The crank is coming!

I HATE summer. I think all of you has heard me say that at least twice since I've known you. I just can't stand the heat. Since I was little I've always despised it. You're probably wondering, "But you're from Brazil, you must love the heat!" Well, to a certain point, yes I do, and I'll tell you the times I like the heat:
1) When I'm at the beach. Put me on a beach somewhere where it's 95F and I'm a happy camper!
2) When I'm at the pool. Who wants to be in cold water, only to get out to 50F weather?!

3) When I'm inside a building, i.e. work. Central air/AC is THE best invention ever!

This summer is going to a rough one for me. Last year I swore to myself I'd NEVER go through another summer without central air in my condo. See, when we bought this condo last year (in February) we had to make an offer the same day we were looking at it because we were running out of time in order to get the paperwork going so we could move before the contract at our apartment ended... so we made an offer because not only the inside was nice, it was centrally located in the valley, and it was affordable (at the time!). One of the things on my wishlist was central air, but I figured, "What the hey, we'll be getting bank on our tax returns in 2009 so we'll just get it then!". Oh.... what a mistake. We didn't get a decent tax return.

Last summer was horrid. I don't think I became a potty mouth until last summer. Either the heat of it or postpartum hormones did it to me. But the heat was too much to bear. We do have a wall AC in the living room but it doesn't disperse the air through the house very well... so the living room is a freezer while the bedrooms are ovens.

I can tell this year will be just as bad as last year. Now I have a baby that actually cares how cold/hot he is and it just will not be a good season for us. I may have to shed a few pounds to look a bit better in a swimsuit (just so I don't scare the neighbors) so we can spend days in the pool- and maybe for some of you that have kids you can come hang out with us since Elijah and I are taking school off together!
Anyway. This is the "beware" post to the summer beast that comes out of me every year!

What happened to potty training?

I've always envisioned Jacen being potty trained early. It wasn't because I wanted him to just be ahead of everyone, but it was also for monetary reasons and facts I knew before I researched the topic. Therefore, for his birthday, I went out and got him a potty, and he got it as a birthday present (here's a picture of it to the left).
I knew potty training early could be done. My paternal grandma, for example, potty trained my dad when he was just 6 months old!!! Although I think that's a little extreme (it was, however, exciting for her- she didn't have to wash any more nasty cloth diapers!), I researched early potty training. I even read a book about it, which my co-workers will testify of it!!! As I combed the internet looking for answers, I found the facts about potty training and its history.
So it looks like back in the 1800's parents potty trained their kids when they were very young, between 6-12 months of age. That's just how it got done, and it was all hunky doorey. There was no such thing as a disposable diaper, and who wanted to be washing cloth diapers without the amazing cleaning products we have on store shelves today?! Not me, that's for sure! So it just happened early for everyone. THEN in the mid 1900's, the disposable diaper was invented. ALELUIA, praise the heavens, right?! Well, yeah, but then parents figured "why potty train when you can just change a diaper? It's so much easier!" Also, about that time, the women began going out into the work force, so it just didn't really get done as early as it had been in the previous centuries. Research has been done on this, and they have found that as the disposable diaper became more absorbent, the age of babies being potty trained was even older! You can do any research on this and find the average age babies are beginning to potty train are 20 months for girls and 31 months for boys. WOW!!!
There was a pediatrician back around the time disposable diapers were invented (for the life of me I cannot remember his name, and I can't find it on the internet for some reason), began saying that we needed to wait until kids showed interest and some signs of wanting to potty train. That's awesome because then you KNOW for a fact you won't be wasting any time with the process, but then why is it back in the day it was done early, and now it's not? Interesting, eh?
I could go on and on about this, but to make a long story short: I even took the time to ask people on message boards on parenting and potty training about potty training early. I got criticized and ridiculed for thinking such things! Then I asked a few people I knew about it, and I even had people laugh at me, or just go very quiet because they really thought there was just NO WAY I could EVER get my baby to potty train. Right?! Uhhh... no!
I decided to show people I really could get my baby to go on the potty. The first day (Easter) I had him look at it and even sat him on it while I was getting his bath ready for him. He absolutely LOVED it!!! We took pictures but decided not to post it- one day it WILL be used as black mail though LOL. Anyway. He obviously didn't do anything in it. The following day, Monday morning, I took him right after breakfast, and lo and behold: #1 and #2!!!! Then in the afternoon, #1 again! Tuesday we didn't have much luck, but wednesday we got #2 in the morning then #1 in the afternoon! Well, you get the point, right?
So my question is for anyone who's willing to have a discussion about this because I know it can become a heated topic: why is it that in these past few decades we have been potty training our kids later? Is it because of what society is doing or is it because we're just waiting and waiting for those signs to show up?
At this point I'm not being very agressive with the process quite yet just because really getting a child to potty train involves having naked time around the house, and it's just not warm yet. So I'm really gonna try hard this summer to have him mostly potty trained by Christmas. Call me crazy, but I'm going to try!

Jacen turns 1!

Well, ladies and gentleman, it's been 1 year since Jacen was born. It's really hard for me to think that it's been that long since I finished an awful pregnancy, had a great delivery, and went on to 6 weeks of a bad recovery, in the middle of finals, with no sleep. Jacen has been a great baby for us. I think Heavenly Father took pity on us for having an unplanned baby and all the other nightmares we've been having to deal with, so he sent us a good baby :) But we sure love our son; we don't know where we would've been without him!

So we pretty much started our weekend off with a trip to the Zoo on Friday (4/10), Jacen's b-day. Surprisingly, Elijah just happened to get that day off from work, and we decided it was a good time to take Jacen there. Since Twinkie no longer lives with us, we figured we might as well show him lots of animals. We first went on a train ride, and like I expected, Jacen missed EVERY animal we passed. But he sure didn't miss all the cars we passed through the parking lot!!! He got so excited about them, it was so funny!

After the train ride that didn't really do anything for him, we went around and looked for big, moving animals that he could see really well. Some of his favorites were the cougar (which he thought was a big size Twinkie and kept waving at it!), the black bear, swans, giraffe, the "warthog" looking animal, the monkeys, and the big black Gorilla. Along with those, he also liked to see the people walking around, especially the kids, the Hogle Zoo pamphlet, and the parking lot cars. I think next year we'll take him to a parking lot and he may have more fun for free than going to the Zoo!!!

After that we decided it was a good time to try a new restaurant, and thanks to Candace's idea (co-worker of mine) we ended up at Texas Roadhouse. Good steaks for a reasonable price! Jacen had some mashed potatoes and gravy, Mac&Cheese, applesauce, diced tomatoes and eggs (off my salad), and milk. He was like a bottomless pit!!!

Then today was his b-day party. It was supposed to be held in the club house where we would've had more room, but... *sigh*... it's really hard for me to tell this story without fumes coming out of my ears. To make a long story short the HOA people gave us the wrong keys that wouldn't let us in so we had to have the party in our small little place. It worked out fine because there wasn't a whole lot of people that came, but still... just the thought of... anyway. I better stop right here.
We had pulled BBQ pork sandwiches, macaroni salad (which, we just found out Jacen doesn't like tuna!), chips, and yummy cake/cupcakes. Grandma and Grandpa Glazier, Grandma Johnson, uncle James, Jenn Harris, and Devin all came to our party to wish Jacen a Happy Birthday!

The cake was FANTASTIC: my friend Jenny from work made the football cake for me (if I were to make it, I would've butchered it in no time...), and I made the little baseball cupcakes. As you can see, I'm not good at baking.

Jacen was absolutely hilarious when it was time for him to have his cupcake. As soon as I put it in front of him, he picked it up and tossed it on his tray. Then he didn't know what to do with it until I took out a piece of it and fed it to him. Then he figured it out and went to town! He ate the whole thing, which surprised me: I thought baby stomachs were smaller than that!

This is the last time I'll be doing monthly updates on him, so here it goes: we took him to Dr. Witt yesterday and he weighed 26lbs even, 31 1/8 inches long. He dropped below the 90th percentile for both height and weight, but that's because he's getting more mobile, which is good. He learned to say hi, and he'll do it repeatedly when he's around his teddy bears. He's also saying "moo" when we read his "Mr Brown can Moo" book. He's cruising really good now, and will even stand on his own for a few moments without realizing it. He's switched from formula to whole milk now; that was easy. He's down to 3 bottles/day, and we're now working on getting rid of the bottle and giving him milk out of his sippy cups. I wanted to switch him from disposable diapers to cloth diapers to help him with potty training, but it's very expensive to start, so we'll be delaying that for a while. One of his b-day presents was a potty, and tonight he sat on it for the first time and LOVED it!!! Obviously he didn't do anything in it, but it was a start!

We're so glad to be parents to a loving, wonderful son. He makes us proud every day and we couldn't love him more!!!

Happy birthday Jacen!

Time to share your recipes!

Alright. You all know how HORRIBLE of a cook I am. I can't seem to learn how to do it, no matter how much I practice. And it's just not the horrible cooking, it's the ACCIDENTS involved in the kitchen, like slicing my fingers (like the other day I sliced it so good it bled for a good 24 hrs, I should've gotten it stitched up), or burning my hands, or something. I think the most memorable awful meal was my attempt at making lasagna. I put aluminum in the microwave (the littles ties wrapped around a thing of ground beef). The whole thing almost exploded. The beef cooked WAY too long, and so the ground beef instead of being defrosted was cooked all the way and I couldn't break it up. I didn't have enough sauce or cottage cheese, so it turned out like some sort of layered pasta with meatballs. YUCK. Elijah was nice to say it was good, but I know it wasn't. He's so sweet when it comes to congratulating me on my cooking, because I KNOW I've made some nasty stuff and he still says it's good.

So the point of this post is to get your recipes. I'd like simple, easy recipes that are cheap to make, and that require the least amount of ingredients. As you know, I don't have much time to cook (between working, going to school, taking care of Jacen) so I just need your ideas to get me out of this mess!!!!!

Thanks!

Fun in the sun!

Saturday we went to Sugarhouse Park and had a picnic, which was something we hadn't done in... well, never!


Buhbah (AKA Jacen) was surprisingly happy to be there. He was having a grand time!

He kept trying to get ahold of the camera. But he always wants me to talk on his toy phones now, it's pretty funny.

We had some yummy sandwiches and watched the birds fly by. We were going to walk around but it got windy and I was freezing so we decided to go home early, but it was a great day to be out!