The Wilhelmsen Botanical Blog

So this morning as I led Aiden through the breakfast prayer I told him to say, “Please bless grandpa.” Knowing both are in need of blessings I didn’t specify which and moved from there to please bless our food, but before Aiden would say that he added uncoached, “Thank you for our grandpa.”  What a sweet boy.

This morning while Aiden took a bath I was sticking putty tack on the back of some photos.  I turned my head for just a moment and next thing I know I hear him saying, “need the potty” and he has his potty seat (just the part you fit onto the big toilet) in the tub with him.  Oi.  Needless to say I emptied out the tub and re-filled it before he resumed his bath.

So, my preggo brain is just about spent.  It seems that the closer I get to Lucas arriving the less I can remember.  🙂  I am 36 weeks today and we are pretty much prepared for his arrival in the way of clothes, a place to sleep, and other supplies.  I am not however quite prepared for the major change that is about to take place in our little family.  I don’t think anyone ever can be though.  While I don’t remember a whole lot about details of the week I do know that we are trying to keep ourselves fed and taken care of as well as getting out of the house as often as possible because once the baby is born it will be a bit more difficult, it is also just good practice to keep a new baby home away from the public for the first few weeks.

So Wednesday Brandon ended up being home all day, mostly to recuperate his voice which he had nearly lost subbing the day before.  We ended up going to eat lunch and then over to the dollar movie to see Planet 51.  Aiden did really well for the first hour of the movie and then he was ready to go.  Thankfully the theater was nearly empty and Brandon and I were able to take turns distracting Aiden and taking him out into the hall.  We will likely take Aiden to the movies again soon, just not during peak hours.  😉

I also made cookies on Wednesday.  My mom dropped by and suggested that we stick some in his oven on a make shift cookie sheet and let him discover them.  He thought it was pretty neat to be “baking” some cookies and took them in and out of his oven several times before finally eating them.

Friday we had an evening out and enjoyed $1.00 meatball plates at Ikea.  It was an awesome deal, especially when paired with 4 slices of garlic bread for $1.00 as well.

Saturday we spent a good portion of the morning cleaning and “getting ready for sunday”.  In the evening we called my cousin Mike and his wife and invited them over to play board games.  Aiden and their daughter played together while we all visited and played one round of Would You Rather.  We enjoyed their company and it was nice to socialize with other adults a little bit.  Thanks for coming to visit!

Sunday was our usual.  Church, a visit from my ever wonderful mom, and then after dinner we went out to Ferguson family night.  We stopped at my dad’s briefly beforehand so that Brandon could pick up his ski’s and ski boots and got to visit a little while Aiden got into mischief.  😉

As for other news our veggie of the week this past week was leeks.  We had creamy potato leek soup, green egg and ham cups, and greek ditalini.  Here is what we learned, leeks are great.  In my opinion they are just a milder version of an onion.  The other thing we learned is that I do NOT like romano cheese.  Two of the recipes we had this week included this offending cheese and I just could not stomach it.  Aiden and Brandon on the other hand gobbled it right up and Brandon mentioned on several occasions that he was glad we were branching out and trying new cheeses.  Not only did we test out leeks and romano cheese this past week but we also had gruyere cheese on our ham and egg cups.  The gruyere was milder and in the ham and egg cups barely noticeable.  I will likely try gruyere again.

Ok, so in ending I have had something on my mind that I feel like mentioning as a way of putting minds at ease.  Since my marriage to Brandon various people have noted concerns to me on many things such as jobs, kids, my decision to be a stay at home mom, the places we have lived, the number of kids we want and our timing to have them, our desire to adopt, etc.  I appreciate everyone’s concern and their desires for the absolute best for our family.  That is what we want too.  I just want to let people know that we are not making important decisions off the cuff.  We pray about them, we seek out all of our options, we weigh them against our priorities as well as those things of spiritual and temporal importance, we do our best to make decisions as fully informed as possible, and on top of it all we make sure that the decision we are making is in the absolute best interest of our family.  Sometimes there are factors in our decision making that may not be visible from the outside but that may need to be weighed more heavily then the obvious facts.   Just trust that we involve the Lord in our decision making and trust 100% that he will not steer us wrong.  Also know that especially since Brandon graduated that we have been praying more fervently then ever before about the future such as what Brandon should do for his lifetime career and in what city/state, and finding a home for us that is in the best place possible to meet the needs of our family.  We are always doing the best we can with the resources that we have and I am sure that all of you are too.  Thanks for reading…

I thought maybe I should try and clarify my thoughts on the carbon tax.  First, since I have left college and have been bombarded with varying views on politics it has become increasingly clear to me how important it is that I form my own point of view on things and try to do so based on raw facts that have not been slanted in one direction or another.  A lot of my political conversations with my husband involve him asking me about a particular topic such as, “How do you feel about companies being taxed for their carbon output?”  Or simply telling me that you can buy credits for your own carbon footprint.  He asks me in such a way that I am able to consider the question, weigh it with my own logic and form an opinion.  Because of these things, I avoid any political media, including political talk shows because they are nearly all slanted these days and how am I supposed to form my own unbiased opinion if I am being slanted in one direction or another.

That said, I have never believed in global warming, not even after seeing Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth.  What I do believe and what is the raw fact is that since the beginning of planet earth there have been periods of worldwide cooling trends and periods of worldwide warming trends.  I do not believe the current trend to be headed in the direction of any kind of global disaster.  In the 70’s there was talk of another ice age, now there is talk of major flooding.  In another 30 years I believe people will be talking about another ice age.  Nevertheless I feel that protecting the resources that we have, cleaning up the air and the earth and being more conscious of it all is important.  One day we will own an alternative fuel vehicle, we try to recycle, we try to turn the lights off when we leave a room, but we don’t do these things to “be green” and save ourselves from impending doom, we do them to be responsible citizens of planet earth.

Lastly, now that I have clarified where I am coming from I will talk about the carbon tax.  I understand that companies, humans, cars, etc. are emitting carbon dioxide and perhaps even chloroflourocarbons.  I understand that an overabundance of these can damage the ozone layer, soil, water, etc.  But what I was trying to say in my previous post is that no one except God has the right to say what is too much carbon dioxide.  No one has the right to go to a company who may be emitting an over abundance of this pollution and say, “Ok, now you owe me X amount of money because you are over polluting by X%.  I feel like the carbon tax is like the government playing the bad cop and using negative means to incentivize companies to clean up their act.  If it were me I would approach a company and say, “We have noticed an over abundance of carbon pollution coming from your company.  We would like to encourage you to clean up your carbon emissions by offering these workshops about cleaning up carbon emissions and giving you this tax break if you have cleaned up your emissions by X% in 6 months.  By going this route we are creating unity rather than hostility or resentment and I know that I personally respond better to help and positive reinforcement as opposed to threats and punishments.

Aiden has a pair of pajamas that features a monkey playing the guitar.  The other day he was touching the guitar on his shirt and making sounds.  This led Brandon to ask, “Are you playing the guitar on your shirt?”  To which Aiden said, “Yes.” with a big huge grin on his face.

Now, I am not a republican and I am not a democrat.  Frankly I think the lines between the two parties are so blurred these days that we should do away with the two party system all together.  Both Bush and Obama have made choices that I have not liked and have disagreed with.  I believe it is my civic duty to go out and vote and as such it allows me to voice my opinion about the decisions being made in Washington.  A carbon dioxide tax?  CARBON DIOXIDE?!?!?!?!?  No one owns said carbon dioxide.  It just exists in the earth.  An earth that God has created in such a way that it can heal itself and that has the ability to compensate for the carbon dioxide in the air.  (Think TREES.)  If they start taxing companies for their carbon dioxide output (which isn’t the governments right to do) then all of our goods, groceries, gas, etc. will rise in cost for us as the consumer.  That carbon dioxide tax could be better spent by the companies themselves to create a more efficient company.  Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe that we should all be more conscious about protecting the resources that we have but I don’t think that anyone has the right to tax others for their carbon dioxide output.

So today Aiden found a small air soft pellet on the ground outside.  He brought it over to show me and I tossed it away saying,” You don’t need that it is a choking hazard.”  To which Aiden replied, “I need a the choking hazard!”  I then explained that it was a tiny ball and that if he ate it he might choke and that is why he didn’t need it.  Silly boy!

Well, hello again!  I love how there are more and more nice days in a row lately.  It allows Aiden to be out in the beautiful sunshine for longer time during the day and for more days during the week.  So this past week has gone fairly well.  Our veggie of the week was artichokes and the recipe we chose were artichoke bruschetta, artichoke cheese braid, and artichoke chicken.  The bruschetta would have been great except that I had a hard time stomaching the romano cheese (holy strong cheese Batman), the cheese braid was good except that next time I would leave out the pimientos, and the artichoke chicken was by far the best, it was very moist and creamy.  We definitely give artichokes two thumbs up with a few tweaks to the recipes we tried as well as trying hot artichoke dip in the future.

Here are a few pictures from last Monday.  Aiden decided he wanted to try on my gloves and cheese it up for the camera.  Later in the evening he got to enjoy his very first ice cream sandwich.

Wednesday was my 34 1/2 week ob appointment.  Everything is still going well and I was only measuring a week big at this appointment.  (Hooray!)  My next appt. is set for 36 1/2 weeks and then will be once a week after that.  As for if I have “dropped” or not I feel that Lucas has been low the whole time.  I have never once felt him up in my ribs and have been constantly feeling him on all my lower nerves and muscles.  If that is “dropped” then I have.  I also had a WIC appt. that evening.  Holy cow I can not believe how much more or less efficient varying WIC places are.  This is my third location and by far the SLOWEST.  OI.

Thursday we got our tax refund back and we were able to pay of Brandon’s largest student loan.  We just have a little less then $200 in student debt left and then we will be DEBT FREE!!!

Friday Brandon heard from Vangent.  He will train March 8-12 and will start working four ten hour days on March 15th.  During lunch I gave Aiden a slice of Fudge Lover’s Strawberry Truffle Cake.  I cut it into bite sized portions so that he would eat it more efficiently and next thing I hear is him saying, “I washin’ the hands.”  I turn around and see that he is rubbing his two hands together and as a result smearing chocolate cake all over his hands.  Kids!  ;p

Later in the evening we went to the safe kids fair.  Aiden really had a good time and enjoyed motorcycles, snow mobiles, helicopters, and the fire engine.

Saturday was a busy, busy day, in the morning we had to pick up the food co-op food and then Brandon and I went to the temple.  After that we came home, ate lunch, and then cleaned up the house.  During nap time we did a lot of cooking as well as taking time to finish cleaning.  When Aiden woke up we decided to go out to run a few errands and eat some dinner.  Every time we go near Lowe’s he wants to “drive the car” because they have car shopping carts.  Despite the busy day there was still some time for Aiden to make a funny face or two.  You will also see a few pictures below of the Winnie the Pooh character Rabbit.  Note the difference between the tattered and well loved one and the new one.  It is quite remarkable.  Well, I guess that is all.  Have a good week and thanks for reading…

Tonight I was preparing Aiden for bed. As he sat on the toilet he looked down, and pointing, told me, “I have an owie on my chest.” I told him that, no, it is not an owie, and I gave him the proper term. He nodded and whispered, “Nipple…”, just to test how it felt on his tongue. Then, pinching first on the right side of his chest and then the left Aiden proudly declared, “I have nipples!” Then a beat and he asked, “Daddy has nipples, too?” I confirmed the fact, and he was quite pleased with his new knowledge.

So it seems like just yesterday I was bringing Aiden home from the hospital and then I blinked and now I have a 2 year old and my second son is due in 5 weeks.  What will happen if I blink again?  Will I have a 4 year old, a 2 year old and a 3rd one on the way?  Do you remember those long lazy summer days of childhood when time seemed to stretch on endlessly before you and every minute felt like an hour?  I remember my mom telling me that time speeds up as you get older and I never did believe her for a second.  But as I approach my 10 year (yes 10, isn’t that absolutely nuts?) high school reunion, look at my two year old who I feel like was just born yesterday, and anticipate the arrival of Lucas, I will tell you now that she is absolutely right and it scares me because the time I have with my children will be all too short and over all too soon (spoken from the view of a mom who is soon to be knee deep in diapers and laundry and the antics of two boys) and we absolutely must make the most of it and cherish each moment, and let our kids enjoy the long days of the future that lay before them even if some of those days they are nearly bored to tears (it will encourage creativity).  Because they will grow and each day will be so full of good memories that they won’t last nearly long enough and they will see their children transforming before their very eyes.