Mothering a 2-year old

Crystal is potty-trained enough for wearing underwear now. She will go on the toilet public bathrooms but she get's pretty stubborn at home. Usually, I can get her to sit on her potty herself with minimal fighting if I first give a warning: "go sit on the potty or I will drag you." The nicer version sometimes works: "can you do it yourself or shall I help?" It also works for other things. She loves her independence.

Also, I am still breast feeding Crystal but I have night-weaned her. This means that I give her only "milky" at bedtime, morning time, and throughout the day; not during the night. I sleep in her bed with her or in another bed in the same room most of the time. So whenever it's the middle of the night and she asks for milky, I say something like "no milk and if you cry, I'm leaving the room" and "it's still nighttime: you can have milky in the morning." Of course the threat only works after I have actually left the room immediately when she cried (and I return after only a moment). I then ask her "will you be happy? Say 'I will be happy.'" Then she wipes her eyes and says "I will be happy." So she believes me when I threaten her and she won't cry and will go back to sleep.

I've also stopped giving her milky during her 2-3 hour nap. When I'm done giving her first milk and she's still not asleep. I pretend that I'm asleep while repetitively telling her to lay down and close her eyes and stop talking. Again: "If you sit up or if you talk, I'm leaving the room." If she ever misses her nap, it makes for a very poor rest of the day, so I make sure that I do whatever I can to convince her to go to sleep for her nap at the perfect time each day: 12:30 unless she get's tired eyes and moody earlier.

Crystal was dancing at Zumba on Thursday and it was so sweet! We have so much fun together and I love her so much! She is such a wonderful little sweetie!

This is Steve and Crystal during General Conference:

How I Spend My Time

Lately, I've been reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. Each book is 800-or-so pages long. I started the first book shortly after my birthday or was it Christmas? Now I've just started the 6th book but think that I'm slowing down now.

For the past couple of days I've been practicing some vector calculus and I'm really enjoying it. Funny since I can't remember enjoying it much when I took it during a summer semester 7 years ago.

I'm tutoring math even more than ever and I am enjoying that also. My favorite students are my 9th and 10th graders taking algebra and algebra II. The most exciting subject for me to tutor is any of the college Calculus courses.

This year, I gave Crystal only a small birthday party and I gave Steve the bigger birthday party. In the 7 years of marriage, I had never given Steve a birthday party, partially because he hates big/long parties. But this year, he prompted the idea himself by suggesting that we invite his brothers over to share the cake. That's when I immediately started making the phone calls. For his cake, I followed the recipe for the "Red Waldorf" cake in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook except that I left out the red food coloring called it "Brown Waldorf." Though the name doesn't sound too good, the cake was.

Christmas time

This year, I feel happy that we had a full Christmas experience.

Activities include:
-Going clothes shopping on Black Friday
-Christmas party at church where we forced Crystal to momentarily sit on Santa's lap.
-Trip to the U.S. Botanic Garden downtown where we saw little trains.
-Visit to the Festival of Lights at the temple visitor's center where we watched a saxophone quartet.
-Christmas eve at Grandma Kelley's where we witnessed Rudolph sneaking around the backyard.
-I got a new bike for Christmas! and
-Hosting Christmas day dinner at our home with 19 Kelleys. This was the most exciting for me and it turned out great.

Crystal 18-36 months

Other news:
-We're still moving forward to buying half of our home.
-We're still potty training Crystal.
-I may be teaching a different primary class at church next year: I guess I'll find out when the decision final.
-Steve got a B in his Materials Science class this semester and will be registering for another class for next semester.
-The 6th grader that I've been tutoring got a 100% on a math quiz. Yay!

Loving and Missing the Outdoors

I haven't really been excited enough about anything these last few months. I guess that happens when starts to get cold. My favorite activity lately had been riding my bike (with Crystal in the trailer) to neighborhood playgroups 2-3 times a week and taking extra loops around the lake. I had to stop about a month ago because our garage door fell apart and it became too difficult to open and close in order to get the bike and trailer out. Well, the garage door should be getting replaced tomorrow! Hurray!

Click for some recent photos of our fall camping trip to Shenandoah and Crystal's Halloween costume.

Crystal 18-36 months

Other news:

At church, Crystal loves being in nursery while I teach the Sunbeams class.

Crystal 20 months old now and is part-time potty-training. I would let her be naked all of the time at home, except that she gets bad eczema (dry rashy skin) on her bottom in the winter and she needs clothes on to keep her skin protected from the dry air. So, right now I'm just letting her be naked every hour or so until she goes potty and then her clothes go back on. I'm afraid that that would be punishing her for going potty, so I still don't really have a coherent plan yet. I think that I should get some cloth diapers/training pants or something.

Crystal is also able to say pretty much every word now and several small sentences. She's very good at being polite by saying please, thank you, excuse me, and sorry all on her own. She counts to 12 and she sings some ABCs. She can even say prayers! But, she is still pretty quiet and shy in front of other people, just like her mommy and daddy are. She's also getting better at jumping. She has 16 full teeth.

She goes to sleep 8-9 pm, regularly wakes up for help-milk at 2am and 4am, and gets up at 6-7 am. I sleep on a separate bed in the same room. I think that I'll keep breastfeeding her until after she's at least two. It seems that I still haven't been able to get pregnant while breastfeeding which is fine because we're in no rush.

We're still living with just one car and it works just fine. I loving paying $800 less car insurance per year and not worrying about oil changes too.

We're trying to find a mortgage so that we can buy half of our house (the half that my Mother-in-law doesn't own). The house appraised at $245K, pretty low for it's size and neighborhood, because of its need of major remodeling.

I've also started math tutoring at home and I love it! It has all of the good things about teaching without the bad things like grading, classroom discipline, and bureaucrats. I charge $25/hour and I've only been advertising on craigslist. I need some more students, so please refer me to anyone you know that's looking for a math tutor. As I have a B.S. in Mathematics, I can help with pretty much any high school or college math course.