A Lord of the Rings Halloween

The biggest spit up of Tate's lifetime.  10 oz worth of milk all over the bed.

Tate's girl twin, Tatum.

Baby Gollum

Wow, so many things have happened since I last wrote I don't even know where to begin.  Unfortunately, I don't really remember anything from two weeks ago (which probably means nothing super amazing happened).  So I guess I will just reminisce about this past week.  This week felt so crazy, but I am not sure why.  I think it's because Tate was so cranky this past week.  And most of the time he was cranky, I was pretty cranky myself.  That is not a good combination.  His naps were a lot shorter than usual (which means not a lot of time for me to get stuff done) and he would wake us just as upset as when he went to sleep.  And the night time has been crazy too.  Yesterday at Church, our neighbors asked, "was Tate really upset this morning?"  And by this morning they meant "at 5:30 am when he was screaming."  We said "yes."  We were using the nose sucker to clear out his nose and he did not like that at all.  He has been sick with a stuffy nose and yesterday Josh and I think we saw incoming front teeth.  But we are not sure.

Saturday we had our ward Halloween party.  Last year Josh and I were in a bit of a last-minute scramble for our costumes.  I love love love making Halloween costumes, but I did not enjoy the stress last year, so we started early this time.  We were characters from "The Lord of the Rings."  I was Frodo, Josh was the eye of Sauron, Tate was Gollum, and Nathan was the Ring (Sarah is out of town on a trip, so we adopted Nathan into our family for the day).  We paper-mached a hat that looked like the tower and then the eye went in between the two spires.  I made the skeleton of the hat with a cardboard box and paper.  The eye was a balloon.  Josh wanted to be the Eye last year, but it didn't happen.  This year, my sister and her fiance were the Ring and the Eye.  So we saw how they did it and kind of did it the same way, but not quite.  We won first place in the costume competition at the ward party.  Tate stole the show.  He was in a loin cloth with a few scraggly strands of hair attached to the top of his head with corn syrup.  He crawled around the cultural hall and he looked like gollum.  Everyone got to see him crawling around and people started calling him baby Gollum.  I was so proud. Tate didn't win his cute baby competition (but thanks for everyone who voted!!), but at least he won a prize because he makes a good Gollum.

This past week was also Sharon's birthday and for her party Josh and I made a whole lot of bread.  I actually really like making bread.  I made pretzel rolls, which I usually love, but I used a different recipe than usual and I did not like it as much.  We made bread sticks and some loves of bread with honey butter.  The next day we had a lot left over and I had bread and honey butter for breakfast, lunch, and mid-afternoon snacks.  I seriously had almost 10 pieces of bread.  And these weren't baby-sized.  They were thick pieces covered in honey butter.  It was funny, because that day Josh only had fruits and vegetables to eat.  So our eating habits were kind of switched for the day.

This week I also reached an all time low in my life.  I did laundry this past week, and I really struggle with laundry.  Well, I have a love/hate relationship with the laundromat.  I don't like that we have to take our laundry there and pay for it, but I love that we get to do it all at once.  But something about loading Tate and all the laundry in the car and then strategically unloading it into the laundromat really annoys me.  I can't carry everything at the same time, so I usually put the laundry in the car, then get Tate out of the house and put him in the car.  Then once I get to the laundromat I get Tate out of the car and use him (in his carseat) to prop the door to the laundromat open.  Then I get the laundry and drag it into the laundromat.  Then I get Tate and push everything to the washer.  It's not a bad system, but for some reason I always get upset doing it.  I think it's because Tate feels like he weighs 100 lbs in his carseat and carrying him and our laundry (which is also surprisingly heavy) gets me frustrated.  I usually mutter to myself "how are you so heavy!"  It's a silly reason to get annoyed, but the emotions I feel are real.  So, this time I decided I was not going to put myself in a situation that I knew would make me annoyed.  Instead, I went to Smith's and got a shopping cart.  I put Tate in the cart along with all of our laundry and pushed Tate and our clothes to the laundromat, which is only a block or two away.  I looked like a homeless person.  I was in sweats and my hair was out of control.  Tate was also in sweats and had food and grossness all over himself and his clothes.  So Tate and I went back and forth from the laundromat and our house throughout the day with our shopping cart.  My mom told me I was lucky someone didn't offer me money, and I said hey if someone had offered me money I would've gladly accepted.  I went with Tate to pick up our clothes and a little boy said "why does she have a cart?"  And when I went to get one of our loads out of the dryer, the clothes were really wet.  So I went home to get more quarters and came back.  When I went to put my quarters in I realized I hadn't pressed start when I first put them in.  So I pushed start and Tate and I walked home.  Despite that minor setback, it was a rather smooth experience, which I credit to the shopping cart.  I just might use it next time.

Friday I knew I wasn't going to have time to jog, so I decided to cross train and do some jump roping.  I didn't want to do it in my apartment, because it would be loud for everyone else.  When Tate went down for his nap, I went out on our front porch and jump roped there.  I also set up my computer on a chair and had netflix playing.  I couldn't see anything and I could only hear it everyone few minutes, but it still made the time go by faster.  I am sure I looked really strange to everyone who drove by.  The next day my calves were so tight.  My left calf is still really tight.

So last week I did a lot of things that were kind of socially awkward...I am excited for what this week will bring.