Pat-a-cake pat-a-cake baker's man...

The other day I heard Brielle saying over and over "roll it, roll it, pat it, roll it, roll it, pat it..." and I stopped what I was doing to make sure she wasn't causing trouble (When I do anything in the kitchen I can't see her in parts of the living room and dining room. And she knows this!) She was rolling and patting Hyrum to the tune of "pat-a-cake", and he was loving it (though by the time I found the camera the giggling had obviously died down!)

Pudding

I fully expect to find a mess when I give Brielle pudding. The tray smeared with pudding, her face covered, eyelashes glopped with it, all of that I'm used to. But what I don't understand is......

WHY does it have to be on her feet?!?

Random Pics

She just took off the bike helmet (in her hand) but she had been playing a game entirely of her own creation using the volleyball, a hanger, fridge magnets, and her doll stroller. And yes, the helmet was necessary!

Happy Valentine's day! Brielle's wearing her flower girl dress for Uncle Danny's wedding and holding the balloons her daddy gave her.

We went to the zoo twice during the week my mom was here (we're all big zoo fans!). We didn't take too many pictures, but I do love this one of the hippo, mostly because of how excited Brielle gets every time she sees the hippos, and now we have the excitement at home every time I pull up the picture on the screen! (the real hippo, not the metal one!)
This is the house I lived in from the ages of 9-11, in Kenmore Washington. It's changed a bit, but it's mostly how I remembered it. And the pet store a few blocks away that I would walk to every day to stare at the guinea pigs was STILL THERE! (though it was not as great as I remembered =0)

The Water Hole!

So there's this little pull-out on the side of the road that we pass every day here in Lynnwood, and there are ALWAYS oodles of cars and a bunch of people flocking like some secret meeting place. It struck us as odd after the 15th time we drove by and saw huge crowds of people lined up in the pouring rain around a little green open-walled "hut", so we decided to stop some time.

Last week when my mom was here visiting we finally stopped, and what do you know, the fountain of youth right here in Lynnwood! There's an Artesian well, where the water always flows, and the people come from everywhere to fill up buckets and water containers, and barrels and anything they can store a lot of water in. The water tastes excellent! However we'll stick to city water for the most part, since it comes right to our home and I don't have to wait in line with two babies to fill something up and haul it home in!

Francis Family

We had family pictures taken at Christmas time and sadly this is the best we got. Maybe in two or three years we'll get some of the kids to smile!

Uncle Christian pulling the girls around the block.

5 months

At 5 months:

Hyrum is 17 pounds, and that is
at the 54th percentile for weight.

Hyrum is 27 inches, and that is
at the 81th percentile for height.

Hyrum has a head circumference of 17 inches, and that is
at the 43th percentile for head circumference.

And Hyrum likes princess dolls and that is
at the 27th percentile for five month old boys! =0)

Our cute little girl

We had pictures taken from Kiddie Kandids for Brielle's 2nd birthday. We picked the top one, but there were a few cute ones before Brielle decided she was done with smiling and posing and hopped off the platform to go play.

The Joys of Motherhood

It was in college that I first learned about opportunity cost. Most of you have probably learned about this at one point as well, but in case you learned it the way I learned about cosine curves and electronic spectroscopy (that is to say I remember the terms vaguely and the concepts not at all!) then let me refresh your memory. Opportunity cost is the cost of pursuing one choice instead of another. Every action has an opportunity cost. Now I happened to learn the term in relation to the business world, however I’m finding more and more that this concept was truly created to describe choices made as a byproduct of motherhood.

Let me explain. As a mother of two I have found that there is an extremely high opportunity cost for any activity that does not involve directly monitoring my children’s actions. For example, if I choose to do my hair, I must then later scrub the crayon markings off the bottom three feet of every wall. If I choose to type on the computer or check my email, then later I will need to plunge the toilet in an effort to dislodge the partially disintegrated roll of toilet paper that has been stuffed there. Once I actually took the time to put Russell’s shirts on hangers (as opposed to taking them from the dryer and plopping them into a basket where they could then sit until he’d worn them all.) Never again! That was a huge mistake. The whole house was in disarray. Not that Brielle is always destructive; sometimes she lets her creative side shine through. A few weeks ago, after a four minute bathroom break, I found an empty bag on the floor. The bag had previously contained 300 multi-color bendy straws. To this day I’m still finding straws in the most unusual of places! So basically, the opportunity cost for ten minutes of time to myself is anywhere from 30-60 minutes of cleaning up after my two year old. And that’s just on a good day.

Lest you think I jest, or even in the slightest bit exaggerate, let me describe this morning. Hyrum wakes up first and after feeding him we smile and coo at each other for a few minutes until I hear shouts of “Morning, morning, MORNING!!!” from Brielle’s room. Once I get her down from her crib she loads up her shopping cart with her favorite toys and wheels them out to the living room, where she then attempts to disassemble the DVD player using a plastic lemon and a butter knife. As a compromise I stick in A Bug’s Life for her to watch. She spends a relatively peaceful ten minutes watching the cartoon while I unload the dishwasher and then it’s time for breakfast. Normally I do the dishes or clean something in the kitchen when Brielle eats so that I can keep an eye on her, but this day was special, the kitchen was clean, so I did the children’s laundry. I returned to find Brielle just finishing what appeared to be some toddler ritual which involved smooshing her muffin to teeny tiny crumbs, dousing them all with water, and then flinging handfuls in every direction. I clean up Brielle and remove all leftover ammunition, and then tackle the floor. When it’s all cleaned up, I let Brielle get down and start preparing Hyrum for his nap. Unfortunately this involves leaving Brielle alone again. Once Hyrum is down I close his door and…..my car alarm starts blaring right outside the window where Hyrum is sleeping. I ran and took my keys away from Brielle and tried in vain to turn off the car alarm (it can be turned ON through the walls of the house, but not off apparently), then I run outside in my pajamas to turn it off and came back in to find Hyrum screaming and Brielle sitting on the floor beside the fridge unwrapping some rib-eye steaks. Apparently she had started this task before rummaging through my purse for the car keys. So then I have to disinfect her and everything she may have touched, and quickly while Hyrum screams himself hoarse, then go take care of the baby and get him calmed down and back to sleep.

Once Hyrum is sleeping it is my only chance for a shower. Usually Brielle showers with me, and the reasons are three-fold: 1. if she is showering with me then she isn’t getting into anything else, 2. if I let her roam free, besides messing up the house, she will also wake up Hyrum (not by accident but as a matter of principle), and 3. she is often covered with chocolate, dirt, or playdough and is generally in need of washing. However this particular day we have a long debate over the prudence of bringing all of Brielle’s toys and dolls into the shower with us. In the end we agree that Brielle will not be showering today. I get her up in her high chair to color (hoping to contain her for five minutes whilst I shower) and then the phone rings. Once I finish telling the relief society president to come visit at 3 pm the next day and not at 10 am because at 10 I’ll still be running around half dressed trying to get everybody bathed and ready for the day, I notice that Brielle is done coloring. I realize this because every crayon, marker and colored pencil is on the ground. Except for one, with which she is coloring her face. We pick them up (so that they can’t be used while I shower) and then Hyrum is awake. I’m pretty serious about getting my shower, so I stick Hyrum in the Johnny-jump-up in the bathroom doorway and quickly get in. Within 30 seconds Brielle is standing on top of the toilet ripping off her clothes to get in as well, she has decided to bring only one toy, a ball the size of a soccer ball. Sticking her in the tub with me is a much better alternative than letting her crash Hyrum’s Johnny-jump-up into the door frame repeatedly, so in she comes.

Once in, Brielle insists that I stand out of the way of the water so that she can hold her ball directly under the shower spray. I let her ball enjoy the water while she and I shiver at the end of the tub for a few minutes, then I move her out of the way, ignore the screaming, and shower as quickly as possible. After drying and dressing Brielle and putting Hyrum on the living room floor with some baby toys, I run back to my closet to find something other than a towel to wear. Within seconds I hear screaming (of course) and I run back half dressed to find Hyrum crying, not because he is hurt but because he is no longer getting chocolate. At least this is what I assume since his face is liberally smeared with chocolate and Brielle is hiding a cookie in between her palms. (Not hiding it WELL since her face, arms, shirt and pants are all covered in melted chocolate and cookie crumbs!) So now instead of finishing my dressing process I clean up Brielle, RE-DRESS her (please note she had been dressed in that outfit for a total of 2 minutes) and clean up Hyrum and the blanket they had been sitting on. Then I feed Hyrum, after which he spits up on me, and while rinsing that off I remember that I need to hand-wash the blouse I wore on Sunday, (also a victim of spit up). I stick it in my bathroom sink and turn the water on, then run back to the living room to stop the screaming once again. Brielle was loving Hyrum a little too much. Once separated Hyrum resumes his happy cooing, but Brielle starts shrieking because I won’t let her feed Hyrum a plastic baby bottle (two year olds aren’t very gentle I’ve found) or have chocolate milk (which she would gladly live on). In the end I pick up Hyrum to rescue him and leave Brielle to her screaming. That’s when I remember the water. I run back with Hyrum to find my bathroom sink overflowing and flooding the floor. After mopping it up and hanging the rugs to dry, I find that Brielle has scampered up one pile of boxes to push over the other piles of boxes one by one. (Yes we’ve been here a month and there are still unpacked boxes! Multiple stacks of them no less. We might never unpack them, just stick a few doilies on top and arrange them decoratively.) After a time-out for Brielle and calming a fussy Hyrum, I pick up the toppled boxes and then (finally) finish dressing. (I’ve left out approximately half of the morning’s events for the sake of brevity, but suffice it to say I was not sitting down!)

So there you have it. After a mere four hours we are all dressed and ready for the day.

That’s one hour faster than yesterday!

(postscript: in answer to some of the emails and blog comments, no this day was not out of the ordinary; actually, though this might scare off some of you new mothers from having a second, it was one of our better days. I haven't the heart to write up a description of a really hectic day.)

Shanna!!

Every time Brielle sees a gorgeous blond actress or model on TV or the computer she starts shouting "Shanna! Shanna! Shanna and Tishten!!" Yup, she's obviously very impressed with her Aunt Shannon's looks, because only the most beautiful of blond girls get the excited squeals of "Shanna!" And now that she's getting used to using the web cam to talk with her grandparents, she also is quite hopeful that 'Shanna' will talk back to her. The conversation goes something like this: "Hi! Hi, Shanna! Look! Bunny! Phone! My book! Hi! Hi!" It's cute. Maybe Christian and Shannon can move to Washington and go to Dental School here, and then Brielle can adore Shannon from a much closer proximity. We can hope!

When bad things happen to good people...

So last Saturday I opened up my Costco box of Oreos and the first sleeve of cookies that we pulled out had the top cookie missing one of its chocolate sides. That's right, we had HALF an Oreo less than all the other costco boxes, and I thought WHAT are the odds of that happening!? Then my brother called to tell me that my little brother Christian had his car stolen (for those that want to know what type, it was white) ( and for those of you who are not helped by that, Russ says it was an Accura) and worse still he didn't have insurance to cover theft. So pretty much bad things were happening all around, I don't even know which is worse.


Here's the rest of the details: Christian and Shannon walked out early in the morning to where their car should have been in the Wymount parking lot (BYU's married student housing) and their car was gone. They called the Provo police who told them to call the BYU police, and Shannon got to go in to work an hour late (the highlight of her day!). Later their car was found completely torn apart, it had been professionally gutted, everything was taken: the doors, the hood, the engine, the tires, the seats, the dash, and all the other parts that I've never heard of. Oh and as for me, I rallied my spirits long enough to eat the rest of the oreos, though I'll probably always feel a little sorry about the missing half.

I guess on the bright side at least we're all going through these hard times together. =0)

Babies

Here's a comparison of my two babies.....both at around four months. To me Brielle looks more like the Streadbeck side and Hyrum looks more like the Francis side, but that's just what I think. They're both super cute, and it seems whichever one of us is with either child a person will say that he or she looks just like us, so maybe our genes were equally mixed! Feel free to offer your opinions.

Snow Day

As a Montana girl I always think it's funny when a whole city shuts down because of a few inches of snow. It snowed 3 or 4 inches here Sunday night, and it was quite pretty the next morning. But the Seattle-Lynnwood area is not accustomed to dealing with snow, cars couldn't get up hills, the buses couldn't run, and all the schools were canceled. Russell's boss couldn't make it into work either, there was no snow where he lived but the freeways looked iffy. =0) Which was good for us because Russ got to come home early!

More Presents!

Brielle was very excited to get a package from her Grandma and Grandpa Streadbeck.


Look at that expression! Dinosaurs!! Brielle LOVES dinosaurs!