. me, for not feeding my kids broccoli just cause i can't eat it. the police officer who essentially gave me a ticket for nothing. me, for getting pulled over by the police in the first place. i guess i played the fool enough times yesterday that i deserved to have a quiet april fools today.

easiest enchiladas

2011-03-29T14:24:00.000-07:00

enough birthday talk. i am going to share with you the best thing since sliced bread. i found this recipe on an enchilada sauce can, so i can't take any real credit for this. but get out your pen and paper and get ready to take some serious notes cause this is an instant classic . are you ready?

buy some frozen burritos. put them in a baking dish. pour enchilada sauce on it. put it in the oven for however long it says on the frozen burrito package. take out of oven. consume.

tada!

amazing!

easy!

FAST!

and best of all CHEAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if you want to get fancy, then by all means- do it. add some cheese on top to melt. gotta love melty cheese. shred some lettuce, get some sour cream, salsa, chop up some green onions, throw it all on top of your enchiladas, and now you have a seriously dressed up dinner. this can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.

i have never been a frozen burrito fan, but drenching the thing in enchilada sauce really works. AND if you are really pressed for time- you can skip the oven and do this in the microwave- still delicious! i have tried every possible method and it is so good.

bueno appetito mi amigos!

my baby is 3

2011-03-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

today topher turned 3. yup, my little baby is 3 now. he woke up at about 3am and tried to climb into bed with us. me and my steel will got out of bed and escorted him back to his bed. but then he said: "mom, can you lay down with me for a 'ittle while?" and my steel will shattered like glass. so in i went to the little twin bed. i heard chris getting ready for his sprint triathlon at 5:30ish, and lily woke up at 6ish, and then we were out of bed at 6:30. i actually just had to laugh as this reminded me so much of the day topher was born three years ago.

i love my topher so much and the things that come out of his mouth just make my jaw drop. he has started saying: "stupid head" which makes my jaw drop with shame, but he learned it from Lilo and Stitch, which we have stopped watching. that's a bad example of my jaw dropping though. topher thinks people are beautiful, and when he thinks it- he actually expresses it verbally (you can learn a lot from this little boy men!!!) he tells me i'm beautiful every now and again, and he tells lily often enough too. it's so sweet. today lily told topher she liked his hair cut, and he told her she was beautiful. my sweet kids. i just need to teach him how to make a few decent meals and how to do the dishes and laundry and he will be 'perfect-husband-material' in no-time!

we had a lovely day, filled with donuts, church, lunch with nana (topher's twin. happy birthday barb!!!), more present opening, watching Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat (topher's pic) and hanging out at grandpa's. topher opened the present that chris and i got for him which is a big Ironman action figure. topher's imagination is so great! i love to watch him play. and he got a book in the mail from his Michelle imo in toronto and he LOVES reading it (having it read to him). we read it about 3 times a day, at least. thanks for the great gift Michelle!

just now as we were getting ready for bed, lily and i sang 'happy birthday' to our dear topher one more time, and topher sat on his bed, with feigned embarrassment, and even threw in an 'oh my gosh' for good measure. he is turning into quite the ham.

anyway, there is so much i love about my boy. so much. he is so special, so beautiful, so crazy, so wonderful. thank you Jesus for blessing us with such a superson. we are unworthy and grateful for both of our beautiful march babes.

i have a big big...

2011-03-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

i have a big big girl and her name is lily.
today she turned 4. actually, in about 5 minutes she will officially turn 4. fortunately she is sleeping, so i will celebrate the minute of her birth in peace and quiet and solitude!

we had a pretty terrific day today. we went garage sale-ing (that was more for me than lily. but we need some patio furniture!) and i got some wicked-good stuff for dirt cheap. (though none of the stuff i got was actually patio furniture...)
then we went back home, picked up the dog, and went for a walk to the neighborhood playground which is a 2 minute walk from our house. oh how i love our house! then chris woke up (he worked late last night and is working late tonight too) and we really started our day.

lily opened her present from chris and i, and she loved it! we got her a 'Jessie' doll from toy story (which i got on ebay for $2!!!! but shipping was $10... but it's normally $17 at the disney store, so i still saved some moola). we also got her some new underwear cause her 2T/3T undies are quite snug on my new four year old. quite snug. she loved her gifts so much. so much so that she wore all three undies at the same time. on top of one another. special girl.

then we went to this cute new cupcake cafe at gilbert and warner called 'TopIt'. they have a bunch of lovely looking cupcakes, and some plain cupcakes that you can decorate yourself! cute idea. the kids chose the already-beautiful-cupcakes and forewent the option to make something beautiful themselves. will have to go back another time. maybe next week for topher's birthday...

here's lily enjoying her cupcake.

then we went to the mall to go on the train, then meet lily's aunt Katie and uncle Joey for lunch. more crap was consumed, in the form of Mc Donalds, but more funtimes were had, in the form of eating Mc Donalds and hanging out with family. the rest of the day was much more low-key, especially since chris had to go to work. but lily kept saying how much she loves her birthday all day. mission accomplished.

my lily is so amazing and continues to grow more beautiful and wonderful everyday. she was so great about sharing her precious new Jessie doll with Topher, who was not doing the best job of letting his sister have the limelight today. in fact, she was getting so many phone calls from her friends (thanks cambry and colbie!) and family, that topher started getting pretty jealous. when GG (greatgrandma, chris' grandma) called and spoke with Lily, topher insisted that he talk to GG as well. lily had just finished telling GG that she got a Jessie doll for her birthday. well, we brought topher's Woody doll/figurine/pillowthing that he got for christmas into the car with us, so topher starts telling GG: "well, i have a big, BIG WOODY! i have a big, BIG WOODY!" oh, chris and i are such immature parents. we were dying of laughter. it was hilarious and inapproriate. why would Pixar pick that name?!?!?

anyway, back to my lils. she is all kinds of terrific, even though she is not sleeping that well lately, and still cries very dramatically (and loudly) over things that are not that important. or at least not important to me. but i love her just the same. the best part of her turning four today was that i was sitting in the backseat of the car with her, and she needed to have four kisses- four eye kisses, four lip kisses, four nose kisses, and four cheek kisses. when we are on a longer car ride i will ask for thirty eye kisses, thirty lip kisses, thirty nose kisses, and thirty cheek kisses. but for now- four is just perfect.

happy birthday lily. i have a big BIG LOVE for you in my heart.

quiet time

2011-03-18T11:04:00.001-07:00

it's 11:04 am. so great. chris took off with our kids to the gym. he works later tonight. my other two boys are napping. thank you Jesus. and gabe slept over last night, and he went home too. oh the quiet. the solitude. the wonderment of sitting on my butt tending to no one's needs. not even my own (i really need to pee.)

sorry i have been not around here lately. we are pretty much unpacked, but that just means almost all the boxes have been emptied and recycled, but now we have miscellaneous piles of junk in corners of some rooms, notably mine. it helps that we have had some guests over already, cause that really makes me work a little bit harder than if no one was coming around to 'judge' how productive i have or have not been since we moved in almost two weeks ago.

as many times as we have done this, moving continues to be a slightly stressful situation. with each move, the length of time that the stress lasts for decreases. but the constant busyness of packing, unpacking, and putting things away from the time we wake up till the time we pass out is not that fun. it doesn't leave a ton of time for chris and i to just hang out after the kids have gone to bed. and the kids haven't been sleeping the greatest here, as some nights i feel like i have a newborn baby with the amount of times i have to get out of bed. but the good continues to outweigh the bad, so i should just count my blessings and move on.

so, i have no pictures to post, cause the camera is in the kitchen and i am not. i think i heard a child stirring. so i guess i should wrap this post up. my list of future posts continues to grow, especially as both my kids' birthdays are quickly approaching (lily is turning FOUR tomorrow! yowsers.) and my twin brothers turned 28 last saturday so i just wanted to send out a quick Happy Belated Birthday shout out to two of my favorite brothers in the whole wide world. love you Eds.

pug

2011-03-12T20:24:00.001-08:00

i've always wanted a pug.

i don't know why. they are so ugly they are beautiful.
pugs are cousins to mastiffs, which works out great since chris loves mastiffs, and we've already had one of those, and, well, that's it. it doesn't matter that they are cousins.

anyhoo, pugs are kind of expensive.
but do you know which dogs aren't expensive? free ones that people leave in other peoples' backyards.

so, our precious dog was left in one of chris' friends' backyards a few weeks ago. these friends of chris's have 4 dogs already, so whoever left the dog there was pretty certain their dog was going to get taken care of. even though they (the original owners) did not seem to be that interested in taking care of the dog themselves. he is very skinny and has abandonment issues (shocking, i know).

so our little dog is of an unknown age, though he seems to be out of the puppy stage. seems to be. i am not into puppies at all except to look at them. that's it. i am not fond of dogs that chew stuff, bark, or go in the house. therefore all puppies are dead to me. the friend of chris' who had the dog for a few weeks said that the dog did not chew or have any accidents in the house...
since we brought the dog home on saturday, the dog has had a few accidents in the house and has chewed barbie's hand to look like a flat nasty pancake. but at least the accidents are not big and, teenytiny compared to when mally, our 160lb mastiff, had accidents in the house.

his major flaw is that he goes through the trash, and has a thing for dirty diapers. major grossness. he doesn't listen when i call him, and he makes trails of messes. basically he fits into our family perfectly.

sometimes i want to kill him. but then i see him with the kids. so cute. and even though it's very annoying to have a dog that acts like a toddler, it's probably way more annoying to have a bunch of toddlers who step on, and pull, your tail and chase after you while some crazy asian lady yells at you to quit peeing on the carpet.
sometimes you just have to be thankful for what the Lord has gifted to you, even if you don't recognize it as the gift you were hoping for just by looking at it.

hot water

2011-03-10T20:19:00.001-08:00

so i wrote this gigantically long blog yesterday and it got deleted by the evil internet. dang you internet! or maybe it's just this computer. or maybe it's my brain that is working at 24% (and that's being generous).

needless to say, i had a pretty crappy day yesterday. i am a little bit having a crappy day today too. and it's all from a lack of hot water. do you know we've been living without hot water since sunday-ish???? and the southwest gas guy came today and we missed him so he isn't coming back til monday?!?!? omg people. that's over a week without hot water. and i know- i shouldn't complain. at least the water i have is CLEAN. but the question is- am i clean?!? and the answer is: yes. thanks to my gym membership. and i plan on using my gym's showers until monday. my kids on the other hand have been taking small baths. small=3 pots of boiling hot water (that i boiled on the stove) with some cold water that is pouring out of our faucets. they don't mind cause they don't know any better. which is so great. i love my ignorant kids.

so we moved in on saturday and it was special. we had tons of help from our friends and family. it was a village-sized effort. some people lifted heavy boxes. some people watched kids so that heavy boxes could be lifted, unpacked, etc. thank you so much village workers. what would we watsons do without you!?!?!? just to name some names- thanks jeff, marybeth, drew, christin, mike, cindy, robert, lindsay, greg, shannon, and eric. you guys are awesomeness personified. there was a moment in the afternoon, in the middle of our chaotic living room, that chris and i were standing around with wes and kim, and barb and jerry, who had arrived around the same time, and we were just talking about how much we all love our landscaper-- who we all use. i am so thankful that chris' parents all get along, and that they were all instrumental in us getting this house- cause they let us live with them for months on end. thanks so much wes, kim, barb and jerry. for so so so so much.
and grandma and grandpa watson who prayed so diligently for us these last many months! and to you too readers- for joining us in the craziness that has been our nomadic journey. it was funny to open boxes that i packed in 2009 (pre-apartment)
and haven't opened until now. you can tell i was really dying without the items in said boxes...

anyway, during all the insanity of our moving in and unpacking and making our house a home, i haven't really taken any pictures. sorry. but i will soon enough. and i need to post pictures of our new family member, Pug, a stray dog who is now part of the watson clan. all this will happen soon enough. probably sooner than my hot water gets turned on...

exciting things

2011-03-09T13:50:00.001-08:00

funny things this week

2011-03-03T19:42:00.000-08:00

-usually when i am writing out the alphabet, or any serious coloring with the kids, we are sitting at the kitchen table. i sit on one side while the kids sit on the other, therefore i usually write upside down. i have to admit, i still write my 's' and 'z's backwards sometimes. i am not that smart and i didn't go to teacher's college (i hear you learn to write backwards and upside down there... or you used to when people used overhead projectors instead of powerpoint.) anyway, lily was pretending to be me and came up with this: she wrote her name upside down and it came out pretty great! sure her 'L's are backwards, but it's still awesome.

-today lily tried to go #2 this morning before school. she pushed and nothing really happened. she hopped off the pot and looked in. there was a dead fly. i imagine it flew in there in the middle of the night looking for a drink of water and instead met it's demise instead. that's what i, with my 30 year old brain, imagined what happened. lily's almost-4-year-old brain said: "look! i pooped a fly!"

-topher is teething, along with every boy i watch during the week. it's special. topher's been dealing with his new molar pretty well. he noticed it a few days ago, and keeps pointing it out. today in the car, topher said: "look mom! i have a new tooth! santa put it there!"

-here's another picture lily drew: it comes complete with kneecaps, eyebrows, and two hats.

-topher is in the "why? why? why? why? why? why? why? why? why? why? why?" portion of his life. annoying as that may be, it's just a phase. right? i am hoping topher will always think he is a superhero with superpowers:

emma time!

2011-03-02T19:46:00.000-08:00

long over due!

finally- i am dedicating this post to my lovely new niece Emma Faith Watson!

this is a picture i stole from facebook. precious! (the pic, not me stealing.)

so, Emma was born on the 17th of february at 7 am and weighed 7lbs 7oz. good job little one! those are all numbers i can remember. that means lindsay went into labor some time in the middle of the night, had barb come over at 4:45am, was in the hospital by 5, had her epidural by 6, and 2 pushes later Emma was born.

Lindsay is a very girly girl, so if anyone deserves a daughter- it's her ;) but admittedly she has done an incredible job being a rough and tumble mom to Gabe and Corban. Lindsay was born to be a mom, and so far being a mom of three under the age of 37 months ;)

Emma is my 4th niece, but only the 2nd one who lives here in arizona. Lily is SO happy to have Emma around, and surprisingly- so is Topher. he has been all about holding her and going over to see her. i love our family and am so blessed to be surrounded by so many precious people who love one another.

all the ladies

the boys and their little girls

Lindsay and i in a picture with all five kids. not easy to orchestrate

anticlimactic

2011-03-01T22:02:00.001-08:00

i have been waiting to post this post for so long now, and i have nothing clever or cute or witty. i was going to take a picture of our new house key and just post that, but to be completely honest- i have not seen our new house key, and therefore have not attempted to take a picture of it. oh well. who cares. we have a key. it's in chris' pocket. and it opens the door to our new house!

yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thank you Jesus!!!!!!!!!

and thanks to everyone who lifted this whole ordeal up in prayer at some point during the last 12 months that we have been looking/trying to buy a house.

so this week i will really pack, clean this house, and wait for a ton of people to do a ton of stuff to our house. be looking forward to some awesome posts about awesome entrepeneurs- provided that everything works out well! i am looking forward to having our house and carpets cleaned professionally, and for our cabinets to get a facelift, and for our appliances to get delivered. this is going to be a great week. a great week indeed.

need new knobs

2011-02-28T21:16:00.000-08:00

this is going to be a short post, cause i am tired, and cannot even pretend to be a conoisseur of home decor. but we are moving, hopefully this week, and my wonderful husband refinished some furniture we had bought at yard sales for our bedroom. we have a black bed, so we have the easy task of painting furniture black to match.

i didn't take any "before" pictures, cause this painting business happened so fast, but i am very pleased with the "after"! both nightstands were bought at different yard sales. i think one we got for $5 and the other like $8. i love yard sales! i bought a small can of 'flat black' paint for about $9, and chris transformed our plain, different-colored wood nightstands into beautifully painted black-kind-of-matching nightstands.

we also bought a dresser off of craigslist while we were living in the apartment almost a year ago. it was kind of black, but kind of not. it was pretty old and the knobs needed to be replaced. but this dresser has eight drawers, and each drawer has two knobs. that's sixteen knobs! and one of the nightstands has two knobs, and the other one has two handles. i wanted everything to match (knob-wise) so i looked for some pretty new ones. pretty knobs cost about $5 each. not-interesting-nor-pretty knobs cost about $1 each. that's a lot of money to spend on furniture that we practically stole.

so instead of getting new knobs, i got this:

a can of Valspar silver spray paint. perfectomundo! $4 for 18 matching knobs and 2 matching handles! that's a good deal.

so, if you are looking to make some ragtag furniture that doesn't match match- i would highly suggest a quick trip to your local Lowes or Home Depot with $15 in your pocket. a great investment!

(i am looking forward to one day posting a picture of my bedroom with all the furniture in it... again, hopefully this week.)

3 pairs of jeans later...

2011-02-25T19:43:00.000-08:00

today was one of those days.

it was originally the day we were supposed to get keys for our house. shockingly= didn't happen. and when i say "shockingly", i don't mean it. buying a house in arizona is not for the faint-hearted. or for anyone in a rush. or for anyone who doesn't like it when things go wrong. cause things can and will go wrong.

chris and i were pretty upset/pissed/not-shocked/annoyed when we got a bunch of e-mails confirming we were not getting our keys today. i don't know who dropped the ball, i just know it wasn't our lovely realtor diana (my previous post about her did not jinx the deal!) anyhow, after some time, chris and i were able to see God's wisdom in it all. it's supposed to rain on sunday, the day we were planning to move. so now we won't run into that. we were supposed to have the appliances delivered, the house, and the carpets cleaned, the internet set up, and the cabinets were going to get a facelift too, all tomorrow. after a million phone calls to cancel all of the above, we see there is some benefit in spacing that all out next week, provided that we actually get keys next week...

chris went to the gym with our kids, and i was left at home with two napping little boys. i was so elated to be alone in a quiet house. i opened my journal and i had written down this verse the last time i journalled, and it was staring me right in the eye:
"Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God the Saviour, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and forever. Amen." Jude 24-25You alone are wise God! thanks for the reminder. the daily reminder.

i only had about 10 minutes of peace and quiet before the boys started to wake up and the day continued to unravel. one of the boys dropped a pretty full bowl of apple sauce on the floor which a lot of that applesauce landed on my jeans and feet. i got thrown up/spit up on. so i changed again. and then topher tried to pee in the potty after his nap, but he didn't make it all the way so he peed on the bath rug, which is fine, but then the pee didn't all soak into the rug so when i picked it up a bunch of pee dripped onto me. so i changed again. and with every clothing change, i needed an attitude change again.

today was definitely one of those days. fortunately i am out of my jeans and into my pj pants. the house is quiet. the kids are sleeping. and i don't have put off packing until next week. i guess things aren't so bad afterall.

i love my realtor

2011-02-23T21:20:00.000-08:00

i am a relationship hoarder.

i love me some people! and my cup runneth over with incredible relationships. i have an amazing family. then i married into an amazing family. i have a great handful of friends pre-arizona. then in the last 5 years i have made some disgustingly incredible friends here in the desert. i have a high school small group that i am falling in love with more and more after every wednesday night meeting. and to top it all off- i have the best realtor in the world!

if you are looking for a realtor- i know a few of em. my sister still has her realtor license. my sister-in-law just got her realtor license and already has her first house closing right now. and then there is diana. our realtor. (for the record, she has been our realtor since before any of my sisters had their licenses.)

anyhoo, diana is a special lady. she is actually a friend of chris' mom's. she sold chris his first house. then she sold us our second house. and she has been patience incarnate with this buying of our new house. 11 months! yowsers. i don't know how many offers we put on houses. but it has to be in the 20s. she was always available to look at houses with us, sometimes with just me, sometimes with just chris, sometimes she even went and looked at houses without us. in fact, the house we are in the process of buying right now- she put an offer on it before chris and i even saw it! and we love it! way to know your clients!

in the last 11 months, she has hooked us up with using her timeshare so we could go to Cancun, she has looked at almost every foreclosed and short saled house in the east valley with us, she has allowed us to live in a rental home that she owns for the last 3 months, and to top it all off, today chris and i went to sign papers, and she came over to watch lily and topher. who does that?!?!? and not only did she come over to watch them- she brought them each a new toy. and she even brought one for hobey! even though i didn't leave him with her! we told her to sit and watch a movie with the kids. and of course signing our documents took a while (we were gone for over 2 hours!) so diana watched the movie, then went on a walk with the kids, and then we found them playing in the backyard. i almost hired her to be lily and topher's nanny.

so we are so excited to be FINALLY moving into our home sometime this week. it has been such an absurdly long process, but we are so thankful that through it we were able to get closer to, and experience the awesomeness of one of God's finer creations- diana k. if you want me to refer you to her, i can. she might not lend out her timeshare to you. but then again, she might.

miyuk gook aka birthday soup

2011-02-20T19:37:00.000-08:00

i got a new niece this week! yeah!!!!!! i will blog about the arrival of my sweet niece after my sister-in-law has a chance to blog about her daughter. but seeing as how she is now the mama of 3 little ones, i will give her a week, and if she hasn't blogged by thursday, i will go ahead and blog for her ;)

my quest to be more culturally legit continues as i did something REALLY korean this week. i made 'miyuk gook', which translates into seaweed soup, which koreans eat on their birthdays. they do this because post-partum mothers are made to consume a lot of this soup. seaweed is very high in iron, calcium, and protein, and so it is thought to be a great way for new mothers to replenish their blood stores. so since mothers eat this when they have babies, those babies celebrate their birth by eating this soup on their birthdays. so i made this soup for my sister-in-law lindsay, in honor of her having given birth on thursday.

the soup is relatively easy to make. though i still managed to mess it up a bit.
i am 30 years old and i have never attempted to make this soup before. my mom's 'recipe' is awesome. i could eat her version of this soup till i am blue in the face. jeehon also makes a great miyuk gook. mine was greasier than it should have been. oopsie. but i know the errors of my ways, so whoever has a baby next will have a less-greasy version of what lindsay and robert ate tonight. (robert texted that he had some too as he wanted to "heal his uterus too".)

here is the general recipe:
-some water
-some kind of meat on bone, or beef soup stock
-garlic
-sesame oil
-soy sauce
-dried seaweed
-salt, pepper, garlic salt to taste

so i put the dried seaweed in a bowl so it could be not-dry. let it sit for about 20-30 minutes.
this is what dried seaweed looks like when it sits in water for a while:

this is what dried seaweed looks like:

this is what dried seaweed looks like in the bag:

then i started a big pot with some water in it with the beef. i put some salt,
pepper, and crushed garlic into the water and let it boil. like crazy. as the beef is boiling, gross stuff will float to the top of the water that looks like white and brown froth. that's fat from the meat. you're supposed to skim that off the top and throw it out. in the sink. i did this. but not enough. thus the greasiness. my bad. so get all that junk off the top. add the seaweed, and some drops of sesame oil and soy sauce and let it keep cooking. add more seasoning as you feel led to do so.

serve with rice.

eat and listen to your body, especially your uterus, thank you.

this may not be something that everyone enjoys, but i am so delighted that i married into this watson clan that is very accepting of my experiments with korean cooking!

congrats to robert and lindsay for having survived my first attempts with miyuk gook, and for having created this piece of squishy beautiful awesomeness:

(what? like i was going to blog about the fact that emma was born and only have pictures of seaweed and NOT add a single picture of her?)

the waiting game

2011-02-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

we are in a state of waiting. lots of waiting.

the last two weeks or so in arizona have been far too hot for my liking. i'm not trying to brag to those who are reading from wintery climates. i like winter! i kinda like the cold. some cold. we haven't had any coldness. it's been in the high 70s (20 celsius). but apparently there will be rain this week, and with that some coolness. here's waiting for the cool...

we have a house! we just can't move into it yet. we were supposed to close on it last friday, and i was SO EXCITED to post this week from that house. but alas. not happening just yet. fortunately we aren't moving yet because the sellers are doing some repairs and putting in appliances. hopefully next week i will have some superduper great news on the housefront. but for now, we wait...

we are trying for another baby. we haven't tried to get pregnant since 2006. actually febraury 2006 is when we started trying for lily. (and we haven't tried again since!) that was five years ago. yowsers. i forgot how annoying it is to wait for this. and what's worse is, my no-more-birth-control-pills pms symptoms are a lot like pregnancy symptoms- severe narcolepsy, cramps, and emotional stupidity/anger. poor me. and poor chris watson... i've thought for certain that i was pregnant every month since i got off the pill in december. but my heart has been breaking all the more for a dear friend of mine who has been trying to get pregnant for the last two years. ah the disappointment when Aunt Flow comes for her monthly visit! if you think about it- please pray for my beautiful friend G as she continues to wait.

and right now i am waiting for my kids to fall asleep for their naps. i don't blog when my kids are supposed to be awake. but they aren't supposed to be awake right now. but they are laying on the floor, in opposite corners of the living room, cause lily locked the door to their room and i can not open it. i all the other rooms have sleeping kids in them, so no blankets or pillows for my kids. the carpet and the hair on their heads will have to do for today.

sweet girl

2011-02-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

this is classic lily.

hanging out. looking off into the distance, pondering. i often catch glimpses of her in my rearview mirror when i'm driving and she is just looking out the window, oblivious to the fact that i am staring at her. probably cause she thinks i have my eyes on the road. which i should.

on sunday, when topher and i hit a wall, lily brought my boiling point back to a good, normal temperature. the tension, the tantrums, were not getting to her. she told me that i was a 'good girl' and gave me the sweetest kisses on the cheek all day. truly a cherub sent from the Lord! thank you Jesus for my Lily. thank you so much for my mouth-breather son too. i love him so much too. he has definitely been pushing my buttons lately, but i guess it's his turn. lily had her turn last year. or was it the year before? or both?... :)

lily still loves singing and it's been a very long time since i have posted a video of her showing off her 'instrument' (apparently real musicians call good voices 'instruments'. i'm no real musician. but i like to pose as one.)

the kids have been watching 'The Sound of Music' with chris a lot. it has replaced 'Despicable Me' (because we had to give that back to the person who lent it to us). both classics. here is lily singing 'Do a deer'. she knows the first few lines and then makes up the rest. enjoy!

i don't know why my kids hate clothes- but they do. just a warning. we have enough money for clothes. you just can't tell from my videos.

bad superbowl sunday

2011-02-07T21:42:00.000-08:00

yesterday was a terrible for me. and for toph. and everyone on the pittsburg steelers. the first two things are not related to the third thing, but they are absolutely related to each other.

maybe that's not entirely true. i woke up with pink eye. yeah. you were right jenny- this house is a hotbed for conjunctivitis! so i spent all morning washing every single blanket, sheet, and pillow case in the house. that's a lot of blankets, especially considering the fact that the kids each have three blankies. i disinfected surfaces. i cleaned and cleaned. it was not fun. and then topher happened.

i don't exactly know why or how. but he had a tantrum of epic proportions. he cried. he screamed. he pouted. he got spankings. he cried more. he wanted to eat lunch. he didn't want to eat lunch. he wanted ice cream. and chocolate. he screamed when denied. and then he peed. on the floor. on a book. and on two blankets. oh. more laundry. disaster.

he finally calmed down enough to eat his lunch. then he wanted dessert. ice cream. and chocolate. i remained firm and said no. his behavior today warranted no treats. possibly for the rest of his life. so he cried again. and screamed. i was resolute. but i did shed some tears of frustration as well. oh this strong-willed child! over an hour had passed.

i finally lured the crazy child to bed with the promise of a family nap. he really needed a nap. at this point i was feeling as cranky and exhausted as he was. so we slept. oh sweet glorious sleep! and when we woke up- we were new people! and chris had just gotten home from work. so wonderful.

it was like a new day had emerged like a phoenix out of the ashes. we had a mini-superbowl party. chris was a champ and decided to stay with me and my pinkeye instead of giong to his dad's house, even though there were actual football fans there, and much much better food. we had a great evening. it was quiet. it was lovely. and ice cream was eventually consumed.

one of my favorite things to do is to watch topher eat. he is a mouth-breather. he breaths. out of his mouth. very very audibly. it's pretty hilarious, though sue sylvester uses 'mouth-breather' as an insult on 'glee'. here's a short video of topher breathing and eating his ice cream. even though we had a terrible beginning and middle of the day, it all ended well. very well. and it's all about how you end.

xin nian kuai le!

2011-02-03T19:15:00.000-08:00

happy chinese new year! well, it's lunar new year, but i got this book called: "Happy Chinese New Year, Kai-lan!" and that's what they say in the book. i don't know how to pronounce it. i don't know which words mean what. mostly cause i'm not chinese. which may or may not come as a surprise to some people. anyhoo, one of my new year's resolutions was to celebrate korean and canadian holidays with my kids, so that's kind of what we did today.

our festivities actually started after hobey left at 5. i probably could have done some lunar new year craft or something today, but i didn't think far enough in advance to do that. maybe next year we will make some paper lanterns or something. after hobey got picked up, i was pretty tired and not in the mood for celebrating much of anything, but i was even more not in the mood for making dinner, so the kids and i got in the car and started driving. i was going to go to Mekong Plaza, a make-shift chinatown in Mesa. but i didn't actually feel like eating chinese food. i felt like eating sushi. so we went to Ra, a sushi restaurant that has an awesome happy hour. and it made me happy. the kids also did really really well eating their chicken skewers and edamame. the kids likened their chicken on a stick to 'ice cream' (they meant popsicles), lollipops, and marshmallows on a twig. this made for some serious chicken eating. i am going to have to remember to have more sticks on hand when i am making chicken.

then we walked over to barnes and noble to read some books about the lunar new year. only i couldn't find any. they didn't have a display of books, which i thought they would have. nothing. so i tracked someone down and asked them and they said they had a display but that they took it down yesterday. i don't know why they took the display down the day before the actual day they were trying to commemorate. whatev. so by this time the kids, and i, were antsy, and we needed to get home to sleep. so instead of talking about lunar new year with my kids for free, i ended up buying a book (ah! that must be why they put the display away. well played barnes and noble. well played. enjoy my $6.)

so, we got home, got ready for bed, and read our new book. the kids really loved it. we learned that red is a happy color, according to the chinese, and that's why they hang red lanterns, banners, and wear red clothes on this special holiday. super. they didn't talk about the phases of the moon or anything like that. and actually all the books at barnes and noble were about chinese people celebrating the lunar new year, as if other asians don't. again- whatev. here are lily and topher holding up their new book:

but i am very proud of the fact that i made an effort (albeit a small one) to show my kids a little extra culture. even though there was nothing korean about our celebration in the midst of japanese food and chinese books. there's always next year- come January 23rd, i will be ready!