food therapy

I don't know if there is such a thing as food therapy for picky kids, but I'm thinking of starting my own program for Luke. One of his former preschool teachers told me that it might be helpful to have him experience foods using all his senses. For example, smelling different foods or holding different foods up to his lips without having to eat it, etc. 

So today I told Luke that if he held a pear for 5 minutes, he could have a Halloween treat. He really didn't like the idea and had to think about it for a long time. I had to reassure him a few times that he was not required to eat it. 

Here he is looking at the timer as the count-down began.

He was all business...

...and a little annoyed as the clock ran down.

There was no magical bite of pear :( but he did get a piece of Halloween candy.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Milano

DAY 1: Milano

I flew to Milan from Salt Lake City. Andrew flew to Milan from Chicago. Andrew's sister, Marika (who also came on the trip) flew from Washington. All three of our flights arrived at different times (Marika's, a day early) so we decided that we would meet up in Milan. My flight got in on a Saturday morning so the plan was for me to rent a car and drive down to meet Marika at her hostel in downtown Milan. We would spend the day seeing everything we could and then pick up Andrew from the airport that night. 

That was the plan.

That plan sounded a lot easier than it ended up. But only because I forgot that I am not very good with maps/directions. And I don't speak Italian. Minor problems, right?

I first knew that I was in trouble when I drove my rental car outside the parking garage and realized I had no idea how to exit the airport. I didn't know the word for "EXIT". So I drove around and around and around until I saw a bus leaving and decided to follow it. That is when I learned my first Italian word, "USCITA" or "exit". 

La Galleria

 It only got worse from there. I should also mention that my plan for fighting jet lag was to stay up all night before my flight and sleep on the plane. But the sleeping pill didn't work and I didn't sleep much on the plane. So I had been awake for about 48 hours....driving in a foreign country....with only mapquest directions. I will skip the details and just say that I got utterly and completely lost. I thought I had written down the phone number to Marika's hostel so I could call and tell her what had happened, but the number didn't paste into my word doc.

There I was. No Italian. No Internet. No Map. No idea how to contact Marika. I pulled over on the side of the road and cried, but mostly because I was tired and had no brain power left. All reason had completely left me. (I should also mention that Italians are CRAZY drivers. In every other way they are amazing and wonderful people. But crazy drivers. My car even got side-swiped and the guy just kept driving like it was no big deal). Anyway, I finally decided that I needed to call someone. I knew the perfect person to call would be Andrew's Dad because he is a very kind, forgiving man who likes to get up early (it was about 4 am Eastern Time). He was asleep, but woke up and kindly navigated me to Marika's hostel. I would probably still be driving aimlessly around Milan if it wasn't for him.

Inside La Galleria (formally called, "Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II". The oldest mall in Italy built in the late 1800's. Can you believe this is a mall!?

What I look like after being awake for about 60 hours and balling my eyes out.

The Duomo

As soon as I found Marika, the FUN officially began. We still spent a lot of our time lost, but we were lost together, and it was a blast. Miraculously, we made it to all the places we wanted to see. It was amazing.

One of the funniest things that happened to us was when we were trying to find a metro station where we could park our car. We weren't having much luck understanding Italians when we asked for directions so we were so relived when we finally saw a huge sign that said 'METRO' in big blue letters. There were even plenty of empty parking spots and no meter which I thought was a bit strange. So we locked up our car and started walking toward this "Metro Station". We met a man in front who spoke a little English so we asked him in disbelief, "Can we really park here ALL DAY!? For FREE?!" He looked at us strangely and said that we could. So we happily started walking in the building through the first set of automatic doors. Then we noticed there were FREE bathrooms. SCORE! So we went inside and kept commenting out loud about how we couldn't believe this metro station had FREE bathrooms that were so clean. We left the bathroom and started walking towards the sliding doors and THAT WAS WHEN WE REALIZED IT WAS A GROCERY STORE. A grocery store called "Metro". Can you believe that? The same guy we had talked to earlier was inside the store now...still looking at us like we were the dumbest Americans ever.

We laughed so hard I honestly couldn't even stand up. I can't believe that I didn't notice it was a grocery store until I walked through the second set of automatic doors. I can't believe that I asked an Italian man, with so much enthusiasm, if I could really park in (what turned out to be) a grocery store parking lot all day, for free! Maybe you had to be there. Maybe I was just tired. But I think I will laugh about that story for the rest of my life.

We did find a real Metro Station eventually in case you're wondering. Lesson learned: look for a red "M". Who names a grocery store "Metro" anyway? Is that some sick joke to play on dumb Americans?

Inside of the Duomo

Each of these little stained-glass windows depict a story/event from the life of Christ

Top of the Duomo

Andrew told us that there is some sort of law in Italy that if a church is undergoing construction then they don't have to pay taxes. So it is very common for church to be "undergoing remodeling" but in reality they just have scaffolding set up even though no one ever seems to be working on anything. Maybe it is just a rumor but I wouldn't be surprised.

Couldn't resist impersonating some statues

From the top of the Duomo (center of Milan)

 We eventually got hungry and decided to see what the street vendors were selling. Wraps filled with good cheeses, prosciutto, and a little bit of arugula, grilled in a panini maker (at least it looked like a panini maker). Even their street food is delicious! Why don't we all eat like this?

This is just one of the many streets that are part of the Quadrilateral of Fashion. See Valentino on your left? 

My favorite part of Milan was visiting the Brera (Pinacoteca di Brera), a famous museum inside of a famous art school. We saw the original of this painting which took my breath away:

I wish you could all see it in person. Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio. The original is so beautiful that we just sat and stared at it for a long time. Marika is an artist so her appreciation is probably on a whole different level than mine. But even though I have very little knowledge of art, I can tell you that seeing this painting was a spiritual experience for me. It made all the craziness of traveling and getting lost, completely worth it.

Up Next: Lake Como

time.

This was the best part of our weekend.



I read this talk by Elder Uchtdorf which is AMAZING and helped me put some things into perspective. Time is a gift....residency has helped us all realize that a little more around here. Father and son silly time was definitely the most important thing to happen this weekend. There is nothing but pure love between these two.

Halloween 2012

We finally caught the Halloween bug around here. We've been so busy with other things that I haven't had much time to relish in my favorite season (not my favorite holiday, but my favorite season). Halloween is always SO COLD in the midwest but we bundled up and went trick-or-treating downtown on Main St. today.

Luke was a doctor and Cam was a dog. Luke originally wanted to be a cat (how do you make a manly cat costume?), then I talked him into being a construction worker. But then he saw a little doctor kit in the store and I told him he could have it if he would be a doctor (very easy costume for us to throw together around here). It wasn't the coolest costume ever but he seemed happy with it. All the businesses downtown put out black and orange balloons if they are giving out candy. It was a lot of fun. Cam was cautious at first but by the end he was shouting out, "trick-or-treat" like a pro.

A few people were confused about the boys' costumes. They couldn't decide if Luke was a moose or a doctor or a moose doctor. Some thought Cam was a mouse. All I can say is that it has been a busy 3 weeks over here. We have been to Italy, Utah, Cleveland for a wedding, Indiana for a BYU game, AND I refinished the deck somewhere in between all those things. So moose-doctor and mouse-dog were the best we could do.

Afterwards, Cam went down for a nap and Luke and I had ourselves a little party. We cranked up the Halloween music on Pandora and carved the pumpkin. Luke dumped his candy out on the table and I just let him go to town. It was nice to give myself permission not to regulate for a day. Feeding children is sort of a stressful ordeal for me on a daily basis, so for at least today I decided to chill out.

As a quick aside, I will also mention that I have been a bit of a mean mom lately. I have just felt so frustrated by the things involving my kids that aren't going so great, that I stopped teaching and started telling (sometimes very loudly). I stopped enjoying and started surviving. But then I read this talk from General Conference last night and decided that my methods of tackling the problems of the moment were downright ineffective. So I'm trying to be a more loving Mom again. So far it has made a HUGE difference for everyone involved and our home feels like a much happier place. If I get lazy and start my mean mom tyrant act again, you make sure I re-read that talk. Thanks. Now moving on...

I told Luke that he should save some of his candy for later instead of eating it all in one day. He thought about it and a few minutes later he came up to me and showed me the inside of his pumpkin. He said, "Look Mom, I'm saving these for later!"

We originally weren't going to put any political signs in our yard. One, because we like to remain pretty neutral and independent when it comes to politics, and two, because we live in a VERY liberal town and I would like to make some friends first before they jump to any conclusions about who we are :). But, a neighbor found out we were LDS and came to my door (holding the Romney sign) and said, "I don't know your political persuasions but I just thought you might want one of these," with a little wink and glimmer in her eye. She was so nice (and we are voting for Mitt) so we decided to come out of our little conservative closet. Lets hope we didn't kill our social life :)

I was feeling a little homesick today for our old apartment complex. All the little kids would go trick-or-treating together and everyone was such good friends. It made me happy when a family here invited us (and others) to go trick-or-treating in their neighborhood. It was kind of like the good ole days in C-bus.

Happy Halloween!

Italia

We bit the bullet and went to Italy. You know what that means. Get ready for lots of travelogue posts. I can't help myself. I took about a thousand pictures because I wanted to remember every second we were there.

We have wanted to go to Italy for a VERY long time. Before we were married, Andrew told me that if I wanted him to take me to Italy, I needed to take an Art History class at BYU. [Andrew served his mission in Italy about 10 years ago]. I complied... and then waited...and waited...and waited. Still, we could have easily waited until we were much older and more settled. But I just had a feeling come over me a few months ago that it was now or never. With Andrew's schedule getting crazier by the year and the kids at a good age to leave behind, that feeling was probably correct. I'm so glad we did it. And I am so grateful for my sister and her family for watching the boys for A WHOLE 10 DAYS so we could go. They are heaven-sent.

I felt like I learned a lot of things on this trip, little impressions here and there, that I really needed to learn for this time in my life. Most of them are just for me, but one little thing I'll share is the overwhelming thought that came to me over and over again that BEAUTY IS CREATED. Italy is beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Of course, there is the natural beauty that God created. But so much of it is man-made beauty that has been carefully and purposefully created over centuries. It was so hard for me to fully comprehend how long it took to create and build some of the structures we saw. Some of them took hundreds of years to complete. Can you imagine if you helped build something your entire life and never saw it completed? It took time, artistry, patience, planning and sometimes the reward for all that effort was not even enjoyed during one's lifetime. But I got to enjoy it. They built it to last forever. I left feeling more motivated to create beauty in my own life both in my surroundings and metaphorically. That probably sounds cheesy but with the imperfections and defeats that are so common in my everyday life, it was nice to realize that good things usually take a lot of patience and careful crafting to come to fruition.

best day of my life (almost)

Of course there was my wedding day. Then the births of my children. But not far behind that, the best day of my life was definitely last Saturday when Steve Young sat down right in front of us at the Notre Dame v. BYU game. I'm sure I morphed into a 14 year old and had a dorky grin on my face for the entire 3 hours (except for when we lost which was extremely disappointing). Still, I watched a BYU football game with Steve Young! This is bucket list material.

Steve, if you ever come across this post, which I sincerely pray never happens, I'm really sorry that I obnoxiously took at least 5 pictures of the back of your head while pretending to take pictures of the game. And I'm sorry that I am now obnoxiously posting a few of them on my blog (rest assured hardly anyone reads it). But you were my childhood hero (and I grew up in San Jose, a very loyal 49er fan so I deserve to say that). You made it easier to be a Mormon in an area with not a ton of Mormons. At least that's how I felt. And because I watched every single 49er game every week for years, I learned a lot about football which probably helped me land Andrew.

So thanks.

I swear this photo was pure coincidence....really...

He is a really cool guy btw

(I turned off comments for this post because...well...I feel nerdy enough)