I promise I don't beat my child

Yesterday Peter helped his brother and his brother's wife move. Brita and I were hanging out at their apartment and watching them load the truck and stuff. As I was carrying Brita down the sidewalk I fell off the side and totally biffed it. Stupid Andrea. Unfortunately, Brita got the worst of it. I got a bruised and skinned knee and a skinned finger. Brita got a bruise on her head and a really, really scraped arm. A nice man that was helping with the move took Brita and me to his apartment and he and his wife patched Brita up.

Here's what her arm looks like a day after.

Scarred for life

A few weeks ago Monica got a new belt. While she was wearing it she let Brita slide down to the floor and Brita got her tummy scrapped up a little bit from the belt buckle. Monica felt horrible. I figured it wasn't that bad and Brita would recover.

Apparently I was wrong.

Monica is wearing the belt again today and Brita is always pointing at it ans saying, "bad belt." She probably mentioned it 25 times today. I think Monica will have to break down and get a more friendly belt.

Dancing with the Stars

Monica got Brita hooked on Dancing with the Stars this year. After the results show Brita was walking around the house saying "10!" exactly like Bruno (complete with annoying gestures).

Hopefully she won't be scarred for life.

For ages 7+

I think there's a reason that they have recommended ages on games. I think it's so moms don't get schooled by one year olds.

Brita and I were playing connect four yesterday and she beat me. Twice. It was a little on the embarrassing side. The only thing Peter would do is point out when she had trapped me and there was nothing I could do. Oh--and celebrate when I lost. And teach Brita to gloat.

The first win


The second win


You should always follow these recommendations

Grow, garden, grow

One time I was craving fresh vegetables. I love vegetables. I looked out at our garden, which was just dirt, and yelled "Grow, garden, grow."

Monica evidently thought that it helped the garden grow because she started yelling at the garden every so often.

Now Brita will go up to the back door, look at the garden, and yell, "Grow, garden, grow!" It's pretty stinking cute. See:



I think it's been working, too, because all sorts of plants (the good kind of plants) are starting to come up in our garden. Yeah for vegetables.

I think I might have too many baby clothes..

Each size has more clothes than I do. Well, maybe not boys 9-12 month. Oh wait, I don't even have a boy. :)
I should have just left the boxes in the closet.

Rice crispy heaven

A couple weeks ago my sister Pamela's former roommate got married in the Salt Lake temple. That meant that we got to be the hotel for Pamela and John. Lindsie and Chris didn't quite finish decorating their cake before their first reception, so Pamela offered to redo the layer they cut and finish the rest before their second reception. She redid the layer that they needed to cut at about one in the morning so she decided to just not finish the other layer and they could have a three layer cake again instead of a four layer cake. So they left the bottom layer of the cake with us. Happiness. The best part was that the layers that they weren't planning on cutting weren't really cake: they were rice crispy treats.

I LOVE rice crispy treats. And we ended up with a huge hexagonal one on our kitchen table. We thought about taking some to our neighbors, but I guess we're just not that nice. It did last a long time. But now it's gone. It was great while it lasted, though.

Last weekend we went to a May Day celebration at a historic farm. It was really fun. Brita loved the animals. There were tons of geese all over the place. Brita cock-a-doodle-dooed at the roosters and we watched a sheep being sheered.

I proudly present..Brita's dinner.

Brita eats pretty well for a kid her age. She's pretty much always eating. But last night she decided that she'd rather play with her food than eat. At least she's cute, right?

She dresses herself!

Not quite, but almost. We were out in the garage last week and she came to me with work gloves on. They were on the wrong hands, but she got both of them on by herself.
Today she wanted help putting her shoes on. I was kind of ignoring her because I didn't want to go outside. Then all of a sudden her sandals were on. The straps weren't tight, but she still did a great job.


A totally staged picture of the gloves incident.


Brita and her cute shoes that she put on herself by the gooseberries that have actual gooseberries on them.

Longwinded..boring..you know, like me.

So there are lots of things I should blog about.. But I don't really feel like it right now. I usually think about blogging things and never get around to actually doing it because I've already blogged them in my head.

I taught my Sunbeams class today without a team teacher. It was pretty horrendous. The worst part was having to keep the door open and having the kids distracted the whole time. Okay, maybe that wasn't the worst part. Maybe it was the hitting and the temper tantrum in the corner. Who knows?

Peter is out of town this week. It's always scary when he's gone. I just like having him here. I like knowing he'll come home every night and take care of me and Brita. Oh well, I'm still spoiled having Monica here helping me.

I think it's annoying that no one in my ward will recognize that Monica is a member of the ward. When we moved in people came and visited us. And we spoke in church. And we got callings. And home and visiting teaching routes. All the family wards I was in while I was single were nice to me. Maybe it was because I was getting ready to go on a mission. And maybe I'm over reacting.

We need screens on our windows really badly. Monica has one on hers, but I think it's the only one in the house. Some day we'll get our act together.

We finally looked at carpet samples. We're getting closer to deciding. It's taken nine months for us to get this far. Hopefully we'll actually get carpet before another nine months pass. That'd be nice.

I've been thinking a lot about my school advisors. I think I had the best three advisors in the world. They each totally went out of their way to help me multiple times. I really think that the Lord had something to do with putting me in association with such great people. When I switched my major at Ricks it was totally blindly and I honestly thought I'd switch it to something else and no one would even notice. Bad plan to do it the week before advisement week if that's really what I wanted to have happen. I think I ended up meeting with Brother Blaser five times that week and by the end of it my life was pretty much planned out for a while. If I'd had any other advisor he probably wouldn't have gotten me a job that I loved, let me grade my own papers, helped me graduate in a year, given me access to the college garden, and treated me like his own daughter. I would have totally missed out. He also introduced me to my second college advisor who introduced me to my third college advisor. All of whom I loved.

I'm really bad at grammar. Just in case you haven't noticed. I know I do things wrong, but I just didn't get the mad grammar skills of my siblings. That's why they've all read some really, really boring papers helping me get through school. Maybe it's because I'm home schooled, but I've seen a lot worse.

By the way, where do people get off being anti-homeschooling? I can see it not being for some people, or people having had bad experiences with home schoolers, but really being anti-homeschooling is just dumb. Being anti anything is fairly dumb in my opinion. Unless you see it as a moral issue, which I could understand, or if it infringes on someone else's rights or something, but it's just so slippery that I think people should just mind their own business and stop being anti things.

Speaking of home schooling (one word? two? will we ever know?) I think it made me socially backward. It must have been the home schooling. The year and a half of public schooling and the four years of college just couldn't combat it. I'm sure I would be a social butterfly if I had just gone to public school. Peter and I went to a dinner last night and I just couldn't join in any of the discussions at our table. Half the time I had no idea what they were talking about, too. Oh well, I'll get over it. Maybe they will too.

Aren't you glad that I don't usually have time to just ramble about things on my blog? Don't worry, I probably won't do it again any time soon.

It's a girl!

See just check out the barrette in her hair. It even matches. I'm such a good, coordinating mother.

Happy Mother's Day to me

I got to sleep in this morning. It was awesome. Then Brita came and got me and led me to the living room where I found this:

My family is so cool. Brita drew both pictures and picked the flowers and helped glue and decorate the mom. She really wanted to pick more flowers for me--I think she was thrilled to be outside that early in the morning. She also kept going upstairs hoping that Dad would help her do more crafty things. What an awesome little girl I have. And she has an awesome dad. He let me beat him at Fluxx even. I told him that if he won it would be a terrible Mother's day; that might have had something to do with it.
So Happy Mother's day to everybody else. I hope you enjoy it.

Maybe we need a pet

Brita just grabbed Monica's pant leg and led her from the kitchen to the bedroom where she handed her a diaper. So Monica changed her diaper and went back to the kitchen. Brita went and grabbed her by the pant leg and led her to the computer room where I am. Monica told me it was like a leash and asked Brita where she was taking her. Brita just led her around in a little circle like she was taking her for a walk. I laughed.

Brita just fell asleep

By herself. She was watching a movie with Monica, and she came downstairs and got me at took my back up to Monica's room and climbed onto my lap and fell asleep. That never happens. Ever. Happy day.