First official family pictures

About a year ago, GJ showed me the photography web site of his friend from high school, Jamie Hammond.

The natural light! The candid portraits! I was in love.

She came to Utah the other week and was able to squeeze us into her busy schedule (she's based in Seattle, but travels often). I've been having all these "I love Utah" moments lately, so I made her hike it up to a picture spot in Big Cottonwood Canyon. I'm kind of an annoying client like that. AND an annoying client to want "cute shoes" in pictures that showed my feet...when we were on a HIKING trail with ROCKS. Jamie didn't mind. And the ending result was PERFECT.

It was hard to pick a favorite. Visit Jamie's site for more.

Fourth of July

I used to always make fun (behind the safety of my computer screen) of bloggers who whined summer was "SOOOO BUSY!" and "I NEVER have time to blog :(". Well you know what? I'm sorry. I'M SORRY. Because I'm now one of those people. Increasing work responsibilities, increasing church responsibilities, family functions...you don't want to hear my to do list. Basically, I've hit a point in my year where "Blogging" is pitted against "Make work deadline," "Feed screaming baby," "Attend meeting," "Show up - on time - to family event," "Maintain social life beyond the internet" and "Make nursery stop smelling like poop" (I'm looking at YOU, cloth diapers!).

So now, I present my 4th of July, via pictures and short snippets.

- Partied like it was July 4, 1999 in Huntsville, Utah! Events included horseshoing (please notice how posed and skilled my friend Melinda looks while doing this):



And then me...



Capturing a "baby bat" or largest moth I have ever seen:



Hiking and photographing:





(Stole the latter from Melinda's blog...but I took the picture playing with her camera, so technically not stealing? I will justify.)

...and playing a mean game of Apples to Apples, eating foil dinners and getting freaked out by the movie "What Lies Beneath."

- Watching the charming Huntsville parade. The best was the float "Huntsville remembers MJ" with a Michael Jackson impersonator dancing on a truck bed. I dressed Peanut in Fourth of July gear:



...or she's been wearing this same outfit for months, it just had red, white and blue on it so I called it her "Fourth of July" number. I can't be one of those moms who buys her children an outfit to wear just once for a holiday.

- Celebrated my dad Norm's birthday:



Four people had to light his birthday candles. I'll be polite and won't reveal his age. But it rhymes with "ifty-ight."

- Hung out with my brothers:



Trent here has been harassing me about updating my blog. I told him he should guest post, maybe about "What it's like being brother to the coolest sister ever." He suggested "Why Amelia sucks at blogging and what we need to do about it."



While one brother is a Blog Nazi, Ryan may or may not be inching himself into "Favorite Uncle Spot" by ridding Peanut of her unfounded fear of balloons and rocking her to sleep during fireworks.

- Laughed at my dad and his brothers.



- Got all artsy playing with my camera shutter during fireworks.











I've decided Fourth of July is my favorite holiday.

Bird hell

A downside of living in our house (a place I have dubbed "The Forest" because there are 15 trees on our small property - 15!) is the amount of critters that also call it home. We've had woodpeckers, raccoons, squirrels, mice, quail - but the worst, oh the worst critter of all? THE BIRDS.

We've had our fair share of bird problems over the years. Let me recap:

- January 2008: GJ is out of town for work and I am working in our office alone when I hear someone walking on the roof. I go outside and look around the house - nothing. I come back inside only to hear the walking getting more frantic...and sounding eerily closer. I pull a chair up to the vent leading to the attic and - SOMETHING RUNS ACROSS! A bat? Rat? Squirrel? Terrified, I spend the night at my sister-in-laws, hoping to return to an either escaped or dead animal. No such luck; attic animal is still going at it. My handyman neighbor is brave enough to crawl into our attic and grab the offending creature with his bare hands. Turns out, it was a bird. A starling, to be exact. And their torture on us begins.

- June 2008. I am working on my laptop in the living room, probably stalking the mailman, when I see out of the corner of my eye a frantic bird continually hopping around the front porch landing. And then I witness what can only be described as bird rape. Yes, bird rape. This poor, small female (or male? Who can tell with birds.) sparrow is continually being mounted by an aggressive, large sparrow. This act continues long enough for me to take numerous blurry cell phone pictures to prove to GJ what was transgressing right outside our front door when the small bird finally flies away.

- Approximately the entire summer of 2008. 5 a.m. Baby birds, outside our window. Chirping. More like an angry scream chirp, if that's possible. EVERY. DAMN. MORNING.

- July 2008. A now broken baby bird egg and tiny baby bird carcass are found on the front porch.

- Later July 2008. The Stowell vegetable garden is finally planted and sprouting. And the birds are single-handedly (single-clawly? single-beakly?) destroying it. I buy rubber snakes and use old CDs to detract the birds (the internet suggested this). Despite the fact that planting was done extremely late in the gardening season, I blame the lack of crops on the birds.

- September 2008. GJ is cleaning pine needles out from the rain gutters when he finds THREE bird nests ON the house. He removes them all and puts up chicken wire.

- October 2008. I am dressing a newborn Peanut for her first appointment with the pediatrician when I hear a loud pop and strange whirling coming from the swamp cooler. GJ investigates - only to find that a bird has flown into the swamp cooler and was chopped up, most likely spraying bird guts throughout our vents. GJ removes the dead bird, only to scare me with its deformed, mangled body - I never forgive him for this.

- April 1, 2009. After a bird-free winter, I am not excited to see the beginnings of a nest and feathers on the front door mat.

- April 8, 2009. I see a red something-or-other poking out in the green ivy on the front lawn. On closer inspection, I find a single bird beak and talon - the other remains of the bird are not seen. Of course only a bird would orchestrate an attack on his own kind.

- April 14, 2009. A second bird rape is witnessed.

- April 29, 2009. The garden is planted a full two months earlier than last year, and the birds are already out in full force, destroying our romaine lettuce and going as far to eat a grown, ready-to-sprout brandy wine tomato plant down to a tiny nub.

SO BIRDS. I can tell you all about how menacing, dangerous, horny and disgusting these creatures are. I have witnessed a bird break-in, a bird violently rip apart another and bird sexual ab use. I haven't even bothered addressing the amount of bird crap I've had to clean off our windows (including THROUGH THE SCREEN. That has to be some pretty tricky angling.)

Haven't I had enough?

Apparently not. Because you want to know what I STEPPED on the other day?


(Yes, I'm pointing to it.)

A DEAD BIRD! Yes, my sandled toe actually touched this dead, furry, most likely diseased creature. I'm not even going to go into the details of how many times I scrubbed and washed my poor toe. Let's talk about how this bird chose to die. Just sitting up, in possibly the creepiest death position ever. The dead birds I've seen at least attempt to die dramatically, feet in the air, wings spread out. This guy looks like he's taking a mid-afternoon nap.

I'm going to try to end this post without copious amounts of expletives because I'm pretty close to getting a cat or a gun (and, if you know me, if I purchased either it is surely the sign of the Apocalypse.)

Simply put...BIRDS: WE ARE DONE!

Weekend happenings

I didn't win at Mormon Mommy Blogs. It was basically a guarantee no one would take first over the leader (who was 100 votes ahead of everyone!) BUT I CAME IN SECOND! I WILL TAKE IT! And here's where I get mushy and thank those of you that voted and all of you who read my blog. It's nice to hear from people who love to read it.

And now, a busy weekend, recapped by short blurbs and pictures. A busy weekend both Peanut and I are still recovering from. Hence this is how I found her Monday morning:



Bum in the air!

...and this is how I found her Tuesday:



Both days, she slept past 10 a.m. She usually wakes up at 8 a.m. I'm not complaining.

(Don't judge the lack of sheets - I hate putting them back on that stupid crib mattress, so find it easier to lay a blanket down in their place and wait for GJ to eventually put the sheet back on.)

- My sister Kristin came in town from DC. And we laughed heartily when, moments after this picture was taken, Peanut peed all over her dress (and brother Trent's shirt) and Kristin remarked: "We should take Peanut home to change her out of her pee-ness." (Say it aloud.)



- As you can see, we attended brother Ryan's high school graduation. It was 2 1/2 hours long. TWO AND A HALF! It was the graduation from hell - and I'm blaming you, Bingham High School principal Tom Hicks. A speech for 45 minutes is one thing...but thanking each individual club, organization, athlete and random foreign exchange student individually? I KID YOU NOT when I quote "And now, the chess club! Let's have all the seniors stand up who participated." All the editors of the yearbook were thanked individually, as were the athletes (BY EACH TEAM) and anyone WHO WENT TO A DANCE (and at Bingham, there are school dances every six weeks).

Between the principal congratulating all the students with a 3.7 GPA and those with a 3.6, Peanut uttered her first word (BORING!) and fell asleep.



Ryan's "Look sexy" pose. Watch out ladies.



- My brothers decided to experiment with the female mohawk.



- Got Trent this t-shirt for his birthday from despair.com, validating my blogging existence.



(Picture from my mom's crappy camera; shirt reads: "More people have read this shirt than your blog. 0000002")

- Took Peanut shopping




(She loved this.)



- Did a baby scarf fashion shoot (my sister made it for her). I couldn't stop laughing because she looks like a character in a Charles Dicken's book, a Tiny Tim maybe.



- Watched our nieces while our brother-in-law took GJ's sister on a surprise 10 year anniversary trip. They have an insane blog stalker (another story for another day), so I'm leaving names off and putting a watermark over pictures of them. The 2-year-old clearly favors GJ (one of her first words was GJ) and screamed "I WANT GJ! I WANT GJ!" when I put her to bed.



- Practiced our swinging skills.



- And cuddled with cousins.



(Can you catch the typo in both these watermarks? Too lazy to fix them.)

- Took the 7-year-old and 5-year-old to see "Up" in 3D (or, as 5-year-old said, "It's 'Up, Up and Away' Amelia, not just 'Up'") where 7-year-old thanked me profusely for revealing the secret behind a snipe hunt. In the movie, the old man sends the young boyscout on a snipe hunt and the girls were very confused. It was either reveal the old camp joke or spend the night with two girls clapping around their beds, scared a snipe would get them.

-...and then I sent the dorkiest text of my life to GJ, which read: "I just fixed the broken blinker by myself and couponed my way to free chicken. I'm basically supermom. No big deal!"

Lyrical genius

I am a singer. Not as in "I'm good at singing," but as in "I love to sing and do it quite frequently" (out of earshot of my adoring public). The problem with being a crappy singer is you never remember the lyrics to any songs.

Take for example one of my favorite sing-along-to-the-radio favorites "When I Grow Up" by the Pussycat Dolls. For the longest time, I thought the chorus went like this:

When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have boobies

It wasn't until I read an entertainment blog where the author admitted singing the same thing that I realized the word is not "boobies" but "groupies."

Or let's take Outkast's "Bombs Over Baghdad," which I used to sing the first couple lines:

International, underground, above the ground, on the ground (WHOOP)
Like a million hands fightin' the Tang, trying to stop the train

My brother pointed out to me that I was singing it totally wrong ("Tang? They are not singing about Tang."). The real lyrics:

In-slum-national, underground, thunder pounds when I stomp the ground (WOO)
Like a million elephants and sliverback orangutans you can't stop a train

Coupled with childbirth and breastfeeding 101 classes, courses should really be taught in lullaby singing. Because my same lyricitis applies to children's songs too. I sing to my daughter quite a bit, but the only children's song lyrics I can fully remember are from my little brother's potty training video from roughly 16 years ago. Awesome.

So the majority of the songs I sing to Peanut are not necessarily for the kids. I sing her a lot of Beatles, Journey and musical hits like "Without Love" from Hairspray, "What Is This Feeling" from Wicked, "Come What May" from Moulin Rouge and "These Boots are Made For Walking" from Kinky Boots. And how can I forget the popular genre (bows head in shame) that is hip-hop. The lyrics are easy to remember and the tunes are catchy - how can I not sing her hip-hop? You should see how crazy Peanut goes when I sing Black Eyed Peas "Boom Boom Pow," particularly to Fergie's lyrically artful part:

I like that boom boom pow
Them chickens jackin' my style
They try copy my swagger
I'm on that next $%&* now

I'm so 3008
You so 2000 and late
I got that boom, boom, boom
That future boom, boom, boom
Let me get it now

(Yes, I sing this to a baby.)

When I rock this, she goes crazy and begins furiously bouncing up and down and waving her arms. She'll be a hit at the clubs.

You can see why I need to learn some lullabies. Let me rephrase that: You can see why I need to learn the correct lyrics to lullabies. Because I just make up the parts I don't know. Let's take the classic "Hush Little Baby." I knew the first couple lines and the last line, so I've just been filling in the rest with whatever rhymes. Here's how my version goes:

Hush little baby, don't say a word,
Momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird don't sing,
Momma's gonna buy you a diamond ring.
And if that diamond ring don't shine,
Momma's gonna buy you a glass of wine.
And if that glass of wine turns sour,
Momma's gonna buy you Rapunzel's tower.
And if Rapunzel's tower has no hair,
Momma's gonna buy you a polar bear.
And if that polar bear eats your dad,
Momma's gonna buy you a new dad named Brad.
And if that new dad named Brad is in alchy,
You'll still be the sweetest little baby in town!

It's truly a creative masterpiece that involves materialism, underage drinking, violent death and the perils of alcoholism.

(I looked up the real lyrics to "Hush Little Baby" and the rhymes are about a billy goat, horse and cart and the ring turning to brass, which I'm not sure is even possible. I like my lyrics much better.)

Any other hits I need to be singing to Peanut?

*****
...and I'm still losing pretty bad at Mormon Mommy Blogs. So go vote for me - poll on the right-hand side of the blog. You don't need to be a Mormon, mom or a blogger to vote. If you know how to click a mouse, I'll take it!

My ghetto toe is crying right now

So I lost the Sego Lily Spa blog-about-spa-treatments-for-a-year competition. I'm actually surprised by their judging process because they had at least two really big Utah bloggers in the running and neither of them made the cut. Apparently, one of the requirements was use some sort of scrapbooky, cutestblogontheblock layout, and the other was "Don't attempt humor." I promised in my entry that I would write a super bitter post about losing. That bitterness has been channeled into pretending I'm totally over it. So now, my reasons why I'm frankly GLAD I wasn't picked to write about spa treatments for a year.

I hate facials. (LIE.)

Peanut can do it. Since Peanut has mastered the art of sitting up, I'm teaching her how to give me massages anyway. They may not be actual massages and instead "eating mom's clothes and hair," but I take what I can get.

...I kind of told a couple people in various separate incidents that, if the spa had me write about a couple's massage, I would bring them. Awkward.

Who would babysit? Let me rephrase that "Who would want to babysit for free for a couple hours twice a month while I have regular 'spa days?'"

There would be a possibility of me peeing. I read a reliable medical journal (...or a random message board posting) that said there's this certain area on your back that, if the right amount of pressure is applied, you will pee. Naturally, I freaked out that this would be me, peeing all over the massage table.

I am above celebrity gossip. And this is supposedly the spa where the cast of "High School Musical" took spa trips. And I really hate celebrity gossip. I am so not one of those girls who religiously checks perezhilton.com or has the latest edition of "People" on her nightstand. So I would not even care to hear the dish on Vanessa Hudgen's pore size or Zac Efron's scoliosis.


I am trying to distance myself from people with foot fetishes. I'm looking at you, JP from "The Bachelorette." Keeping my toenails long, nailpolish chipped and calluses thick will keep the creeps at bay.


AND IN OTHER NEWS...I've been nominated for the June blog spotlight on Mormon Mommy Blogs. And when I say "I've been nominated" that means "I nominated myself." I'm so shameless. More shamelessness: VOTE FOR ME! Incentive: winning would influence me to post daily in the month of June a la NaBloPoMo...or maybe your RSS feed is like mine and you're hoping more people DON'T post. But seriously, I'm already losing, I can't bear losing two blogish things twice in a matter of days.

Adventures at Target

(Crappy phone picture where Peanut demonstrates the many uses of a shopping cart cover.)

While in Target, I was heading toward the tights (Anyone else love that tights are in style? I am just not a nylon girl.) and I felt someone lingering a little too close behind me - awkwardly close. I stopped in front of the official tights rack - sale! - and the perpetrator stopped right next to me. Dressed in a cute business suit coupled with equally cute heels, she asked me how old Peanut was and we began casually chatting. After talking about kids (she has three boys) and motherhood (she too was struggling with the mom-and-career thing) for a minute, I wished her well and headed through the shoes to bras. Not 15 seconds after arriving at my destination, Mrs. Business Mommy Chic appeared at my side again.

"Hey," she said. "You seem like a really cute, fun woman. Can I ask you something?"

!!!

"THIS IS IT!" I thought. I was about to be invited to join the inner-ranks of a cool mom's club. Or no - she totally wants my advice on shoes. OOOOO, maybe the number of my hairstylist?

I was already flattered. "Sure," I said.

"I work for Mary Kaye and was wondering if I could come over sometime and give you a facial?"

Oh.

I know I have crappy skin, but trailing a random Target customer? ARE TIMES REALLY THAT TOUGH?