In The Honey Bucket

Have you seen this?





The same principle applies to mothers with coughs all over the world.

I am a mother who is getting over a cold and coughs. It makes me pee a little. Sometimes a lot.

Today I went running with Rachel in the stroller and it was a nice day. But then, I started to cough. And I coughed some more. And I tried not to pee but sometimes it just comes out. I promise I do Kegel exercises each day!

After a few more coughing fits, I decided that I needed to find a bathroom so I could cough until I was done coughing. Hooray! I thought, I'm getting close to a park with a bathroom! Problem solved.

Or so I thought.

The doors were locked. The sign on the door said, "These bathrooms are temporarily closed due to vandalism."

OK, so do I kick down the door to use the facilities (and also vandalize the door) or do I go into the bushes next to the busy road (and potentially get arrested for indecent exposure and traumatize everyone and practice for camping in the wild)? Neither really sounded like good, legal options.

I looked around, and lo and behold, a Honey Bucket! A Port-A-Potty! That is legal!

Fortunately (maybe) for Rachel and I, the Honey Bucket was handicap accessible, so we both could go inside it.

Rachel had been sleeping, but woke up when the stroller jostled around as I shoved it into the Honey Bucket. I locked the door.

"Ooooh boy," I muttered. This was a stinky one.

Rachel looked at me with a funny face. It was a stinky one.

I opened the seat. I don't want to be graphic, but this potty was piled up. Almost to the top. I think more people should try to hold their poop until they get home. No wonder it stank so badly.

And I completed my business. Rachel looked confused. I coughed and got some more pee out.

I opened the door and rammed the stroller through it, stealthily getting some hand sanitizer (HOORAY! Also need for my bum, probably) in one hand. The stroller wheel got stuck on the door jamb and I had to maneuver it to get unstuck. Rachel was really looking confused. We were finally free! And the hand sanitizer slipped out of my hand. There was no way I was going back in there, so I tried my best with the last vestiges of it on my fingers.

For the rest of the run, I didn't cough very much, nor did I have to pee again.

And that is my slightly TMI story about running.

Our Little Foodie

We have a foodie-in-the-making on our hands---and we couldn't be happier!

We made some congee for breakfast. Congee is overboiled rice with chicken and ginger and it is absolutely delicious. It is a Chinese food.

We gave Rachel some.



She loved it. Absolutely could not get enough of it.

But we didn't take the ginger out when we put it in the fridge, and it kept exuding delicious ginger flavor. When I gave it to Rachel the next day, she threw it all up.

So we decided we should get her some rice cereal that doesn't have ginger in it.



And she seemed very disappointed about it. Bland. Blah. No ginger to spice things up.

The past two nights we have given her rice cereal mixed with homemade applesauce, which she adores almost as much as the congee.

I think next we will try some butternut squash and then some avocados. We bought the rice cereal so she has to eat it. We'll just find out some ways to spice it up. I'm thinking that in a few weeks, I will sprinkle some curry on it.

To those of you appalled that we feed our baby congee and curry, don't be alarmed. When I was pregnant, curry was the thing that settled my stomach. And she drinks curry-of-flame milkshakes all the time. I will just put a little bit on and see how she likes it.

Snow Day!

I guess it sometimes snows here in the Pacific Northwest. And I guess this winter was a weird one. It only snowed in March. I love the snow. Rachel and I went out and played in the snow with our neighbors.


Rachel in her snowsuit. It's a little big and she's super cute.


Out in the snow!


"Ralphie! Ralphie!"


Rachel and our friend Claire being pulled in sleds.


Sledding down the hill with the baby.


The sled was a huge hit with Claire and Dallon


Rachel was slowly being consumed by her snowsuit.


Claire pulling Rachel in the sled.

We had fun! Maybe sometime we will go snowshoeing.

Ebey's Landing

You probably aren't surprised that I am posting another hiking post.

What can I say? We love to hike, and we will drag any and all children, guests, and friends who come our way on one.

The thing with a baby is that we don't want to do anything too terribly difficult, because we have a baby. But I think this summer we'll get more adventurous than we have been in the first five months of Rachel's life.

Andrew's sister Elise came to visit us and wanted to go on a hike. We might have gotten adventurous in March, but the mountains are still very snowy. So to the seaside we went. We hiked Ebey's Landing on Widbey Island. It climbs to the top of a bluff and then alongside the steep hillside. Not too thrilling, but nice. We had a great view of the Olympics, the day was warm, the baby wasn't screaming once we faced her out. We went back to our car by way of the beach. Andrew wasn't too impressed with the hike so he didn't take many pictures. I think it is because he has that great view out his window all day at work. So you only get pictures of our beautiful selves.


Hiking girls on the prairie.


Rachel loved watching the waves.


Being the star mom that I am, I remembered to put the hat on Rachel when we were almost done with the hike.


Yay hiking!

Now go outside and hike!

Welcome To Our Humble Abode

Here are some pictures of our house before we brought all our junk into it. Enjoy this little tour!


Enter here! This is the front door.


The view from the front door. Ahead is the kitchen, to the forward left the dining room, to the forward right is the living room. There is a small bathroom to the left, and we want to put a piano against that wall on the right.


The dining room.


The kitchen. Finally! Enough room for Andrew and I to cook at the same time!


The living room. Now we have a green couch. I'm thinking about purple curtains...


The back porch.


The rocky and tiny backyard. We wanted a bigger yard, but this is a blessing in disguise. It is super rocky and we are digging all the rocks up. Thank goodness it is small! We are going to put a small garden in the back corner.


Now we go up the stairs. I love these big windows. My house is so full of natural light, even when it is a cloudy day!


The master bedroom. There is enough room for our bed and a small sitting area.


Nice deep bathtub in the master bath!


The upstairs hallway. We have three bedrooms (besides the master), a laundry room (closed door on the left), a full bath for the kids, and a "bonus" room where we put all our indoor recreation things.


Rachel's room/the eternal nursery. The baby will always sleep here.


Kids' and guest bathroom.


The bonus room. Love love love it!

And the other two bedrooms are just like the other bedroom, except the windows are taller.

Do you love it? We love it! The only room I know what I want is the downstairs living room, and Andrew disagrees with my dreams of purple. If you have any ideas for other rooms, let me know! I have been scouring Pinterest for ideas and would love to hear yours.

Flying!

In February, Rachel and I flew on a lovely airplane to Utah for my friend Erika's wedding. We flew without Andrew, but things went pretty well.


Rachel liked looking out the window. I'm not sure what she was looking at, but she was looking.


Rachel in the thing that always makes me sing, "We'll put on the armor of God!" (See this clip for what in the heck I am talking about, at about 10:00 the song begins, but the part I always sings is at the very end.)


Rachel sitting in our seat on the airplane.



We survived the plane ride! Rachel was very good. She was hungry when we were taxiing, but I wanted to feed her when we took off. Oh well, I gave her the binky and she was just fine. When the businessmen saw us on the plane, they all rolled their eyes. But after the flight, they all said, "Oh, what a good and cute baby you have!"


After the wedding, we went back to Washington to be back with Andrew/Dad. Our flight got delayed by an hour and a half. It was bedtime.


Rachel enjoyed the delay and took a great nap.



After another successful ride. She slept (was passed out) the whole flight until I started moving around to get our things.

She is destined to travel the world. Hopefully I will be with her.

We Are Not Dead

We are very much alive. We are moved in and have been living here for almost a month--crazy! I have a lot of pictures of Rachel and our adventures since then, but we only have the laptop at our house and I don't want to go through the hassle of uploading pictures here and on our desktop later. So. We are living in two places, which is cool and inconvenient but less expensive than breaking our contract early.

Are you ready for some happy news? I am wearing my pre-pregnancy jeans and they are tight but they are better than my other jeans which fell off constantly. This is good news. I have also been doing much better with running. Once I run consistently, I begin to enjoy it. I am enjoying it more and more each run. Pushing Rachel in our new jogging stroller is tough. One of the great things about our house is that I just have to put the stroller in the garage when I am done running. I don't have to drag it up to the third floor. YAY! I am also doing hot yoga for the month and I haven't decided if I like it because it is yoga or because it is hot yoga. I'm thinking that I like it because I like yoga. It is so freaking hot. But that is cool because I am already quite flexible and I become even more flexible. So the point is, I can wear my old pants.

Are you ready for some sad news? My leopard gecko Grendel died this week. I was waiting for him to die for a few months because he stopped eating. I was sad about that. But when me, Andrew, and Elise had his funeral, we all said nice things, and I remembered that he was a cool pet and I think he is probably happy in lizard heaven. I made a little bed in a macaroni and cheese box and slid it into a fruit snack box. I think it was one of the nicest coffins I have ever made.

I have so many books. It is ridiculous. We only have three bookshelves. And that is ridiculous for the amount of books we have. I think it wouldn't be so bad if we could fit them all on bookshelves. Right now, all the books for my master's thesis are on the floor of our room. Andrew said in a few years we might build some shelves under the window in our room. Until then, I have to figure our where to put all the books. I also went through and pulled out the books that I will probably never look at again. I collaborated with Amazon and divided them between books that would be worth my time to sell and books that are going to Goodwill. I will be getting rid of 25ish books. And that hardly even made a dent.

Rachel grabs her toes. It is super cute. I cannot put into words her cuteness. She is also a pill sometimes. She was yesterday. And today she is kind of a stinker, but not too bad. She is getting better at not freaking out in the jogging stroller.

Anyway, I hope to post again soon!