Amanda cracks me up

This isn’t really news; we’ve always known she was funny. But she got me good today, and I had to share it.

I was changing Katie’s diaper, and she reached over to grab her blanky and her pants. I said, “Oh, you’re collecting soft things?”

So Amanda asks me, “Katie likes soft things?”

“Yes, Katie really likes soft things.” (And she does. She loves blankets, pillows, clothes, stuffed animals, anything cuddly.)

Amanda’s reply? “Oh. I like NOISY things. Like fire trucks, whooooo whooooo whooooo! and motorcycles! Vroooom! And french fries! Crunch crunch!”

She paused for a minute. “Mommy, you like QUIET things?”

“Yes, honey, Mommy likes quiet things, like books, and music, and naps.”

She’s got us all pegged. It’s pretty funny.

Shameless self-promotion

Last November, I participated in an event called National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Your goal is to write a 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to write a story. There’s a website devoted to the event, nanowrimo.org, which I loved using. They have a word count tracker, so you can monitor your progress. Things to keep in mind: You can’t write a word of the novel beforehand. You can plot, outline, and think out all you want, but you can’t start the novel until November 1st. Another thing to keep in mind: When you’re writing in just 30 days, your goal is not to have a polished product. It’s a first draft, and the idea is just to get the main story out on paper. It will need revision later.

I think that’s why I enjoyed the event so much. As a writer, it forces you to let go of that obsessive need to edit and revise while you’re writing, which is a great way to get bogged down and never finish the story. It forced me to keep going even when I got stuck, and because I really wanted to finish the event and fill up my little stat bar, I managed to do it. It was a great motivational tool.

So after I finished my novel (or novella, really), I let it sit for a little while before I started revising. I was lucky enough to have a few friends volunteer to read it for me and critique it a little. And now…

You can buy my book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1440483914?ie=UTF8&tag=2donecom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1440483914

I am so amazed at all my friends and family members who’ve already bought the first few copies – you guys can’t imagine how good it makes me feel to know that you believe in me enough to spend $9.99 on my book.

So here’s a little synopsis for those of you who might be interested in reading my book. It centers around a society of winged humans, who live in isolation from the rest of humanity. Lady Vara, the heroine, is engaged to marry Prince Markus, the heir to the throne of Angelus. Vara finds herself drawn to Markus’ liege man, Phillip; neither of them want to hurt the prince, so they fight their feelings for each other.

But Vara finds out that something sinister is happening beneath the surface of Angelus. Evil forces are gathering in an attempt to take over Angelus, and Vara realizes that she is being drawn to Phillip because he is the only one who can help her save her city.

The book ended up being a lot more about eternal families than I thought it would be. It’s not pure Mormon doctrine; the book is fantasy, after all, and so there are some fantastical elements in it. It is very clean, though; it’s not aimed at middle-school kids, but the book is clean enough for them to read.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what the story’s like, and whether or not you’d like it. There are a few formatting issues with the book, and those will be fixed someday. If you have any other feedback about the book, I’m open to it. Just leave me a comment, or you can post feedback on Amazon too.

Smushing

On our way to church every Sunday, we drive along a little curvy section of road next to a good sized open field. The squirrels love that area, and they, unfortunately, run out into the road fairly often.
As we were driving to church this morning, I saw one sitting by the side of the road, watching our car coming. I crossed my fingers, hoping he would run out of the road, instead of towards us. Luckily, he did.
Amanda noticed the squirrel as we drove by, and she said “We almost drove the squirrel! And we smush it!”
(Picture the adults in the car laughing at her, and wondering how she learned that we would “smush” the squirrel if we ran over it…)

The feeling is mutual

My dishwasher and I are in hate with each other. For one thing, it doesn’t clean the dishes very well. For another thing, it’s ridiculously noisy. It scares Amanda out of the kitchen quite often. We very rarely use our dishwasher – it’s just easier to do it by hand, and considering the age of this thing, it might be more water efficient too.

But worst of all, my dishwasher likes to eat my dishes. When it’s being noisy, it sprays water so hard that it knocks things off the top rack. Then they fall all the way through to the bottom, and get burned up on the heating element. We’ve damaged a few large plastic mixing spoons this way, and a tupperware lid or two. This last time, though, my dishwasher took its evilness to a whole new level. It did this:

 

 

Hopefully you can’t imagine the stench from our dishwasher. Luckily we caught it before the cycle had finished, so it hadn’t completely ruined everything else in the dishwasher, but the knife’s a goner. I seriously thought for a few minutes that we were going to have to evacuate our house because the smoke was so obviously dangerous, but we managed to get it cleared out quickly enough that it was okay.

Of course, then we had to run the dishwasher empty, with dishwashing soap, to get rid of the smell, and then we had to reload all the dishes that had been in there and wash them again, to get rid of the smell, and to finish cleaning them. I may never use that dishwasher again.

A little bit of earth

Having no yard, we’ve resorted to a windowsill garden. They had these little pots with seeds and dirt at Target for a dollar each, so I bought 4 of them. Amanda loved helping me plant the seeds, and she loves watering them with me. It’s so cute to watch as she concentrates really hard to do everything just right.
We planted our little garden a week ago, and they are growing like crazy! I wasn’t too optimistic, since they were cheapo seeds from Target, but so far, things are going great. There even were enough seeds and leftover dirt to plant a second batch in some styrofoam cups.
Call me a nerd if you like, but I’m proud of our little garden. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it once the plants get so big they have to get repotted…

(In case you’re curious, we’re growing oregano, chives, basil, and mini sunflowers.)

Cuteness

I sure hope this isn’t blasphemous…

but it sure is funny. I don’t know where Amanda got the idea to do this. It’s not how we pray, and we haven’t been watching any evangelical preachers lately. I think she’s figured out that we think it’s funny, even though we try desperately not to laugh, and so she hams it up even more.

My favorite is how she does the baseball sign for safe. We have trained her well!

Someone’s got mad skillz

It seems like Katie’s learning something new every day lately. Here’s her new favorite thing to do:

She feels like such a big kid, getting up on the couch by herself. She’s not always successful at it yet, though, and it makes her EXTREMELY mad when she can’t get up on her own.

She really likes watching TV on the couch. It’s probably the main reason she climbs up. And it’s the best way to get her to sit down when she’s on the couch, so she gets her way about this way too often.

As a side note, I absolutely love her in this outfit. She fits into Amanda’s baby jeans now, and it makes her look so grown up. It’s adorable. In fact, the jeans probably fit her much better, and much sooner, than they ever fit Amanda’s skinny patootie. (How do you spell patootie, anybody know?)

 

You think she might be happy?

She’s so proud of herself, it’s adorable.

Amanda’s new sports class

Mike and I decided several weeks ago, when the park and rec guide came around, that we should sign Amanda up for some classes at the community center. We decided to try her out on a once a week preschool type class, and then we gave her a choice for her second class: sports, or dance. She picked sports without any hesitation – and I wasn’t sure she knew what “sports” meant! She knows individual sports, but I didn’t think the word sports itself was one she would know. Turns out, I was wrong. She started telling us about how she was going to play basketball, and soccer, and tennis, and bowling, and my favorite, baseball Dodgers! (Those are her exact words, not mine.)

I think her expectations of the class might be a little high – I don’t think they’ll do tennis and bowling, but so far she’s loving it. They did tee ball her first week, and she was in heaven. She also decided to bat left-handed, and surprise her teacher. Sadly, I forgot the camera that day, but I learned my lesson and brought it for yesterday’s class: basketball.

Amanda hanging out with her boys.

 

Skipping down the court?

I don’t think they quite understand the point of the game – you keep trying once you score a basket!

 

Here you’ll see what Amanda was really interested in – playing with the pine needles.

 

None of the kids wanted to try to steal the ball from the coach; that would be bad manners, right?

I eventually convinced Amanda to go try.

Trying to shoot that big ball into the basket.

Coach giving her a little assist to make the basket.

I’m glad we decided to let her pick her class, and I’m glad she picked sports. She’s having so much fun at her classes, that she never wants to come home when it’s time to go.

Katie’s new hobbies

I think she must be trying to decide on a career already. She’s developed some funny habits lately. Katie cleans up. She loves finding things and bringing them to Mommy or Daddy, or even Amanda. She picks up the remote control every morning and brings it to me, and she says ah? ah! It’s cute. Except when she won’t stop bringing you stuff and you’re trying to get something done…

She also loves climbing. She’ll climb up people, toys, boxes, chair legs, anything she can get her feet up to. Except the scale at the doctor’s office. She doesn’t like climbing up on that. Bathroom scale at home, totally fine. It’s just the doctor’s scale she’s phobic of. Climbing is, understandably, hard to get a picture of. Usually I try to talk her into getting down, instead of picking up the camera. Silly mom, concerned with child safety!

She also loves hats. She likes modeling them.

She also likes painting. Face painting.

She also really likes flirting, with just about anyone she sees. It’s hard to get a good picture of, but she does flirt.

And she’s got the big blue eyes to pull it off. Everywhere we go, people are stopping us and commenting on those eyes of hers. It’s funny when she meets a new person and they’re mesmerized by her.

She’s also pretty good at snuggling. She loves blankets, pillows, laps, and stuffed animals. Anything soft is liable to be taken over at any moment for a snuggle.

Let’s just say, life is always interesting with Katie around. You never know what she’s going to try to do next.