How to starch a white shirt

Usually I would call my mom to share such random thoughts, but she isn't answering her phone tonight and Ryan is out playing basketball. So I've decided to turn to my blog.

After 2 years of Ryan being in law school, I may have just found the biggest con of having a lawyer husband... They need a freshly ironed white shirt EVERY day!!! I've never enjoyed ironing and we rarely do it in our house. Ryan has a really annoying habit of using the dryer as an iron(and a closet). He does a load of laundry with all his shirts, then leaves them in the dryer. When he needs a clean shirt, he just turns the dryer on for a few minutes until they are all wrinkle-free. This using the dryer instead of an iron thing has rubbed off on me. It's so much easier and quicker.

So Ryan has been in Washington DC for an internship the past 9 weeks, and just came home to start another internship here. He's done all the ironing so far. Tonight I decided I'd do him a favor and have his shirt all ironed and ready to go for tomorrow. When I saw the can of starch sitting on the ironing board, I started having second thoughts..I had no clue what to do with the starch! The only time I've ever used it is when I was making a quilt. I tried calling my mom to ask, but noone answered. I wasn't sure if the starch went on the whole shirt or just the collar, or how much to use. So I lightly coated the whole shirt, all the time wondering why white shirts needed to be stiff anyway. It wasn't until I was finished that I thought to google "how to starch a white shirt". I didn't see anything too useful, but I did learn that starch helps to keep a shirt from getting wrinkled so quickly.(according to ask.com)

So back to the con of Ryan being a lawyer.. I do NOT want to be ironing white shirts the rest of my life!!! Once was more than enough! And I have a feeling that it will probably become part of my wifely duties at some point(assuming I passed tonight). I guess all I can hope for is that Ryan will become less picky about his shirts and we can start using the dryer technique for white shirts as well! : )

The end.

Basement Required

Tornadoes have been occupying my thoughts constantly for the past 2 days.. There is a constant stream of pictures, videos, posts, news articles, etc being uploaded to facebook every few seconds about the Joplin tornado. I just now came across a first person video of a guy that was huddled with a group of people inside a gas station when the tornado hit. The power must have been out because it was dark, but you hear everyone talking until it hits, then the glass shattering, people screaming, and kids crying. It seriously made me sick to listen to it. I cannot imagine how horrible it would be to go through that. And can't believe how much destruction one storm can bring. I don't even recognize the city! A few people that I know lost their homes.. what in the world do you do if your house and all belongings are gone in an instant? I've always been terrified of tornadoes, but even more so since this one hit so close to home! So what I've decided is that when Ryan and I go to buy a house in a year or so, a basement is a must!!! And if I find the most perfect, cute little house with no basement, I'm gonna have to come back to this post and remind myself of my feelings. : )
While I'm on the topic of tornadoes.. I've got my own personal tornado in the form of a little girl named Lexi. She seriously destroys our house. Yesterday was especially bad. I've been on the computer alot reading about the tornado, so I've haven't been giving Lexi as much attention as she wants, and maybe that's the problem. Anyway, I had been sitting at the computer for about 5 minutes when I realized Lexi was completely silent. She is ONLY silent when she's doing something she knows she will get in trouble for. I went in to find Lexi with a jar of my canned butter. She had gotten it off the kitchen counter and took it in the family room to her play kitchen. She did a real good job buttering a piece of her play toast and other kitchen items. It wouldn't have been so bad if she wouldn't have buttered the carpet as well!! Her clothes and arms were completly covered. I didn't think there was any chance I'd get it all out. Anyway, I put her in her room for a while so I could start on the clean-up without her making it worse. While I was working on that, I heard her banging on her door and yelling "poop". I ran in there to find she had taken off her pull-up and peed on the carpet. UGH! Got all that cleaned up.. well semi-cleaned up because I don't think the carpet will ever be the same after all that butter. About an hour later Lexi drew on my new quilt with her crayon. I don't think I was the best mother ever yesterday.. Probably yelled WAY too much!


Here's a picture I took of the butter incident. I had already cleaned up Lexi and part of it before I thought to get the camera.


The end.

Kiddo stats

Lexi and Carter both had doctor appointments today which was quite an ordeal so I'm SO glad Ryan is able to come with me. I definitely couldn't manage by myself. They both had to get shots today and I've decided Lexi is at the worst age for shots because she's old enough to know what is going on, but too young to understand why. It's just too much for my little heart to take. Carter seems to have some sort of heart murmur so we have to take him to a cardiologist next week to get checked out. The doctor said she hears a clicking noise. Hopefully it won't be anything to worry about! Anyway, here are their stats and a few pictures..

Lexi-18 months
Height- 33 inches - 90th percentile
Weight- 22 lbs 4 oz - 25th percentile

Carter - 1 month
Height- 24 inches - 97th percentile
Weight - 12 lbs 6 oz - 97th percentile

2 Weeks!

Time is flying by! I know 2 weeks isn't really that long, but it's just that it feels like it was yesterday that we brought Carter home from the hospital. Why can't they stay little for longer?
He is the sweetest little boy! We thought Lexi was a really good baby, but I think Carter is better. He hardly ever cries except when he's hungry or during a diaper change. After I feed him, I can lay him down in the crib or bouncer, and he won't make a peep until 3 hours later when it's time to eat again, whether he's asleep or not. He is starting to be awake for a little longer each day- it's nice to see his eyes! I think they are a dark blue, but I've heard all babies have blue eyes at first. He is sleeping pretty well at night. Sometimes he still wakes up every 3 hours, but has started giving me 5-6 hour stretches.
Lexi has finally decided to start giving Carter some attention. She loves to hold him, give him kisses, and put his pacifier in and out. Today she even shared her dolly with him. I think she will be a great big sister if she can just learn to be careful with him. The other day we came home from the doctor and I had Carter in his car seat on the couch. She was upset about something and came over and tried to knock him off onto the floor. And after she holds him for a few seconds she tries to just push him off her. Hopefully she will learn soon!

All About Carter

Carter was born Wednesday, January 5th at 9:25pm. I was scheduled to be induced on the 6th at 39 weeks to try and prevent such a big baby and the damage that comes with it, but after an extremely rough cervix check at the doctors office, I went into labor early. Even though he was more than a week early, he still weighed in at 8 lbs 11 oz and 22 in. long. Here are some pictures for those who have been asking to see more..

My little angel?

My little sweetie pie sure is having a lot of un-angelic moments lately!! Today especially I'm not too happy with her. For the past month I've been trying to get my mom a copy of our family picture we just had taken. After like the 4th trip to JC Penny today I finally picked it up and got home with it. In the 20 seconds or less that I ran to the bathroom and back, Lexi managed to pull the envelope off the kitchen table, take the picture out of the envelope, smear her greasy french fry fingers all over it and put 2 bends down the middle of our faces.:( What a stinker!! The only thing that kept me from getting too mad is that she had the biggest smile on her face and seemed so proud of herself that she got a hold of it! I don't know what I'm going to do when she ruins more than just a 15 dollar picture. I'm sure it's going to happen over and over. Oh boy...

Last night I let Lexi go play in her room for a minute before I was going to put her to bed. I walked in about a minute later to find her here..



I guess she just really wanted to brush her teeth again. I had just done it 5 minutes earlier! I don't know how she thought she was going to get down from there!! I grabbed my camera to take a few pictures, then put her in bed. I heard a bunch of noise in her room so went in to find out what was going on and found her sitting on top of the changing table again in the dark! I'm not sure what to do about it. Do I try and teach her how to get down from it or move the changing table into the closet for a while?? I'm afraid she could really get hurt if she fell off it.

Anyway, here we have Lexi raiding my candy dish..




And here she is in one of her new favorite places to play..


And here she is just being cute : )

Lexi's bigger girl bed

A few days ago I went to go get Lexi out of her crib in the morning when I heard she was up and was quite surprised to find her standing at the door! She has been climbing on everything lately so I figured it wouldn't be too much longer before she learned how to climb out of the crib. We were planning on getting a toddler bed in the next couple months with the baby coming so we went ahead and bought it. Last night was our first time trying it out. I really had no idea how Lexi would do with it..I thought i'd have to put her back in bed a billion times and that it'd end with her in the crib. But she did pretty well. We put her in there and she immediately got up and started playing with her toys. She didn't seem to mind at all that she was in there by herself with the door shut and lights off. I just left her in there to play for about 10 minutes before I'd go in again and put her back in bed. After an hour she finally got so tired that she stayed in bed and fell asleep! I'm hoping it will get a little easier each night.