But this is AWESOME!

*scroll down for video*

I love com­ments.  I love read­ing com­ments on oth­ers’ blogs.  I love when some­one com­ments on some­thing I write.  I like leav­ing them, too.  Unfor­tu­nately, I am par­tic­u­larly bad at doing it.  I read most of my blogs in Google Reader.  This makes it harder to com­ment.  It is espe­cially hard when I for­get about them for a few days and the unread posts pile up into the hun­dreds.  I end up skim­ming more than I would like.  I also just find that I feel like I don’t have time to stop and com­ment.  Booo! I know.  Here I am writ­ing about how much I enjoy read­ing what oth­ers have to say, and I give a lame-o excuse for not doing it myself.

I guess I need to do some­thing about it.  Either I need to read fewer blogs (can’t see this hap­pen­ing), or I need to make it a pri­or­ity (that sounds like a great idea, Casey!).    So, those of you whose blogs I read will (hope­fully) be see­ing more com­ments from me in the future!

Credit: National Delurk­ing Week logo by Breast­feed­ing 1–2-3 from Com­puter Mon­i­tor with per­mis­sion from weird­vis (feel free to copy with link to both)

Jan­u­ary 4th to Jan­u­ary 10th is National Delurk­ing Week! Those of you who are blog­gers know that one of the most reward­ing parts of blog­ging is to get to inter­act with read­ers through the com­ments. I am very happy to say that I have great read­ers. I very reg­u­larly get com­ments (which I love). I do won­der though who is out there read­ing this. Some­times when I see how many peo­ple view my blog, I won­der if I even know that many peo­ple.

So, if you like what you read, or if you don’t like what you read, leave a com­ment! Let me know what you think of the blog, and MOST impor­tantly, let me know more about you!

Look no fur­ther! I have a great oppor­tu­nity for some­one. I am look­ing for a per­sonal shop­per and fash­ion con­sul­tant. I am seek­ing some­one with good fash­ion sense who can also find clothes at bar­gain base­ment prices. Please con­tact me if you think you may enjoy this posi­tion. With your con­tact, please include three out­fits that you find to be styl­ish yet prac­ti­cal for a busy mom of two.

Okay, so I’m not expect­ing a huge response to this ad. Actu­ally, I’m not really expect­ing any response. I do wish, though, that it would hap­pen. I was at the mall on Sat­ur­day, and I had coupons to use in two stores, and I really couldn’t find any­thing that looked like what I thought I wanted. That is prob­lem one. Prob­lem two is that when I find things that I like at the store, about 60% of them turn ugly or unde­sir­able in the car on the way home. I’ve been try­ing to con­vince Jason for a cou­ple years that he should turn me in to What Not to Wear on TLC, but so far I haven’t noticed any­one fol­low­ing me or ask­ing me ques­tions about my style for a mar­ket­ing video.

So, if you’re inter­ested…

Yes, appar­ently one or both Jason and I say “oofta.” Yes, we also live in North Dakota, so it prob­a­bly hap­pens more than we ever real­ize. This fact was ham­mered home to us the other night at sup­per when Jason said, “oofta” after A had a cough­ing spell. K looked at him and said, “Asa poopy?” So appar­ently, we not only use the word oofta, but we use it as an exple­tive when chang­ing a smelly diaper.

More and more over the past few weeks, we’ve been hear­ing K repeat things that we have said to him. One night, Jason was giv­ing him two choices for get­ting his dia­per changed. K kept telling Jason that he didn’t want to have his (poopy) dia­per changed. He wanted to wear it. (On a side note, you can tell we’re not exactly steam­ing down the road of potty learn­ing . ) Jason told him, “That’s not a choice.” Later that night dur­ing the bed­time rou­tine, K and Jason were talk­ing and at one point, K said to Jason, “No, Daddy, that not a choice.”

Last week, we spent a lit­tle time with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. One of the days, my nieces (ages 6 and 4 were over). At one point, I heard them argu­ing, and the six year old was say­ing, “That’s fair!” to her sis­ter over whether or not she needed to share some toys with her. Fast for­ward to this morn­ing. I was show­ing K the new library books we had checked out for this week. He was pretty excited about them, and he kept pulling them out of the bag and say­ing, “That very fair!”

Then, there are the things he picks up that I’m not sure where they came from. “You know bet­ter, Mommy!” “A, you being bad!” “No, no, no, no, no!” These are not things we say to him. I know that now that his peers are speak­ing more and we are around more and dif­fer­ent peo­ple, his pool of expe­ri­ences to draw from also grows.

He’s at an age where he is such a sponge. He doesn’t have pre­con­ceived ideas of what is fun or not fun (video games vs. books) or what music is good or not good (pop music vs. opera). He loves so many dif­fer­ent things. I think that his new ten­dency to repeat things that we say at just the right time is good for us in more than one way. While it reminds me that he’s always lis­ten­ing to what we say, it also reminds me that he is pick­ing stuff up All. The. Time. I am rais­ing a lit­tle sponge, and I want him to be able to absorb all that he can before this time ends.

You know that when­ever your spouse says, “Do you know what your son just did?” some­thing hasn’t gone quite right. This morn­ing, I was lay­ing in bed nurs­ing A, and Jason said those words. I didn’t answer, because I knew he was dying to tell me. Sure enough, the answer fol­lowed almost imme­di­ately. “He put Magic Butt Cream in his hair.” For those of you who don’t know, Magic Butt Cream is the dia­per cream that we get from our doc­tor for a dia­per rash that isn’t con­trolled by the reg­u­lar over the counter stuff. A few weeks ago, K and Jason had a talk about how we don’t eat the Magic Butt Cream. It’s only for sore butts. It’s not for eat­ing. Well, he didn’t try eat­ing it again. This time, he took about 1/2 of what was left, and he smeared it in his hair. Ugh.

Unfor­tu­nately for me, Jason was on his way out the door and on his way to work. I was lucky enough to take over the emer­gency bath. In addi­tion to hav­ing a head full of grease, K did not want to take a bath, and he had a poopy dia­per! I man­aged to talk him into the bath. Then, I started in on his hair with Dawn. Dawn cuts grease, right? I fig­ured that was my best chance at get­ting some of that stuff out of his hair. He was patient enough to let me lather and rinse his hair twice. THen, he lost patience, so I took him out of the bath, and he spent the rest of the day with the wet look.

Tonight at sup­per, he con­tin­ued on with the hair exper­i­ment and decided to try apple­sauce in his hair. I told Jason that it was his turn to work on K’s hair. He did the 2nd bath of the day with both boys. While they were in the bath­room, I checked the inter­net and found that some peo­ple sug­gested using corn­starch for get­ting Vasaline out of hair, so we tried it. K thought it was pretty funny, and I fig­ured it couldn’t hurt. I didn’t get a chance to see his hair after it dried, so I’m not sure if the corn­starch solved our prob­lem or not. I’ll be inter­ested to see how it looks tomorrow.

It’s time for my favorite car­ni­val! It’s the 5 Min­utes for Books monthly “What’s on Your Night­stand?” car­ni­val. Yay!

This is so hard for me. I have so many books I want to read. I have told my hus­band sev­eral times recently that there are just too many books and too lit­tle time. Last month, I spent most of my read­ing time read­ing the Twi­light series by Stephe­nie Meyer. It was okay. Yes, that was a lot of time to allo­cate to some­thing that is just okay. Gen­er­ally, I’m not the type of per­son who sticks with some­thing and fol­lows it through if I start to lose inter­est, so I decided that I was going to read all 4 books no mat­ter what. Also, I was curi­ous. I liked some of the char­ac­ters, and I liked the first book quite a bit, so I wanted to see how she wrapped it up. It seemed to me like there was a LOT of room for another book in the series and that it wasn’t really wrapped up. I know the movie just came out, but I don’t go to movies so I most likely won’t be see­ing it for quite some time if at all.

This month, I’m back to my pile of books from Book­Mooch and Paper­back­Swap. I’m also think­ing a lot about home­school, par­ent­ing, and breast­feed­ing tod­dlers, so maybe I’ll read some of those types of books, too.

Do you have any home­school­ing, par­ent­ing or breast­feed­ing books you’d recommend?

This is a blog car­ni­val from 5 Min­utes for Books. It’s held the 4th Tues­day of each month, and it’s a blast! I get a lot of great rec­om­men­da­tions and a few new blogs for my feed reader each month by click­ing through to oth­ers’ posts.

What

Last month, I set forth a nearly impos­si­ble read­ing goal for myself. Instead of read­ing all the books faith­fully on my list, I got side tracked. I read the first two books in the Twi­light series, Twi­light and New Moon. I will be com­pletely hon­est this month and I’ll admit that right now the other two books are the pri­or­ity on my read­ing list. I’m wait­ing for Eclipse to be returned to the library and then I’ll read Break­ing Dawn right after that. Right now, I’m read­ing Eat. Love. Pray. and I have to admit, I’m not lov­ing it. I’m def­i­nitely look­ing for a diver­sion. So, if any­one knows who has that copy of Eclipse that is 2 weeks over­due, tell them to take it back! Nor­mal read­ing plans of way too many books in way too few days will be resumed next month.

I’ve been count­ing down in my head to my 100th post for a while now. Then, I real­ized that I missed it! Whoops. So, for my 101st post on this blog, I decided to do a list of 101 things about me (and my fam­ily). Here it is:

1. My mom and I shared a hos­pi­tal room with my high school best friend and her mom when we were born (2 days apart).
2. We didn’t find out about that until we were 17 years old, because we weren’t from the same town until her fam­ily moved at age 14.
3. When I was younger, I thought I would become a nurse, a teacher, and a pet store employee when I grew up.
4. When I was around 7 or 8 years old, I started putting the same 3 items on my Christ­mas list every year: a phone in my room, a pet, and another brother or sister.
5. I have one sibling.
6. I never got any of those things.
7. Before I could read (well), my par­ents used to give me the mail addressed to “Cur­rent Res­i­dent” and tell me it was for me.
8. They gave me mail­ings from Byron Dor­gan and told me he was send­ing me mail.
9. I believed them until I was far too old to believe that sort of thing.
10. I had a great childhood.
11. I have great parents.
12. Most of my child­hood mem­o­ries revolve around play­ing at the neigh­bor hood park, play­ing with friends in my yard, or being with my extended family.
13. I learned to read before kindergarten.
14. I have loved to read for as long as I can remember.
15. When my brother had bowl­ing league, I spent the time at the library
16. I’m not sure he’d appre­ci­ate me remind­ing peo­ple he was in a bowl­ing league.
17. Fourth grade was my favorite year of ele­men­tary school. Thanks, Mrs. Becker!
18. By 6th grade, I had read nearly all the children/youth books in our library and checked out a Stephen King novel.
19. My sixth grade teacher called my par­ents to see what they thought about me hav­ing that book.
20. I didn’t actu­ally read it. It was a lit­tle too creepy for my age.
21. When I was in sev­enth grade, I had my first sort-of-real boyfriend.
22. We didn’t date or call each other or any­thing, but we were “together.”
23. When I was a junior in high school, I had two teach­ers tell me that he still “had the hots” for me.
24. I doubt the truth of #22.
25. I have been a North Dakota res­i­dent my entire life.
26. I flew on an air­plane for the first time when I was 16. I went to St. Louis, Mis­souri with 3 class­mates and a teacher from my school.
27. FHA (now known as FCCLA) was respon­si­ble for most of my travel prior to turn­ing 18.
28. Because of FCCLA, I was able to go to St. Louis, MO, New Orleans, LA, and Tokyo, Japan.
29. I spent 6 weeks in Japan with a host fam­ily the sum­mer I was 17.
30. I climbed (part of) Mt. Fuji.
31. I lived in cen­tral Tokyo when I was in Japan.
32. My Japan­ese fam­ily drove a Ford minivan.
33. When I was in Tokyo, I felt like I could not breathe because there were so many peo­ple and build­ings all around.
34. When I came home from Japan, I remem­ber what North Dakota air smelled like as I stepped off the airplane.
35. The only rea­son I needed to attend 4 years of high school was for my senior eng­lish and my senior social stud­ies class. I had enough classes/credits to grad­u­ate after 3 years.
36. I wanted to be a marine biol­o­gist when I was in high school.
37. That is not very likely when you live in North Dakota.
38. When I wrote my senior eng­lish paper about my future career, I chose civil engineering.
39. I was an engi­neer­ing major for 3 days in college.
40. I also majored in speech lan­guage pathology.
41. and ath­letic training
42. and ele­men­tary education
43. and mid­dle school education.
44. I stuck with the last two.
45. I have a dual major in ele­men­tary and mid­dle level education.
46. I have a mas­ters in spe­cial education.
47. I met my hus­band, Jason, in my first semes­ter of college.
48. I knew who he was in a class of 150ish people.
49. He didn’t know me, but it all worked out in the end.
50. We offi­cially met at a Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ Christ­mas Conference.
51. We dated for 10 months
52. and broke up for a year and a half.
53. Then, we dated for 8 months,
54. were engaged for 8 moths,
55. and got mar­ried in June of 2002.
56. Jason says that he knew we would get mar­ried the night we first met.
57. It took me another 3 years to fig­ure that out.
58. I don’t like the ends of chicken strips.
59. I don’t really like most meat at all.
60. If I had my choice, I would be vegetarian.
61. I have two sons.
62. I had two unmed­icated labors.
63. I am breast­feed­ing both my 15 month old and my almost 3 year old (will be 3 on Nov 3).
64. I am mar­ried to an early adopter (some­one who jumps onto new trends early).
65. I am not an early adopter.
66. Jason has intro­duced me to blogging,
67. NPR/MPR,
68. and being polit­i­cally moderate.
69. I’m no good at mod­er­a­tion. I like all or nothing.
70. I used to teach spe­cial edu­ca­tion before I had K.
71. When I tell peo­ple that, they say, “you must be really patient.”
72. I laugh when they say that.
73. I am a very emo­tional person.
74. I am eas­ily moved to cry.
75. There is a CVS com­mer­cial that makes me cry.
76. I like the Pixar movie Cars more than my son, I think.
77. I am plan­ning to run a half marathon in May of 2009.
78. I used to think that I wanted to have six children.
79. Now, I’m not sure how many I want.
80. For the first two years of our mar­riage, I did almost no cooking.
81. We had a rota­tion of about 4 meals that we used to space out meals in restaurants.
82. In the sum­mer of 2004, I decided to start try­ing one new meal a week.
83. Now we usu­ally eat 2–4 new meals a week.
84. I am try­ing to get rid of high fruc­tose corn syrup in our house.
85. I love cin­na­mon rolls.
86. I love caramel rolls.
87. I once found (what I think was) a cock­roach in the base­ment of the apart­ment building/house we were liv­ing it.
88. I put it in a sand­wich bag and left it on the kitchen table to show to Jason when he got home from work.
89. Think­ing about that now still gives me the creeps.
90. I some­times get the urge to move some­where far away from North Dakota.
91. I will prob­a­bly never move all that far from North Dakota…maybe Moor­head or East Grand Forks?
92. I am pas­sion­ate about breast­feed­ing and the ben­e­fits of breast­milk for moms and babies.
93. I am becom­ing more and more inter­ested and pas­sion­ate about con­ser­va­tion, green liv­ing, fair trade, and organic food.
94. I want to learn to knit
95. I have started play­ing the piano again, but our piano badly needs to be tuned.
96. I am pleased with where my life is 10 years after high school graduation.
97. I miss my brother and sister-in-law and wish they lived closer.
98. I love to watch football
99. and hockey.
100. Hav­ing kids has sig­nif­i­cantly reduced my sports watch­ing time.
101. Ide­ally, if I have more chil­dren, I would love to give birth to them at The Farm.

There you have it! Those are my 101 things. If you got all the way to the end, I’m impressed!

A cou­ple months ago, I found Paper Bridges through a car­ni­val from 5 Min­utes for Books. I clicked around her site and found sev­eral inter­est­ing posts. One of them was a book give­away. I entered and won this book. She has another book give­away going now. If you have ever heard of or read For Men Only or For Women Only, you might enjoy hav­ing this book even if it’s not directed at you. If you have (or will soon have) a teenage boy, you def­i­nitely will enjoy this book. Click on over and check it out!