One More Song

I should have posted this one yesterday with "Henry's Courage."  This one is completely original, believe it or not.  It's entitled, "I am a Dog," and uses an original guitar accompaniment (with some help from Dad).  

I am a Dog from Ben and Jenn on Vimeo.

Henry's Courage

Here's a new song composed by Henry.  

Henry's Courage from Ben and Jenn on Vimeo.

My favorite parts: 

• The fact that the Lord "commanded Henry to go and get a plane."  I guess you never know what the Lord is going to command next!
  
• Use of the adjective "wicked" to describe Ellis.
  
• Henry's sweet and bold obedience.  I love this kid.

One year down, four to go

A grueling, awful test this morning marked the end of the first year of my program.  Just four more years to go!  Really, though, this test was bad, and it was a fitting end to an incredibly difficult year.  Easily the most work I've ever done for school in my life--I had many, many dreams about solving economic models (complete with Greek letters!).  Now comes the wait to see if I passed (definitely not a sure thing).  Ugh.

On the upside, I've got the summer off!  Let's hear it for school vacations!  I'm not going to just be kicking my heels up, though.  I've got three research papers that I'm working on with various people, so I'll be working on those as much as possible to get them ready to be submitted to journals.  It will be a nice break from homework and tests, before I get back at it next fall.

I have to give a huge thanks to Jenn and Henry for supporting me through this year.  Not only did Jenn take excellent care of the boys and run the whole house on many a late night and weekend while I studied away, but she also had to listen to me each night trying to explain esoteric theories to her, even though she could care less about the Pareto optimal way to invest in public goods.  Henry was great, too.  At times during our dinner conversation he would break in with great questions like, "What's credit default, Dad?"  Or, "What did you learn about in Macro today?"  Or, "What games do you do in game theory?"  As funny as it is to hear a 3-year-old ask things like that, it was actually a pretty good thing to try explaining this stuff to a little kid.  Mostly, though, I just love his enthusiasm and curiosity about everything.

And Ellis?  Well, if you recall, he was born while I was in the middle of Math Camp at the beginning of the year, so he's been with me every step of the way.  I don't know if I can say that he really supported me, but he's done a great job of slobbering on a lot of things, you have to give him that.  And all of those full diapers were good excuses for me to take a few breaks from the books, right?

Twins for a day

We babysat Ellis' friend Bridger last week, and it was so fun to have twins (for a limited time, of course)!  They were so cute together, and it was fun to see how excited Ellis was to have a friend over who is almost the same age.  He was smiling and laughing the entire evening, which is really something because usually after 6pm, Ellis is done for the day.  

Bridger is a month younger than Ellis, but he taught him a few lessons about Tummy Time.  Ellis has never smiled during Tummy Time before, but ever since he saw Bridger doing it, he has started to actually enjoy it.  This child may crawl after all!
Bridger was only kind of amused by my peek-a-boo tricks.  I think he was a little scared of me.  We'll give him a few months!

Next up: twin 3-year-olds for a weekend!  Henry's friend Jack stayed with us last Friday - Sunday.  While a few things were harder with two kids (they did fight a bit when they both got tired), I found that most things were easier with the two of them.  They entertained each other for long periods so I actually got a few things done.  They also fed off each other when it was time for clean up, pajamas, and eating.  I almost thought Henry was going to start eating strawberries after he saw how much Jack liked them.  Jack asked, "Henry, do you like strawberries?" and Henry lied, "Yeah."  I kept quiet, watching to see if he would eat one.  Unfortunately, the peer pressure is not yet powerful enough for Henry.  He did eat a bite of a strawberry, but only with a wee bit of force-feeding and a lot of gagging "on the seeds."  Darn!

Unfortunately, I didn't get any good twin pictures of Henry and Jack.  I kept forgetting to get the camera out during the cute moments.  I finally pulled it out during Jammie Time, but I never got the shot because it took Henry like 5 minutes to get his PJ's on and then I lost my train of thought, as any mom of twins + 1 would.  Luckily, if you squint, you can see Henry in the background wearing only his undies.

Fire at Longfellow Chapel

Some of you might be interested in seeing this clip about the fire yesterday at LDS Longfellow Chapel in Cambridge.  This is not the church we normally attend, but we have visited there and loved the building.  It is the one right across from the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow house.  The fire happened during Stake Conference, and luckily no one was hurt.  Still, it looks like most of the building was destroyed.  So sad!  

The future is bright

Not only will I be DONE with the first year of my Ph.D. program next Wednesday, but people keep inventing incredible things like this.  Seriously, click on the link.  You have to wait for it to load for a minute, but it's worth it.

Sew Frustrating

6:30 am: the average wake-up time of Henry and Ellis three weeks ago.  Probably has something to do with the early sunrise, right?

$20: the amount of money I spent buying buying blackout fabric to attach to the back of the curtains in their bedroom.  Yes, I know I was probably ripped off.  I was desperate and know nothing about buying fabric.

2 weeks: the amount of time the ironing board and sewing materials sat out in the dining room waiting for me to break down and get them done.

3 hours: the amount of time I spent cutting fabric, ironing on the Stitch Witchery (I am afraid of the sewing machine), and sewing on the blackout fabric by hand.

9: Ugliness rating of the new curtains (on a scale of 1-10).  This is why you get a picture of the super hero capes I "made" out of the scraps instead of a picture of the finished product.

6:15am: the new average wake-up time of Henry and Ellis.  

Aaarrrrgghh.  And we're not even trying to be lazy and sleep in every morning.  All we're asking for is an hour in the morning to read scriptures and exercise before the sweet little monsters wake up!  And I really don't think it's possible for me to wake up any earlier than 6:00 right now.  Come on, boys!  Seven is the magic number.  YOU CAN DO IT.  PLEEEEEEEAAAAASE.    

Happy Mother's Day!

Ben is the husband of the century, as you all probably know.  He's wonderful and super-willing to do everything he can on Mother's Day to pamper me.  Last year I think I went a little overboard being the queen for the day (who, me?).  I think Ben did all the cooking and clean-up as well as taking care of Henry while I sat on the couch reading a magazine.  I remember thinking part-way through the day that it didn't seem very Mothersdayish to be pretending I wasn't a mother on the day we're supposed to be celebrating motherhood!  So  . . . this year we've had a little more of a balance.  I decided I just wanted to enjoy my boys and let Ben take care of all of those other wifely/motherly duties that seem to get in the way of just being a mom.  It's been an absolutely lovely day!  I got to sit and read with Henry and play with Ellis as long as I wanted to without worrying about the messy house (that Ben was whipping into shape before my eyes) and the Sunday dinner (that Ben was firing up on his new grill).  It was heavenly!  And when Ben discovered he had burned the grilled potatoes to the point of non-edibility (we're still learning), I sat and ate my dinner and put the Puffs (and peas!) in front of Ellis while Ben cooked up some homemade french fries.  It's kind of nice to eat dinner without having to get up a hundred times in the middle of your meal!  Let's also mention that I got a nice hour-long nap in the afternoon.  Yes, I definitely got pampered today.  A little pampering and a lot of love from my boys.  It was a great day.  And now I'm going to go eat blackberry cobbler . . . 

Some added bonuses --

A video of Ellis playing peek-a-boo all by himself!  This is his latest trick that he just started doing on Thursday.  We didn't prompt him or teach him or anything.  He just started up doing it and got this really clever/proud look on his face.  Ooh, he is sweet:

Peek-a-boo! from Ben and Jenn on Vimeo.

Aaaaaaand some more of Jenn's creative madness, coming your way.  Mother's Day gifts for my mom:

And Ben's mom: 

Food is our friend

Let's start with a little Henry-Ellis comparison, because those are fun:

Henry

Ellis

It's fun to see them both at the same stage.  I think Ellis is starting to look more like Henry than before, but they still definitely each have their own look.  Henry sure was a chubby one!

Ellis has been loving his new life as a solids-eater.  I've been kind of slow to introduce each of the baby foods, mostly because I'm lazy.  What I didn't realize was how much he was going to LOVE the table food.  I should have started it a month ago!  Ellis has really been quite grumpy lately, and we were blaming it on teething for a long time.  When his two cute little bottom teeth cut, however, he didn't cheer up.  Our new discovery is that Gerber "Puffs" are the secret to his happiness.  We just have to keep giving them to him (one at a time because if he has two he'll get so excited that he'll drop both of them).  His happiness is living Puff to Puff right now.  Yummy!  Soon we will add other easy-to-gum solids (any ideas?).

I must say that the very best part about Ellis eating solid food is the re-introduction of that song "Millions of Peaches" into our home.  The song just jumped out of me while trying to convince Ellis to open his mouth for the peaches.  Since then, someone in our home has sung that song (or some variation of it) at least once every day for the last 3 weeks.  This has brought back many happy memories of the good old days as a really super cool (and not awkward at all) 8th grader.  I also have this really vague recollection of Tyler Squire doing an oral report about peaches and singing that song as part of the presentation.  Is anyone else lucky enough to share that memory with me?

If you enjoy watching clips of baby cuteness, here's a good one:

Ellis eats Puffs from Jenn and Ben on Vimeo.