Fun at FHE

Thought I would share a little about our family home evening on Monday, because it ended up being pretty dang cute. Normally we struggle through a song then wrestle Max through a quick lesson and then do an activity while he does his own thing, but these week we made cookies as our activity and Max got really into it. He stirred his little heart out with dad then helped us roll them into balls (which was crazy messy but fun). It gives me hope that maybe we're making headway and someday he might actually enjoy family night.

Just Some Random Max Cuteness

Just a few cute pics from this week. Max stealing my shoes and Max with his trains. Enjoy!

Mini-Max update

Nothing much happened this week, so I thought I'd share some cute Max stuff:

• His new trick is setting the table. When I'm making dinner, he goes to the utensil drawer and grabs chopsticks, butter knives, slotted spoons, and other useful things and sets a few at each place. He even puts some out for Darreck every night, regardless of whether or not he's home.
• His language has exploded! He can now parrot back almost anything we say (not always a good thing!) and has started combining words into short phrases.
• He can tell you what a cow says, a snake says, and what a lion says. He's also really close to getting down the duck sound. However, his performance of these sounds is a little hit and miss. In true Max fashion, he doesn't like to do anything on demand.
• Nursery on Sundays is no longer a battle. He goes straight from Sacrament and makes a be-line for the toys. It's been such a huge blessing with my new calling in the primary presidency and Darreck going to work during the third hour.
• Eating is either feast or famine. He either eats us out of house and home or won't touch anything for days. And there's no persuading him otherwise.
• On the not so nice side, he's become binky-dependant, and Darreck keeps threatening to take it away permanently. The rule has always been that he only gets it during bedtime and nap time, but he's gotten really difficult when we take it away. Which leads me to...
• Max has discovered tantrums. In a big way. Unlucky for him, Darreck and I have been there, done that before with clients, and we ignore him completely. He'll learn.

Lucky for us, he's still a really sweet little boy. He loves to please us, and has such a personable disposition. It also helps that he's cuter than anything, which means he gets away with a lot.

Blogging Slacker

So, I should start by saying that we bought a new-to-us car over a week ago. I normally post these things for the grandmas to see, but the weather has been so horrible that I've put off taking pictures. However, today I had to get out the camera to take pics of Max's haircut (more on that later), so here you go. Our now not-so-shiny Volvo station wagon, just like real adults. I feel a little old, but the heated seats are amazing.

As for Max, he got his first real haircut by a professional today. It was sort of a spur of the moment decision, but since I was getting mine done I figured what the heck. He surely needed it! Actually, Darreck doesn't know about it yet, so we'll see what he thinks. The only problem is that now Max looks older, and I'm not so cool with that. He's getting way too big way too fast. Gotta think of a way to stop that.

I've also expanded my New Year's resolutions. It seems like 2010 brought us a lot of happiness and others around us lots of trials. I want to find better ways to serve this year. My heart goes out to all those around me who are suffering, sometimes a little too much. I get really upset when bad things happen to good people, in spite of mom parroting "the world isn't fair" over and over and over to me for 23 years. I still think that the world should be fair and karma should be an immediate principle. I feel, quite often, that there is so little I can do, but I still want to learn how to serve those around me better. There. It's written down so now I really have to do it.