The Blind Side - 2 thumbs up!!!

I don't get out much, aside to meet up with friends every once in a while. Friday I got a special treat. My parents and a few siblings were going to see The Blind Side. Rob wasn't interested in seeing the movie (though I hope he likes it when I get him to watch it sometime), so he stayed home with Guy and I went out with my family.

Wow! I got teary eyed a few times (which may be a sign of my age, I know)--the movie was touching in so many ways. It's not anything like Remember the Titans (another one of my favorites)--it's much less about football, but it's tremendously motivating and inspiring as it shows the struggles of a boy that "makes it" after starting in some awful and often defeating circumstances.

One of my favorite parts of it was that during the credits real photos of the man and the family the movie was based on were shown. I found that particularly touching.

If you only saw one movie this year, I would highly recommend that you choose this one.

Cake Weekend

This weekend my niece Iris turned 4. My brother and sister-in-law had family over for a birthday dinner, so I offered to make her birthday cake. She wanted a princess cake and Jen found this idea on Betty Crocker's website. It looked pretty easy, so I gave it a shot. The cake was 4 layers (3 8-inch rounds and the last layer baked in a bowl). Luckily my mom had the 8-inch rounds. I doubled my favorite chocolate cake recipe and I used 3 cans of frosting. It all turned out well--I loved making it, Iris loved looking at it, and everybody loved eating it! I LOVE making things that look pretty and taste good--it's my favorite thing to do in the kitchen.

And one of the kiddos - Iris and Jimmy are so fun and nice when they play with Guy. He loves them.

The Latest

It's been a busy in a good way, lately. We're gearing up for the holidays - I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week already!

Here are some photos of my latest photos

In this one Guy has a whole Nilla wafer in his mouth - every once in a while we give him one, and often he slips that whole thing right into his mouth.

He's pretty skinny even though he's a good eater - he's even perfected his begging routine when anybody around him has food.

But how would you say no to this face?

It was my sister Eden's birthday last week. For our family dinner, Rob and I offered to make dessert. Her choice was eclairs. I've made cream puffs before, but never eclairs. For the first time, I'd say they turned out pretty well. They are time consuming, but Rob and I enjoyed doing them. We used a pastry tool that we have and injected all the cream, so they looked pretty professional.

We gave Guy a small piece of one - without chocolate. He enjoyed it, of course

Guy HATES fallen leaves. I'm sure he'll grow out of it, but I put him down in them for less than five minutes because he just couldn't warm up to the idea. I even tried again later that week and it was still traumatic.

More Halloween

Yesterday we spent the afternoon in Park City. I love people watching (and the streets were FULL of dressed up people and dogs), and even enjoyed a little window shopping.

When we got there we met my folks at Nathan Sawaya's lego sculpture exhibit at the Kimball Art Center. His site has better photos of his work, but this gives you a bit of an idea of what we saw. I really enjoyed it. It's a bit of a small exhibit, but still enjoyable. I like seeing it, but am glad we planned to do some other things while we were in Park City.

My friend Maddie loaned me an adorable lion costume for Guy to wear - I thought about making one, but after reading the sewing directions decided not to spend 10 hours gluing ribbon onto a headpiece for a mane that I was sure Guy would quickly destroy while wearing. Thanks Maddie!

Happy Halloween!

There will be more to come after we go up to Park City today. I'm excited to enjoy the festivities up there, and to also visit the Kimball Art Center for Nathan Sawaya's lego exhibit. Yea!

Why I love digital cameras

Wow, I would waste a lot on film--or just take less photos, and that would be sad.

What I've been reading

Last week Elder Dalin H. Oaks, a member of the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave a talk at BYU-I regarding how religious freedom is being attacked. I could go into example after example of how that is currently being manifest on a weekly, if not daily basis, but right now I won't. Obviously one of the biggest controversies to date has been Proposition 8 last year in California.

Right now, as Rob's in school for Social Work, this topic and others like it come up all the time. For me, it's difficult to swallow the fact that many BYU students adamantly protest the words of our prophets, but I won't broach that right now, either. For a while, I've been thinking that I need to learn more about why the prophets counsel as they do and what the impact on society really is when moral values slide, or are debased.

Because of this, I did an online article search (scholarly research journals—not just a google search) for gay marriage (since it’s a hot topic):

This is the article I chose to read: The Potential Impact of Homosexual Parenting on Children
Author: Lynn D. Wardle
University of Illinois Law Review -- 1997
There was a lot in the article – and I know that I can’t cover it all in one blog entry, or it would be boring to read, and probably no one would finish it.

Here is a section that stuck out to me:

Among the most important reasons why heterosexual parenting is best for children is because there are gender-linked differences in child-rearing skills; men and women contribute different (gender-connected) strengths and attributes to their children's development. Although the critical contributions of mothers to the full and healthy development of children has long been recognized, recent research validates the common understanding that fathers, as well as mothers, are extremely important for child development.

Experts in many disciplines that have recently been studying fathering have reached "surprising unanimity" in their recognition that "men nurture, interact with, and rear competently but differently from women: not worse, not better ... differently." When fathers nurture and care for their children, they do so not quite as "substitute mothers" but differently, as fathers. For example, some studies show that fathers play with their infant children more than mothers, play more physical and tactile games than mothers, and use fewer toys when playing with their children. Mothers tend to talk and play more gently with infant children. Compared to mothers, fathers reportedly appear to "have more positive perceptions of the more irritable sons and less irritable daughters," and perceive their baby daughters to be more cuddly than mothers do. Mothers smile and verbalize more to the infant than fathers do, and generally rate their infant sons as cuddlier than fathers do. Moreover, "men encouraged their children's curiosity in the solution of intellectual and physical challenges, supported the child's persistence in solving problems, and did not become overly solicitous with regard to their child's failures." One study found that six-month-old infants whose fathers were actively involved with them "had higher scores on the Bailey Test of Mental and Motor Development." Infants whose fathers spend more time with them are more socially responsive and better able to withstand stressful situations than infants relatively deprived of substantial interaction with their fathers.

Erik Erikson noted that father love and mother love are different kinds of love; fathers "love more dangerously" because their love is more "expectant, more instrumental" than that of mothers. Fathers more than mothers tend to appreciate the value of and foster child interaction with extrafamilial socializing influences, to provide instrumental leadership, to establish and enforce standards regarding unacceptable emotions and behaviors, and "absorb hostility" from children, whereas mothers provide more expressive, integrative, and nurturing childrearing, and their love is more unconditional. Fathers see themselves more often than mothers as involved in developing values and discipline in children. Fathers have a powerful influence upon academic achievement of children, and "many researchers today believe that a father's expectations regarding future roles for his child will have an influence upon the child's cognitive competence." Likewise, paternal affection is associated with adolescents having more friends, being happier in relationships, and feeling more secure, calm, and self-confident. Also, "there is a lower incidence of sexual involvement in teens from father-present homes."

Sorry, I didn’t quote in a scholar-appropriate way – it was just easier to cut and paste and not change quotes.

Much of what I read there resonates very well with “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” so it isn’t new thinking to me, but I’m grateful to see it in print, in scholarly journals. I particularly liked this part of the article because to me, it simply points out the differences a father and mother provide, as well as the need for both.

While the prophet and other leaders of our church are older, that doesn’t mean that they are out of touch or old-fashioned. I do believe that they are ahead of the studies sometimes, and that when they speak as the prophets and council us that they are doing so with wisdom, authority, and knowledge—meaning as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that we need to listen and be believing, or at the very least, pray for help to believe.

I made my first pie!

I'm not a big pie fan, in fact, I really don't like pastry crust. I also don't like pie filling, either (the jelled stuff, from a can). I've eaten it before, but I really don't like it. For Thanksgiving, I always make apple crisp for me to eat while everybody else digs into the pie.

Last November I had to get the four hour blood test for gestational diabetes done at the hospital. It was brutal. Rob was kind enough to go with me to get it done. In the waiting area was a Martha Stewart magazine Rob looked through. He found a triple-chocolate pumpkin pie with a graham cracker crust. It looked promising, so we thought we'd try it. Didn't get to it last year, so two weekends ago we finally made it for the first time. It was pretty good. Not my favorite ever, but I do feel accomplished in that I made a pie.

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/triple-chocolate-pumpkin-pie

The photo is courtesy of the above website since I forgot to take any.

Next we're going to try an apple pie. We're going to create the recipe by combining parts of other recipes. Of course it'll have a graham cracker crust and this time we'll do a "crisp" topping. I'll take photos for sure.

Guy is 8 Months

This post is about a week late, oops. Guy is now 8 months, and just starting to fit in his 6 month old clothes well (while at the same time weaing 12-18 month shoes that are a little big, but not by too much). His checkups have always been fine though we do know he's on the smaller side (25th percetile or smaller). As tall as Rob and I are, we do expect him to have a growth spurt sometime--and his foot size gives me that hope. :) Guy seems to be a pretty mellow kid. He loves people and getting a reaction from anyone he's looking at.

A little before 8 months he got his 2 bottom teeth within 5 days of each other. Less than one week before Guy turned 8 months he finally started crawling really well. He's moving all over the place now. I love that he now crawls to me when he's crying (wanting to be held) and everytime he sees me eating.

And now he's starting to pull himself up on furniture, too.

He has been waving for at least a couple months, now and he's just started clapping a lot, too.

My seemingly largest feat on a daily basis is getting him to eat baby food. He's been watching our food since he was four months old. A little before 6 months we started feeding him baby food. He was okay with that for a little while, but now he wants anything and everything we have. He LOVES everything, including avacados and tomatoes (even with garlic on them). . . making him less of a picky eater than his mom was until she was in her 20s (yea!).

We have a happy baby. He babbles, smiles, and laughs a lot. We love him and feel incredibly blessed to be his parents.

For a Good Laugh

My friend Colin is hilarious, and today I can't stop laughing because of it.

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If you don't already know, today Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This may not seem like such a weird thing if the nominations hadn't been closed 12 days after he got into office in February of this year. I've already seen all sides of it - Obama supporters thinking he rightfully won it and others also thinking it was too soon and not yet deserved. I've also seen those that aren't fans of Obama share both those sentiments.

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I know nobody asked me, so I won't say much, but I will say I don't think it was deserved. And here's where I should put a disclaimer - if you think Obama deserved it, you should probably stop reading here - sorry.

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As Colin put it (his first status update I read today on facebook), he said: "The Nobel Peace Prize is officially meaningless. Al Gore's political win over a Holocaust survivor who saved 2,500 children (look up Irena Sendler) put the prize on thin ice, but this year's ridiculous award belittles all previous laureates. Sorry Aung San Suu Kim, Theodore Roosevelt, and MLK and other worthy laureates. No wonder Pope John Paul II and Gandhi never won, this prize is a joke."

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Apparently he's on one today--more status updates:

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"Still, I'm sure they made the right choice. These people all have a soapbox from which they can spread peace throughout the world, they don't need the award. However, Mr. Barack Obama, from Chicago, USA, wouldn't be able to 'aspire to spread peace' any other way." with this link:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/10/meet_the_people_who_were_passe.asp

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"Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for talking about talking to people about peace but really doing nothing so far. 1st runner up: Peace-a-Pizza restaurant in Abington for spreading peace through pizza. 2nd runner up: Miley Cyrus and her powerful peace...... sign. 3rd runner up: that guy on the bus who hugs everyone."

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"Did you hear? I won the Nobel Peace Prize. Yep, just put a quarter in the machine and out it came. I also won a bouncy ball, a spider tattoo, and a multi-colored eraser."

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AND THE BEST, I think:

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"I'm starting a fundraiser, entitled 'Send Kanye West to the Nobel Peace Prize Awards Ceremony.' We pay for his plane ticket, he takes care of the rest. Give what you can."

*don't get the Kanye West reference? see below

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Jenn, Colin's wife has also posted a few good status updates today as well:

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"From Dave: In honor of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize win and deferring to the standards set by the Nobel commission, the NHL has decided that they will award this year's Stanley Cup Championship to the Philadelphia Flyers, based on their potential and the fact that the Flyers players believe they can win. - Okay, thats just funny. And I bleed orange and black"

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and

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"someone said he's becoming Jimmy Carter faster than Jimmy Carter did - it made me laugh out loud."

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I met Colin while working at Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) - as the Director of Communications and Public Affairs. We used to eat lunch together every day, until he got wrongfully fired by a jealousy ridden scoundrel of a boss, but that's another story. While I'm so grateful that Rob's in school (and more than halfway done), and that I get to stay home with Guy everyday, this is a day when I miss our lunches--and the laughter--and even the one or two times I laughed so hard my drink came out my nose--ouch.

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*Kanye West made an uninvited stage appearance during some MTV music awards. Taylor Swift was the recipient of an award that Kanye apparently thought Beyonce was more deserving of. In a drunken rambling tirade on live TV, he let everybody know.

Moving Mischief

It doesn't matter where Guy starts out, in this room he ALWAYS ends up next to this table, continuously banging his head on it, or his newest feat--getting stuck underneath it.

Before he realized he was stuck, though, he did look up and try to reach through the table to get the goods a few times. :)