The Wilhelmsen Botanical Blog

Here are a few pictures from our family night on Valentine’s day that I didn’t add to the post last week…

So on President’s day I had the lucky opportunity to go and get another cavity filled.  Joy…

Wednesday Aiden was pulling on his ear, distraught, and didn’t nap well.  I ended up taking him to pediatrician during their night clinic hours.  Turns out that he did have an ear infection.  He was very cuddly in the evening and very sleepy as well.  We gave him ibuprofin, amoxicillin, and some numbing drops in his ear.  He slept soundly all night and was back to his normal mischievious self the next morning.  He is doing much better now and even seems to finally be recovering from his cold.

This week I finally finished our living room curtains.  I will try to remember to take photos this week to post.  We also tried out turnips as our vegetable of the week.  We had them pan roasted and we also had bacon clapshot.  The pan roasted were only so, so, neither one of us were very enthusiastic about them but the clapshot was yummy.  It was basically glorified mashed potatoes.

Friday evening after Aiden went to bed Brandon and I watched the movie Amelia.  When I was younger I was fascinated with her and the mystery of her disappearance is still quite intriguing.  We enjoyed the movie and I thought that it was well done.  It even led me to looking Amelia Earhart up on wikipedia to see what the latest speculations are on her disappearance.  It baffles me that she would have just disappeared with no trace.

Saturday I went to our stake women’s conference.  It was fabulous.  I learned a lot of useful things and it got me excited about food storage and food storage rotation.  I attended 4 classes, one about sprouts, one about beans, one about powdered milk, and one about canning meat.  Here is what I learned in brief summary:  Sprouting is easy, but I am not a fan of how sprouts taste.  Beans can be used as a fat (butter, shortening, oil) substitute in recipes and they taste equally as good but are even softer and more moist then if you had used butter.  Beans can also be used as flour if ground up dry.  I also learned that I really like split pea soup.  Yum.  I learned that powdered milk is amazing and that you should buy INSTANT non fat milk instead of REGULAR non fat milk.  Powdered milk can not only be used as a drink but by adding  just a few ingredients it can become sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and buttermilk.  You can turn powdered milk into yogurt, and from there it can become sour cream and cream cheese.  Not only can it become cream cheese but it is DELICIOUS, FAT FREE, cream cheese!  The speaker made two cheesecakes one with all store bought ingredients and one in which she had substituted all the dairy ingredients with powdered milk ingredients of the same.  They tasted the same!  I also had the cream cheese topped with homemade jam on a cracker.  It was so smooth and delicious.  I was amazed!  The canning class was cool.  I learned that you can can raw or cooked meats and that it isn’t that different then canning fruits or veggies.  It was a good learning day.

I have also been on this kick lately to just get things into place and into habit before Lucas is born.  The reason being that I know that if we can get into the habit of things before he is born then the craziness of a newborn will be less likely to disrupt it.  Here are some of what we have worked on…   We are getting more consistent with FHE, part of why is because we have set an alarm to go off every Sunday at 8:30 p.m. to remind us, the other reason is because we do it on Sunday when there are less outside distractions to cause us to forget.  I have also started to heed the primary song, “Saturday is a special day, it’s the day we get ready for Sunday…”  The last three Saturday’s (yesterday didn’t go as well as the ones before) we have taken an hour or two of our day to sweep, vacuum, mop, and to thoroughly clean the bathroom.  I think having a set day to do these less enjoyable chores and to have Brandon’s help, will help us to get us into a good habit of doing them.  It also helps to have two specific laundry days and a time of day to be finished by.  I have split my laundry load in half and do half one day and half another.  Getting it put away is still a struggle but at least I have set days to have them accomplished on.  Dishes are still a work in progress, we do 1-2 loads a day and I feel like there are always dishes on the counter.  We have also been doing pretty good at keeping the table clear and piles of papers from becoming clutter in the house.

Today was good, church went well, Aiden is doing superbly in nursery and always seems so aloof when I go to pick him up.  It’s like oh, hi mom, just a minute while I finish up.  LOL.  We had my dad over for a dinner of pork chalupas and bean fudge.  The bean fudge was tasty but the beans give it a strange texture.  The chalupa filling was SOOOOOOOO good.  Oh baby.  It is a recipe that we will definitely use again.  This morning when I was changing Aiden’s diaper he said, “Bite the baby Lucas toes.”  (We nibble on his all the time.)  I told him we have to be gentle and soft when we bite Lucas’s toes but it made me grin inside to think that I will take a little nibble of Lucas’s toes and then I can offer them to Aiden for a little nibble.  As we arrived at church Aiden said, “Mommy’s cute.”   To which I asked, “Mommy’s cute?”  Then he said, “Mommy’s handsome.”  So I asked, “Mommy’s handsome?” and then he said, “Daddy’s handsome.”  He did a very similar thing when we got home as well and this evening as my mom got ready to leave he ran his hand through her hair and said to her, “Hair’s cute.”  Then he told her, “Teeth’s cute.”  And then they stuck their tongue’s out at each other and my mom asked, “Is my tongue cute?”  To which Aiden replied, “Yes.”  It is fun to receive compliments from a two year old.  🙂

Lastly, I am down to 6 weeks before my due date, it has caused me to try and cherish these last few moments of one on one time with Aiden.  I try to hold him a little tighter, squeeze him a little longer, and to enjoy the quiet and silly moments that we have together.  I look forward to having another little one to hold and to the times when my two boys can play together, teach,  and entertain each other but I find myself mourning the loss of undivided, individual one on one time with my first born and for the smaller amounts of it that I will have with Lucas and all of my subsequent children.  I am also slightly nervous about going from one kid to two and how all of that transition will go.  I do know one thing though and that is that I will love both my boys with all of the love that a mother can have for her kids and I will do everything I can so that they know it.  😉  Thanks for reading….