Long time No See (or Write)

So, it's been a while, I will admit. I don't have much time to myself, so it's hard to get away and do something like blog-keeping that doesn't even get my house any cleaner or my children any happier.

Well, the picture of William and Ben is a more recent one. See how chubby and cute William is getting? When he was born he was seven pounds and two ounces. On Monday when we weighed him he was ten and a half pounds! Little porker! It makes me happy because he is obviously happy and doing well. I worry about EVERYTHING I could possibly worry about, so it's nice not to have to worry about him!

The family picture is from the baby blessing and the picture of my girls is just a recent one that I thought was pretty cute (and yes, the girls are in their pajamas!)

This is for David: Hannah Singing

This is the second song Hannah has learned. I love her smile at the end. (In case you can't tell it's Twinkle Little Star.)

Ben's Handywork

Ben and I have been very busy this month. It seems like Ben has no time to spare, ever. We're busy fixing up our house nowadays. Well, actually, Ben is. I watch. He's done a lot of painting and that sort of thing and since I am pregnant and want to be safe I stay away from where he is working most of the time. It's kind of annoying to have to watch and wait for results when I want to be participating in the fix-ups half the time, but it is fun to see our house transforming all the same.

These pictures are of Ben as he put it "performing a death-defying act" which meant he spent a long time on a shaky ladder, sometimes very near the top of it, just to change the light fixture in our entryway. It ended up looking really good though.

Ben and I have a ward talent show coming up and we couldn't think of anything to do to participate. Ben jokingly said something like, "I can't think of anything to do, unless they want me to change a light fixture at the church." (He's already changed five of them in our house.)

I'm lucky I married such a handyman. Among other things Ben has put a peep hole in our door for me, changed our leaky, disgusting, uncleanable tap in the kitchen, fixed a hole in the wall and a sticky drawer in the kitchen and built several very nice shelves in our laundry room and pantry. Last weekend he replaced our counter-top in the bathroom and installed a new tap there too. Everything looks very good and very professional and the best part is that Ben loves doing it!

Shoes?

These pictures were taken around mid-December when Evelyn was obsessed with putting everything on her feet. She spent about half an hour or more trying to put on shoes some days. Later on it was socks. (She says both words really well.) One day I got some cute videos of her trying to put on a shoe. I filmed her for about ten minutes. She sometimes got frustrated and threw herself backwards on the floor before sitting up to try again. She expresses her emotions loudly. She always has. She's either very happy or very upset and there's no inbetween, although her moods do change from minute to minute. I'll give her one thing though; she is very persistent when she wants to be.

Hannah this Time!

These are some of the most recent pictures we have of Hannah. We took them a couple of weeks ago. Hannah is so much fun. She's very independent but very shy. She loves to look at books and she's finally started to enjoy watching movies. But her favorite thing to do is have friends come over. She loves playing with other children. Or bossing them around or something like that. Just kidding. Mostly. It depends how old the kids are. If they are younger than she is, she's the boss. If they are older, she's friends with them. And she laughs a lot and runs around and plays and has a glorious time. It's fun to watch.

In this last picture, Ben asked Hannah to smile and "show her teeth." It looks more like a grimace doesn't it? I don't think Hannah knows how to smile on demand yet!



These are some of the most recent pictures we have of Hannah. We took them a couple of weeks ago. Hannah is so much fun. She's very independent but very shy. She loves to look at books and she's finally started to enjoy watching movies. But her favorite thing to do is have friends come over. She loves playing with other children. Or bossing them around or something like that. Just kidding. Mostly. It depends how old the kids are. If they are younger than she is, she's the boss. If they are older, she's friends with them. And she laughs a lot and runs around and plays and has a glorious time. It's fun to watch.

In this last picture, Ben asked Hannah to smile and "show her teeth." It looks more like a grimace doesn't it? I don't think Hannah knows how to smile on demand yet!

More of Evy

(Evy is the name we usually use for Evelyn. Eh-vie). Anyway... here are some very recent pictures of Evelyn. She's a very active girl. She can hardly ever sit still. (She's also very loving though. She spends a lot of the day coming up to me and giving me quick hugs before running off to play again.) You may notice that she has a black eye. She fell in the bathtub about a week ago. She falls a lot. She likes to climb. That's partly because she watches Hannah and wants to do all of the things that she does.

Evelyn is only fifteen months old but she thinks she is at least three. She's starting to talk a lot too. It's so much fun. She started talking months before Hannah did. Again, I partially think that's because she copies Hannah. She's learned a lot of the things she says around the same time that Hannah did. Although she pretends to say full sentences, usually the last word is the only intelligible one. I bet she can say fifty or more words on her own. It's so much fun! Her latest words are "boot" and "book" (she walks around practicing saying "k" and "t") and "hat." She can pronounce all of them perfectly. She also recently started to enjoy saying words like "hand" and "hair" and "eye" (as she pokes mine of course.) I can't get over how cute it is!

Evelyn My Sweetheart!

I'm in love! Evelyn makes my heart swell every day. She is a bundle of life and personality and joy. She's such a happy baby and she is so much fun! She's so adorable! Her face is always filled with expressions that make me laugh and smile and appreciate life just because it's obvious that she does! I don't think anyone could be any sweeter! It's no wonder that her name means "life" or "light!" It's obvious to me.

I'm back!

So many people have asked me why I haven't been updating my blog. It was obvious to me but not everyone else I guess. I got pregnant near the end of June and Ben was gone for a lot of the summer and I was SO tired. I also felt consistently sick all the time, and I fell out of all the routines I had established and all desire to do anything that I didn't absolutely have to do. It was hard enough to have to change diapers when the need arose! But I'm feeling absolutely GREAT now and overall I have a lot of energy and so I decided to see if I can get back at it!

Hats and Shoes

Hannah's favorite game right now is dress up. She puts everything on her head that could possibly fit there, and she loves to try on shoes. It doesn't matter whose. She tries on mine, Ben's and even Evelyn's. And when we go places and there is a front entrance with shoes, she's in heaven. Until I stop her from losing everyone else's shoes, of course.

These are some of the pictures I've taken this month. It's so much fun to take pictures of my babies.

Evelyn's First (Sort of) Walk

I've taken Evelyn on walks before, but only in our travel system stroller. She's been in her carseat with her head covered the whole time. This is the first time she's been able to see what is going on. I remember when we took Hannah for her first walk. She stared silently, not moving, straight ahead the whole time. Hannah is like that. She has to warm up to a new situation and analyze it before she'll react.

Evelyn, on the other hand, looked interestedly around for a short while and then fell asleep. Our walk was only a few minutes long, since it was only six degrees outside. Ben thought it was a beautiful day. It hasn't been that warm in a long time. But we didn't count on the cold wind that blew across our faces, and we had to return earlier than we would have liked.

I love this picture. The girls look so cute together!

We Just Can't Get Enough of Each Other!

I love the way Hannah loves to hug and kiss Evelyn. Evelyn loves it, too. She loves any attention that Hannah gives her, no matter what kind it is. I really hope they will be able to grow up feeling close to each other. My greatest hope is that they will be best friends. Aren't they just so adorable?

Where did Hannah go?

This is Evelyn searching for her playmate (Hannah of course). Hannah had walked away and Evelyn was trying to see her for as long as possible. It's so much fun to watch them together. There isn't anything I would rather see.

By the way, I'm glad I don't have to put my body into contortions like that just to see what is going on!

Look! I'm Flying!

Okay, so Evelyn is much more active than Hannah was. I know mostly all babies "fly" but Hannah never did. It's so much fun to see Evelyn doing it. I left her on the floor for a long time, taking pictures. By the end she was zonked. It was hard to take pictures since Hannah kept on wanting me to take hers instead.

Mommy, Come OUT!

I was in the laundry room where I have my changing table set-up. I was changing Evelyn. Hannah likes to follow me from room to room, but I had gone in and shut the door. Suddenly I heard Ben, who was home at the time, say, "Be careful! Don't open the door!" I guess Hannah decided she wanted to come in after me. He took a couple of pictures and then moved her away from the door so I could come out. (Hannah doesn't actually know how to turn the doorknob and push at the same time. I'm grateful. She couldn't have opened the door. It's cute to see how she tries though.)

Best Friends Sit on Each Other?

I know I've told this story to some people. I was in one room and my girls were in another. I decided to check on them since they were being too quiet. I found Hannah sitting on Evelyn. I almost made her get off, but as I was opening my mouth to tell Hannah to move, Evelyn looked up at me and smiled brightly. I laughed to myself. She was enjoying being sat on. So I left Hannah there. Evelyn loves Hannah so much. She doesn't seem to mind when Hannah does strange things to her. She laughs when she sees Hannah coming and she smiles when she pays attention to her and stops crying when she enters a room. It's adorable!

Oh So Cute!

I just couldn't pass up posting this picture of my adorable eyed little angel.

Computer Technician

Hannah watches me at the computer, often, and she loves to play with the keyboard and the mouse herself. It delights her. She's had a lot of fun with it, especially since she learned how to climb on the kitchen chairs. I don't mind, except for when I accidentally leave the computer on. She has so much fun though that I've resigned myself to letting her play.

Making Empanadas - Quite a Story!

Okay, so my latin friends would laugh to know that one of the only posts I have made about myself is about me making empanadas, since any one of them could do it with their eyes closed. But I feel so proud of myself, so I'm going to do it anyway.

Recent events have caused me to reflect a lot on the mission I served in Paraguay and to ponder over it, perhaps excessively. Perhaps because of this I have recently craved foods I ate there. So a few days ago I tried my hand, again, at making Paraguayan tortillas. Compared to a Paraguayan standard they probably weren't very good, but to me they were delicious. Then the other day I was watching a video about how to make butternut squash ravioli, and the little ravioli looked so much like empanadas that I got a crazy idea. I would make meat empanadas!

I thought it wasn't too farfetched of an idea. After all, a Paraguayan family had showed me how to make empanadas, and albeit it was more than two years ago, I thought, "How hard can it be?"

So at about three o'clock, thinking it would be a snap to prepare in time for dinner, I got out my cookbook and read the recipe for the dough: 8 cups of flour, 1 cup of shortening, warm water and salt. I should've known the measurements for water and salt would be non-existant. Nobody in Paraguay who knows how to cook would ever need such a thing as a measurement. But I thought to myself, "I can do it." And then I set to work. An hour later I looked down at my stiff, lumpy mound of dough and thought "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea." Admittedly, I had to throw out a bunch of it before I had a dough product that looked and rolled out well enough to use. And about the same time that I was up to my elbows in flour and ground beef both of my daughters started to cry. And cry. And cry. And, well, you get the point.

I was trying to roll out the dough, which was still too stiff, and my daugters were crying, and I was starting to wonder where I could buy a wig when all of my hair fell out, and that just happened to be the time that my husband came home. I was acutely aware of how glad I was not to be a little Paraguayan wife, because by the standards of Paraguayan wifery, I'm sure I'd be classed as a failure.

I quickly set my husband to rolling out the dough for me, when all he really wanted to do was take a shower. He is such a great guy!

That was when I tried to shape the dough into empanadas. It was gruelling, frustrating work and I threw the first one out. (To make empanadas you have to cut out a circle of dough and then fold it in half, encasing the filling.) I remembered how the family who taught me how to make empanadas showed me how to fold them over and squish the ends together, and then make a pretty little pattern on the ends. I tried and just got frustrated. Ben kept on offering suggestions. Finally I just decided to squish the ends with a fork.

Then I fried them, anxiously awaiting the grande finale, the best part, where we would get to enjoy "the fruits" of my exhausting and frustrating evening. I quickly took the empanadas out of the frying pan and took a bite out of an oddly shaped one. I closed my eyes even. And I was rewarded by an undercooked, doughy empanada. But man alive did it ever taste good. It was divine. I remembered in detail the night that family showed me how to make empanadas, I remembered the lady who I used to buy them from in Luque, and for the first time ever, I fully appreciated how much work she used to do, and I remembered just how wonderful it was to bite into a Paraguayan empanada just hot out of the pan. I hope I never forget that feeling. That's why I had to write all of this.

The truth is, Ben and I kept working at it and although we didn't finish until almost three hours after I had started, the final empanadas were just as delicious as I remembered. That's why I had to share. Here's to my little empanaditas!

Learning How to Dress Myself

Here's Hannah...again. Why don't I post pictures of myself? It's because I don't take pictures of myself. I take pictures of everyone else. Most of the pictures I take of myself just don't turn out. Usually it's my nose that is completely disproportionate. Ah well. Hannah's cuter than I am anyway. So, on the 10th I tried a new dress on Hannah and told her she looked gorgeous in it. Then I took it off, so she could wear it to church the next day. She didn't want me to. She was pretty upset about it, in fact. So I gave her the dress. I guess she wanted to wear it pretty badly because it's the first thing she actually successfully got over her head. Then today she started putting on one of her onesies. She's never done that before either. She put it on over the new dress which she wore to church today. I thought it was pretty cute. It sure would be nice if she could learn to get dressed by herself.

Evelyn's First Rattle

(Actually I don't know if this was the first rattle she played with, but I believe so.) I love this rattle because it's easy for Evelyn's small fingers to wrap around. I gave it to her and came back quite a while later and she still had it, and was gleefully sucking on it. Later I came and found her asleep, with the rattle still in her mouth.

By the way, although lots of the pictures I have of Evelyn are of her in the swing, I do take her out sometimes. I do admit, though, that it is the easiest place for me to leave her, because Hannah can't step on her or squish her there! Also, something about the swing seems to easily soothe her, and that's nice too. Before I had Hannah, I asked Mom what baby things I should buy. At the top of the list, before a crib even, Mom told me I should get a swing. I haven't ever regretted it.

Elf

It's so fun to take pictures of Hannah in hats nowadays. She never used to let us take pictures of her in hats because she hated them and didn't wear them. She still doesn't particularly like them. We usually get her to keep them on by saying, "Let's go look in the mirror!" (Yes, we bribe her.) She loves to look in the mirror. In this picture Ben is trying to keep her excited about seeing herself since she kept on trying to yank the hat off. We didn't even get the picture that we wanted. When we first put the hat on her it stuck straight up and she looked just like a perfect little Santa's elf. This picture turned out fairly well, but (no offense Ben) it would have been so cute without Ben in it.

Here's Evelyn! Isn't she just the most adorable little thing? She does a fairly good job of holding up her head. She did a really good job before Christmas, especially. And then we didn't really put her on her tummy at all for a couple of weeks, since we were travelling and visiting, and she kind of forgot how to do it. Every time I would put her on her tummy she would scream and fuss after just a few moments, and rub her nose back and forth on the blanket without lifting her head. Then, suddenly, it was as though something clicked in her mind again, and she started holding up her head again and enjoying her tummy time more. It was kind of strange, but I'm glad she's over it.

Toque and Mittens

Is that how you spell toque? I couldn't find it in my dictionary. I just thought this picture of Hannah was really cute. She doesn't mind putting on her toque and her mittens but when I try to put on her coat she often has a fit. She doesn't like that at all. She likes to go outside though.

A Little Bitty Box for a Little Bitty Girl

I already have a few posts of Hannah climbing all over the place. This represents her newest achievements in that area. I absolutely LOVE being a mom, because I get to be a part of moments like these!

Expressive Evelyn

When we were taking pictures of Evelyn in her dress she started smiling and talking to Ben (who was holding her.) She made some cute faces, and I was able to capture a few on the camera. I couldn't decide which one was the best, so I am including two. Also I have an extra picture just to show all of Evelyn's dress. There is a story behind it. When Evelyn was just a few days old Ben's mom asked if we needed anything, wondering what she could get for Evelyn. We already had everything we needed, since we had Hannah, and were just planning on using everything for Evelyn that we had used for her. But Ben really wanted Evelyn to have her own special not-hand-me-down just-for-Evelyn dress. So Ben's Mom searched and found this one. I think it's adorable, and it really is nice to have a dress just for her.

Little Climber

Hannah got a stroller to push her dolls around in for Christmas, as well as a little playpen. She really enjoys them and spends all day wrapping her dolls in blankets, putting them in my swing (when Evelyn isn't in it), putting them to bed (I've encouraged her to use the playpen as a bed)and pushing them around in her stroller. But today she found another use for them. I came upstairs from doing something downstairs and discovered her inside her baby stroller. I guess she doesn't think she's done being a baby. It also helps that she is becoming more of a bold climber. She got a little chair for Christmas from her Grandma and Grandpa Hogenson and she's been practicing climbing in and out of it. Later that same day I was holding Evelyn on the couch and I watched Hannah discover another use for her baby's playpen as well. I took pictures of both events, and I think it's funny that they both happened for the first time on the same day. The sad thing is that although I took time to take pictures, Ben and I don't think climbing inside of her toys, especially her stroller, is a good thing. We're going to try and prevent it from happening as much as possible, much to Hannah's disappointment. I noticed that sitting in the play pen is making the stitching on the bottom pull out, and once when she climbed into the stroller she came dangerously close to falling out of it when it started to roll underneath her when her weight shifted.

Exciting World of Plastic Bags

(I'm adding a disclaimer to this entry right now. I do not let Hannah play with plastic bags and as soon as I took this picture I confiscated it.)

Hannah got a really cool toy for Christmas. It was so cool that I played with it for about half an hour on Christmas morning. It's a fisher price toy. It's ten hollow domes of varying sizes. They stack on top of each other, or they stack inside of each other, or they can be made into little balls, or they can be put together in such a way that all of the pieces end up inside of each other to make one big ball. The other day Hannah found a ziploc bag I must have had some pamphlets in and she went around and picked up all ten of the pieces of her ball. It was pretty cute, because she invented the idea all by herself. It was pretty cute.

The One Way She Sleeps

Once again Evelyn is awake and I wish I was in bed, but what can I do? I realized the other day that she seems to sleep well in the swing, and she prefers to be upright. I think that's one reason why she doesn't sleep well in the bassinet. She just likes the swing better. It's too bad. I've come to rely on the swing. I put her in it to keep her off the floor, because when she's on the floor Hannah wants to play with her, and she always seems to squish her, or pinch her trying to pick her up, or all sorts of things. I feel like she's much more safe in the swing, and I can leave the room and not worry as much as if I had left her on the floor. I don't like to leave her on the couch either because, especially when she was brand new, Hannah would grab the blanket she was wrapped in and pull it. I'm afraid if I leave them alone together Evelyn will end up on the floor. But somehow I've decided I have to wean her off the swing to see if she'll sleep at night time. Wish me luck!