Darth Vader and Son

I found this hilarious little book at a store in Santana Row and knew Paul needed it to read to Clara.  The cartoons are hilarious.  These are just a few of my favorites that I promised to share in case anyone is interested in this book as a Father's Day present.

You can buy it on Amazon by clicking here.  And "Vader's Little Princess" is coming out April 23, 2013, so we will definitely be ordering that too. 

Clara Jane at 5 months

Clara turned 5 months old two days ago.  We went out and took these photos at a local parking lot pumpkin patch that day, since there aren't any "real" pumpkin patches nearby.  She wasn't interested in much other than the hay spread out over a black tarp. 

Our little "punkin" continues to be such a sweet-natured, happy-go-lucky girl.  Our friends with kids tell us that our next children will seem like holy terrors compared to Clara because she is so easy-going.  So far, our biggest challenge has been the whole sleeping-through-the-night issue.  Around the 4 month mark, Clara started waking up more and more frequently at nights until it became so bad that she was up 4-7 times each night.  I had planned on waiting to do sleep training until after Hawaii and Yosemite, but decided it could wait no longer when she was waking up almost every hour all night long.

The first night of sleep training was the worst.  I let her fuss until she started to actually cry.  As it turns out, I think a lot of her wake-up times were really just fussing and she might have just gone back to sleep if I hadn't interfered, but hindsight is 20/20.  Once she was really crying, I gave her 5 minutes, then comforted her by rubbing her back and hair and talking to her, but not taking her out of her crib.  Then I let her cry another 10 minutes and repeated the comforting process.  Then 15 minutes, then finally 20 minutes.  By that time she had been crying for about 45-50 minutes and I could tell she was almost worn out so I went ahead and gave her the pacifier and she went right to sleep.  (I wouldn't normally deprive her of the pacifier but one of the reasons she was waking up 7 times a night was that she would lose the pacifier, wake up, then freak out that it was gone.  I wanted her to be able to self-soothe without freaking out about a missing pacifier.)  I laid on the floor next to her crib but out of sight the entire time, unless it was time to comfort her.  I didn't want to be getting in and out of bed and I knew I wouldn't be sleeping anyway and I figured if I was going to make her go through it, I might as well be right there with her. 

The second night went better - I think she only cried for 30 minutes - and by the third and fourth nights she was only crying for maybe 15 minutes before she would just go back to sleep.  Then we went to Hawaii and things got a little messed up, but basically she has only been waking up once a night ever since, usually between 2:30 and 3:00.  I'm hoping to start sleep training her again and break her of that once a night habit soon because even when she does wake up she is not that hungry and barely drinks half a bottle. 

Claradactyl has also become really vocal in this last month and talks, giggles, and laughs a lot more.  I swear she is trying to say "mama" which sort of kills me at night when she is crying and I think that she is saying it.  She has kind of a manic cackle when I find a good tickle spot on her (her upper thighs was working really well yesterday) or if she is in just the right mood and I either "roar" for her or shout "boo! getchyou, getchyou!".

And she is getting long!  Or tall.  Whichever.  I haven't measured her again, but she looks and feels so much bigger and has been straining her pajamas again so we are upping her to the 6-9 month size.  Her hair is getting longer too and I can even do one ponytail at the back now although I haven't bothered because she takes so many naps that it would fall out so easily that pigtails are still the best (and my favorite anyway) option.  I found some tiny baby hair clips that I use to clip her bangs back each day, otherwise they hang down in her eyes and bother her.

Her favorite toys are currently the plastic bag that I keep her hair bows and comb in, her giraffe, and her pacifier.  In her 4 month post I mentioned how she was working on figuring out the whole pacifier thing and how to put it in the right way.  Well now she knows and yet she will purposely stick it in upside down and chomp on it while smiling and saying "rawr-rawr-rawr".  When she is bored with that game she will stick it in the right way and move on to the next thing. 

Clara Jane is going to crawl any day now.  She has been doing the army crawl for a couple of weeks now and does laps around her crib and the living room rug, although she has never ventured off the rug and onto the wood floor.  But in the past few days she has spent less time doing her army crawl and more time on her hands and knees in true crawling form, as if she is testing it out before really taking off.  It is so darling.

She almost always sleeps on her stomach with her bum in the air and her head to the left even though I put her down on her back.  And up until this week she has been a consistently good napper taking at least two 2-3 hours naps per day, and usually taking an additional third nap of about 45 minutes somewhere in between.  This past week though she has only done the morning nap and has slept for just 20 minutes in the afternoon twice.  I can't figure out what is up because she acts tired and fussy (for her) and rubs her eyes, but when I put her down she fights and fights it and when I finally go in to soothe her she gives me the thousand-watt toothless smile and coo that she does so well and reaches out for me so I pull her out and then she plays happily for another hour before she starts acting tired again and we repeat the routine.  My best guess is that on those days she has had a little tummy trouble because inevitably she has a huge movement later in the day than normal and that is why she can't sleep.  Maybe it is the prunes she has been eating. 

Speaking of eating, here are some photos I took of her eating squash while we were in Hawaii.  Her stroller did double duty as a high chair and this was early in the morning, which explains her crazier than usual hair.

Sometimes she makes this goofy face while eating.

She is really a good little eater and has tried all sorts of different foods.  No, she has not had carrots yet, but we plan on introducing them this week.  So far her favorites seem to be green beans, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, squash and pears.  She is less enthusiastic about peaches, mangos and oatmeal, but she eats everything we give her without too much of a problem.  I also have just introduced those freeze-dried yogurt puff things to her so that she can start to figure out how to use her fingers to put food in her mouth on her own, but she acts like they are the worst thing in the world whenever I stick one on her tongue.

My favorite books to read to her are currently Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich by Adam Rex and Halloween by Jerry Seinfeld.  Clara likes to play peek-a-boo and will initiate it on her own by holding a burp cloth over her eyes then pullling it down and waiting for us to say "peek-a-boo" or something similarly shocking and hilarious.

She is so much fun and we love our baby girl who seems less and less like a baby with each passing day.

Baby Shower

This past Saturday one of our amazing friends, Ginny, threw a baby shower for our little Clara.  We had so much fun and Ginny worked so hard to make it special.  And we were so glad that so many of our close friends in the area could show up.  We loved seeing everybody!

I had mentioned to her that I loved the idea of a book-themed shower to add to Clara's scant library.  So she made these darling garlands with little pink "books" and she invited everyone to bring their favorite children's book for Clara.  Amazingly, every book we received was different - no duplicates! 

 Then Ginny made a theme menu around nursery rhymes.  Things like "Peter Piper's Prawn Salad" and "Little Boy Blueberry Scones" were served and everything was so yummy.  

Ginny had prepared nursery rhyme themed games like answering trivia to questions such as "What did Georgie Porgie do that made the girls cry?" or "What time did the mouse run down the clock."  I didn't know that 4 and 20 blackbirds were baked in the pie. 

Ginny and I are both in pink in the photo below.

Carolyn (the master of all nursery rhymes), Melanie, and Hailey working on their trivia.

Paul was having a really good time as the only guy there.  Clara was true to form and slept pretty much the entire time. 

Another game we played that I LOVED was coming up with all the words that you can make using the letters of Clara's name.  I'm keeping this for her scrapbook.

Then we opened gifts.  Everyone was so sweet and generous and Clara got some very thoughtful presents.  These blocks were made by our friend Melanie.

 I was kind of excited when I saw the darling little dress for Clara that Ginny brought back from a recent trip to Mexico. 

 And we got books galore for reading to our little girl.  It was really fun seeing how each family has different favorites for their children. 

Yep, this girl was sooooo sleepy!  You would think we work her to the bone at home or something. 

This photo is for my mom who wanted to know what Clara wore to the party.  I took this photo afterwards while Clara was doing her daily exercise regimen tummy time.

Thanks so much to everybody who came to the shower and for all of the beautiful presents!  And thank you Ginny for going to all that hard work for us!  We love you guys!

Current book

If you are the person who recommended this book to me, thank you SO much.  I am reading it right now and I am really, really enjoying learning about Pakistan and high altitude mountain climbing and building schools for children in impoverished third-world countries.  I know that somebody recommended it to me, but I can't remember who. 

And if you aren't the one who recommended it and you haven't read it, consider this an endorsement.

Book Review

So, photos from our Yosemite vacation are coming - hopefully soon - but I wanted to do a quick post about a book I just finished.  It has been freaking me out in thirty minute increments as I listen to it while driving to and from work.  The book is called "Life As We Knew It" and it is by Susan Beth Pfeffer. 

Basically it is a story about a 16 year old girl (Miranda), her two brothers and their mom and what happens to them after an asteroid hits the moon which knocks it closer to the earth.  The moon's closer distance affects tides and weather and before they know it everybody is storming grocery stores trying to stock up on food, electricity stops working, and diseases like West Nile Virus start hitting the human race reallly hard.  The story is told through Miranda's journal entries. 

The main problem with this book is that it is really affecting my intentions to stick to a list or a budget when I go to the store.  Instead, I end up throwing this and that into the cart and thinking "I must stock up, I must stock up" like a mantra repeated over and over in my head. 

I even told Paul that I was okay with him buying a gun.  And I am so not okay with that.  But that is how much this book freaked me out.  I did the same thing when I read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy (which I do not recommend).  I just started the second book in this series - "The Dead and the Gone" which is the story of a kid in New York City and his experiences going through the same event but in a different location.  I just finished listening to the first few days of panic all over again and found myself wandering through Target tonight telling myself that our cupboards are full and our fridge is full and we don't need anything.  It was sort of traumatic.

5 Things You Probably Already Know About (But Maybe Not)

Recently I have been surprised to find out that stuff I thought everybody knew about maybe isn't quite as common of knowledge as I originally believed.  Like for example, a friend recently posted on her Facebook status about Seriously So Blessed as though TAMN had just come up with her first post or something--she was telling all her FB friends to check out the awesome new website she had stumbled upon.  I was flabbergasted that she was just now being exposed to the hilarity that I thought every LDS gal in Utah Valley had already known about for at least a year.  So if I have already raved about some of the following to you in person or you already know about any of this, please forgive me.  But here are some of my favorite things:

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  I thought everybody had heard about this book until the other week when a well-read friend mentioned that she had just barely heard of the book and hadn't read it yet.  It's easily one of my favorite books I've read in a long, long time.

2. If you hate uploading photos onto your blog because it takes forever and inserting them is frustrating because it messes up your formatting, you are probably using the old editor settings.  There is a super easy fix for this.  On your Blogger dashboard/profile, go to "Settings", then "Basics", then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says "Global settings", then choose "Updated Editor" (it's the button next to "Select Post Editor").  You can insert photos easily anywhere into your blog post and you can also easily change the size of the image.  You can also upload all of the photos for your post at one time, then go through your post and insert them where you please.  We always size our photos to x-large. 

3. Speaking of photos, you know that Paul and I aren't against fixing our images with photo-editing software to bring out colors that get lost due to bad lighting, right?  A little saturation or fill-lighting here and there never hurt anybody, so long as you don't go over the top with it.  And you don't need to be a photoshop pro to do it.  I just use Picasa, which is free to download at http://picasa.google.com/.  Once you have the program on your computer, play around with the different functions.  I almost always use "I'm feeling lucky", then a little "fill lighting", then sometimes I'll up the "saturation" if the photo really needs it. 

Here's the original photo (not bad, right?):

Here's the photo after my Picasa adjustments (better, don'tcha think?):

You can also crop the picture, make your image sharper, etc.  It's a really fun tool. 

4. Bertolli dinners.  Yes they are frozen dinners and I am a slacker for using them, but they are scrumptious.  My favorites are the Lemon Penne Shrimp and the Roasted Chicken with Linguine.  So yummy and all you do is dump the bag into a pan and heat for about 10 minutes.  They actually taste like real food and have vegetables and everything.  I watch for them to go on sale at Safeway and then I stock up.

5. Books on CD.  Since I have been commuting, I have gotten into listening to these while I drive to and from work.  I just finished Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman and I loved it (thanks again for the recommendation Nathaniel and Dorothy).  It's not like I never knew that books on CD existed before this year, but I just never thought about listening to them.  They don't replace books for me per se--I'm still reading during lunch breaks or before bedtime--but they have brought a whole new dimension to literature.  I just check these out from the library, and it works out perfectly.

I'm pretty sure I had a couple more things in mind when I planned out this post, but it's getting late and I can't remember anything more, so that's it for now.  Does anybody have recommendations for things that you think I should know about but that I may actually not know about?  I'm usually pretty behind the times about stuff - I never even heard of Harry Potter until the third book had already come out.