Hyrum is learning to play pretend. His most requested pretend game is "Sleep." He runs to his room and brings us a blanket (or 6). He calls out "Hyrum sleep" and lays down on the floor. We then cover him with a blanket and wait until he decides to wake up, bouncing up to cry "Again again!" He also likes it when Daddy makes snoring noises for Hyrum. He doesn't close his eyes because he wants to see our reaction to his cuteness. Yesterday, Daddy decided to play with him and used his multi-blanketed self as a pillow. He laughed, waited for a bit, then called out, "Daddy wake up." Lather, rinse repeat.
We've also tried Pretend Breakfast and Pretend Park, going through all the motions of each in the comfort of home. He likes them a lot.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Hyrum says "Wow"
We did a lot of shopping today - Mommy clothes and Hyrum clothes mostly. Near the end of the day, I was wandering through the kids' pajamas with Hyrum and I was curious to see this one brightly colored, red-white-and-blue number. I held it out and Hyrum paid attention (!). He looked at Mater the car, decorated in red, white, and blue with fireworks and pizzazz. He said, "wow!"
We don't get that reaction much, so I put it in the cart. Then as we turned a corner, Hyrum said "Wow!" again. It was Buzz pajamas. Hyrum didn't just want to marvel at them, though. "Hold Buzz pajamas." So we went home with a pair of Buzz pajamas. Mater somehow jumped out the cart when Hyrum wasn't looking, and is hiding out with a bunch of shirts with skulls on them. The fuzz'll never find him there.
We don't get that reaction much, so I put it in the cart. Then as we turned a corner, Hyrum said "Wow!" again. It was Buzz pajamas. Hyrum didn't just want to marvel at them, though. "Hold Buzz pajamas." So we went home with a pair of Buzz pajamas. Mater somehow jumped out the cart when Hyrum wasn't looking, and is hiding out with a bunch of shirts with skulls on them. The fuzz'll never find him there.
The Cathedrals of Helsinki
The (I'm guessing) Russian Orthodox cathedral rests on top of a small hill looking over downtown.
With a good view of the other cathedral across the way. The rest of the pictures in this post are from this other cathedral.
I would like to acknowledge the good weathermen of Helsinki for predicting rain the entire time I was there and instead providing me these wonderful, varying skies to shoot against.
A peek between the columns
The Resurrection. Another mural next to it depicts the crucifixion, but my shot wasn't as detailed as I'd like it.
I wish blogspot would let me arrange these pictures so they lined up. Oh well.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Hyrum Top Ten Apr/May
1. Tarantara -96
2. Mickey Mouse Club March - 95
3. Bob the Builder - 73
4. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony - Movement I - 50
5. Yours - 43
6. The Egg - 43
7. Seventy-Six Trombones - 43
8. Praise to the Man - 37
9. Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious - 35
10. The Hallelujah Chorus - 33
All time Top 10:
1. Bob the Builder - 837
2. Handel's Hallelujah Chorus - 446
3. Tarantara - 279
4. Seventy-Six Trombones - 144
5. Little Drummer Boy - 115
6. Pomp and Circumstance -110
7. Praise to the Man -108
8. Mickey Mouse Club March - 95
9. Ten Little Indians - 85
10. Star Wars: Imperial March - 83
My brother requested a top ten by the number of hours:minutes Hyrum has spent listening to the songs. Here's that:
1. Hallelujah Chorus 29:14
2. Tarantara 21:56
3. Bob the Builder 13:43
4. Pines of Rome 13:09
5. Pomp and Circumstance 11:42
6. Little Drummer Boy 7:42
7. 76 Trombones 7:22
8. Praise the Man 6:20
9. Battle Hymn of the Republic 6:13
10. Come, Thou Fount 5:57
And after the break are a bunch of other top songs just for my records.
2. Mickey Mouse Club March - 95
3. Bob the Builder - 73
4. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony - Movement I - 50
5. Yours - 43
6. The Egg - 43
7. Seventy-Six Trombones - 43
8. Praise to the Man - 37
9. Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious - 35
10. The Hallelujah Chorus - 33
All time Top 10:
1. Bob the Builder - 837
2. Handel's Hallelujah Chorus - 446
3. Tarantara - 279
4. Seventy-Six Trombones - 144
5. Little Drummer Boy - 115
6. Pomp and Circumstance -110
7. Praise to the Man -108
8. Mickey Mouse Club March - 95
9. Ten Little Indians - 85
10. Star Wars: Imperial March - 83
My brother requested a top ten by the number of hours:minutes Hyrum has spent listening to the songs. Here's that:
1. Hallelujah Chorus 29:14
2. Tarantara 21:56
3. Bob the Builder 13:43
4. Pines of Rome 13:09
5. Pomp and Circumstance 11:42
6. Little Drummer Boy 7:42
7. 76 Trombones 7:22
8. Praise the Man 6:20
9. Battle Hymn of the Republic 6:13
10. Come, Thou Fount 5:57
And after the break are a bunch of other top songs just for my records.
What God Did Not Say
God did not say "Free-range your passions - it's organic, man." Instead, we are warned that the all-natural man is an enemy.
So there need to be limits. But God also did not say "Put your passions on a leash," which would imply giving them free reign within a certain sphere.
But He also did not say "Muzzle your passions," which would be never listening to them or unhealthy suppression.
"Bridle your passions" expresses a working relationship between spirit and body, between conscience and mind, heart, stomach, and any other bodily organ. We are to learn how to bring ourselves into submission until such time as rider and horse are one.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Ear Infection
Joy says, Did this day really end? I am going to have to give an extra dose of gratitude in my prayers today for the one small miracle. I found out Hyrum has an ear ache and now he is one medicine. We hope he feels better soon. He sure is a trooper. So I can't really figure doctors out. They make you think you should wait to bring them in to get medicine, if they are sick enough and the doctor that saw Hyrum today said, well it looks like he is just about through with it. I say if you can tell he has an ear infection then you can't really be serious..... doctors. I always wish i could live without them. I am thankful for the medicine though.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Chocolate milk has Iron
I am so glad that I got the sequencing cards. I let Hyrum choose the stories today and we only got to three of the 5 or 6 I had him choose.
The first story is of a boy going to bed with three different cards. The first card shows the sun in the window and the boy sitting on his mother's lap while she reads a story to him. The second card shows the mother tucking him into bed, kissing him on the head and added nice loving things she is saying. The last one shows the boy asleep in his bed with the moon in the window. I tell him the story and give him each card as I tell the story for him to look at and put on the floor in front of him.
After I told the story two times, Hyrum jumped up and ran for his bedroom saying, "Blue blanket". He came back with the blanket and laid down on the floor with the blanket over him. I figured out that he wanted the story told again and so we played the go to sleep game several times. When he had only slightly satiated on that game, I went on the to the camping story that he wanted next.
The last picture in the camping story is about sleeping, so I showed him that first. Then while he was laying under his blanket, I showed him the picture of the boy putting up his tent. Next, the boy and his daddy making food at the fire and then the boy sleeping in his tent. In an effort to play this story up. I took a star blanket that we keep in the living room and put it over the back of two chairs, saying "tent" and showing him the first picture. He was still laying down but looking at me with interest. he wasn't far from the tent, so I just tugged him a little closer so that he was under the tent. He did not like that idea and pointing to the blanket tent, said "no blanket". I took it down.
The third and last sequence story was even more successful or just as interesting to him as the first one. This story has 4 pictures. The first picture is of a clear glass and milk being poured into it. Then there is a chocolate sauce contain behind it with part of the milk chocolate and part white and a spoon is starting to stir. Next the milk is all chocolate with the spoon on in front. The last picture has an empty glass with remains of chocolate in it. I told him the story, then I realized that we had chocolate sauce and could actually make it. We did and Hyrum drank it and said again. We did it three times until he couldn't drink anymore. hehehe.
I was really happy to realize that though milk has no iron, chocolate sauce has 9%. Maybe it is a way to get iron into him besides the vitamin that I have been forgetting.
The first story is of a boy going to bed with three different cards. The first card shows the sun in the window and the boy sitting on his mother's lap while she reads a story to him. The second card shows the mother tucking him into bed, kissing him on the head and added nice loving things she is saying. The last one shows the boy asleep in his bed with the moon in the window. I tell him the story and give him each card as I tell the story for him to look at and put on the floor in front of him.
After I told the story two times, Hyrum jumped up and ran for his bedroom saying, "Blue blanket". He came back with the blanket and laid down on the floor with the blanket over him. I figured out that he wanted the story told again and so we played the go to sleep game several times. When he had only slightly satiated on that game, I went on the to the camping story that he wanted next.
The last picture in the camping story is about sleeping, so I showed him that first. Then while he was laying under his blanket, I showed him the picture of the boy putting up his tent. Next, the boy and his daddy making food at the fire and then the boy sleeping in his tent. In an effort to play this story up. I took a star blanket that we keep in the living room and put it over the back of two chairs, saying "tent" and showing him the first picture. He was still laying down but looking at me with interest. he wasn't far from the tent, so I just tugged him a little closer so that he was under the tent. He did not like that idea and pointing to the blanket tent, said "no blanket". I took it down.
The third and last sequence story was even more successful or just as interesting to him as the first one. This story has 4 pictures. The first picture is of a clear glass and milk being poured into it. Then there is a chocolate sauce contain behind it with part of the milk chocolate and part white and a spoon is starting to stir. Next the milk is all chocolate with the spoon on in front. The last picture has an empty glass with remains of chocolate in it. I told him the story, then I realized that we had chocolate sauce and could actually make it. We did and Hyrum drank it and said again. We did it three times until he couldn't drink anymore. hehehe.
I was really happy to realize that though milk has no iron, chocolate sauce has 9%. Maybe it is a way to get iron into him besides the vitamin that I have been forgetting.
The Culture that is Finnish
Now that I've been in Finland less than 24 hours and walked around a small corner of Helsinki for two hours, I am an Expert on Finnish Culture. (Hey, I have as much experience in the country as most development missions before they pronounce how to solve poverty, right?) So what is special?
1 - In US restrooms, the icon representing women wears a knee-length skirt. In the Helsinki airport, she wears a miniskirt. At WIDER, she's reverted to the more modest knee-length again.
2 - "Every man is an architect. You plan the architecture of summer houses!" Finn Tarp opened the conference mentioning this, and he's not kidding. The facades of the buildings are amazing, and each one is remarkably different. Some are medieval stone, some have Arabic arches, some are all brick, some have Greco-Roman carved marble decorations. The colors are lovely and varied without clashing. Actually, I saw the first 5-story, Eurobau apartments that I thought might be places an American would like to live in. The restaurant I ate in for dinner had beautifully muraled ceilings Very attractive. [Oh, how I WISH they hadn't lost my luggage and CAMERA in the Manchester airport!]
3 - Barren windows. Shockingly, despite the enormous numbers of windows in all these architectural wonders, the windows are empty. I glanced at thousands of windows and in a couple hundred cars and saw: 1 printer, 1 fan, 2 potted plants in buildings, 1 dream catcher, 1 air freshener, and only three cars that had stuff in them. The cars were completely empty! Okay, I was glancing, not searching under the seats, but there was almost no individualization of windows or cars. For a course on flaneurie, I had once tried to identify which person in a store belonged to which car in the parking lot and I did pretty well - there was nothing to go on here! (aside from the owner of the East German Trabant)
1 - In US restrooms, the icon representing women wears a knee-length skirt. In the Helsinki airport, she wears a miniskirt. At WIDER, she's reverted to the more modest knee-length again.
2 - "Every man is an architect. You plan the architecture of summer houses!" Finn Tarp opened the conference mentioning this, and he's not kidding. The facades of the buildings are amazing, and each one is remarkably different. Some are medieval stone, some have Arabic arches, some are all brick, some have Greco-Roman carved marble decorations. The colors are lovely and varied without clashing. Actually, I saw the first 5-story, Eurobau apartments that I thought might be places an American would like to live in. The restaurant I ate in for dinner had beautifully muraled ceilings Very attractive. [Oh, how I WISH they hadn't lost my luggage and CAMERA in the Manchester airport!]
3 - Barren windows. Shockingly, despite the enormous numbers of windows in all these architectural wonders, the windows are empty. I glanced at thousands of windows and in a couple hundred cars and saw: 1 printer, 1 fan, 2 potted plants in buildings, 1 dream catcher, 1 air freshener, and only three cars that had stuff in them. The cars were completely empty! Okay, I was glancing, not searching under the seats, but there was almost no individualization of windows or cars. For a course on flaneurie, I had once tried to identify which person in a store belonged to which car in the parking lot and I did pretty well - there was nothing to go on here! (aside from the owner of the East German Trabant)
Sunday, May 9, 2010
The Power of Temples
Hyrum likes temples. He turns to pictures of temples in any of the picture scripture books we have. He likes going to the temple and being there. We passed a church yesterday and he pointed it out to us as a "temple." Temples are pretty cool.Hyrum also knows something of what temples are for. They're for making people feel happy.
Mommy was having a Bad Day. Hyrum wanted her to feel better. He said, "Go temple! Go temple! Mommy go temple! Daddy go temple!" When he sees a picture, he says, "Mommy Daddy go temple."
He's been an awfully sick little boy this weekend - not-quite-so-low grade fever between 100 and 102 depending on how long it's been since he took medicine, with a sour tummy that doesn't want to eat anything. "But he's being a good drinker" of milk and apple juice. The first day he had the fever, he told me he wanted to "Go temple." And in fact, Mommy drove him half way there to help him get to sleep and have a nap.
Mother on Mothers' Day: a Joy post
I've got this idea - I thought of it at church today - since Hy was sick today, I had no Mommy duties - and I realized that my stage of life Mothers' Day is Really Great to have a break. But I know there comes a time when Mothers' Day is really great if you at least get some contact with your children. I'm okay to be on this end for now.
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