Lighting The Riverwoods | Pizza For Africa

So Wiffy and I + Walt decided to go to the Riverwoods tonight. It has been under construction for most of the past year. Tonight the central square was completed and the whole place was dressed for Christmas.

It was lovely.

Santa was there, the line was about a block long though, so we opted for another day.

The lighting was amazing! As you can see they had strands running above the walkways and icicles that seemed to drip from the trees and buildings.

A local band was on center stage singing some songs that were familiar, and other that we hadn't heard before.

They did a good job. It was fun to listen to.

Dotted throughout the Square were large braziers, all of which had different pieces of awesome metalwork. This was my favorite, mostly because it reminded me of Daeden.

Sorry, my camera sometimes has issues with night shots. A couple of these are blurry.

My lovely Wiffy!

(Spell-check wanted to turn Wiffy into WiFi,

[add to dictionary]

Ha, take that spell-check)

How I love her.

As we were wandering about, around, and through the different events, our minds started to switch back into food mode. The Riverwoods while known for great food, (IMO) is also known for it's prices which, class as tier 3. So with that in mind we started to search for something on the cheaper end.

Enter Malawi Pizza:

A personal custom pizza parlor, with 6 minute wait times, friendly staff, and a promise to feed a child in Africa for every meal purchased.

We loved it.

Wiffy decided to go for the salad, which while it was good, she says she won't get again after tasting the pizza.

I ordered off of their 'Healthy Specials' menu. Something about roasted garlic and shrimp sounded amazing! It was.

Walt had his first taste of commercial lemonade which he liked only after he realized it wasn't water. (Which took some convincing. [read as trickery])

The wait time was amazing. The place was crowded, easily around 150 people. Before I finished dispensing my drink they brought Wiffy's salad, as I was walking back to my seat they brought my pizza. I had watched the process while we were waiting to order; raw ingredients thrown onto dough, covered with cheese and set in a large open brick oven. They were quick and efficient.

Walt was even tempered and smiling the whole time.

The date night was a success.

Man, I love that kid.

parents, inc

Walter has been having nightmares lately. Most nights we toss him into bed with us until he calms down and then he snuggles with Dad on the walk back to bed.

Unfortunately, last night was kind of our fault. As the husband and I got into bed, I looked at him and said, "We need to change Walter's diaper. I forgot to put him in a nighttime before bed." We grudgingly got out of bed and made our way into the nursery. There was Walter, curled on top of his fuzzy, completely dead to the world.

The husband looked at me and said, "Are you sure about this?"

I was.(insert speech on diapers leaking and clean bedding and a recently washed fuzzy) We just needed to move with stealth. We got to work. From the crib to the changing pad, Walter was still asleep. We moved with his stretches to get his little legs out of his pajamas. We switched diapers. And then as we were getting his little legs back into his sleeper, Walter's eyes opened. His mouth twitched. He shot us murderous looks. He opened he mouth. and. WAILED.

The husband insisted that he would be fine once we put him back in bed. We walked out of the room to wailing. We stood by the crack door, listening to more sobs. We got into bed serenaded by the distress of our child. The husband sighed and got out of bed. Three minutes later, with no end in sight, I heard a voice down the hall say, "Should we go find Mamma? Let's go find her." Sniffles. Light sobs. "There's Momma." Screaming.

Snuggling.

Hand holding.

Gibberish.

Reaching for Dad's beard.

Sleeping.

Snuggling. All the way back to bed.

Happy Monday!

 

and the little one said, "Roll over"

Last night, between the hours of ten and midnight, I had a Walter in my bed. Remember him?



First he fell asleep in the crook of my arm. Then he lunged across our bodies with his head on JL's chest and his legs on my stomach. Finally, JL and I sandwiched around his little body and he rolled from side to side in his sleep, putting his little hands on our arms and faces.

It was adorable the way he gently clung to us like we were giant teddy bears. And because he wasn't screaming.

New adventures

It's been awhile. I didn't even realize how long until my mother told me I needed to post on my blog.

The past few months have been a bit crazy. JL got laid off the beginning of July and we spent some time adjusting to having him home. Last week we started a new semester. JL has 13 credits and two institute classes. He also got a job working for Vending services at UVU. A true blessing since we lost our unemployment as soon as classes started. Now Walter and I are readjusting to having him gone all the time again.

I started work yesterday. My first job in a a year and a half! I think it would have felt more like a job if I had actually had to leave the house and Walter behind. Instead, we get to stay at home and spend time with an adorable little boy named Tommy. The boys are the same size and at the same stage in development.

We'll just have to see how this all goes.

spoons

Today I looked at my house and realized that Walter had about three cubic feet of space to move around. Because my floor was filthy. I got to work.

This burst of energy led me to my dishwasher. My dishwasher full of bowls and spoons. Soup spoons to be exact.

I know it is summer. The heat of the day sneaking in through my windows reminds me all day long. But I love soup. It warms my heart and soul. When nothing is going right, I eat some soup.

The husband thinks I am crazy.

I am going to go eat a bowl of soup. Because I can.

what's life but a series of what ifs?

We purchased a steal of a table yesterday that I am already in love with. As a result, our black table is up for grabs on the standard sites. A woman called me today and asked me for my table. And my chairs. My chairs which were not for sale.

I thought,

"What if I sell the chairs. I could get the chairs I want sooner."
"What if JL gets mad at me because we don't have the money."
"What if this lady just wants to sell MY chairs for more than she got them."
"What if I sold the chairs for more than I got them." ($15 to be exact)
"What if I stopped thinking about this and told her to find her own chairs."

in very rapid succession.

I didn't give her my chairs. They are mine.


And yet, sometimes I want this whole place to burn down while we're out running errands so that I can de-clutter my life and not have my preteen journals anymore.

just me, my books, and my double gulp of sprite

I'm a reader. This facet of my personality has been in place since I was a wee one sitting on my mother's bed reading Horton Hatches the Egg by the all knowing Dr. Seuss. I love books. Nothing can go wrong if I have a good book in my bag. A book for a present will never be turned down.

I especially love used books. And libraries. They smell like the homes of grandparents the world over.

In my life I have read A LOT of books. I spent the last three years of my pre-married life as a nanny. Then I got smart and got a kid of my own. Do you know how quickly kids get tired of having the same story read to them? (Unless it is a favorite) Here's a hint: Walter and I go through about 15 books per week.

I am not a genre snob. I will read anything: non-fiction, general fiction, science fiction, young adult fiction, children's books, mysteries...wait. I take that back. I avoid romance novels.

I have no shame in fighting children for books at the library. In fact, right now I have three books on hold that are children's literature. No shame.

I do not fault an author for writing a book that I just don't like. And if he writes another book, I'll give it a go. I do fault an author for two books that should never have been published. And sometimes, I fault their editors and the people who read them. (You know who you are, Eragon series editor.)

I have favorites that I will always go back to and I live to laugh at David Sedaris' work. Good gracious man alive I live to read his work. I also live to read the Arts section of The New York Times.

So when I ate three bites of bad chicken last night and spent the rest of the evening feeling the effects, I happily finished The Soloist by Mark Salzman and picked up the second book in Rick Riordan's series Percy Jackson & The Olympians.*

*This is in no way an endorsement for rotten chicken and in every way an endorsement for The Soloist by Mark Salzman. One I wish I was getting paid for so I could go buy non-rotten chicken.

it's naptime

Walter is asleep. Usually during these brief intervals of quiet I fold clothes, prep dinner, do dishes, put away dishes...you get the picture. Today I didn't. I let myself be moved by something wonderful.

(500) Days of Summer

It's a beautiful movie about love, and not in a fairytale romance way. But the harsh reality of love and its imperfections and disappointments and joys. The balance of love. The inevitability of developing emotions for people in your life. How marvelous all of their imperfections can be when they are looked at with the forgiving eye of a lover and best friend.

The entire thing made me grateful for my personal experience battling the monster that is love and in the end coming out on top without even knowing how that happened. It made me remember how much I love my husband for putting up with my ridiculous quirks and always knowing what my favorite color of the moment is and never judging me when it changes drastically from golden yellow to girly girl pink. And even though there are dozens of things about him that I will probably never understand, I am happy to say that he's the guy turning my life upside down at random moments of the day.

And, long story short, isn't that what everybody's looking for?

have i told you lately...

that I adore my son? This is a reminder, mostly for myself, of why I became a SAHM and opted out on all those other life adventures I had planned. At least for now. Because Walter has hit his clingy phase and he hit it hard. Home run, kid.

Reasons why being Walter's mom is AWE....wait for it....SOME:

He thinks sneezing is hilarious.

From birth he has had a little alfalfa sprout on his head. Guh. So cute.

Blue eyes.

He laughs like a psychopath.

He'll blow bubbles until his onesie is soaked through with bubble blowing spit. In otherwords, he is a stud.

His goal in life is to eat my cell phone. And his father's cell phone.

He's a whole lotta something packed into a small little body. (Really, he's only thirteen pounds and five months old. Way to own that 6 percentile in weight for age.)

He can squeal with the best of those pigs.

He can only go backwards in his walker. This means that his quests to head out the open front door usually result in him getting stuck against the couch.

He always lets me know when his dad has given him illicit food, like that time he drooled orange spree all over his white onesie.

He yells at us when he bites his fingers too hard on his little tooth.

He will only eat his oatmeal if there is applesauce mixed in. If you're wondering, it's a pretty disgusting combination.

I've always wanted a constant audience when I pee, shower, and gussy myself up.

He has the longest eyelashes in the world. Watch me give birth to a daughter with alopecia.

In reference to the above, some guy called him a girl in Wal-Mart the other day. Even though he was in all blue and manly pants.

He gives the best kisses. And sometimes he slips ya the tongue.

Who needs room darkening curtains? Not my child. To fall asleep, he just pulls his blanket over his head.

I gave birth to him, he's adorable, etc. etc. etc.

Mkay, I need to go. He just tried to bite his toe off. But seriously, motherhood is the best job in the world. Thank you for letting me remind myself. So all of you random women out there who are wondering whether or not to let your husbands impregnate you (if you're not married....out of the question, don't even think about it) do it. Greatest adventure of my life. And the best part: it just started.

tuesday must be an synonym for green beans

Walter hates green beans. This evening, he had green beans for dinner. Like always, he said "yuck". He spit them out. He wiped them on his hand so I couldn't spoon them back up.

But today he rubbed green beans onto his eyelid and spent the next ten minutes attempting to rub it away only to pile more green beans onto the already dried up mess. I laughed. He laughed.

Happy Tuesday world. If you haven't planned dinner for tomorrow, think about green beans. Because I'm not cleaning up the mess again (third time really is the charm) and somebody's got to eat them.

"i kissed you and i got snorted at"

Today was a trying day. Baby Walter has developed the same sinus cold that his father brought home from school/work earlier this week. Nothing like an uncomfortable baby to obliterate any and all plans for the day. There was a list, it didn't get done, but that's okay. Eric the Handyman came over and entertained us while fixing all the broken things in the apartment. I call that a fair trade.

After years of saying I would never read them, Baby Walter and I started listening to Lemony Snicket's. The flaw is that they are truly depressing. So I grabbed another Amelia Peabody book for balance. Unfortunately The Falcon at the Portal is not the usual bucket of humor straight from the page to my heart. I picked up my biography on Hadrian acknowledging a failure before I even began. I stopped and read Walter is Worried to Baby Walter. There among the pages, which Walter was persistently grabbing for, I found my happy ending. Perhaps I should have become a children's librarian instead of spending all of those years studying Art History. Or maybe I should use my knowledge and write a children's book of my own.

Jamie Lee Curtis did it. How hard can it be? Incidentally, this adoption tale is one of my son's favorite books. Four months and he already wishes his gene pool had a different origin.

don't judge me, I'm concussed

The first thing I said this morning?

"Why does my head hurt?"

The reply?

"Um, because you hit your head against the wall and knocked yourself out going to bed. I'm pretty sure you have a concussion."

WHAT?!?

After a hungry baby was fetched, my sweet husband told me about the grand finale of my day yesterday that involved a wall, my head, seeing a huge black square in my vision, and making his life miserable. I remembered nothing.

I have effectively lost two hours of my life courtesy of my bedroom wall.

To make matters worse, my extremely sweet husband (sooo very patient) got me in a tub for the most embarrassing bath of my life. He put shampoo on my hair. The shampoo dribbled down my head and into my eye. I burst into tears and then lost control of my bladder (thank you baby!) and peed in my warm tub. This only made me cry more until I realized that the hand that was trying to rub soap out of my eye was covered in pee water. At which point I gave up.

I got out, JL went to work, and Ali came over to play with Walter and make sure I didn't run into the wall again.

All of this aside, Walter rolled over for the first time! Guy, Ali, and I burst into cheers immediately, but the poor little guy was so startled by everything that he broke down and started sobbing anytime we tried to put him on the floor for the rest of the day.

excuse me, I have something inconsequential to say

For the past three days, my sweet baby has turned into a monster to rival Oscar the Grouch. He is teething, growing, and sniffly. As a direct consequence, I've spent most of the time at home except for attending a performance of As You Like It at BYU's Pardoe Theater.

This enables me to tell you all about the most bizarre take on Shakespeare I have ever witnessed and I witnessed quite a few versions at Swine Palace Theater in Baton Rouge, a place much more contemporary and "cutting edge" than anything Provo, Utah has to offer. At least on a regular basis.

Before I begin, let me say that the music man wins. By a long shot.

The husband and I sat in the third row, right behind an adorable little family that had two teenagers and two children under the age of twelve. Three of the cast members were on stage warming up the audience with musical numbers that involved a guitar and a tambourine (until the tambourine broke). I was so caught up in the joy of singing along to The Beatles, Let It Be with a crowd of perfect strangers that it took quite a few minutes before I realized men in ski masks were guarding every entrance and I began to feel concern for the mother in front of me and her two small elementary aged children. That concern quickly grew as the play began and the stage was filled with more violence than, well, to give you my exact thoughts at the time, the DiCaprio-Danes adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in the 1990s. It was a very rocky start.

That rocky start gave way to the realization that Rosalind, played by the beautiful Ashley Bonner, was a head taller than most of the male cast, her romantic counterpart included. Bonner played her part well. Her talent, combined with her height, made it impossible to focus on the other players when she was on stage. I am ashamed to say, it might have been too much of a good thing.

Twenty minutes in and I had already given up on the director and the main character. Thankfully, the director had the good graces to add to the show a music man. Kris Paries, playing Amien and the new role of "Music Man", breathed fresh air into an overworked attempt of modernization. He kept me going until Orlando (Ben Isaacs) had the good graces to sing a delightfully silly song while playing the guitar and harmonica. I love a man with musical dexterity. From that point on, my mood had been restored and the play seemed to quickly culminate in its multiple weddings and great joy. I clapped for the cast, I hooted at Ben Isaacs and Kris Paries - along with several other members of the audience - and I left with the knowledge that my Saturday afternoon had not been entirely wasted.

When all was said and done, I enjoyed myself. However, I hope to never sit through another musically enriched version of Shakespeare again.

how to pretend to clean

Today is the day for cleaning. Every Saturday I get out of bed and begin a mass rejuvenation of our home in an effort to be ready for Sunday. This typically means running a few loads of laundry through, making sure the dishwasher is empty, and straightening up. We are clean people in the base case.

Today was not a typical Saturday. Today I learned how to look like I'm trying out for the spot of Organizer lady on Clean House, but really just cuddle the whole time. Walter teaches me things everyday.

Every time I tried to clean, Walter would make this frustrated noise and shoot me a look. His message was loud and clear: "Mom! For heaven's sake, why must you be so OCD?!" Like father, like son.

So instead of pristine and ready for the Sabbath, my table is covered in mail and empty rice cereal bottles. Peter Pan is on the floor under a walker covered in toys. A packet of typewriter paper (where did that come from?) is next to a miniature globe.

Today was a fabulous day.

let's hear it for new routines

This morning, while JL snored very lightly in my ear, I rolled, rather ungracefully, out of bed to go for a jog. Because I'm running a 5K with my sweet sister on April 24. (What happens to be a busy day, belonging to my dear friend Ali and my sweetly psychotic brother-in-law, Lincoln.) For awhile I would jog at 7 PM, during Walter's bath. I loved coming home to a happy clean baby and laughing husband. Baths are always cause for a good dose of joy in this house. Unfortunately, JL's schedule has been a bit hectic recently and jogs have not happened. Provo is scary past 9 PM for the ladies. I blame Provo for not exercising.

...You read me.

Back on point. I left the house with Walter happily chatting away to himself in his swing, assured that he would go back to sleep as he does every morning as soon as I stopped banging around the kitchen and got out the door. Thirty-five minutes later I came huffing and puffing through the door. Apparently little had changed. JL was just getting out of bed and Walter was still happily chatting away, as I quickly learned, to the animals on his swaddling blanket, which he had maneuvered over his head. Per usual.

I was elated. My husband was happy, my baby was laughing, and I had already gotten in my morning work out. To boot, the early morning looked like New Jersey, so it was a little bit of home in the sky. What else could a girl ask for?

gee whiz kid.

So...about two weeks ago Walter started spitting up after every meal. Sad day. Every piece of clothing was victim to his explosive baby vomit. It was a great mystery easily solved. Like his cousin, my little man had food allergies. But what exactly? Five loads of laundry later, I am happy to tell you we've got it all figured out.

Lactose and soy intolerance.

Put two and one together and we are a gluten, lactose, and soy-free household these days. And by household, I mean baby and me.

I cried. A lot. For three days. I was horribly depressed. I called my father for positive words of encouragement. His words? Eat food. Food is good. ...Thanks Dad. (In his defense, I called 24 hours before my mom went into surgery, although minor. I'm giving it to him. I promise he's not emotionally and intellectually inept.) I got really upset and said mean, nasty things to the husband. The husband went to In & Out and brought me back a protein style burger with no onions and a Dr. Pepper. Talk about love.

I'm sort of calm now. And in desperate need of recipes that don't use wheat, barley, rye, dairy, or soy ingredients. Help? Please???