Boys are gross.

I have this theory about baby boys and their inherent grossness. I'm sure a mother of a young daughter would be happy to set me straight, but I can't help but imagine that a little girl couldn't possibly be gross in the way that a little boy is. Every time Forrest lets out a huge fart in the middle of dinner (then claps for himself), or licks the drippies from his runny nose (and goes back in for more), or burps and laughs uproariously like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard, I just think, "A baby girl wouldn't do this. There's no way. Only a boy." I was a little girl once. I remember a lot of tea parties, hair brushing, and twirling. I do not remember clapping for farts.

Although this is nowhere close to the grossest thing Forrest has accomplished, I can't picture a little girl walking around for 5 minutes with the world's most resilient snot bubble pulsing at the end of her little nostril:

Do you see it? Should we get closer? 

Ah, there it is, in all its snotty, boyish glory. It was an impressive sight . . . especially in profile:

No wonder these two are so close. Daddy gets it. Mommy doesn't understand.

Fall!

(Everything in this post has already been on facebook, so if we're friends on facebook, you may have seen all this before. I just wanted a new post in case any of our ward members stumble across this blog--nobody has mentioned it yet, but I figured they should have something besides my little "what a jerk!" rant from my last post to read if they should find me here. On the other hand, maybe if the person in question somehow finds it and recognizes himself, he'll be a better visitor in the future!)

My mom, Bekah and I took Forrest and my two nieces, Abby and Megan, to a pumpkin patch a few days before Halloween. It was a lot of fun.

The kids especially loved the little corn maze and insisted on going through it a few times. Abby was our fearless navigator.

There was also a pretty cool little antique tractor display, which made me feel a little nostalgic for Iowa. How sad that the first picture of me and Forrest with a tractor was taken in Utah, not Iowa!

It was right about at this time that I realized my camera's settings were at an ISO of 1600 and set to dim indoor lighting, despite it being an incredibly bright, cloudless day . . . whoops! This was also the moment that Forrest realized THERE WERE WHEELBARROWS IN THE PUMPKIN PATCH.

He thought that little wheelbarrow was pretty nifty, until he abandoned it for this one:

A MAN'S wheelbarrow! He was getting so angry that he couldn't push this one, so we tried giving him a ride in it, instead:

Surprisingly enough, this did not go over well . . . I think he was just mad that Bekah could get it to move when he couldn't. He got shown up by a weakling, 80-pound girl with the upper body strength of a newborn kitten. He was also not happy with Bekah when she plunked him in the middle of this row of pumpkins and he couldn't get out. I wish you could see his face better--it was priceless. PUMPKIN FURY!

I'm sorry to report that he really did not have a great time at the pumpkin patch--he had fun for the first 20 minutes or so, but one frustration after another piled up (I CAN'T LIFT THESE PUMPKINS! THE GROUND IS UNEVEN AND I KEEP FALLING! THAT D@%* WHEELBARROW IS FREAKING HEAVY!) until he had a total meltdown. Poor Goobs. But you wouldn't ever know it, because look at the cute picture we got together!

I was so happy to see that this picture turned out well--I really don't have many pictures of the two of us, and I'm glad he could bottle up his tears for a moment to pull out a smile for this shot.

I also got a cute picture with Bekah, and realized that we look, in Bekah's words, "kind of exactly the same." 

People have always told us we look alike, and we've never really seen it. But every once in a while, in a photo, I have to admit that we do look really similar. I think that's bad news for Bekah, and good news for me, since I'm okay with admitting that she is the cuter sister.

Forrest was Batman for Halloween, and Jeff was Robin. Classic! I didn't get a picture of the two of them together, so we'll need to have a re-do this week. Forrest's costume was completely last minute--I had been planning all along to do a Firefly theme (Jeff as Jayne, I'd be Kaylee, and Forrest as Mal of course), but that fell apart when I couldn't find myself a jumpsuit. It was a tragedy. Maybe next year. But since Jeff already had a Robin costume for work, we pulled together a teeny Batman costume for Forrest. He was pretty darling.

 

And, last but not least, a few shots of Forrest playing in the autumn leaves (which are now covered in two inches of snow--I'm playing Christmas music right now. I'll be cursing the snow in a month or two, but I do love the first one!)

(This blog sure has gotten lame lately, hasn't it? Sorry. All my blogging energies go into this one.)

In non-baby-related news:

Jeff graduated from Palmer about a month ago! A few days later, he found out he had passed all of his boards, which was a HUUUUUUUUGE relief, because you can carry around your chiropractic school diploma and feel like a fancypants and still never work as a doctor if you don't pass your boards. And those boards are hard stuff. I'm very proud of him--it was a lot of hard work, and he did such a great job and loves what he does.

I didn't fly to Iowa for graduation with him--it would have cost well over $1000 for both of us to go (do you know how many pairs of shoes I could buy with that money?!), so I'm very grateful to Janel for taking plenty of pictures for me! That picture is Jeff and his 3 best friends from school--Jane, Will, and Josh. We sure miss all of them already.

After considering a few offers in the area, he took an associateship at Peterson Chiropractic, the office he worked at during his internship, and he loves it so far. He'd love to open his own practice in the future, and working with such a successful practice now will help him learn how to do it on his own someday.

I've been very busy between Forrest's shenanigans and keeping up with orders at my etsy shop . . . I actually had to take down all my non-pattern listings for a week because it was getting so busy I didn't think I'd be able to keep up. I've briefly entertained the notion of hiring a crochet assistant, but I just don't think I could send out something made by someone else. Although Bekah has pointed out that the name is MAYBE Matilda . . . like, hey, maaaaaybe I made it, you never know. Not misleading at all! 

Even though the number of orders I was receiving was getting a little insane, I am incredibly grateful and happy that my shop has been doing so well--it really is important to me to have something purely my own to stay busy with. I hate to say that I don't think I'd be happy just playing with Forrest and doing housework all day, but, well . . . I don't think I would. I do love being home with my little guy, and I feel so lucky that circumstances so far have made it possible for me to stay home and focus on him, but I'm so glad that I have my own thing, you know? Something apart from mothering and diapers and homemaking that makes me feel fulfilled and rewarded. And it sure doesn't hurt that I'm making money off it, too. Holla!

Yep, thanks for stopping by.

You know what's really friendly and welcoming? (Not this!)

Some of the members of our bishopric stopped by our house a few nights ago, because they "like to get to know and welcome new members of the ward." We've been in this ward for 4 months now . . . nice try, though. But I can forgive them for that--I'm sure they're busy, and it's a pretty new bishopric.

But then they stayed for almost an hour, which might make it sound like it was a really fun visit, and we all had a great time. False. The hour was filled with nothing but one counselor bragging about his vacations to exotic countries, his 5 big screen TVs (not exaggerating--"I don't even know what to do with so many big screens! Why should one family have 5 big screens?!" I dunno, buddy, but I"d be happy to take one off your hands, if they're really such a big problem for you), and his brand new 3000 square foot office he's having built. Whoop-de-doo for you.

And ready for the kicker? During the entire hour, neither one of them directed a single comment or question to me. I briefly entertained the idea that maybe I had gone invisible. Literally, not one word spoken to me the entire evening. They asked Jeff about his schooling, mission, job, plans, hobbies . . . and did not say a single word to me the entire hour. When I asked them questions, they responded . . . to Jeff. Ummm, hello?

Extremely welcoming. We really love this ward.

(This picture has nothing to do with this post, but I feel like a post has to have a picture. This was taken when Forrest was a sickypants a few weeks ago. Poor little fella.)

Simple pleasures

Can you even imagine finding this much happiness in something so ordinary? Kind of makes me rethink the way I look at things.

Good news and bad news

Good news:

I'm growing out my pixie cut! After Bekah and Jeff whining their dang pants off about how weird they find it that I look exactly like my mom now that we have the same hair, I've decided to give long hair another shot, and I hope that this time around I'll miraculously be blessed with hair-styling abilities. So I guess that's the end of this for now:

It was good while it lasted.

Bad news:

I'm growing out my pixie cut. There's a reason this is happening over the winter . . . it will not be pretty, people. Hats will be my friends. I have a pretty impressive half mullet, half rat tail thing happening right now. In fact, with a little gel and a curling iron, I think I could style it into this:

Good news:

We made friends in our new ward! Two of them!

Bad news:

They are both moving this month. That brings the friends tally back to zero.

Good news:

Jeff and his sister ran the Dirty Dash a few weekends ago.

Bad news:

Jeff and his sister ran the Dirty Dash a few weekends ago.

Next on his list: Night of the Running Dead. I don't know how he finds such weird events.

Good news: 

Forrest is walking!

Okay, I don't have a picture of him walking, but I just find the look on his face amusing in that picture. He looks kind of guilty for eating a brownie. It's okay, Forrest, chubby looks good on you.

Bad news:

He now thinks he must walk everywhere. Jeff's office had a booth at the home show this weekend, and when we dropped by to visit, Forrest felt that he needed to push the stroller through the whole place instead of riding in it. I was tempted to take a seat myself, but I didn't want any weird looks.

Good news:
I saw The Help this weekend with my old friend Audrey, who I haven't seen in 3+ years! 

 It was so good, and so much fun to hang out with Audrey.

Bad news:

The movie ended and we had to go home. 

(But only after a detour to Red Robin, where our waitress brought us checks and boxes after we had literally taken about 3 bites from our dinners. I think she wanted us to leave.)

All you come here for is baby pictures, right?

I hope so, because that's all you ever get anymore.

Right after Forrest's birthday, we took him out for a little photo shoot. I wanted some cute one-year old photos, which I didn't think was too much to ask. This undertaking was made rather difficult when you consider that I have no money to pay a professional to do it for me, minimal photography talent, and an absurdly wiggly child who refused to sit still even. for. two. seconds. Even with Jeff filling the role of Baby Wrangler, I only got like 4 decent pictures where Forrest wasn't writhing on the ground, crawling at top speed away from me (if there's a crawling version of sprinting, that's what he does), or stuffing his mouth with pebbles and sticks. As you'll see, we finally gave up on keeping the sticks out of his mouth. And once you toss in the fact that we were trespassing to get these pictures in the first place and that Jeff spent the whole time whispering, "Hurry up! We're going to get arrested!" it was quite a stressful day.

So this is the best I got. I took these pictures almost a month ago and just now opened them up for the first time, which should tell you something about how frustrating this experience was. Although I know almost nothing about photography or editing, I think they came out pretty cute.

I think this one is my favorite:

(By the way, he learned how to walk over the weekend! He and I flew to New Mexico to visit my parents for the weekend and Forrest decided that the few days when his dad wasn't there to witness the biggest accomplishment of his life was the ideal time to start walking. Poor Jeff.)

Far too many birthday pictures

Someone turned one! Prepare yourself for way more birthday pictures than you ever cared to see.

(Are you prepared? Really? Okay then.)

We started the fun with some jumping--Forrest is obsessed with the trampoline. He and Bekah are getting their jump on:

 Megan is a very ladylike bouncer--she had to hold her dress down:

 Check out those legs!

 

Of course, the cousins had to read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs during the party--it's his very favorite movie, after all.

 

I'm absurdly proud of Forrest's birthday cake--I'm sorry to say that pretty desserts are not a talent of mine. They usually taste fine, but I just can't seem to master the art of making them look adorable. This may be the first time anything I've baked has looked cool. Since Forrest's favorite movie is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I made a spaghetti and meatballs cake:

Ha! Cake success! It's a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. The spaghetti noodles are just an ridiculous amount of buttercream frosting, tinted yellow and squeezed out in a loopy pattern all over the top of the cake. The meatballs are Ferrero Rocher chocolates, the sauce is strawberry ice cream topping, and it has grated white chocolate on top (parmesan cheese). I think I may have taken more pictures of the cake than of Forrest on his birthday.

 Jeff was very insistent that Forrest get his own miniature cake (not just a cupcake--a miniature cake) to eat, so I made him a little version in a teeny cake pan:

Cake glamour shot:

Three cheers for cake!

Forrest was a little unsure about it--he daintily poked at his cake for probably a good 5 minutes when we put it on his high chair tray:

I'm not sure that he realized it was food. The boy eats pebbles and grass clippings, for goodness' sake, and wouldn't eat the cake I made him. But once I cut it open and he could see the inside, I think he decided it was worth a taste:

 

I guess it was pretty tasty after all.

Too much of a good thing?

The water in his bath afterward looked like mud--he was coated in chocolate cake, and had rubbed it everywhere . . . it was in his ears, the back of his knees, his neck rolls, all over his hair . . .

I edited one of my favorite cake pictures:

Happy birthday to my stinky boy!