Where are your eyes?

Sometimes Andrew notices that his toy or a picture in a book has eyes and he'll point them out.  You can ask him where his eyes are, but he's not very likely to show you.  He does, however, point to mine (or Will's).  More accurately, he pokes me in the eye.

Sometimes he will also show me my hair, or maybe my nose or ear. These are less common, though. The eyes are much more interesting for now.  For the most part, the one he's most willing to show you of his own is his head.

Since Will and I both wear glasses, Andrew gets told a lot that we don't play with glasses or pull them off someone's face.  He's getting pretty good at reaching under my glasses to poke me in the eye when we're talking about eyes.

Yesterday he was showing me, again, the eyes on a toy.  I asked him where his eyes were.  He reaches toward my face, per usual, and I close my eyes, ready to squint to protect myself from the poke. Then what do I feel, but a little finger go straight up my nose!! Ha! Quite the sensation when unexpected.  We'll keep working on our body parts : )

Cook book

Here's my next million dollar idea: a book (or website, whatever) that gives directions to make a meal with multiple recipes and tells you the order to do things across recipes.  It's hard to put it into words...  I know, I know, I just have to use a little critical thinking and analyze the recipes before I start and think about efficiency, but that doesn't always happen.  Real life always happens though.

I'm making two new-to-me recipes tonight.  Because I want to and that's fun to me.  But they're for feeding to other people, too, so there's a time deadline.  I've tried to think about what I can do ahead of time, as both of them are to be served right away so I want to get the timing right.  I'm still a little unsure when exactly to start and how I'll decide to go back and forth between the two.

Maybe my book would also have tips that tell you that it's ok for something to wait a little bit longer while you attend to this other thing, or if that would surely give disappointing results.

Maybe the answer is don't make new recipes for other people because you don't even know if it will be good! ha!  And that doesn't even include the gluten-free brownie mix.... (at the request of one for the other as a birthday surprise... even though her birthday isn't for a couple weeks, but she's going home next week...)  But (un?)fortunately I can mix a brownie mix in my sleep, so I'm not worried about that!

Toothpaste Chicken

We're really "money's-worth" and "bargain" kind of people.  We try not to be wasteful either.  When someone might classify a food container (peanut butter, for example) as empty and toss it, I would feel remorseful if I hadn't used a scraper spatula to get the last bits out before taking care to recycle it.  Waste not, want not, right???  I was taught well. : )

So someone else likely would have tossed our tube of toothpaste days before we did, but it just kept on a'givin!  You think you've squeezed it enough, but have you re-squeezed from the bottom and sides??  And then re-re-squeezed?  There are more little crevices to pinch and squeeze than you think!  It got to a point where I thought surely it must almost really be all gone every morning and night.  It became a game of toothpaste chicken - who was going to give up first?!  I think most people make a good effort, but this time, for whatever reason, it seemed to stretch out for many days.  Finally on Saturday night I found the new tube of toothpaste waiting for me.  I could say that I won, but we both got clean teeth out of it : )

On a related note, please send all your tried and true methods for successfully brushing a toddler's (what??!) teeth -- short of strapping them to a board.

Happy old year! Happy new year!

2015 was a good year for our family.  Andrew's adoption was finalized and we were all sealed together to be an eternal family in the Oakland temple.  Those two things were by far the best parts of our year.  Though every moment wasn't rosy, there were plenty of other good things that happened that we look back on fondly.

After putting off recruiters for well over a year (because we knew it wasn't the right time, especially after Andrew was born), Will surprised them by applying for a job early 2015.  The next several months brought hours and days of preparation and sacrifice for the whole family.  (I wondered how my friend could be surviving having her husband working full time and in school and gained a greater admiration for her.  Lucky for me this wasn't a semesters or years long commitment.)  It helped that we both knew that it was all for our good.  After many interviews, other proceedings, and just plain waiting (sound like adoption, anyone? : ) Will was offered a job different than he had originally applied for and certainly a different location.  Rural New Mexico vs. New York City.

We made all the necessary preparations to leave California and begin again on the East Coast.  We were really excited to experience new surroundings and it's proved excellent so far.  There have been many adjustments, but we're loving this grand adventure so far.  Never having moved growing up this has been my first real experience moving away from people and places and not really having plans to return to visit.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around that.  BYU was different, I guess, because everyone planned to move on.  I have some dear friends in Tracy that I miss a lot, but thanks to the internet and phones I can keep in touch easily.  Now we're working on getting to know new friends out here.

Adoption/sealing, new job/moving.  Those are the main ways we'd sum up 2015 and it was all totally awesome.

Now, the new year is here!  I always love the talks and lessons in church about goal setting and the new beginnings that everyone thinks about with a new year.  Looking forward to new opportunities and planning to become better is exciting!  It's true that through our Savior's Atonement we can begin again and try to become better at any time - what a blessing!  But I also think it's great that we can collectively reflect and look forward to improvement with a special time of year.  All that along with enjoying the life experiences that come our way makes the new year an exciting time!

Here's to the next happy year!  We haven't lived it yet, so we can't give any spoilers as to how it turns out... But we can say that we celebrated the new year eating treats and making it to midnight.  Except Andrew.  He went to bed as usual, and then woke up at about 12:05 (thanks neighbors? who are really very nice!) so then got to sleep in mom and dad's bed snuggled up with us and made sure we didn't sleep in the next morning.  We hung around home new year's day morning, then in the late afternoon/early evening we went to see some mini "homes" that were decorated as different homes or other buildings from A Christmas Carol.  They were neat, but it was pretty cold.  Those were only about 15 minutes away from a zoo we went to see the holiday lights at after.  Of course it was even colder there, but we had a good time seeing the handful of animals we could and the lights.  We also got to ride on their cute little zoo train with lights and Polar Express music.  Andrew loves trains, so that made it fun, but with the breeze I think we all haf second thoughts once the train was going.  When we couldn't stand the cold any longer (and we really were done otherwise) we left.

Yesterday's fun was satisfying our (nearly) life-long curiosity to see the Harlem Globetrotters!  Will said we were going to see a game.  I said we were going to see a show.  We were both right : )  Not exactly what I had expected, but we had a good time.  Andrew just thought it was great to see so many basketballs!  We got to go to the new arena in Brooklyn to see it, so that was nice.  And how convenient that there was a Shake Shack right across the street!  We're looking forward to the rest of 2016!