We are here and we are 'appy (happy). Alice has started telling us when she feels 'appy and it is so fun. The two times she usually does this are (1) if she's frustrated about something, she'll go find a quiet corner to sit down and pout in for a minute or two, and then when I go sit by her she'll inevitably take another 30 seconds and then smile and say "'appy!" and (2) When we tell her it's time to take a nap, she'll often try to get out of it by saying, "'Appy! Me 'appy! Me no sad. Me 'appy!" We think she came up with this by noticing that when Jack gets EXTRA mean and grumpy we tell him he should consider a nap or an early bedtime. She's very observant and socially aware so I think that's where this strategy came from. It's so cute that it's actually kind of effective. We'll usually give her an extra 5-10 minutes and then mention the nap again. Eventually her insistance that she's still 'appy starts to get frantic, and that's when we know the 'appy is wearing off and the tired is taking over. She is just so fun.
Jared and I are having lots of fun finding moments to sneak over to the new-build neighborhood and walk through the houses under construction. We've had a few meetings with the sales office and we are 80% sure we've picked out the floorplan we'll be going with, and that we'll be in our (likely) forever home by the end of the year. I give a 20% chance that we'll wait an extra year for the next phase to start being built, which would allow us to live even closer to the mountain than the current phase going up. We're a little nervous about being priced out of the market though, so it's definitely more likely we'll pick a lot in the current phase that will be built later this year and go with that.
Let's get to our pictures from the week:
Ladies and gentlemen, I am tired. So tired. My brain feels foggy, so I'm going to need to get right to the pictures from our week to jog my memory of what we've been up to:
The weeks of winter sicknesses have officially begun. I remember Jack being sick constantly during wintertime until he reached kindergarten and his immune system caught up. I have a feeling it will be the same song and dance with Alice. Little Miss had a fever all week. No throwing up, but a weak appetite and cold symptoms in addition to the fever. Her fever is gone now and she is making a good recovery, but we were a bit down-and-out all last week.
Speaking of Alice, we love that little lady so much. She has the funniest little personality. She's sweet with a side of spicy--mostly sweet but she has to have a little kick in her to survive growing up with Jack. She is so quirky and we just can't get enough of that about her. Her language is 80% slurps (my speech pathologist cousin says she holds her tongue too wide in her mouth and that's why; it will probably resolve itself, but if she's still slurp-talking by the time she's in kindergarten then I'm sure she'll be spending time with a speech pathologist. For now we adore the slurps.) She walks with a bit of a bounce, holding her elbows up to the sides, and she LOVES to dance and sing (squeezing her eyes shut when she's REALLY into a song). At home she wants to be within eyesight of mom at all times, but if we're out at a family gathering she'll kind of wander around and find toys and food to pick at and generally enjoy her independent explorations. If we're somewhere public, like the dinosaur museum, she would prefer to command me to "stay" (or "sssss" with a finger pointing at me and a slurp) while she runs around and up and down stairs/ramps for a while.
Alice's most recent obsession, which started cute but is becoming problematic, is her obsession with making recipes of her own creation. This started out as playing in her play kitchen while I would cook meals, but at some point this last week (I think after I had the kids help me make muffins one day) she realized that she could mix together REAL FOOD, and now nothing else will suffice. When she points at our fridge and says, "Tea," I know I'm in trouble. "Tea" is short for "tea party," which means she is going to set her toy cups and plates around our table for all her cousins and grandma and grandpa, and mix up some snacks for a "tea party." The only way to avoid a meltdown after Alice has uttered the word "tea" is to open the fridge and let her choose 2-4 ingredients. I try and steer her toward produce that is getting old, but that doesn't always work. Then she will ask me for what sounds like a "Boo" but is actually a Bowl.
While I'm getting her a mixing bowl she will find herself a spoon or fork to stir with. At this point I can generally get something done for 5 minutes while Alice adds her ingredients to a bowl and mixes them up, all the while making slurpy noises, and then she'll set the bowl on the table for us to have our tea party. She'll say the names of all the family members who are there in her imagination and then I'm required to take a few nibbles. For the most part, the recipes she comes up with have been decent combinations (strawberries and arugula one day, romaine and salami and a cheese stick the next day), but she's starting to venture into more adventurous territory and these tea parties are getting scarier (her latest creation was limp celery, raw eggs, and salami, which I am REQUIRED to sample. I feel like Craig in Malcolm in the Middle on the episode where his Helper Monkey turns on him and forces him to drink a Drain-o milkshake).
Whelp, there goes my brevity. Anyway, we love Alice and are glad she's feeling better. The rest of us have cold symptoms but no fevers. I wanted to make note of mine and Jared's micro-car dates so we can remember to keep doing them in the future! We are seriously suffering from lack of quality time together. When we lived in Washington, we used to have Jared's full day off every Tuesday to have the morning together and squeeze in a date while Jack was at school and Alice was napping. Then we'd have an hour or two together in the evenings after the kids were in bed. Now Jared has a half-day off on Wednesdays, but since he works a bit of a commute away it ends up being just an hour or two together before Jack gets home. And between Jack's 3 weeks off of school and the random appointments we have to squeeze in to get our life in Utah set up (this last week it was an appointment to the DMV to get our Utah licenses), it's been a long time since we've really had time for each other instead of using that time for time-sensitive tasks.
The lack of uninterrupted time together in the evenings has been a blow, too. I remember listening to a Q&A on a mom podcast last year. One of the questions asked about what was the hardest transition in parenting so far, or the most surprising. The podcaster answered that she and her husband were blindsided by their kids getting older and going to bed later, slowly encroaching on she and her husband's quiet evenings together until they were pretty much gone. I thought we'd have a few more years before that transition began, and I guess I assumed it would happen approaching the teenage years when Jack would want more separation from us, but it appears to already be upon us and he has no desire for more separation. It's probably time to adjust our expectations so we don't get annoyed at Jack every night for only sleeping 10 hours instead of 12 hours, when 10 hours is, unfortunately, within the acceptable range for his current age.
Jack has had trouble staying in his room after bedtime since we moved, which is something we're working on. Something that hasn't helped has been the loft and bedroom setup in this house. Jared's "dream house" floorplan included a two-story great room that you can look down on from an upstairs loft, which this rental house has. The problem is that the kids' bedrooms are just off the loft so we can hear every whine, cry, or giggle even while we're downstairs trying to forget we have kids for a minute. And Jack can easily sneak out of his room and be part of the downstairs action, staring down at us from the loft. It's difficult to maintain some separation in a floorplan this open. In our next house we're hoping for a bit more separation between the kids' rooms and the rest of the house. Glad we tried this floorplan on in a rental, because we're making note of some tweaks that would make everyday life flow better in our next home.
But, car dates! One day last week was particularly tough with the kids. I put them in front of a show while I started making dinner, but I was in such a need of a break that I went out to my car to call and vent to Jared, who was driving home from work. About halfway through our conversation the garage door opened and Jared pulled in. Instead of going inside together, I got in the passenger seat of his car and we stayed and talked and laughed and commiserated about the kids together for 5-10 minutes. It was really nice to have a moment to feel connected when he got home from work, instead of him coming into the crazy that is two kids during witching hour and a frazzled me, at which point we never really have a moment to feel connected all evening. More car dates before Jared comes inside from work in 2025, please and thank you.
Some other highlights from our week were my mom coming to help organize our kitchen and stay with the kids while Jared and I had a DMV date. Thanks for helping me get the ball rolling, mom! We also had freshly homemade fettuccine at Chris's house for dinner one night. The invite came just in the nick of time--we weren't sure we could sit through one more grumpy dinner at home, so it was a relief and so fun to have dinner with my brother while the kids ran around contentedly with their cousins.
And now, some pictures from our week:
We have officially made it to the first year of the rest of our lives! I know we could say that every year, but this year it rings especially true. It feels good to, for the first time ever, be living somewhere we know we'll be for the long haul. We've had some wonderful adventures and now we're ready to settle in.
This might be basic, but your girl LOVES a new year. New Years is a reflective type of holiday and I'm a reflective type of person. I had such a peaceful New Years Eve. We didn't really make plans because I knew we'd be hosting all my siblings a few days later when my brother was in town and doing New Years types of activities with them then. Halfway through New Years Eve we were like, "Shoot, we should have invited my parents over!" We have such fond memories of New Years Eves spent with my parents in the various places we've lived, when they'd come visit us after the Christmas hustle. I really regret not having them over and carrying that tradition on (sorry Mom and Dad! We missed you!), but I have officially made note to get back on track for future years whenever possible.
We did play several games with Jack after dinner on New Years Eve, make informal vision boards of our goals and hopes for 2025, drive to a lookout spot two blocks from where we live to watch fireworks go off across the valley, and put Jack to bed a little later than usual (9:30). At this point I wrote down some resolutions with Jared and my sleepy lil' husband couldn't hang on anymore past about 10:15. He is such an outlier in our family. The rest of us would always rather stay up just a little longer! There's so much more to do in a day! But he would always rather go to sleep. It's honestly cute and I really wish my children inherited that trait, but alas. I do love when I can greet the New Year at midnight with Jared, but this year I was giddy to go downstairs and have two hours alone by our glowy Christmas tree to reflect and dream and plan.
It was peaceful and magical. I lit several candles, made myself cheese toast, got a bubbly drink, and parked myself in our living room where I could see the lights and fireworks of the valley twinkling and popping outside our big picture windows. We are getting VERY spoiled with the view from our rental house. There is a chance we will have great views from our next home, but honestly it probably won't be as good as the views in this home. You can see most of the valley from the main level of our house, and we get an entire unobstructed panorama view of the entirety of Utah Valley from the window of our primary bedroom upstairs. Because we're on the north side of the valley we get a full view of the sunrise AND sunset every morning and evening. We are feeling very happy with where we've landed and so far feel confident in our decision to build a home right next to our current neighborhood, hopefully by the end of the year. Jared has a bit of a commute to work, but it's nothing crazy (about half an hour in traffic), and the commute feels worth living in this location to both of us. (Not to mention home prices are a little lower on the Utah Valley side than if we decided to look closer to his work on the Salt Lake side.)
And that was our simple New Years Eve! The days since then have been filled with fun and cousin time. I am so grateful that we were able to be living in Utah during this extra long winter break out of school. The days went by so much more quickly and so much more fun hosting cousins and my parents and visiting fun spots with them. Here are some pictures from our week:
