Dear Kaden,

Today you are twenty months and six days old.  Not what one might call a traditional milestone birthday.  There is no special doctor's visit today, we aren't having a party, and there is no lit candle eagerly waiting for you to blow it out.  Today was one of those days when I stop and stare at you, in awe that you are getting so grown up, changing so much every day.   

We went to the library today for story time, only as soon as we rushed into the library (five minutes late because I had to convince you to leave Cougar-your giant pillow pet-in the car), I noticed the quiet.  The library, even though it is always meant to be a place of quiet, is not quiet during toddler time.  And then I realized today is Tuesday and story time moved to Wednesdays now that it is Spring.  You ran up and down the stairs in the story time room, completely unfazed by my mistake, while I scooped up a pile of books.  You climbed into one of the little chairs at one of the little tables, and I thought we were going to share a delightful story time of our own.  Only then you threw a massive temper tantrum, for a reason that is still unclear to me.  So our pile of books stayed on the table, and you were carried back to the car, the sentiment, "NO!  Books!!!" reverberating through the otherwise still library, while I told you there would be no new books to bring home today, because you had chosen to behave badly. 

In the car, you said sorry, and we struck a deal.  If you could behave nicely at the post office, then you could still go to the park on the way home, the one with the shoot ball and the dinosaur slide.  When I asked if you could behave at the post office you said, "Yes!" and so to the post office we went.  While we were there, you drank an entire sippy cup of apple juice and pretended to be bashful, burying your face in my shoulder while the lady behind the counter helped me send peanut butter to Brazil.  It's a tricky thing, mailing peanut butter to South America, but you were a dream child the entire time.  And so, since you kept up your end of the bargain, I kept mine.

The park was almost empty when we got there, except for two rambunctious boys.  You stared at them with wonder, while they slid down the slide head first and jumped from the top of the jungle gym.  You explored and climbed and went down the biggest slide in my lap, like you always do, and suddenly you were climbing to the big slide on your own, a very adamant, "No! No! NO!" being the answer when I asked if you wanted me to come, too.  And then, there you were, standing at the top of a slide that suddenly looked as tall as a skyscraper, with me at the bottom fighting the urge to climb up and stop you.  And then, just as suddenly, there you were, sitting at the top of the slide and counting, "Two! Two! Two!" (because, even though I always count, "One, two, three!" before you slide, two is the only number you say).  And then, there you were, laughing at the bottom of the slide, your little blond head thrown back in a huge chuckle, because you had done something great all by yourself.

Today, when you are only twenty months and six days old, I realize that motherhood is full of tiny goodbyes.  As you have grown older I've said goodbye to so many things already:  the tiny clothes you wore home from the hospital, nursing you in the middle of the night, that fat roll on your wrist that I cried over when I realized it was no longer there.  I love watching you grow, Kaden Cub.  Even though goodbyes are hard, I am so thankful I get to be there for every hello, too.  Today, you said, "Hello, Big Slide, I am big enough and brave enough to play with you."  Who knows what hello I will get to witness tomorrow.

I love you.

Love,
Mommy         

While Eating a Lime-Glazed Coconut Banana Muffin

Kaden:  "No, no!"

He then hands me a single strand of coconut from the top of his muffin.

A couple of bites later.

Kaden:  "No, no!"

Another strand of coconut is banned from the sight of Master Reese.


Me:  "I hate to break it to you, kid, but there was a lot of coconut INSIDE that muffin that you ate unknowingly . . . just sayin'."


Would any of you like to come over and help me eat the 2 dozen muffins still cooling on the counter?

Too far away?

Try the recipe here.

Books! Books, Mama! I Need Books!

This is what Kaden has woken up saying the last few mornings, and I've got to say, I couldn't agree with his sentiment more.  Of course, when he says this, it sounds more like, "I neeee books!"  Just like when he says "I read books," it sounds more like, "I reeeeee books!"  It does my English-teacher heart proud to hear him say this; I'm not going to lie. 

I need books, too.  It's just part of who I am.  When I have nothing to read, I feel this sense of anxiety, like something is terribly wrong.  Something is missing.

I just finished reading Sarah's Key.  Today.  While Kaden was napping.  When I should have been doing laundry.  Don't judge me

Did you know they made a movie based on this book?  I had no idea.  Where have I been?

I don't know if I will ever see it.  The book was so tragically sad, that I don't know if I can handle two hours of reliving it on film.

My journey through The Thirteenth Tale, which was my most recent read before embarking on the guilt-fest The Science of Parenting (do NOT read this book if you have ever let your child cry), reminded me a lot of my experience with Sarah's Key.  I got swept up in both stories and couldn't put them down, but was kind of left voicing an anti-climactic, "Huh" at the end of each. 

I'm looking for a new book.  Something that won't make me feel like a terrible mother. (Although when I got to the chapter in the aforementioned book that said you should disregard the commonly accepted advice not to sleep with your infant, because even a newborn baby would not let itself be suffocated, I stopped reading and felt a heck of a lot better about myself.  Suddenly, the text had lost some serious credibility with me.  My favorite part of this chapter was when they said to make sure you were in a well-rested alert state when sleeping with an infant.  HA!  Who is well-rested and alert while caring for a newborn in the middle of the night?  The times I did fall asleep while rocking Kaden, I was a sleep-deprived MESS!)

Anyway, back to the book search.  Any suggestions?

Goodbye, House

To the People Who Now Own/Will Someday Own My House,

We bought this house in October of 2008, fresh out of school, with my student loans in our pockets.  It was not the first place we lived together, but it was the first home we ever owned. 

When we saw the house for the first time, I was skeptical.  The kitchen was covered in red and white gingham and looked like a picnic tablecloth gone terribly wrong.  The living room and dining room floors were orange and as glossy as a gymnasium.  All of the bedrooms were adorned with nasty, stained carpet.  All of the ceilings were covered in a thick layer of popcorn.  We spent nearly a year peeling wall paper, refinishing hardwood floors, painting walls, and tiling bathroom floors before we moved in.  I love this house.  

For most of the time we lived here, I taught high school English at North Lenoir High School.  My husband worked as a credit analyst for The Little Bank, conveniently located right down the hill.  

When I was 7 months pregnant, we added a brick pathway from the driveway to the front door, because I got tired of everyone coming to my back door.  (Little did my West-Coast-self know, Southerners will use the back door every time, bricked path or not.)  People driving by used to call concerned, because they saw my pregnant-self hauling bricks across the yard in a wheelbarrow (they did the same when I mowed the lawn and laid mulch).    

We brought our little boy home from the hospital to this house in 2010, and I rocked him to sleep in a room painted baby blue at the end of the hall.  There were sailboats framed on the walls.  It was here, in the house you now own, that he took his first steps, said his first words.  

We sold the house in 2012 when my husband accepted a job in the Raleigh area.  Even though we never intended to live here forever, I cried when we put it on the market.  I also cried when it sold.  Part of my heart will always be here, in Kinston, NC, in a house with a sunroom that faces West Highland Avenue.  

I know this house isn’t perfect.  I know it’s old:  the walls are plaster, the attic stairs can be terrifying, and the kitchen floor slopes.  I know these things.  But I still love this house, and I hope you love it, too. 

We had good times and bad times in this house, but the laughter definitely outweighed the tears.  

Please be good to this house; it deserves a family who loves it.

Sincerely,

A Woman Who Has a Hard Time With Goodbyes

Here's How We've Spent Our Friday Morning

I went to the midnight showing of The Hunger Games in Smithfield last night with some of my former students.  It was the last book we read together in my Honors English III class.  So fun to see them and to savor the movie together, but I was exhausted after my 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night.  As a result, we started the morning in a way we rarely do:  with a movie.  Here is Kaden in all of his Toy Story Sheriff Woody pajamas glory, watching Ratatouille, and eating an Aldi-brand cereal bar.  He was in heaven.

After breakfast, we got dressed and headed outside for a little "shoot ball."

 Kaden was more interested in his football and kick ball today, so I don't have a single shot of a basketball.  One was there, though.  We also had a soccer ball.  It's amazing how many balls you can fit in a stroller basket.

 Here's Kaden, upset, because I had misunderstood and shot the basketball, when he wanted me to shoot the football:

 Here he is, fully recovered:

 Here he is, after I told him he couldn't eat the football and made him take the big chunk of orange foam out of his mouth:

 Oh, the anguish.

 When standing didn't get the results he wanted, Kaden resorted to sitting:

 Here is Kaden distracted by mulch next to the basketball court.

Another meltdown was induced when Master Reese found out he wasn't allowed to pick up handfuls of mulch and dump them in the grass.  At this point, I realized we were probably overdue for a nap.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture footage of the event, as I was struggling to strap him into his stroller, whilst he arched his back and screamed bloody murder. 

We came home and read this:

We got this book at the library last time we went to stock up on new stories.  I remember my Grandma Jensen reading me this book when I was little.  If I try really hard, I can remember how it felt to be snuggled in her lap, my head nestled up against her, listening to her read this story.  It's an oldie, but a goodie.

Then we read about a zillion other books, and Kaden went to sleep with a handful of bibis (what he calls his pacifiers).

That was our morning.  How did you spend yours?

Random Thoughts

Isn't it funny how when you are selling your house, you hope everyone is so in love with it they'll want to buy it, but when you're looking to buy a house, you hope you're the only one that loves it until you buy it?  Right now we are in the process of selling our house, with what looks like a very rapidly approaching closing date (YAY!), and so we are also looking at homes.  Last night, we found THE house.  The one that filled my heart with palpitations and kept me up all night dreaming about paint colors.  The one we can actually afford and not have to do three years of repairs to.  I hope no one else likes it as much as we do, at least until we can offer to buy it.

Lately, I have been in a cooking rut.  Seriously.  A lot of this has to do with the fact that we are living on a very limited grocery budget right now, so most of my culinary creations consist of looking at what I have in my fridge/cupboards and trying to invent something that sounds divine without going to the grocery store.  Not a great deal of masterpieces have been created lately.  I have rekindled my relationship with eggs.  Eggs are my friend.  Breakfast for dinner?  My BFF.  Today, I really wanted to cook something good.  This woman saved me.  She has such a delightful, friendly cooking blog.  What I love best about it is that she cooks with pretty normal ingredients.  So, thanks to her, tonight we are having glazed carrots with rosemary and butter cream chicken.  We are also having garlic mashed potatoes, but I didn't have to find a recipe for that.  There will be potatoes, there will be butter, there will be sour cream, and there will be LOTS of garlic.  If you don't know how to make mashed potatoes without a recipe, come over to my house, so we can remedy this tragedy.  Oh, potatoes drowned in garlic, how I love thee!  We are also having homemade bread, because Bernice and I bonded and kneaded up two loaves together.  Not a bad meal for an assembly of what we had on hand. 

My Garden Heights gym instruction is all coming back to me now.  I have shot more basketballs in the last week than I have . . . well, probably ever.  Kaden loves some "shoot ball."  Even though I'm no Jimmer, how can I say no when he looks at me with his big brown eyes and says, "I wan Mama shoot!"  Luckily, he thinks it's just as awesome when I air ball or hit the backboard as when I actually make a basket. 

I wonder how long Kaden's favorite word will be "no".  And how long his favorite phrase will be "no, no, no!"  Seriously, I'm starting to worry that if someone offers him a full ride scholarship to Harvard when he's 18, he'll say, "No, no, no!" just because it wasn't his idea.  Playing mental games with a toddler is exhausting, I tell you.  Whoever named the terrible twos obviously didn't raise Kaden as a 19 month old.  We've been in full-swing tantrum-dum for over a month now. 

When did Kaden get so good at giving hugs?  One, unannounced squeeze around the neck and I can forget all about his last meltdown. 

I wonder how long Kaden will be good at just nicely coloring on the paper/being content to take the crayons out of the container and put them back in before he discovers he can also color on furniture, walls, and floors . . . It's probably time for this blog post to end!

Kenzie, Tanner, and Kaden--Cousins Extraordinaire!

It is fun watching Kenzie and Kaden have more fun playing together, now that Kaden is a little older.  Mackenzie is such a sweet cousin, as is evidenced in these pictures from their first meeting in October 2010:

Kenzie has always been so loving to Kaden.  Even when all he did was lie on the floor and look at her, she thought he was awesome.  She would tell him, "It's OK," whenever he cried, and she had to watch me change every one of his diapers.  

This is Kaden and Kenzie with their Aunt Lauren on Christmas day in 2010:

Kaden was a little more entertaining by the time Spring of 2011 rolled around, but not much.  Any "play" still meant floor time, since Kaden was such a lazy crawler.  

This time when Kenzie and Meredith came to visit, they brought a new addition.  Mackenzie has a baby brother now, Tanner.  He filled the baby role this time, which meant Kaden had to step up to to the plate and be a big cousin.  He was not nearly as enamored with Tanner as Mackenzie had once been with him.  He mostly viewed Tanner as competition and didn't want me anywhere near him.  He did, however, love spending time with Mackenzie.  While they were visiting in January, I was still working, so Meredith and Joy kept Kaden during the day.  Kaden learned a lot about sharing, not pushing, and not pulling hair during this time.  I'm so thankful Mackenzie has a sweet, patient disposition.  Even though they didn't always get along, when they did, it was pretty precious to watch. 

Here are all of the cousins, opening their Christmas gifts.  We waited for the kids to be together to open their presents from each other, instead of mailing them for actual Christmas. 

One of Kaden and Kenzie's favorite things to do was take baths together at Gigi's house.  They had so much fun splashing!  Here they are, "helping" Gigi get the tub ready:

 Here they are splashing away:

I wish Meredith and Adam lived closer, so our kids could play together more.  Growing up, I lived really close to one set of my cousins, and we had so much fun together.  I really wish Kaden could have that same experience.  We just try to make the most of the time we do have them together!  

Here's one last sweet photo of Kaden and Kenzie with their great grandmother, who we all know as Nana.  I'm sure this will be a special photo for us to look at for many years to come:

 

 And here are some fun videos of the kids playing (please ignore my obnoxious voice in each one):

Congratulations, Cameron!

We just found out that Chad's brother, Cameron, was accepted to BYU.  He's on a mission for our church in Las Vegas, Nevada right now, so we sent him an email with this picture today:

We are so excited for him!  We know Cameron will love BYU!

'Twas Two Months After Christmas

And this morning in the house
The mother's guilt was stirring, much more than that of her spouse
A blog post with pictures had never been completed with care
Even though St. Nicholas had shown up and been there

So when the cranky toddler was nestled all snug in his bed,
While visions of fruit snacks and raisins danced in his head
Mama in her PJs, with computer in her lap
Hoped that the baby would continue to nap.

Then the keyboard produced such a clatter
As memories of Christmas made her post grow quite fatter.

 OK...enough of the rhymes.  Seriously though.  A Christmas post two months late?  Shameful.  Even though it's very late, I want to document our Christmas adventures.

Kaden met Santa for the first time at our ward Christmas party.  The interview did not go well, but we did get a free candy cane out of it:

Since we went to my parents' house for Christmas this year, Santa visited us early in  Kinston, so we wouldn't have as much to haul home in suitcases.  We went over to Gigi and Poppy's house, so everyone could watch Kaden open his presents.  While we were there, we opened our gifts from Chad's family as well. . Here are some of the things Santa brought Kaden:

His very first real soccer ball!  It's a size three, and he is quite the champ at dribbling this little baby. Here he is, excitedly showing his ball to everyone in the room, and to Kenzie, Tanner, and Aunt Meredith who were Skyping with us.  

Here is Kaden's captive audience:

 And Aunt Lauren and Uncle Tyler helping him open one of his gifts.  This year was a lot more fun, since last year he just cried every time he heard the paper tear. 

 Just when it looked like there were no presents left, the big Kahuna was discovered in the living room:

 I hear Santa got a killer garage sale deal on this little baby.  Somewhere to the tune of $3.00.  Not in mint condition, but a great used model, since it's his first car.  We figure he's likely to wreck it anyway. 

Here is Kaden showing off for the crowd at our early Christmas celebration.  He kept opening the car door, getting inside, getting out of the car, then slamming the door, and doing a funny dance move.  We found it hysterical.  As soon as Kaden knew we were laughing at him, it was game over.  He is such a little ham and loves to show off.  (I can't imagine where he got this from . . . certainly not from his mother! Cough. Cough). 

We also had a wonderful time spending two weeks with my family in Utah.  Grandma Joy and Uncle Jim were there along with my parents, Jared, Bryan and Lizadel, and their sweet little girl, Adeline. 

We did all kinds of fun things while we were there.  My favorites were eating home cooked goodness and spending lots of quality time in my pajamas.  My second favorites were eating at Cafe Rio and In and Out repeatedly.   (Anyone sense a trend here?)  We went out to eat (oh, dear, there it is again) with my lovely friend Stephanie and her husband Cameron while we were there as well.  Sadly, their sweet little boy wasn't able to  join us. 

Kaden wasn't so sure about Addy, mostly because he saw her as a huge source of competition.  He wouldn't let me hold her at all and would scream, "My mama!!!" anytime I went near her.  Don't worry though, I got lots of cuddle time with my beautiful niece when he was asleep at night. Here are some cousin shots of Kaden and Addy together:

 I particularly like this one, as it sums up how Kaden regarded Addy most of the trip:

 Since Kaden's photos with Santa at our ward party in Kinston hadn't gone over too well, we took him to see Santa at the mall in Utah just before Christmas.  The photographers there had a great drop-the-baby-from-behind-so-he-doesn't-know-what's-coming-approach that worked wonders.  Unfortunately, I don't have a digital image of the picture.  It did turn out really cute though, and their Santa was stellar!  Real beard and everything!

We had a big scare on Christmas Eve when Grandma Joy had a stroke.  She had to spend most of Christmas day in the hospital as well.  We are so thankful that she is OK and recovering well.  She's a real trooper and is doing speech therapy to help her recover from her stroke.  We celebrated Christmas together after Grandma got out of the hospital.  We had an AMAZING dinner, featuring prime rib (we used The Pioneer Woman's rub recipe...to DIE for) cooked nice and rare.  I also made 48 delicious, buttery crescent rolls.   

Here's the table, all set:

Kaden was very spoiled by west-coast relatives as well.  I feel bad for my child, since he is clearly not loved, nor does he have anything to play with.  Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures of the gift opening.


One of my favorite parts of our trip was going to see the lights on Temple Square.  They always do such a spectacular job.  They've added some things since we'd last been there, and it was absolutely beautiful.  My friend Callie met us there, and it was also great to see her. 

Our vacation flew by all too quickly.  We had our traditional Jensen family New Year's appetizer feast a day early, since we flew back to NC on New Year's Eve.  Bacon tomato tarts, crab and cream cheese wantons, and spinach artichoke dip were just a few selections on the menu.   We got back to Kinston just a little after midnight; our New Year's kiss was shared in the car.

Christmas time is one of my favorite parts of the year.  I love that it is a time we think about giving.  A time when we remember the Savior.  There's just such a special feeling associated with Christmas.  Christmas 2011 was no exception for us.