Advice please

Blogs are good for so many purposes. It is like a little journal for our family, but since a few experienced moms look at it I can get advice!

Problem: Teagan's crib is too small. My dad made a beautiful crib/cradle for Teagan when he was born. I love it SO much! Teagan has never fallen out of it because the sides are nice and high, but he is just getting to tall and wide. During his naps I can hear him moving around and he keeps bonking his head against the sides (it doesn't help that he sleeps horizontally sometimes).

Question: What kind of bed do we get next? Here are the options I can think of:

option 1: Upsize to a larger crib. The problem with this is that I don't really want to buy a crib because then I would have 2, why would i want 2 cribs?

option 2: Toddler bed. Is it really worth the money to buy a bed that only last a couple years? They are really cute though and you can get the kind that has the gaurd rail already.

option 3: Twin Bed. My mom has one that she would give to us for free so I like this option because it requires no money, but Teagan is still a baby so i'm afraid he wouldn't understand staying in his bed.

Teagan is 14 months old. Would we be crazy to put him into a twin bed with a gaurd rail? How do you make the change from crib to "big boy bed." How does this whole thing work? I appreciate your imput!

Happy 26th Zac!

Yesterday we celebrated Zac's 26th Birthday. He was at school from 6:30am to 7pm so the celebration was short, but very fun. We had homemade hotwings and french fries for dinner (Zac requested fried foods) and then our wonderful neighbors came over for cake and ice cream.
Notice that he has two cakes? Jose (the father of the neighbors) is the manager at the Albertson's bakery and he made a cake for Zac and even decorated it, it was Alexis' (the 13 year old) idea. Zac was more excited about the chocolate cookies around the outside than either cake but was so excited that both were chocolate, chocolate, chocolate...yummy!

I made Zac his favorite sour cream chocolate cake with fudge frosting.

We had such a fun night with the kids from the other family. We shared magic tricks and played sherades until WAY too late, but we all laughed so hard and had such a great time!

Six

Here is my response to the tag, i don't keep all my pictures on the computer so I had to adjust the tag a little.

Sixth CD, Sixth Folder, Sixth Picture:
This is me and my sister Whitney sometime at our sister Julie's Wedding. There are about 50 funny face pictures so we must have gotten bored on the drive or something...haha

The weird part is that Julie's reception was the first time I ever met Zac. I actually don't remember it, he just came through the line and my mom told his dad (who happens to be the Single's branch president) that he wasn't allowed to let me fall in love with any of those darn Idaho boys in the branch. One thing led to the next and here I am in San Diego married to that darn Idaho boy that I love with all my heart.

Don't Judge the Book By its Cover

Me: 7:00am February 17, 2009

Me: 11:00 am February 17th, 2009
Zac's commentary for both pictures: Wow babe, didn't know you could look like that.

When did my baby get so old???

I took these pictures tonight and i just can't believe how much he's starting to look like a toddler. I think part of it might be that he is wearing big boy clothes, but still. I just think he is about the sweetest little boy in the world! You'll have to ignore the drool...he drools a LOT!

This might be one of those "only a mother could love" movies. But I just think Teagan is a crack-up. I love his attempts at hopping on one foot and how he keeps growling at me when I try to get him to say stuff. He was acting silly all night so i had to try to catch some of it on film.

Best Valentines Ever

Valentines was great this year. It was so simple and from the heart, I loved it! Zac made me the sweetest card. He even decorated it with glitter! He is so thoughtful, I'm lucky to have him. He wrote me an acrostic poem and the vertical words were "Melissa Daniels the love of my life" then he filled it with sweet and funny things he loves about me. What is not to love about that! I love having a man who is thoughtful!


For Zac's present I found an idea online called the "love bank." I put together a bunch of cute love sayings. Some of them I wrote, others were lyrics from songs, a couple from movies, a bible quote, and some random ones and I put them in a vase. Originally he was supposed to be able to open one a day for a month, but I couldn't wait and begged him to look at them all last night. I think I enjoyed it more than him, but he read each one outloud. It was so fun and so sad when we ran out.

Teagan helped me make the chocolate brownies that Zac loves, and apparently Teagan loves them too. He caught me dipping my finger in and had to give it a try. :)

I've been noticing that the majority of the pictures I take are of Teagan at the counter. It is his new position. If I'm in the kitchen he is at the counter insisting on helping to stir something. Lots of food gets splattered everywhere, but I sure love having my little buddy there to keep me company! He is SO sweet and he really wants to help. How can I discourage him in that?

While I was tutoring Saturday Zac taught Teagan a really cool song on the straw. They are both so musical, I hit the jackpot with these guys!

Nasty Nasty Disgusting, oh my gosh sick experience

So I hate living in an apartment. Today was no exception. I saw a cockroach crawling out from under the fridge this morning and FREAKED! For the last month I have probably seen one or two a week inside of my apartment and it has lead to me sweeping EVERY day and mopping at least twice a week and vacuuming constantly trying to keep the house rid of ANYTHING that a cockroach would want to eat.

I complained to the manager and she suggested that the problem was probably coming from neighbors and that she would look into it, what a bunch of crap, I don't like managers.

Well, luckily Zac's first class was canceled so he was here this morning for the incident. I saw the cockroach and it went to the side of the fridge and so I had Zac pull out the fridge and it was the most HORRIBLE thing I've ever seen. I only looked once before I was dry heaving, but there were probably TEN cockroaches under there, half alive and half dead and it looked like NOBODY had ever cleaned under the fridge before. I was freaking out and luckiily Zac stayed calm and collected and grabbed to vacuum and sucked everything up. I then proceed to mop over the area about 10 times with bleach.

How gross! I was disgusted with my house keeping skills. I just didn't think to scrub under the fridge, now I'll be mopping under there every week. We checked under the other appliances and they were all clear.

The whole time I thought it was my "disgusting" neighbors and all along we were the disgusting ones. I doubt that anybody has a nasty story that can top that!

Feelin The Love

I love Valentines day. I love making and decorating sugar cookies and I've found a new love in making home made Valentines.


For Family Night on Monday I decided that we'd make Valentines for all of Teagan's first cousins, but I didn't want to leave out his aunts and uncles, and you can't leave out grandma and grandpa! Pretty soon we had about 20 Valentines and I was struggling to come up with poems for each one! If you blow up the picture you can see that we have a lot of talent...ha


Teagan, can you tell he's tired, was trying to paint with his feet...the table is stained with stamp...oops.


I don't know what makes the Valentines more unique/interesting/funny looking, my "poems" (I need quotes because I don't think they quite qualify as poems), Zac's glitter, or Teagan's handprints. They definately aren't perfect, but I LOVE them, and it is definately going to be a yearly tradition. Heck, maybe we'll start early and include 2nd cousins next year!


Then I had a bunch of sugar cookie dough left over from a Young Women's activity so me and my two AMAZING neighbors(Yesenia,11, and Mariela, 17) made "bachelors." I didn't have any heart cookie cutters so we made Valentines for all the girls out there who don't have one this year. I think we had a little too much fun with the decorating!

PS: I have a couple of really good hints for success in sugar cookie making that I discovered on allrecipes.com.

1a. Roll out the dough on wax paper.
1b. Use powdered sugar if it is sticky, not flour because that makes the cookie gross
2. Use the cookie cutters for whatever shapes you want.
3.Peel away the excess dough.
4. Slide onto the cookie sheet and cook right on the wax paper. You don't even have to use pam and the cookie sheets are WAY easier to clean.


This way the shapes don't get all weird while you try to transfer them and cupboards and cookie sheets are easier to clean!

"What is wrong with my child?"

So about 10:30 this morning I'd had it. Teagan was just whiny and had been crying and hitting himself for attention all morning and I thought "what is wrong with this kid?" He hasn't been napping til 12:00 so I thought maybe he was ready for a morning snack. I stuck him in his high chair gave him his PB&J and turned around to do the dishes. I turned around and he was stuffing his face like he'd never eaten. (He'd had a piece of toast and 1 1/2 eggs and some mixed fruit for breakfast like 2 hours earlier) A few minutes later I turned around and he was asleep.

Well I guess Teagan was being rotten because he was starving and exhausted...poor kid It is a wonder how babies survive with new moms!

Good Bye Trailer Trash

My first question. Who in the heck builds an apartment with only ONE linen/storage closet???

My Second question: Who in the heck doesn't put ANY shelves in that one closet???

That would be my apartments. For the first 5 months we've lived here we've used the two additions to our table (leafs? There is no way that is how you spell it) to support cardboard boxes that hold all of our linens, cleaning supplies, tissues, soap refil, TP and more. The games were stacked between the ?leafs? along with the iron, more towels, a cooler, and dish washer soap. It was a slight disaster to say the least.

Then I begged Zac to build me shelves for my Valentines present (early) so we went to Lowe's today and picked out what we needed. I couldn't believe it was $20!!! We thought the board was $5 less, but we had been looking at the wrong sign and the board was already cut so we just had to suck it up. We hadn't planned on spending that much. But I am SOOO happy we did now!

Zac spent an hour or so building it and then I got to reorganize. I know it doesn't look that different because it's all of the same stuff, but it is so much easier to deal with. Before, if I would touch something the wrong way every thing would come crashing down. Now I'm not afraid to open the door, and my vacuum fits now so I can move that out of our room! YIPEE! I'm the luckiest woman alive. Thanks Zac, you're the best!

Divine Intervention

Tonight was our night to feed the missionaries, yet again. I decided on chicken noodle soup and homemade bread. Cheap, tasty, and easy! I read a review online to make the noodles separate and not add them until the very end so I did and I put them in a container in the fridge.

Zac had to work tonight at one of the labs at his school so I dropped off the missionary's dinner in a ziplock and we went over to eat dinner with Zac. When we got there and opened up the food I realized that I never added the noodles! The soup was a little chicken, lots of carrots, and onions and somes spices and lots of the liquid part. It wouldn't have filled up any normal human, there just wasn't anything to it! The noodles were supposed to be the "meat" of the soup for economic reasons.

I feel bad for the elders, hopefully they have cereal or something to fill them the rest of the way up, but then I realized that maybe this was a good thing!!! I was reminded of a childhood poem:

If you have to wash the dishes,

Such an awful, boring chore

If you have to wash the dishes,

'stead of going to the store,

If you have to wash the dishes,

And you drop one on the floor...

Maybe they won't make you wash the dishes anymore.

Brilliant!!! That is what I call Divine Intervention.*** :) Just kidding, we really don't mind feeding the elders, they just eat such an incredible amount of food!

PS while I was at Zac's school I got to play in the wax maker. It is used to warm up people's hands I guess, but it felt SO cool. I dipped my hand in the wax about 5 or 6 times and look what I ended up with. My favorite part was peeling it off. I LOVE peeling off stuff like that. It is so satisfying it was like 10 times better than a bad sunburn peel...I know that is disgusting, but I know I'm not the only crazy girl who likes to peel!

Zac had to refrain me from getting too out of control so I had to stop, but I could have played in that stuff all night. I've decided that I want to do that with my whole body, how amazing would that be!

***Do I need to explain the joke here? I'm afraid it won't be funny if I explain, but I'm afraid that my blog readers aren't experienced enough poetry analyzers to get what I'm getting at. Replace "wash the dishes" with "feed the missionaries" and you will see.