How the Mighty Have Fallen

I used to think of myself as an intelligent person. I could participate in conversations about any number of things: politics, art, books, travel, history.

And then I had a child, and all that changed...

The most frequent concern in my life is now poo. Thoughts about The Babe's poo now run through my head like good music used to. I make exclamations such as "Poo!" and "Toots!" which effectively lower my maturity level each time. I find it amazing (and appalling) how many things I can worry about that concern poo. Here are some of the most frequent:

1) Is she pooing right now?

2) When was the last time she pooed?

3) She's pooing too much.

4) She's not pooing enough.

5) Her poo is a weird color...I know I did not feed her that color.

6) Her poo is the wrong consistency...deer poo? clay?

7) Is she going to poo during church while they're passing the Sacrament?

8) Has she pooed on this outfit? Or can she wear it?

9) Will she poo if I give her a bath right now?

10) Is she done pooing?

11) Is poo the reason she's crying?

12) Was what I just heard regular poo or a poo-splosion?

13) Is what I'm eating making her gassy?

14) Is what she's eating making her gassy?

The list goes on and on. I feel that this is a little on the side of ridiculous. I'm an educated person. But my life and thoughts revolve around poo.

Festival of Colors!

I have now lived in Provo for four years. Every spring I have wanted to go to the Festival of Colors at the Hare Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork and, for one reason or another haven't been able to. Well, this year we went! And it was awesome!

The Festival of Colors (or Holi Festival to be correct) basically consists of welcoming in spring by forgiving past grievances by throwing organic colored chalk at each other. There were about 20 - 30,000 people all throwing chalk at the same time:

And that's only some of the people. So everyone has bags of different colored chalk, and they count down from twenty over the loudspeaker. Then there's supposed to be a huge cloud of chalk:

We took the Babe because she loves colors. She was under her blanket for the worst of it, but she got to look around for a while. And she couldn't help but get a little colorful:

The only bad thing was that the website said there would be shuttles going from a high school in the next town over to help with parking...so we parked there. After getting out of the car, we noticed there was no shuttle - only a long line of people walking. Walking where? you may ask. We didn't know, but like any good lemmings we followed. Two miles later, we got to the Temple. It wouldn't have been had if we had prepared for that, but walking two miles in flip flops while carrying the Babe (okay, so Dan carried her most of the way because I was lagging behind) is no fun (maybe it was a little fun). And then we were outside in the sun for a couple hours and had to walk back (all right, 3/4 the way there Dan went to get the car for me because my feet hurt). So we were pretty tired by the end of the day:

But we had a whole lot of family fun! And Dan still has a pink eyebrow to remind him of the good times we had.

The Cuteness of Our Family Keeps Multiplying Thanks to a Certain Someone (it's not Dan, in case you wondered)

Baby Feet

Punk Babe

Skeptical Babe

Alarmed Babe

Concerned Babe

Concerned Babe being kissed

Perfect Babe

Poo-splosion in Our Bed

The wonders of parenting have begun. A couple nights ago, I had just finished a 2:30 am feeding with our beautiful baby girl, Juliet, when I noticed her dirty diaper. No problem, I thought, the feeding had gone quickly and well. A dirty diaper was not going to stand in my way. As I was changing the diaper, I noticed a particularly dangerous expression on my dear daughter's lovely face: the poop face. It looks something like this:

I dove to cover her with one of the two diapers sitting there on the bed, but, alas, I was too late. Within seconds there was a foot-long stretch of projectile poo all over our bed. After washing the sheets in the bathroom sink (we don't have a washer, so we had to wait until morning for the laundromat), we were all able to get back to bed around 3:30.

I now use a GIANT changing pad when I change her diaper at night instead of assuming that the diaper underneath her bare tush will sufficiently catch any untimely secretions. Welcome to parenthood. Good thing we're fast learners.

Builder Bob

Daniel finally decided to buy some power tools of his very own: a drill, a skill saw, and a jig saw. Obviously, he's very excited and has been keeping himself busy. He's been fixing things and making things for the baby, which is totally fine by me. :-) He made a cute little name plate to hang in her room - it's pink and purple and has a bow on it...who'd have thought?

We also recently had to prepare our little apartment for an inspection from the Housing Authority. They told us that we couldn't have any chipping or cracked paint. Dan went at it with spackle for DAYS. I rather enjoyed the spackling process as it turned from a bright pink to white when it dried - our walls looked like they had chickenpox and were covered in calamine lotion.

Unfortunately, even with all the excitement of getting new tools, we have, of course, had a loss. Dan lost his beloved hammer. He is very upset as he and Tim bought matching hammers to work construction several years ago. And now his hammer is no more. Any ideas on the whereabouts of the poor boy's hammer?

Pizza Eating Contest

Last night, we went out to a pizza buffet with several of our friends. Dan, inevitably because it's a pizza buffet, got into a pizza eating contest with one of our friends. Dan won, don't worry. He ended up eating 16 pieces of assorted pizzas (2 full pizzas), some bread sticks, and an ice cream cone. Needless to say, he was a little uncomfortable for the rest of the night. However, he did decide that a pizza eating contest would be a wonderful Christmas activity for the brothers. So - Dan is proposing a change from the usual, healthy brotherly competition of running to the fatty brotherly competition of pizza eating. The gauntlet has been thrown.

Dan Makes Fun of Me Because I'm Round

Usually, if we get ice cream when we go to the grocery store, we get two containers: cookie dough for Daniel and moose tracks for me (and Daniel after he's finished off the cookie dough). Last time Dan went to the store, he only brought home the cookie dough. He said the moose tracks wasn't on sale. I told him that was okay - after all, it's not as if I don't enjoy a nice bowl of cookie dough once in a while. But I also made some comment about how it was inevitable that he would end up eating most, if not all, of it anyway (because someone has a real problem when it comes to eating sweets, and amazingly enough it's not me). Well, Daniel retorted with, "Hey. Who's the one with the big belly?" It didn't really seem to dawn on him what he had said because, as I reached out to smack his belly, he had a surprised look on his face. After a brief moment, however, the look changed to one that clearly said, "oh, I am so clever!" He let out a big belly laugh that not even my 8-month-pregnant belly can do and was immensely pleased with himself.