The Most Mundane of Places

This is my gorgeous life:

As Ryan puts it, he makes all the money, and I get to spend all the money. I'm pretty sure that every husband to a stay-at-home wife in the known universe has said that phrase, so no points for creativity, dear. However, it is true that I spend a ridiculous amount of money on groceries, so I will throw Ryan a bone (that I bought! at the grocery store!) and give him credit for taking my purchases in stride.

Ryan does have a full-time career now, thankfully, but for the first three years of our marriage we really didn't have any extra money. We've always had enough for our needs, but we tried really hard not to spend money on things that weren't necessities. Food, however, is an area that I have a really hard time limiting myself in. There is something about a full pantry and refrigerator that speaks comfort and security to me. As the cart got heavier and heavier this morning at Smith's, I felt happier and happier, even though pushing the thing was starting to strain my weak pregnant muscles (to say nothing of the difficulty of navigating the accursed "car cart" through the store). As the cute old man bagger (my favorite- I aways get in his line) packed up my groceries, we were both astonished that I went through all my reusable bags and had to use 2 plastic bags as well! I can practically hear Ryan grinding his teeth as I write this.

The other wonderful part about grocery shopping is taking my son along for the ride. As soon as we pull into the parking lot, Sam starts chanting "Car cart! Car cart!" and looking out the window for the blue one. Which is never there. We always use the green one, which he happily accepts, but if the BLUE ONE was ever available, he would probably have a cataplectic episode. First stop is produce, where Sam points out apples and bananas. Next, we pass the bakery on our way to the dry goods. I like to cruise slowly by the bakery in search of potential Cake Wrecks, but Sam genuinely loves the garish colors of frosting and plastic jetsam that adorn the cakes. He scrambles out of the car cart and insists that I hold him up to look at the birthday cakes. Seriously, that's the best part of my whole day. The grocery store by our old apartment used to give out cookies to the little kids that looked at the birthday cakes, but so far no dice at this store. Luckily, I'm the only one that remembers the free cookies of yesteryear (okay, last year).

I used to write my grocery list on a piece of paper and cross each item off with a pen, but that led to fights between me and Sam's grubby little fists. Tired of having him rip my list week after week, I finally got an app for my iPod that allows me to manage my list electronically, and subtly, as Sam doesn't seem to notice me using it. Today I saw a guy cruising the aisles, staring at his iPod, while shopping. We gave each other the "what's up" nod, because we knew we had passed another tech-savvy shopper. Oh, yeah. Sam got a stern talking-to for grabbing two boxes of Jello (which he somehow knew were strawberry-flavored) off the shelf while Mommy was examining Craisins. Thankfully, he kept his thieving little hands to himself after that.

The people who work at this store are generally very friendly, and as Sam was in a good mood today, lots of people talked to him and told me how cute he is. You don't need to tell me, people. I know my kid is the most adorable thing on the planet. But I appreciate it all the same.

To sum up: Going to the grocery store is pretty much my favorite time of the week.

  

Family Day

 With Ryan working two jobs, it's hard to find a lot of time to spend together as a family. Ryan had a rare day off last week for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so we took advantage of it. We took Sam down to the Church History Museum, where they are currently featuring an exhibit called A Book of Mormon Fiesta- A Latin-American Celebration. It's interactive for kids, and has stations about Latin American culture as well as Book of Mormon stories.

Dressed up to learn about Latin dancing

Building Nephi's boat

Every time we walk on the west side of Temple Square (where the museum is located), Ryan and I can smell doughnuts. Sam claimed he could smell them, too, but he tends to answer "yes" to every question that's not "Are you ready for bed?", so he is not exactly reliable. Anyway... We've never been able to figure out where the doughnut smell is coming from. There are no obvious candidates close by. We asked the people working at the museum if they knew, and none of them even acknowledged a doughnut smell! Granted, they are all in their eighties... Regardless, we couldn't handle the temptation of the doughnut smell, so we extended family fun time with a stop by Banbury Cross to eat doughnuts!

Even if it wasn't responsible for the doughnut smell downtown, it was pretty good.

Big Boy Bed

 If I had to identify a particular strength of Sammy's, I would say that he does really well with transitions. When he turned 2, we took his binkie away, and he didn't even fuss about it. Last month we potty trained him, and he was very excited to wear the big boy underwear and use his sticker chart. This week we converted Sam's crib into a big boy bed.

He loves his big boy bed. We taped the "bog boy bed rules" to his wall, and he loves saying them every night. That doesn't mean he always follows them- after a week, he only has 2 stickers on his "staying in bed" chart. He does a good job of not leaving his room, but his toys are too tempting to keep his hands off. And for some reason, in the morning, he still calls out to me when he is ready to get up instead of just getting out of bed himself.

We hope his love of new experiences makes it easier for him to adjust to having a brother!

Snowman a was there Once

A policeman took the picture for us.

After admiring our morning's work, we decided to try to get a picture of our family around the snowman. Ryan hooked a folding chair through the chain link fence, used my mittens to hold it steady, and then tried to set my camera up on a thinner glove so it would stand upright. At that point, the policemen, having finished checking into things across the parking lot, walked back to their cars. 

 After things died down and the angry guy left our front yard, we dutifully traipsed back outside to put the finishing touches on our snowman. Ryan had a cool idea for the mouth, but it turns out that Sharpie does not work well on broken taco shells. Who knew? We eventually found enough stuff in our yard to give the snowman a proper face, once we convinced Sam that the Tootsie Pop nose belonged to the snowman and he would be sad if someone else ate it. Too bad the police cars lined up in front of our house made it impossible to see our cheery snowman from the street.
While on the phone with the police, I looked out the window (and what did I see? ha ha ha) to see the guy talking loudly and angrily to Ryan in our front yard. I tried to stay calm on the phone, but I was definitely scared that there was going to be some roughhousing. Meanwhile, Sam, always dependable, started yelling that he wanted to go outside and play with Daddy and the snowman. Not wanting the dispatcher to think that I was abusing my child, I bribed him to be quiet with a piece of Toblerone. Yes, I ate one too.
Ryan urged me and Sam to go inside and call the police (because, as I've mentioned before on this blog, I have the SSL police dispatch number in my phone). I had to hoist Sam under one arm to get him to go inside, which is not an easy thing to do while 31 weeks pregnant. Once inside, I decided to leave all our snow clothes on, on the off chance that we would get to go outside again soon. Sam ran away from me and hid in the tent he got for Christmas.

We had a great time in the snow. Sammy kept throwing snowballs at us and the snowman, and occasionally asking one of us to breathe on his face to warm it up. Ryan had done a great job of stacking three balls of snow for the snowman, and I contributed by wiping off most of the pine needles and shaping the snow. We were brainstorming ideas on how to dress up our creation when we heard yelling. That's not too unusual, actually, at the government-housing across the parking lot from us. This time, though, the man and woman yelling at each other were also shoving each other and cursing. I tried to get Sam to stay in the front yard with me, away from the noise, but he kept wanting to run away and see what Daddy was looking at.
After we watched Cars and ate our breakfast smoothies, we got dressed to go play in the snow. My snowboarding pants refused to button around my baby-expanded waist, but the belt buckle held them up nonetheless. Sam was absolutely delighted by the swish-swish noises his legs made when he walked in his snowpants. And even Ryan put on his heavy winter coat instead of just donning a long-sleeved shirt. We asked Sam if he wanted to build a snowman, which got him excited. All bundled up, we hurried outside to enjoy the rare treat that has been snow in SLC this winter.
This morning we woke up to find the front yard covered in snow.