March and some of April 2020

It’s been an exciting month!  And also not at all!  I finally got a laptop and started working at home two weeks ago.  My first day working at home (it was a Friday), I made it to 10:00 am before the general manager at my plant asked me to come back to the office because I couldn’t even open one of the files he needed me to work on, let alone work on it and save it.  So I worked all that day in the office.  My boss (I got a new boss, more on that in a minute), decided I should plan on coming in to the office at least every Monday because I have a ton of reports to run on Mondays and it would be really hard to do on a laptop.  So I’m still in the office at least once a week.  My plan was to be super busy on Mondays and then try to take it a little bit easy the rest of the week so I could watch the girls at home.  So far that hasn’t worked out.  Three weeks ago was the first day of our quarter end close.  Month end close is always super busy.  Quarter end is always that much busy plus a lot more.  That morning, we had a conference call with our corporate office, and they announced that we had a new controller.  It’s a lady who’s already a controller at a plant in Oregon, and now she’s going to take on our plant also.  We’ve been without a controller for 9 months, which means that almost as long as I’ve worked here I’ve been trying to do a lot of controller duties, without knowing nearly enough about the company.  So it’s really good to now have a controller who knows a lot about the company.  But it was terrible timing to have her take over on the first day of quarter end.  Since she’s already in charge of one plant, she knew just enough to review all our files in detail and want me to rebuild a lot of the reports I run ( after I had run them and sent them to her for approval) to do it her way.  So on top of being already super busy for quarter end, now I was double busy doing everything a few times, and not really understanding what I was doing since I never really understood it in the first place and have just been treading water since I got here. That’s kind of how the last few weeks have gone.  And now the general manager is giving me lots more work, I think under the impression that since we have a controller taking work off me, I have more time, but actually she’s putting a lot more work on me.  So I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been at this company.  Add to that that I’m now trying to work from home while Hattie and Tille want to play (last Friday Matt had gone to an appointment and my boss was asking a bunch of questions over email, and Hattie and Tille were climbing on my chair asking me to stop working), and it’s a storm.  Our company is also struggling with the economy now. We’ve had a couple big rounds of layoffs this year, with a huge one last week.  So right now I’m really torn between being jealous of all the people I keep hearing talking about all their free time and new hobbies during quarantine, and being grateful that I still have a job, even if it’s sucking all the free time I had.

Besides that, here’s what’s going on with us:

I had a birthday! 10 years ago I turned 30 and my birthday left a lot to be desired.  But I told myself that by the time I turned 40 I’d be married and my husband would throw me a huge surprise party with all my friends and it’d be lots of fun.  Surprise, surprise!  Covid had other ideas.  Matt made it a really good day though.  He got me a huge bouquet of really pretty flowers and a new dress and a gift card for a massage as soon as spas are safe again.  We got Mexican food and the girls are still singing happy birthday to me.  And I realized that I like the idea of birthday parties, but I really don’t like being the center of attention so a big surprise party wouldn’t be my kind of celebration anyway.  So that was probably the perfect party for me.

In other news, what’s the deal with aging?  I feel like I’ve aged a lot in the last few months. More and more, my hips and knees hurt if I stand up wrong, my shoulder has been hurting for the past couple of weeks from laying on it wrong, and seriously, allergic to toilet paper?!  What?!  Why?!  And by the end of every day, I just want to lie flat on the floor while we watch tv because my back has had it.  I’m done getting old.

Now for a few cute stories of the girls.

Last week or maybe the week before, they started doing a naked dance.  I don’t know where it came from.  Just one night after the bath before we could get their diapers on, they ran over to the window and started dancing.  It’s so funny to watch.  They get so into and move and shake.  Now every night they tell us they want to do their naked dance before we put their diapers one.  Sometimes they keep doing it after their diapers are on. A few nights ago they were seconds from getting into the bathtub and Matt turned on their favorite dance music in the other room.  With the bathroom fan going, he didn’t think they’d hear it.  But they immediately ran out of the bathroom and we had a naked dance party in the living room for about five minutes.  It was great fun.

Every night before bed Tille (and sometimes Hattie) runs to the toy shelf to pick a stuffed animal to take to bed with her.  She always has to have a ‘beddy tear’ (that’s how she says teddy bear and it’s adorable).  They also have little fist-sized animals that must have come from a happy meal that Aunt Kathryn brought them a while ago.  Both girls call these animals their happy meals.  They’ll go to bed and then realize they need something and cry asking for their happy meals.  If anybody was ever listening in on us, they’d think we’re terrible parents, sending our babies to bed with happy meals every night.

When we’re driving in the car, we can never hear what Hattie and Tille try to say to us from the backseat.  Their voices are just too tiny.  One day Hattie kept trying to tell us something and we couldn’t hear, so Matt told me to tell her to use her big voice.  Apparently, he knew what was coming.  From the back seat, suddenly there was a big booming, almost man voice, telling us about the cows or something that she had seen out the windows. It was so funny.  Now whenever we tell her to use her big voice, she uses that big booming voice.  It cracks me up every time.  I would never imagine that my tiny Hattie could produce that sound.

The girls' favorite treat right now is ice cream cones 

Easter egg hunt in our front yard! Tille is in yellow, Hattie in blue

Just chilling with their milk

Nice selfie 

When i got home from work a few weeks ago, the girls were working on getting their pants off so they could tap dance. Hattie in pink, Tille in white. And then they danced for a while. They each had one glove on because in frozen, when elsa sings Let it Go, she takes off one glove and throws it into the wind. So when I get home from work they always get my gloves out of my coat pocket and start singing the song and throwing my gloves around. 

Being cute on their slide, Hattie in front, Tille in back

One morning i was getting ready in the bathroom and i could hear the girls giggling. I went out in the hall to see what they were up to, and they were just lying side by side talking to each other. 

Corona

This is mostly just for my own sake, I wanted to write down what was going on in the world right now so I'd remember what it was like. Feel free to read it, but sorry if it's boring. 

Virus Timeline

January

We’re hearing there’s a new virus called Coronavirus in China.  They’ve been dealing with it for a month or two.  It’s really far away.

Mid-February

Somebody in Washington state who just came home from China has been diagnosed with Coronavirus and is in quarantine in a hospital.  The situation is under control.

A few more people in Washington have been diagnosed.  Still, not a big threat.

Late February

Apparently, Coronavirus is a family of viruses that has been around for a while, and this is a new strain called Covid 19, meaning Corona Virus 2019.  Sweet. A few more people around the country have been diagnosed.  A couple people from Utah who are on cruise ships in Asia are in quarantine.

Wait, now one of those people from the cruise ship has come back to Utah and is in the hospital.

Early March

Somebody else in Utah just returned home from a cruise and has the virus.  They’re under self-quarantine at home. That makes 2 people in Utah. 

Saturday March 7- We haven’t been grocery shopping in a while.  I go to the store and buy everything, just as a good big weekly shopping trip.

Monday March 9- all the national news channels are talking about Covid, but it’s still not a big deal in Utah.  Life goes on as normal.

Wednesday March 11- I have a dr appointment that I’ve been waiting a couple months for.  On the way to the appointment, I hear on the radio that a third person in Utah has been confirmed to have Covid.  I also hear that so far sporting teams, and the Jazz particularly, have no plans to adjust their seasons or cancel any games.  At the dr, I find out I’m allergic to most toilet paper. You can imagine how fun the months leading up to this appointment have been, and how comfortable this dr appointment is.  Awesome.  I need to go to the store and get a certain brand of fragrance-free toilet paper.  But Matt has to work tonight and I have to go to young womens, and Matt has to work again tomorrow, and the girls have a cold so I don’t want to drag them to the store, so I’ll get it on Friday or Saturday.  No biggie.  At young womens, people are saying that the 3^rd person who was just diagnosed in Utah is a member of the Jazz, and the NBA has canceled the rest of their season.  That kind of begins a panic mode in Utah.

Friday March 13- Matt goes to the store to get a few basics; we’re out of milk and juice and he’s going to get me some special toilet paper, and he needs to get some cough drops and cold medicine.  Except he drives to two stores and both parking lots are packed and he’s heard rumors of people waiting in line for an hour or more to buy milk.  He doesn’t have time or energy for that.  When I get home he goes to a different store that we suspect might be less crowded.  He’s back in less than an hour, which I take as a good sign, but he says they were completely out of all milk products and the toilet paper shelves were totally empty.  What’s up with the rush on toilet paper?  What do people think is going to happen? I wish I had known on Wednesday that I did actually need to get toilet paper that night.  I had no idea Utah would be thrown into mass panic within hours.

That same afternoon, we get an email from the church that all church meetings, activities, and gatherings are canceled until further notice.  I think that’s when it really gets real for a lot of people.  Once the church cancels everything, Utahns take things seriously.  I don’t know if it’s that same day or a different day around then, but we also hear that schools are closing for at least two weeks starting the following Monday.  Everybody is being asked not to gather in groups of more than 100.

Saturday March 14- Matt has a pretty bad cold so I throw on some non-pajamas at 7 am and go to the grocery store, hoping to beat the crowds and get there while the shelves are still stocked.  It’s as crowded as mid-afternoon on a normal day. I make a beeline to the milk and get enough to last a week or two.  Next stop, toilet paper.  The store clearly hasn’t gotten a shipment in and the shelves are still empty.  So I’m still using toilet paper I’m allergic to.  Whatever, I’ve been using it for months and being uncomfortable- another few weeks won’t kill me.  I stock up on a few other things- not even really stock. Just get the basics to get through the week.  And, because we need something good, I get some fancy pastries from the bakery. 

A teenage girl in our neighborhood is scheduled to get baptized this afternoon.  We’ve been encouraging all the young women in the ward to come and support her.  Now we’re being told not to have more than 20 people there.  So we’ve just stopped reminding people about it.  I was asked to speak at the baptism, and it ends up being a really good gathering.  I think we have 21 people total.  It’s kind of a nice last get together for those of us who come.

We spend the rest of the day in the house, playing in the yard, and going for a walk.

A few times over the weekend I catch myself thinking we should buy some ammunition to defend against the inevitable zombie invasion; or how can we build up the wall in our backyard so that zombies can’t get over it into our house?  Then I have to remind myself that this isn’t a zombie apocalypse movie.  This is a fast moving illness that the majority of the population will recover from.  It will likely have long-lasting consequences on the economy, but not on the ability of the dead to form mobs and invade my neighborhood.

Sunday March 15- We have our ward council meeting by conference call.  So strange to sit in the basement in my pajamas having ward council.  One of the first things we talk about is funerals.  We have a lot of elderly people in our ward, and if/when this virus gets bad in our area, we’re going to have funerals. And most of the people who will want to come to the funerals will be the people at greatest risk. There’s a long silence as we all consider that.  In the end we decide the ward can’t host funeral luncheons until this is all over.  It makes me so sad to think that these people who have been neighbors for 50 years or more won’t be able to celebrate each others’ lives.  And a woman whose daughter died right before Christmas and was planning a memorial service for her next Saturday is going to have to put it off.  She was already dreading having to do this, now she’s going to have to dread it a little longer. We also talk about how to take care of the widows/widowers/homebound/etc in our ward.  The best way to keep them safe and love them is to stay away from them.  Most of our ministering for the foreseeable future is going to have to be online or over the phone.  We were planning a big ward activity for the first week of April to teach the older members in the ward how to use technology and gospel apps.  If only we’d done that a month ago, we might have been a little more prepared to serve them in this time.  It is a pretty somber ward council as we try to come up with ways to take care of the ward.

The whole weekend, I feel like the world is ending and it seems so strange to think that I would be going back to work on Monday.  Why go back to work?  What was I working for anymore? What was the point?  So it’s actually kind of nice to get back to work on Monday and see that things are still normal.

Monday March 16- Back to work.  Life is still functioning.  I’m still running all the same reports.  It’s a little harder than usual because not everybody is here to get me what I need, but basically it’s business as usual.  I’ve asked for a laptop in case I need to work from home.  I’m being mostly ignored on that request. The stores are still too crowded/out of stock so we’re starting to get a little nervous about diapers and other essentials, but we’re ok for now.

On the way home from work I’m listening to the radio and I’m pretty sure I hear babies crying in the background.  Are the radio news anchors working from home?

Tuesday March 17- I’m being told now that if I need to work from home I’ll get a laptop. I bring up the point that if I need to work from home, it’ll be too late for me to come in and get a laptop.  They say if it comes to that, they’ll decide if I’m a critical employee and if so they’ll ship one to me. Otherwise, I can take a sick day.  Great plan.  First off, I run several reports that management uses every day throughout the day.  Some of those reports nobody else knows how to run.  Second, I’m not sure HR is thinking ahead to how much work goes into setting up a laptop with all the programs and systems that each worker needs for their individual jobs.  They can’t just ship me a laptop and expect me to be up and running within minutes.  I’m going to need someone to show me how to login from home, how to link to all the different programs, etc.  And I doubt very much that whoever ships me a laptop will know all the programs I use.  And HR has already told us that if we’re exposed to someone who gets sick, we have to be out for 2 weeks.  So even if I’m not sick and can easily do my job, they won’t let me come in.  I’m interested to see how this is going to play out.

Also, on my way into work this morning, the radio anchors mention that for the first time in their careers, they’re working from home (confirmed my suspicions from my drive home last night).  They’ve got their studios set up at home with screens to see each other so they can kind of interact. 

There’s a diner I pass every morning on my way to work.  Every morning for the past year, I look in the window and see the same people sitting at the same barstools at the counter eating their breakfast.  This morning, the diner was closed. The lights were off the blinds were half down.  It was so weird.  Life is starting to stop.

Wednesday March 18- Sitting at work, running my morning reports a little after 7, and it sounds/feels like somebody is pushing a big cart past my window.  Except it’s getting bigger and bigger and people further in the building are starting to notice it.  Wait.  It’s an earthquake.  Seriously?!  Plagues aren’t enough?!  Yep.  Started with a little rumbling, then shaking, then the building is swaying.  It lasts 20-30 seconds. I call Matt.  He says he and the girls were snuggling on the couch and the girls got pretty scared but they’re all ok.  After a few minutes, the safety guy at work comes around and asks us all to evacuate until they can make sure the building is safe.  We go out and stand in the rain for a few minutes.  The news reports a 5.7 magnitude earthquake in Magna, by the airport. We’re hearing reports of aftershocks, but I don’t feel any.  There’s another earthquake (4.4 magnitude) about an hour later that lasts 5-10 seconds (it was a confirmed separate earthquake, not an aftershock). Oh boy, another little aftershock (4.6 magnitude) while I’m eating lunch a little after 1pm.  Just about five seconds, but enough to make my stomach drop.  I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.  This is all some really scary stuff.

Thursday March 19- We have a conference call with all the other plants in our division at work.  I find out that my plant is the only one whose finance team is still working onsite- everybody else is working from home.  We bring up the fact that only one person on our team (of 4 people) has a laptop.  The division controller tells us we all need laptops and he’ll make that happen.  Later in the day our IT person tells us he can order laptops but they’re 6 weeks out- won’t do us much good if we’re quarantined in the next week or two.  Plus, my laptop alone, because of the capabilities it would need, will cost $3000.  So the plan for now is that if we’re quarantined, we’ll all just take our whole computers home and set up a home office.  Works for me.  We also find out that some plants are in lockdown areas- their employees are under state mandate not to come to work.  We all expect to be in the same situation any day or hour.

The state has now ordered all dine-in restaurants to close.  They can still offer carry-out options, but nobody can stay and eat inside the restaurant.  I notice on my way home from work that a few restaurants have set up carry-out stations in their parking lot, with numbered parking stalls for easy pickup.  I also notice that parking lots that are usually bustling by the time I’m driving home from work are empty. 

We’re also being told now not to gather in groups of more than 10.  In less than a week, it’s gone from no more than 100 to more than 10.  Things are changing so fast. I never know from one day to the next if I’m going to be coming back to work or if grocery stores will still be open or if we’ll still be allowed to go for walks in the neighborhood.  Some people are saying this will last two weeks, some a couple of months, some up to 18 months.  There’s just so much uncertainty in life right now.  Mostly, I wish I could be home.  I’m hearing of people losing their jobs and companies closing already, so I’m glad to still be able to work and earn money, but I wish I could be home so if things change even more drastically I’ll be with my family.

Here’s hoping for a quiet weekend!

February 2020

I don’t know where Hattie came up with this, but lately her favorite game is Dr.  She calls herself Dr. Hattie and then uses whatever she has in hand (toothbrush, comb, qtip, crayon, etc) as a flashlight to look at Matt’s, Tille’s, and my ears, eyes, and mouth.  Then she’ll use the same tool as a stethoscope to listen to our hearts, and she always makes a little heartbeat sound when she listens.  Most nights in the bath she’ll make me call her Dr. Hattie and she’ll check out all of Tille’s ouches- any current bruises as well as anywhere that she remembers Tille used to have bruises, and any scars or freckles.  And lately, Tille will pretend to cry.  But not just cry- she wails and sobs.  And the only medicine that works is a big hug from Dr. Hattie.  It’s so great.
A few weeks ago I was at work on a Monday morning and Matt texted to let me know Tille had thrown up in the living room.  When she cries really hard, she throws up, so I figured it was something like that.  But then I saw on a screen shot of the camera in their room that all the bedding on her bed was gone.  Turns out she had thrown up during the night, and she threw up two or three more times that morning.  He said she was ok after that.  The next night, about 15 minutes after we put the girls to bed, they started calling us.  Matt went to check on them, and I heard him get Hattie out of bed and tell her to go find me.  She came running out of her room as happy as could be, with throw up dripping off her chin.  Other than the grossness, it was pretty cute.  I got her cleaned up, Matt changed her sheets, and then we put her back to bed.  Another 30 minutes or so went by, and I checked on the video feed in their room.  Hattie was sitting up and looking really confused.  With the night vision on the video feed it was hard to tell exactly what was going on, but it looked like she might have something on her hands.  She was running her fingers through her hair, then wiping them on the crib, then rubbing them on her pajamas.  I finally went in to check on her.  As soon as I opened the door, she started saying really loudly, ‘yeah, uh huh, oh, yeah’, over and over.  I got her out of bed and had her go to the living room.  It was a bad one. We spent the next 20 minutes or so cleaning up (Tille somehow slept through the whole thing) and then the next hour or so with Hattie throwing up in a bowl in the living room.  It was so sad.  She was scared and miserable. We didn’t have any more clean bedding for her, so eventually we got her settled down on the living room floor on a big towel.  I slept on the couch next to her so Matt could have a chance at sleeping and be fresh to take care of them all day the next day, and every hour on the hour that night she threw up a little bit.  When I got home from the work the next day, the girls were playing in the living room and Matt was lying on the couch, sick.  I got it the day after that, violently.  The girls weren’t throwing up anymore, but they still had other symptoms, and Matt and I felt awful, and it was all very very gross. 
For as long as I can remember, at least since early teenage-hood, I’ve dreaded the day that I would have to clean up my kids’ throw up.  I knew I could handle most of the grossness of being a mom, but I didn’t know how I would get through stomach issues.  It would be too gross.  So basically, my whole life I was dreading the week that finally came.  And I survived.  It was gross and yucky but I survived. And it will never happen again, right?
Now it’s 2 weeks later and they’re sick again.  This time it’s just a cold, but still.  Seriously?  I ‘slept’ in the living room with them 2 nights ago and was wiping a nose every 5-10 minutes between 1:30 and 4. And then ‘woke up’ at 5 to get ready for work. I’m too old and tired for this.

The week after the great stomach bugtastrophe, I got home from work one day and the blind on our big front window was pulled down.  I looked more closely, and the big front window was shattered.  My first thought was ‘oh no, who threw a toy at the window and will be in time out for the next year?’  I ran inside, dreading the storm that I was sure I would find in there.  Matt was sitting calmly at his computer, and the girls were watching tv.  I looked at the window, then at Matt, and asked what had happened.  Turns out, when they’d been out on an errand, a bird had hit the window hard enough to go through the first pane and shatter it.  It didn’t break the inner pane, but it left a smudge mark (that’s why we think it was a bird- there’s no body, but a rock would have scratched or cracked the inner pane, not smudged it).  When they got home, Matt hadn’t noticed it at first, but the girls wouldn’t go inside and were really scared.  So that’s why Matt had closed the blind and let them watch tv.  Because it’s a big window, we had to special order the replacement, so we have a really pretty view for a few weeks, and every so often we hear more glass falling out.

Even though I hate when we’re all sick, there are some nice things about it.  The girls take such good care of each other when one feels worse than the other.  Whichever one feels better will always bring the sick one extra toys or drinks or pillows and will tuck her in on the couch.  And when Matt gets really sick, he’s really thoughtful.  I feel bad knowing he feels bad, but I get to hear his inner most thoughts, and it’s nice.  I can never tell if he’s lucid or not, it’s like he’s hovering somewhere in between.  He’ll be telling me how much he appreciates and loves me, and then he’ll say something completely ridiculous.  This time when he was sick, he was lying on the couch while I made dinner, saying all kinds of nice things to me, and then with no context, he shouted, ‘I thought there were 13!’  Later that night, as we were falling asleep, we were having a great conversation about all kinds of things, and then he yelled at Tille to go to bed (hours after she’d been in bed).  It’s always an adventure talking to sick Matt.

Two more quick things: a few weeks ago we recorded the live action Cinderella movie that Disney made a few years ago.  I had never seen it, but it might be my favorite Disney movie now.  It’s fantastic.  The story is great, the filming is pretty, the acting is good, it’s just all around great.  Matt pointed out that it doesn’t have enough music, and he’s right.  It has one recurrent background song throughout that’s really pretty (Lavender Blue- the girls request us to sing it to them all the time now, and I love it), but that’s it. Seriously, great movie.

And last, the girls have very strong opinions about their clothes.  They each have two Sunday dresses that they love.  One of those (technically 2, one for each girl), has fluffy tulle skirts, perfect for twirling, and the other is long and flowing with a big bow in the back.  If I let the girls pick their Sunday clothes, it’s one of those dresses.  If I pick their Sunday clothes, they fight me until I relent and let them wear those or convince them that something else is also twirly.  And for weekday clothes, they love anything that has a ruffle that might conceivable twirl.  They love the twirly princessy look right now!  And they love getting to choose their own outfits out!

Tille loves to play with the camera on my phone and always finds features I didn't know I had, like bunny and puppy face stickers. 

Sigh...

Tille got to go to FHE with me while Hattie stayed home sick with Matt and she had a blast playing with her cousins 

Hattie likes to help with laundry 

Here's Hattie practicing her selfie game

Aunt Kathryn always does fun things with the girls hair. Here's Tille sporting the latest style. 

 

Don't they look so grown up?

January 2020

Oh, where to begin?  Starting pretty soon after Christmas, Tille figured out how to take her pajamas and diaper off at night, and every morning when we got her out of bed she was stark naked, holding a perfectly dry diaper and pajamas in the middle of a soaking wet bed.  It meant a lot of early morning laundry sessions so her bed would be ready by naptime.  After a few days, we decided to attach the tabs of her diaper by duct tape to make them harder for tiny fingers to get off in the middle of the night.  You would have thought we were sending her to bed with a giant tarantula taped to her diaper.  She was terrified!  Even before we got the tape on her, when she saw us get the tape out, she started getting so scared!  It was like we were performing surgery on her without anesthetic.  I’ve never seen her so scared.  Once we got the tape on her diaper, Tille was trying to move around without touching the tape and without looking at it, and if she accidentally glanced at it she’d get scared all over again. And Hattie got scared too.  She was so scared about what we were doing to her sister. It was sweet to see how worried she was for her sister.  Eventually we got them calmed enough for bed and decided duct tape wasn’t the answer.  The next few days we put Tille specifically in pjs that snapped up and down the legs.  It took her a few nights to figure out how to get those off, but eventually she did.  So then one day after work I took the girls on a special shopping trip to pick out new pajamas.  They each got a couple pairs of one-piece pjs that zip up and are footless.  That way, they can wear them backward and can’t reach the zipper.  They were so excited to get home and show Matt their new clothes that they got to pick out! The first night, the instant Matt zipped Tille up, she was wriggling around in her pjs trying to unzip.  But she can’t!  And since then, we’ve had no wet sheets in the morning.

One of the first Sundays of the year, Matt woke up with a migraine.  As it got closer to church time, it was obvious he wasn’t going to be able to go church.  I thought, ‘it’s ok, I’ll be able to take the girls to nursery.  They love their teacher and will happily go and play and I can go to young womens’.  About an hour before church, their nursery teacher texted me (because she knows they only go to nursery if she’s there) and let me know she was sick and wouldn’t be there that day.  And I thought, ‘well, there goes that.’  We went to church, and the girls did awesome in Sacrament Meeting.  They always do a good job there.  Then we went to nursery.  I had warned Hattie and Tille that their teacher was sick and wouldn’t be there, but they’d have a different teacher that they could be nice to.  They said they would and were excited to play with her.  When we got there and they took one look around, they lost it.  Whatever courage they’d been building up to meet their new teacher was gone and replaced with tears and sobs.  So they went to young womens with me and clung to me for the next hour.  It was pretty cool.

Some days when the afternoon is dragging and we can’t think of anything else to do, I ask the girls if they want to do my hair.  Hattie usually gets most excited.  She’ll go in the bathroom and grab all my brushes and hair clips and pumice stones and nail clippers and I get to lie on the floor while they brush my hair and work on my feet.  It’s great for all of us.  Except a few times Hattie has taken off my socks and I realize she’s clipping my toe nails.  It always scares me to find her with nail clippers, but so far we haven’t had any accidents. 

Lately, Tille always has a song.  She’s always humming or singing something. One day a week or two ago, Tille and Hattie were busy playing while I cleaned or made dinner or something and Matt was at work.  And I realized I could understand the words to Tille’s song. She was singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’.  I could make out several of the words and the tune.  Yay!  It was huge!  Since then, I can almost always tell what she’s singing.  She likes to sing that and Bah Bah Black Sheep and I Am a Child of God and the Pink A Licious theme song and Let it Go and a few others. Hattie will sometimes join in.  More often she’ll ask me to sing a song and then sing along with me.  Her favorite song right now is ‘Jesus Once Was a Little Child’.  Any time I start singing it she freezes and stares at me and then asks for more when I finish.  It’s so great to hear their tiny voices with actual words and phrases!  And it’s so cute to know they’re getting songs stuck in their heads!

Lately Hattie says 'Otay' to everything we say. But it's not just otay. She puts a strong emphasis on the 'tay', and she usually hangs her shoulders and acts like she's carrying the world on her back when she says it. It's pretty great. A few weeks ago the girls went to the Wednesday young women activity with me. We were doing yoga . Both girls got right in without hesitating and were doing downward dog and warrior poses. Afterward, when some of the leaders asked if they had fun, Hattie hung her shoulders and acted like she'd just finished a marathon. She might be a little drama queen.
One more story- a few weeks ago Matt was replacing all the hinges in all our inside doors. Hattie was helping him by holding the screws and handing them to him. She likes to remind us a few times a week that she helped him with that. A few nights ago after I combed her hair before bed, I was holding Tille up to the window to look at the moon and Hattie was kneeling next to our tv stand making a funny sound. I asked what she was doing and she made a gesture with her hand and kept going. I realized she was using the comb to "screw" in all the screws on the tv stand. Now every night before prayer she and Tille take turns screwing the furniture together with whatever they can find with a skinny handle.

One night last week we were all in the car driving home.  I don’t remember what we were talking about, but Matt jokingly called me ‘Sucker!’ and from the back seat we heard a tiny ‘Sucka!’  It was so funny!  I guess we need to start being more careful what we say around those girls.

We have these dry erase boards that are supposed to help little kids learn. They have letters, numbers shapes, etc for kids to trace and copy. This board has 2 circles and then down below different kinds of animals to try drawing. This is Tille's first person drawing. Hattie drew one later where the prominent feature was a belly button. I asked what she had drawn and she lifted up her shirt to explain it to me. 

The girls just chilling while they watch their shows

Eating ice cream cones. 

Playing in the snow on a Saturday night 

New backward pajamas 

Tille is riding a horse at the children's museum

Hattie is driving the firetruck at the children's museum 

Tille is trying to wait her turn for the toilet. We have two toilets now

November and December 2019

Yikes, it’s been a while since I’ve written an update!  I’ll try to remember what’s been happening.

Hattie and Tille are getting better and better at talking.  I feel like they know how to talk, they’re just really shy about it and maybe lack confidence in themselves to try.  The first week or so of trying any new word, they’ll always whisper it.  They won’t say any word out loud until they’re sure they’re doing it right.  So they whisper a lot.  We really have to listen closely to catch their words.  But we keep catching them with a lot of words.  A few weeks ago, Hattie and Tille were looking at the grocery store mailers and Hattie pointed to some pictures she saw.  She very clearly whispered, while pointing at the correct pictures, ‘Apple, Blueberry, Raspberry’.  I was stunned!  I had no idea she knew those words!  Since then I’ve heard both girls say all those words, plus pumpkin (the tags on their favorite pajamas have a picture of a pumpkin), teacher (they love their nursery teacher), church, Elmo, Anna, Elsa, Barbie, and lots more.  For Christmas they got the book ‘Go, Dogs, Go’.  One of the pages has a bird saying ‘Stop dogs stop!’.  Now the girls like to tell us Go and Stop!  And they hold their hands up when they say stop. 

For months the girls have liked pretending to be puppies.  They crawl around and pant and think it’s so funny.  But lately they’ve added licking to the game.  They’ll crawl up to us and lick our shoulders or legs or whatever they can reach. It’s so weird.  But also pretty cute.

A few weeks ago I was giving the girls their nightly bath and just randomly they started saying ‘Bob’ and laughing.  I have no idea who Bob is or where they heard of him.  But apparently he’s really funny.  Ever since, Tille will say ‘Bob’ and just laugh and laugh, or put her hand over her mouth and snicker.  If we ask her to tell us a joke, she’ll say Bob and laugh.  None of their tv shows or books have a bob in them.  We really don’t know who bob is. It’s become a really funny joke in our house though.

Leading up to Christmas, we were delivering treats to our neighbors, one or two houses a night.  At our next door neighbors’ house, we were standing in the living room chatting for maybe 10 minutes.  Matt was holding Hattie and I was holding Tille.  The entire time we were there, Tille kept grabbing my face and turning it towards the door, letting me know with no uncertainty that she was done.  So funny!

A couple weeks ago we dropped by Matt’s sister’s house for a few minutes.  They have a huge garage (makes the Bodens’ garage mahal look small).  They’ve hung a long rope from the middle rafter and can clip different types of swings to it.  While we were there, they clipped a baby swing to it and let the girls each take a turn.  Because the roof is so high, the swing goes far!  The girls loved it!  I’m kicking myself for not getting a video of it.  I’ve never seen the girls have that much fun!  We’ll definitely be going back for more of that fun.

For Christmas, with the help of Grandma and Grandpa, Santa built a dollhouse in our basement.  It ended up being too big to get up the stairs on Christmas Eve, so he had to take it outside and up on the deck to get it into the living room.  But when we brought Hattie and Tille out to the living room Christmas morning, they couldn’t believe their eyes!  They kept saying ‘ho, ho, ho’ (their way of saying Santa), and rubbing their eyes to make sure they were seeing it.  They got a few barbies and a barbie helicopter and car to go with the house, and they’ve been busy ever since.  It’s great. They love arranging all the furniture and putting things in just the right spots.  And it’s big enough that they won’t even be able to see the top floor for another year or so, so it’ll be fun for years!

For New Year’s Eve, the girls got to have a party with their cousins (and they got to go on the big swing again), while Matt and I went to a fancy restaurant.  We talked about it before hand and Hattie was nervous about being left at her cousins’ house, but once we got there, she went right in and never looked back.  She and Tille love this one particular cousin.  He’s 10 or 11 and they think he’s hilarious.  We just have to say his name and they bust out laughing.  He’s really good at playing with them.  And their other cousins, closer to their age, came to play and make cookies so they had a great party without us. We should make that a yearly tradition. 

Oh, I almost forgot! Tille has intentionally peed in the Elmo toilet twice! It's only about one a week, but I think she's getting the concept! It kind of feels like the more Tille does it, the more Hattie doesn't want to. But i have a feeling that once we really try, they'll figure it out pretty quickly. 

Playing video games

We got a little snow on Thanksgiving

Hattie posing on Thanksgiving. She loves wearing headbands because princess elsa does

Both girls on Thanksgiving

Hattie and Tille reading with their hilarious cousin 

Playing with their nativity set. Hattie in back, Tille in front

Riding the train at Christmas village 

Maintaining skincare is so important 

We got a frog ornament from our Michigan cousins 

There's an old timey ice cream place down the street from our house, and they had a table just perfect for the girls 

Tille loves dumping all the bows and headbands out of the box and being silly with it. 

October 2019

I’ve always (like, as long as I can remember) had really rough and bumpy skin on my arms. I finally went to the dermatologist a month or two ago (and sat in the waiting room next to a girl who was in our ward in Ogden when we were growing up- it’s kind of fun being back in Ogden and running into people every now and then).  The dermatologist told me to use a very specific type of lotion ($19 for a medium sized bottle?!!!!!) and it would exfoliate the rough spots and make my skin smooth.  So I started using that lotion, and lo and behold, for the first time in my life my arms are almost smooth.  They’re not totally smooth yet, but within a couple weeks there was a very noticeable difference, to the point where I guess I’m now the kind of person who spends $19 on a medium sized bottle of lotion.  What’s next? Quilted toilet paper?  Haha, let’s not get crazy.  ANYWAY, the point is, I have smooth arms and it’s very amazing to me.  So much so, that one night during family prayer I must have been rubbing my arms.  After the prayer, Hattie totally called me out.  She said, “Mom”, and then showed me how she folds her arms.  I said, “yeah, you folded your arms during prayer, good job.” She shook her head and said, “No, mom”, and then folded her arms again.  I said, “yeah, I folded my arms too”.  She shook her head and then rubbed her arms.  Then I realized she was telling on me for not being perfectly reverent during prayer.  Haha, great.

The Saturday before Halloween we went on a train ride.  There’s a model train club in Ogden, and one of their big things is that they have a model train that is 1/8^th scale of real trains.  It’s big enough to hold adults, but just barely.  A few times a year, they have free train ride days, and for Halloween they have a special trick or treat train day. It’s at a park not far from our house.  Turns out, the train club has a track permanently set up around the park- they leave it there all year and it doesn’t get damaged in the winter or by hooligans.  We got to ride in the train around the park, and at one point we stopped and some people in costumes came and passed out candy to all the kids on the train.  Afterwards, there were food trucks and the girls played on the playground and it was lots of fun.  Hattie sat with me on the train.  She sat very still between my legs and barely looked around.  If I pointed something out, she’d nod, but not really risk moving.  I think she was fairly nervous. Matt had Tille with him and he said she was oohing and aaahing and laughing the whole time.

For Halloween, Hattie was a panda bear and Tille was a lion.  We just bought costumes that were basically warm coats.  They were super cute.  There was an article on KSL (or Deseret News?) a day or two before Halloween about how Halloween and trick or treating are so good for kids to experience some freedom and independence.  I had never thought of it that way, but I totally saw it with Hattie and Tille.  Normally they’re super duper shy.  If somebody looks at them (even somebody they know, outside a selected 6-7 people they’ve accepted), they’ll hide their faces and refuse to acknowledge anybody’s existence.  But when we took them trick or treating, they walked along, went up to people’s doors, knocked, held out their candy buckets, said thank you, smiled, and had fun the whole time.  The setting of dressing up and trick or treating gave them an opportunity to not be shy and to interact with strangers.  It was really fun to watch.  There was one house where a kid answered the door wearing a hockey mask.  Tille and Hattie had gone up boldly and were ready for candy, but when he opened the door, they both stepped back a little.  You could see in their faces that they were trying to decide if this was ok.  They knew he had candy, but he also didn’t look right.  It was a major dilemma for them.  Luckily, the candy won out and they were brave.  By the end of trick or treating, the girls were exhausted.  Tille was falling asleep on my shoulder and Hattie was doing her best to keep up next to Matt.  And yet, when we got home, the first thing Tille did was run to the couch and start organizing her candy, laying it out in straight rows to see what she had.  Haha, I thought it was so funny! 

We’ve started getting toy catalogs in the mail.  Target, Amazon, and I think a couple other mailers clearly targeted at kids.  These have become Hattie and Tille’s favorite books.  Every single toy, they point to the picture on the page, then pat their chest, then back and forth very excitedly, and we have to acknowledge that they like that toy, or they just get more and more excited.  A few weeks ago, we were at Costco, and we walked past a big dollhouse on display.  Matt and I have been talking about getting a dollhouse for Christmas, so as we walked past this one, Matt was just starting to ask what I thought of that one.  But before he got a word out, Tille squealed louder and longer than we’ve ever heard about anything.  She was so excited about that dollhouse!  A few people around us chuckled a little, and now we know what Santa is bringing the girls for Christmas.  Every now and then, we’ll go back to Costco and walk past that display, and they still love it.  I can’t wait for them to see it set up in the living room on Christmas morning.

Here are just a couple quick tidbits.  Hattie loves telling secrets.  Every now and then while they’re playing, Hattie will stop what she’s doing and come over and whisper in Matt’s or my ear.  And sometimes during dinner she’ll lean over and whisper to Tille. She doesn’t have words to whisper yet, but she definitely seems like she has something important to tell us.

My favorite word right now is still “moooeah”.  In the morning, the girls usually wake up while I’m getting ready for work, so Matt sits with them on the couch.  Then I have about 10 minutes to cuddle between getting ready and leaving.  Some days, Tille will lay on my lap and demand back or tummy scratches.  If I stop for a second, from deep within the blanket she’s cuddling under, I’ll hear a tiny “moooeah”.  It’s so cute.  Every night after the bath, we do rock-a-bye for the girls.  We bundle them up in their towels and sing rock a bye baby while rocking them like tiny babies.  They love it.  It always calms them down and they stare into space or at our faces or hug us tight while we sing.  And even before we finish the song, they start saying “moooeah, moooeah”.  Seriously precious.  The other night, we gave the girls ice cream after dinner.  When Tille finished, she handed me her bowl and said, “moooeah”.  I said no, it’s bath time, and she lost it. I realized later it was probably the first time she’s been told no about food while sitting at the table.  Both girls are so tiny and not great eaters, so we never say no if they want to eat more.  Tille was probably shocked that she didn’t get more of something she was willing to eat.  Anyway, her little “moooeah”s are the best.

 

One of the train conductors let me wear his pirate hat. 

Grandma and grandpa took the girls to the park

 Riding the train.  Hattie is hidden in my legs

 Playing the piano with their cousin

 Sometimes the girls just want to wear their unicorn dresses

Happy Halloween!!

Hattie was taking selfies while I did her hair

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 Don't they look like tiny 5 year olds with their hair in pony tails?! I need them to be squishy babies again!