Conversations with Tiago

I've written down a few funny things Tiago has said over the last 3-4 months.

One morning I put sugar on his rice krispies.  He called it "canela blanco" (white cinnamon) because he's used to having cinnamon toast.

Once, I accidentally pinched his leg while strapping him in his car seat.  So now he regularly yells, "Don't hurt me!"  He also likes to say, "Don't hurt the girls." And "Don't hurt peoples."  Sounds like I'm an abusive mother.  (I'm not.)

He saw one of our wedding pictures on the wall and said, "Look, that's where Mama got married.  Yeah, that's right.  Se llama Heather."  (Her name is Heather.)  He is still quite interested in his parents' first names.

We taught him about angel Moroni on the top of LDS temples.  He was trying really hard to remember the word, and started calling it Angel Maria instead.  Wrong church, Tiago.

Conversation between me and Tiago:
Tiago- Where's Grandma?
Me- She went to get dressed.
Tiago- Maybe she will wear soccer clothes.  Tiago has soccer clothes.  And Papa has soccer clothes.  He has red, and blue, and yellow soccer clothes."

And lastly, just some funny mess-ups in pronunciation.  Most of these words I think he learned from Little Einsteins.  (That show puts the most random words into a kids vocabulary.)

Arctee fox (arctic fox)
Gold pyrum (golden pyramid)
Gym-nee (instead of just "gym")
Timbell (a mix between doorbell and timbre)
Eifee tower (Eiffel Tower)
I'm squeeky (meaning squished)
And he always says he wants the music slower when he really means softer.

Random Thoughts

Halloween - a friend took pictures for us that night, but hasn't sent them.  So we have no family picture from Halloween.  As I was handing out candy with Tiago, I started questioning why they even make banana laffy taffy.  Strawberry is so good, and the yellow ones are just awful.  Not even the kids wanted them, although they were the first candy I made sure to get rid of.  (Am I the only one who strategically hands out candy?  If I'm going to have left-over candy, you better believe it will be the good stuff.)  Also, note to self for next year: don't buy chocolate!  I think I ate more candy in the two weeks before Halloween than in the 2 weeks after.

And the next morning, I jumped in the car and heard Christmas music.  After being in Germany for 3 holiday seasons with no Christmas radio, it is still refreshing to hear holiday music...even in November 1st.  Tiago loves to point out when Silent Night comes on the radio (one of his faves) and likes to sing along with "Feliz Navidad" -- fitting for a semi-Spanish-speaking kid.

I do have a few pictures of our house decorated for Halloween.  It was sad to take it all down; Tiago, particularly, loved pointing out the werewolf and bats ("baps").

The Election was all around interesting, and probably a fascinating study on human behavior.  I was fairly certain Hillary would win, and was quite surprised Thursday evening to see Trump was ahead.  We voted by absentee ballot a month earlier, so the excitement (or turmoil?) of "who to vote for" was long past.  It wasn't ever a big question for me: I didn't want to have Hillary as president, and I vote in a swing state (Ohio), so I voted Trump.  In the weeks leading up to the election, social media was full of people declaring they would "vote their conscience" by voting for neither Hillary nor Trump, and voting 3rd party instead.  Well, I'll publicly declare that I have no guilt on my conscience.  I never chose to have Trump as the Republican candidate, and think he has no morals, but I also feel like he will make more conservative choices than Clinton and, now that he's won, I'm a little curious how the next 4 years will go.  

The day after the election, I was a little surprised by social media.  People that voted 3rd party were expressing sadness over their candidate losing.  (Really?)  Hillary supporters were baffled -- we're talking deep mourning because they hadn't actually considered that their candidate might lose.  They seemed unaware that there was this other half of the country dissatisfied with how the government was being run.  I also know a lot of people who are Republicans that voted third party who kept defending themselves by saying, "Well I didn't vote for Trump."  You're welcome.  I did.  He is a far cry from the candidate I would have picked in the primaries, but given the options in the general election, I pick him.  (Surpreme court justices, health care, national debt, abortion, military support, etc.. just a few reasons.)  I'll take it upon myself to make sure my kids are correctly taught good morals. 

In other news, it was 75 degrees here yesterday.  Middle of November.  It's a little crazy.  I have yet to start layering clothing, and since I have several new sweaters it's a bit disappointing.  But I'm sure winter will arrive soon enough. 

Health & Fitness

This is the Fall 2016 edition of "I'm going to get healthier."  

The twins are now almost 20 months old... and I'm still trying to get back into shape.  I am in a cycle of feeling motivated, doing something about it, and then stopping and gaining back half of what I lost.  On repeat.

My biggest accomplishment in the last 20 months is being okay with where I'm at.  I view my weight very different than I used to, and have learned to be happy independent of what size I'm supposed to be.  My identify isn't wrapped up in my size.  (In 20 months, I've bought a pretty awesome wardrobe in my current size... so that helps!)

But my next accomplishment needs to be getting healthier.  And I've been doing something about it for about 5 weeks!  At the beginning of the summer, my friend told me that she found a gym with child care, and that gives her a break during the day where she gets to work out.  *light bulb moment*

When I think about what motivates me to work out, 'free' child care is HIGH on the list.  Really really high.  Days are long with three little kids at home.  So I joined the YMCA.  It's 2 hours of child care per day (per kid!).  So 5 days a week we go to the gym and I trade in mental exhaustion for physical exhaustion.

One fascinating aspect of this process is that 'newbies' get a complimentary health consultation with a personal trainer. (I think they're trying to sell themselves...)  But anyway, they have a machine that reads your body composition, called an InBody machine.  Your total weight is broken into water weight, fat, and muscle/organs/bones/etc.

No one likes to see how high their fat percentage is, particularly after having children, but it's an awesome bench mark!  I'm glad I had it done near my peak weight, so I can see progress.  It's also a good gauge for seeing what the 'ideal' is.  What is an ideal weight for my body?  How much fat do I need to lose to be in the 'normal' range?  It takes the focus off of total weight and shifts it to metrics that have a higher correlation to overall health.  My current goal is more muscle, less fat.  (And to be able to run a 5K without walking.)  I've been spending about 30 minutes building muscle and 30 minutes doing cardio.

Progress is slow, but I can (slowly) feel some muscles developing.  I haven't really lost weight, so I'm curious to do another body composition reading in a few weeks and see if there have been any changes.  But at least I'm going in the right direction.  [Halloween candy is probably to blame.  I ate all of the Reeses and Kit-kats out of the candy I bought to hand out.  Whoops.]  My biggest issue right now is my core.  I have no abs muscles, and because of my lower back pain it's hard to find good exercises to strengthen the core.  (Doesn't it feel like to do abdominal exercises correctly, you have to have some existing muscle strength?  I'm literally at zero.)

I don't think my work-out motivation is going anywhere.... I still have a year before Tiago will be in pre-school, and Hyrum is deploying in 2017.  There's a silver lining in every situation.  Let this one finally be my weight loss.

October recap

October has been a busy month, and I'm exhausted just looking at pictures.  I think we've felt an extra urgency to get out of the house and have fun because Hyrum only has a few months before leaving to Europe.  We're trying to make the most of it.  Plus, the weather has been awesome. 

The first weekend in October, Hyrum wanted to take Tiago camping.  We realized there's a state park right across the street from the Army base, so it only took aboug 7 minutes to get to the camp site.  [I declined the invitation to camp with three kids 3-and-under, because: crazy. Thank heavens I did.  Just spending the afternoon with them all in the wilderness was plenty.]

There was a lot of rolling in the dirt, and then we went on a little 'hike.'  Surprisingly, the girls did well walking most of the time.  When we finished 'hiking', we started cooking a pizza roll on the fire, and it started to rain.  Hyrum stayed out in the rain while I tried to entertain the kids in the tent for over an hour.  Tiago was terrified of the storm, and the fire, and the wind.  And didn't want to be in the tent.  The girls were restless.  I think I sang "3 little monkeys" a dozen times trying to distract them.  It was less-than-ideal, but the pizza eventually finished and we ate mostly cooked dough in the comfort of our tent.  Camping here is different in that the bear threat is real!  Each camp site has a bear box where you have to put almost everything but the sleeping bags.  Food, utinsels, bags, roasting sticks, water bottles, toothpaste, etc.  I think it made Hyrum nervous!  After dinner, I happily brought the girls home to sleep in our own beds.  Tiago and Hyrum had a better time after that and managed to stay dry.

That's our red tent right in the middle, and Fort Carson is off in the distance.  If the quality were better, you could see our house!

 Sunday was Hyrum's birthday.  It often falls during General Conference, so we can relax at home and enjoy good food.  He opened some presents and blew out candles.  Tiago was a pro after blowing out his own candles so many times the month before, so he helped.

We've been doing a lot of chalk drawing on our driveway, because the weather is so nice.  Tiago draws the craziest things, and then talks about them constantly.  There are dinosaurs covering the driveway (more like one-eyed monsters, but don't tell him that.).  It apparently hasn't rained in a while, because this enormous tank has been on our driveway for weeks.

 Speaking of tanks... one Sunday after church we walked to the parade field on post to look at the vehicles.  It's so hard to entertain kids on Sundays, especially with 1 pm church.

Another day we took the kids to Burger King to play.  Who knew it could be so hard to find a play place!  This BK was kind of gross, but we had the place to ourselves, and used a lot of hand sanitizer.

Lots of screen time.  But don't tell their pediatrician.

 Lots of park time.  Siena decided to experience the slide as a nudist.

Mila

No idea who this is.  Siena??  Mila??

Definitely Siena.

We spent a Saturday in Denver, first going to the temple, then eating at a Colombian restaurant, and ending the day at Ikea.  The restaurant wasn't bad, but not very close and kind of over priced.

 Hello pumpkin spice!  I love fall.

An obligatory trip to the pumpkin patch.  Unfortunately, it was closing within an hour of us arriving, so they were no longer selling all the food we had hoped to eat for dinner.  But we did the tractor ride to pick out some pumpkins.

Costco 'seasonally' sells the best pirogis.  They're easy to make (cause they're pre-made) and I found out my sister keeps them in her freezer, too.  We've been texting pictures whenever we eat them because it makes my mouth water.  I'm hoping they're back around Thanksgiving time.

 We explored another park about 30 minutes from our house called Red Rock Canyon Open Space.  It was a great time of year to explore and watch the leaves changing colors.  Colorado Springs doesn't have as many trees as I'm used to in the east (at least non-fir trees.)  So this area was nice to visit.  We even saw a few deer wandering around.

I took the kids to the mall one day (so I could try on a pair of boots.)  We stopped in the food court to get a pretzel, and there was a cute little kids table.  Tiago said, "Mom, you sit with us!"  He moved the stroller, and pulled up a chair for me.  Sometimes kids are adorable.  (The girls' behavior, on the other hand, wasn't adorable.  They didn't like the pretzel and cried a lot.)

There's a great zoo in town, built up at the top of the mountain.  I've been wanting to go, but it costs an arm and a leg, so we put it off.  My friend from Denver said she wanted to go, so we made a morning of it.  It was awesome to catch up with her, and let our kids play while we wandered around.  First up were the giraffes.  At first, there weren't any out, but we noticed a draw bridge up, and giraffes emerging from their 'house' to the main opening.  (The ramp winds around the top of the opening.)  There were so many giraffes!  They came very close to us, and the kids got to feed them lettuce.  I've never seen giraffes so close-up before--their black tongues were only a few feet from us.

We made our way up to the top of the zoo, then wound our way back down through different exhibits. We walked through an area where wallabies are jumping around loose.  (I accidentally told Tiago they were small kangaroos, and a zoo employee corrected me.  What can I say... I don't know much about animals!)  The zoo was practically empty, which made for an awesome morning.  

A bald eagle! And a bad selfie-attempt.  (Wings were injured before coming to the zoo)

Hyrum and Tiago watched a soccer game together.  This was the celebration when Nacional scored.

There was a Halloween event on post, at the park at the end of our street.  Hyrum signed up for the 5K run, and we thought it started at 10.... but it wasn't actually til 11 so we had an hour to kill.  (Not ideal with small kids).  They spent about 5 minutes in the bounce house, 5 minutes decorating capes (and staining their shirts - boo), and the rest of the time running around the playground.  By the time the race was over, they were DONE.

About a week later we picked up the free newspaper they have on post, and found this inside.  What a surprise!  Hyrum has a way of sneaking into newspapers wherever we go.  This Halloween costume has been used every year - what a classic!

These two went to play soccer one day, and couldn't resist matching.

We got a babysitter! This is big news for us, because moving around makes it hard to find good babysitters.  Or any babysitters.  We went for an afternoon hike, because Hyrum enjoys hiking, but doing it with kids is not fun.  Plus, I'm making an attempt to get in better shape so this counted for my day's exercise.  We went up North Cheyenne Mountain Canyon and luckily found the trail we were looking for called 7 bridges.  We went about 30 minutes farther than I'd planned, but it all worked out in the end.

I didn't want to carve pumpkins with the kids (messy and dangerous) so I let them color/paint pumpkins one afternoon.

Our branch had a trunk-or-treat the week before Halloween.  We've had the kids costumes planned for months (little Colombians!) but we didn't think about ours until about an hour before the activity.  Hyrum has this pirate wig from college, and the rest of the costume grew from there... mostly out of my closet.  My riding boots, surprisingly, fit Hyrum, as does my old winter pea coat.  (Turns out, it makes the perfect pirate coat!)  My red scarf finished off the costume.  And I threw on a red skirt that I seem to wear every year.

Hyrum and I carved pumpkins without the kids. Tiago saw them the next day and was so excited.

I've been going to the gym (we got a YMCA membership last month) almost every day lately because it means 2 hours of child care!!  (This is one of the best things that has happened so far in 2016.)  It also means I'm getting in better shape.  I think the kids enjoy it, and a few days before Halloween they had trick-or-treating with the kids.  I didn't want to put on the Colombian costumes again (it's hard to tell what they are) so I thought of making these ears for them.  Just like that, we had a little pig and a little cat.  

These pictures are from Halloween day. The girls' oranges bows finally got some use.  We enjoyed some donuts and pizza for dinner before trick-or-treating.  I'll have to track down those pictures later, and maybe do a separate post.  

That's a wrap!