Month 9

3/4 of a year old! Simply amazing! I think it goes by faster and faster as she gets older. Hadley had her 9 month check up and she's doing great! She weighed in at 16lbs. 5oz. and 27 1/8 in long. She jumped up from the 5th percentile in weight to 10-25th percentile so the doctor was of course pleased with that. It doesn't surprise me at all, she's a good eater, except when it comes to finger foods.

I've mentioned before that finger foods are the one thing in the universe that she won't put in her mouth, well I think that's changing. The doctor gave us the go-ahead to branch out to "real" foods now, so we've tried some regular crackers which she seems to enjoy the most. She's tried turkey, colby jack cheese sticks, and avocado. She seems to like them all but she'll only eat a few bites and then it goes straight to the floor. She still has a little difficulty using her pincer grasp so we're working on that.

Another new development....she is mobile. Usually she'll drag her legs behind her and pull herself along, however once in a while she'll get her knees under her and take a few small movements forward. The best part of it all is when she gets on her hands and feet. She can't move anywhere and she usually does it to reach something, but her feet start slipping and she ends up doing the splits. She's also trying to pull herself up on the table. She can get to her knees but she can't push herself up on her feet.

She's doing great otherwise, we moved her crib mattress down since she knows how to sit up now. Hadley has also taken to crying when she gets frustrated, she hardly did that before, so we try not to pay too much attention to it. We can't believe how close it is to her first birthday and how soon she will be walking and talking. We are looking forward to every moment of it though.

To whom it may concern:

Let me start by saying, my husband and I enjoy your restaurant. Your delicious fatty food that is full of mayonnaise and veggies so cold they hurt your teeth is only the beginning. The fact that you have the best french fries in town including the decadent ranch dressing to dip them in keeps us coming back. Although, I must say the cherry that tops it all off is your wonderful fruity drinks. While I prefer only the strawberry flavor, my husband enjoys your November flavor of the month, Cherry Cider. Kudos to the person who thought that changing it up every month would be a fantastic marketing method.

My reason for writing to you this rainy Tucson day is to ask a simple question, WHY DO YOU HATE THE WORD "MEDIUM"? I travel to your fine dining establishment to enjoy a refreshing drink and as I am happily greeted by one of your customer service specialists I order my medium strawberry drink. I am immediately told that you do not have medium, so am asked again, what size I would like. At this my head drops in frustration. I turn to where the cups are displayed for the customers to see how big each size is to pick the size I want. I notice that there are five different cup sizes. Now if I recall, an odd number of items makes it very clear that there is a size that stands all alone IN THE MIDDLE of all the others. My eyes land on the cup in the very middle, the cup labeled 'large'.

I realize this may be just a matter of semantics but it comes across as very confusing. Your cup sizes include 'kids', 'small', 'large', 'quart', and 'Big-ee'. One of those (the large) is in fact the middle size, so when someone asks for a medium, let's just assume they are really requesting the large. There's no need to say you don't have a medium, because you do, you just don't want to call it that. While the rest of the world goes along using the word 'medium' with no problem, you stand by and claim that a medium doesn't exist. It's absurd.

While we're on the topic of sizes, let's look at your drink packs for parties. There's two sizes, a 'fun pak' and a 'party pak'. The normal, every day, Tucsonan doesn't know the difference between the two so when a customer calls and says they need "the fun pak, the one that serves 25 people" just write down whichever one it is that serves 25 people. Don't act like they should know they used the wrong term. If the 'party pak' serves 25 people and the customer wants to serve 25 people but they mistakenly ask for the 'fun pak' there's no need to act like they're the biggest moron on Earth for not knowing.

I hope you'll take our concerns into consideration as you look for ways to improve your business. Perhaps these were mere oversights on the planning committee. Until then, we will be sipping our cold, fruity drinks and shaking our heads at the ridiculousness of the situation.

Yours truly,

The Hashbrowns

Look at me! Look at me!

Attention as defined by the online dictionary: n. observant care; consideration.

Attention as defined by urbandictionary.com: n. 1. the thing that belongs to you which I have right now. 2. slang terminology for a 10 sack of marijuana.

Turn on your computer, your TV or even your radio and you'll, no doubt, come in contact with some person who is purposefully seeking attention. It's safe to say that we all seek attention at some point. Some of us need it more than others while some of us will do almost anything to get it. The rest of us think we don't need it and so go about our day trying to remain inconspicuous, indirectly, at some point, drawing attention to ourselves.

While we all want to feel appreciated, loved, respected, and that we belong somewhere, drawing a fine line between attention-seeking and fulfilling that sense of belonging is difficult. I imagine there are those people out there thinking, "I HATE attention." My translation of this, "I WANT attention, I just don't want it this way." I know many women who had anxiety over their bridal showers or baby showers because they didn't want to be the center of attention. Well, suffice it to say, putting up a fight and trying to resist the spotlight is just as attention seeking; you're just looking for attention through a different means.

Facebook and other social networking sites have become the drug of choice for those addicted to attention and have become the gateway drug for those people who didn't even know they "needed" so much attention. There was an article posted on CNN.com (click to read article) that discussed the most annoying facebookers. All types of facebook status updates listed in this article were various attention-seeking methods. Can you imagine the frenzy that would ensue on your Facebook page if you DIDN'T update your status? More attention from friends asking if you're ok or what's going on. It's safe to say that an update on Facebook, or lack of update, is generally to get attention, whether you update once a week or 20 times a day, the difference is how badly you need it.

Reality shows have flooded our televisions. People think they've got what it takes to become the star of said shows. American Idol is one of the most popular reality shows right along side Survivor, both of which show "normal people" competing to be the best. I've seen some people on these shows and my initial reaction is, "They're doing this just to get attention, they have no intentions of following through to the end of the show." I wonder how many of these people think that this will be their launching pad to stardom? I mean come on, who wants to be the next star performing at the Super Bowl only to have their wardrobe malfunction?? As if it's really reality!

Whether it's how we dress, how many times we update our status on Facebook, or our statement of "I don't like being the center of attention." We all seek attention in some way, shape, or form. I didn't even want to start a blog because I felt weird talking about myself, thus, drawing attention to myself. We all seek to belong, I believe that was how God created us, so that we would want to be a part of His reality. But somewhere along the way we've decided we wanted to belong to something bigger and better than God. How foolish! Look where that's gotten us! Our society thrives on exploiting people's need to belong and the need for attention. We have distorted it so badly that people will spend each day of their entire life looking for the attention they needed, when it was right in front of them all along. It was free and it was more attention than they would ever need!

May you seek the attention of our faithful, ever-loving God this week and realize that's all you need! I'm now going to log on to Facebook and link this blog to my profile...but not because I seek attention...right?

Q4U: To what extremes have you gone to seek attention? (you can post anonymously, although you'll get more attention if you leave your name!) OR do you post a status on Facebook to seek attention or to get a reaction?

Off on another adventure

Sometimes I think I might be crazy signing up for a two year writing program. Like having an infant, soon to be toddler, along with our various other commitments isn't enough and then I go and PAY to write??? I've mentioned before that I'd like to write children's books, maybe even some adult books. So when I noticed a website on a friends blog I was intrigued.

Christian Writer's Guild is run by Jerry Jenkins, the author of the famous fiction end-times books, the Left Behind series. They have courses for amateur writers, even for teenagers, that can help you develop your writing skills. They assign a mentor to you who is usually a published author themselves or has experience in the editing/publishing world. They give you feedback on all your assignments. You can also pay a discounted rate to have a professional editor look over your manuscripts. Once a year they have a writer's conference in Colorado that invites famous authors to come speak, like Max Lucado or Philip Yancy, and then they offer various workshops. They also have publishing companies attend and you can setup meetings with them, so they can review your manuscript and if nothing else, give you feedback about it or at the most, offer you a contract. The conference is a little pricey but I'm super excited that we MAY try to go next year and make a little family vacation out of it.

I know most of you think this sounds absolutely boring....who likes to write for fun? I am really excited to be able to put stories down on paper and share them with people. I hope that God will bless this journey. I'm also extremely intimidated, feeling like when I hand a manuscript to a publisher, they'll laugh me out of the room. I'm willing to try though. If nothing else I feel like this could help me should I decide to go back into an educational setting, I could do something with writing. I would hope to make it more fun for children.

Anyhow, that's my new journey I'm on. I have an assignment due every two weeks for the next two years!!! Better get started. Wish me luck!

Month 8

(I know two posts in one day, but I almost forgot to post about Hadley)

This month involved Hadley's first Christmas and New Years. It was busy, just as we had anticipated, but Hadley was such a trooper, having such a great attitude during all of the gatherings. She absolutely loved opening the presents...well let me rephrase that...she absolutely loved ripping off the wrapping and immediately sticking it in her mouth. She got lots of toys and clothes.

New Years was very low key which was nice. We all stayed home, Hadley went to bed at 8 and Jon and I watched Wall-E. When 10:30 rolled around Jon and I hit the sack but due to all the fireworks and guns being shot off we didn't fall asleep for a while, then Hadley woke up at 12 anyways so I got up and fed her. Finally asleep at 12:30!

Hadley still has just one tooth but we think that other front bottom one is sooo very close to breaking through. We've been trying to give her finger foods and it is the most hilarious thing. She loves to put absolutely everything in her mouth, except her finger foods! I tried giving it to her so she would know that it was ok to eat and as soon as it touched her lips she made a disgusted face. We keep trying but she's still not interested. We've also introduced the sippy cup. Obviously she doesn't do well with the lid on so we're just getting her used to the idea that there is something (water for now) inside the cup that she would want.

On other milestones, still no crawling, although she is definitely trying to move more so she just kind of rolls back and forth until she gets what she wants. She has figured out that she might be able to pull herself up on our coffee table but she doesn't quite have the strength and coordination yet. My insecure mommy voice sometimes pops up in my head and I start wondering if I'm doing enough to help her develop her gross motor skills but I know it'll come. She does love to dance (bouncing up and down while sitting).

The church nursery.....was getting better but last week was pretty bad. I guess she cried for like an hour and our pager didn't go off. They ended up paging us on the big screen when communion started so I ran over to get her and by then they had gotten her to sleep. Of course when they tested the pager in the room it worked fine. I felt really bad for the nursery workers and for Hadley. Jon and I are at a loss of what to do so she'll have a better time in there. It's right around her nap time but I can usually keep her up when I have her at home so I know she can last that long without a nap. And for a few weeks she was doing fine with new people. This week we're going to put a bottle in the diaper bag and see if that will help her calm down if she gets upset. I know hunger's not an issue because I usually feed her right before we leave for church, but at least it might be comforting. Any moms out there have any other suggestions? I know we'll get it figured out, just one of the many decisions to make as a parent.

Home is where the heart is...and lots of work too!

When we were looking for houses (Dec. 2004-Jan 2005) we had few items on our list that we were looking for, after all, it was our first house and we didn't know what we really wanted. We were looking for an older house that had some need to be fixed up, although we really didn't want to have to do any kind of structural re-building. We also DID NOT want a homeowners association or a pool (too much maintenance and money). We also knew we wanted to live somewhere on the eastside, like east of Wilmot. Aside from those three items we were game for just about anything.

We had just been approved for a loan and were casually looking at houses. And by looking I mean on the Internet and driving around. We did not go inside one single house. We didn't even have Realtors that were helping us, although we knew of a couple that went to our church and we figured they had helped some friends of ours so we'd ask them for help when we were getting more serious. We drove by a few houses we had found on the Internet that were within our price range but they were all pretty dilapidated.

Then one night I was perusing the MLS website and found a house off of Harrison that had a neat looking backyard, a nice front yard and was within our price range. The next day or two we decided to go look at it, we called the sellers realtor and set up a time to meet in the evening. Jon and I met with her and looked inside. Despite the light blue tile and matching carpet we decided later that night to make an offer on it. So the very next morning we called the realtor couple from church, told them we wanted to put an offer down on a house and needed their help. From then on things moved pretty quickly, this was at the beginning of the housing market boom. This particular house had been on the market for about a week. Our offer was accepted within just a few short days and the rest is history!

We knew there was a lot of "fix up" we wanted to do, remove the canopy and koi pond in the backyard, scrap the gold chandeliers for more modern fixtures, painting, lots of cosmetic work. We also knew that the roof needed to be replaced at some point as well as the furnace and water heater but we were hoping to spread those out and make them last as long as possible. Of course our time line for all these projects was very short, but I think our time line was horribly misguided by our "high" of buying a new house. As usual, things did not pan out like we had planned, and we quickly lost motivation.

We've done lots of work on this house in the 5 years we've lived in it, the biggest project by far was replacing the roof but we did it ourselves (with lots of fantastic friends and family the weekend it snowed in 2006). It seems there is always a project going on and I think we've come to the realization that once we get things the way we want, we'll be needing to move out.

All this to say...our kitchen remodel may be the most expensive job yet, yes even more than our roof. And it may happen sooner than we had planned. I noticed our sink leaking inside the cabinet. As I looked towards the back wall to see if I could tell where the water was coming from I saw a nice large patch of mold!!! Yuck! I was tempted to post pictures but it's kind of embarrassing, maybe once we have remodeled, I will share. The plan for now is to replace the faucet and take out the drywall under the sink and we'll just have have bricks showing under there. Then when Jon finishes school in July we will start working on a remodel.

At times it's fun to design it and pick out stuff you like but it's also overwhelming. If you've been to our house you know how small the area is, including the dining room, so our options are limited when it comes to change. It's also overwhelming to think of the cost. Not to mention the thought that our kitchen may be torn apart for a week or more. What do we do for cooking, dishes, etc? This isn't like our other projects where we can close the door and do without it for months or step over the mess.

We are blessed and I certainly do not take it for granted. These things sometimes make me think about our next house, this time we'll be able to say "no, we don't want to replace another roof again if we can avoid it", or "we don't mind having to re-do the backyard, we're experts now!"

We can't all be winners

In order for there to be winners there has to be losers right? And what makes some people so lucky that they get to win all the time while there are those who just lose all the time? Can't they share the joy of being a winner? Can't they, for once, just not try so the rest of the people get even a chance to win?

I had randomly entered this book give-away contest on a blog. I didn't even know the person and just happened upon their blog and liked some of the books they were giving away. I figured it was worth a shot. All you had to do was write a poem about the book you wanted and then they were going to announce the winners. I entered my measly poem that I had thought of in about 5 minutes. I really didn't expect to win. However, for some reason looking at the winners it was a little disappointing to not see my name. I actually kind of wondered what it was about my poem that didn't stand out among the some 130 other poems. Was it because this person didn't know me? Did she not think my poem was "deep" enough? She is, after all, a publishing agent!!!

Here are some other venues (that I can remember) I've worked to be a winner at and the results:

-Radio contest for Third Day tickets - I WON!!

-Lots of other radio contests that I lost when I was younger

-Scratcher tickets that I got for Christmas - I think the most I got was like $5

-Volleyball games - For the most part, we lost. In fact our entire sports program at our school was not well known.

-Raffle ticket giveaways - lost them all

-Random drawing at Vail Pride Day (for work) - I won the year I was student teaching and got a gift certificate to somewhere.

It makes me think of random things such as hunting and fishing, two things of which my family members do a fair amount of. I have one uncle who does both and he is always extremely successful. However, my dad on the other hand, puts so much effort into hunting, would be the best employee if he could get paid to hunt but I can only remember him getting an animal once. I don't get it, they seem to approach the sports using the same strategies, in fact I think my dad takes more time to prepare.

Another example, this week on the news there was a couple that won the Powerball, I can't remember in which state. It was to the sum of $128 million. What kind of life will they have now because of their winnings? And what about all the losers? It seems that most stories you hear of lottery winners end up with their lives in ruin.

What's the deal with wanting to "win"? Why do we feel so disappointed when we didn't get something that we didn't have beforehand? Is it a sense of entitlement? I often wonder why people pray for their team to win, like God is worried about the winners and he can't decide who to let win. I don't join many contests because I know the odds are usually against me and I don't really like to give out my information as most contests require of you, besides then you avoid the disappointment.

I'd like to take a slightly different perspective on this situation, if it weren't for those of us who lose more often than not, those winners wouldn't be able to bask in the glory of their celebration. To all those losers out there, you make the winners look good, without you, they'd have nothing. Here's to losers!

*Disclaimer - no humans or animals were hurt emotionally or physically during this post.