30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #6—Mothers' Day Breakfast

Today has been a great today. But last week was a long week. This post will be a short post. But don't let the brevity of my details fool you—today was jam-packed with the absolute spoiling of me by my darling Davie and my Hollie-Jollie.

This morning I awoke with Hollie in my arms. I must have brought her back to bed with me somewhere around 5 a.m. I would like to lie and say that I woke up to her big toothless grin and sparkly eyes, but to tell the truth, I woke up to her purple-nurpling me in her sleep. She wasn't nursing—she was literally purpling my nurple with her thumb and fore-finger. In her sleep. But I'm letting it slide because she is just a baby. As soon as I pulled her hand away, she woke up and gave me the big toothless grin and sparkly eyes. So all is forgiven.

Hollie and I spent the morning watching The Sword and the Stone (my favorite line will always be Madam Mim's "I HATE Shun-Shine!" and I will always tear up when Wart and Merlin have to leave the lady squirrel to weep over her lost love). Meanwhile, David cooked up a secret breakfast in the kitchen. When Hollie and I returned to the dining room, we were greeted by this gorgeous sight:

David made a quiche with red peppers, artichoke hearts, bacon, and gruyere cheese. The yogurt parfaits were delicious—I don't know how David found the best looking blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries that I've ever seen, but he did. The sliced almonds were toasted and crisp, and the granola was nice and granola-y. And roasted potatoes are Dave's specialty. It was wonderful. And the flowers are beautiful (and how great that we now have a purple vase!). Dave also got me a microplaner, which I know doesn't sound romantic, but I've been wanting one for years. I can't wait to start putting lemon zest, chocolate shavings, and grated parm on all future foods! It's the start of a new life, I say!

During breakfast, Hollie finally bit into a rice cracker for the first time (up until now, she's been more interested in smashing them against things).

This is her not knowing what to do with the cracker once she gets a piece in her mouth.

After breakfast, we watched the first twenty minutes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (which has always been near and dear to me, mostly because of my crushes on both Paul and Robert, as well as my desire to somehow, someway end up as beautiful and intriguing as Katharine Ross) until we decided that the day was too beautiful to stay cooped up inside, so we went for a walk to go birding. More on that for tomorrow's Thing #7 (yes, that's right, this post includes a cliff-hanger! My blog is turning into a terrible Dan Brown novel).

Anyway, it was a wonderful Mother's Day, and I love my creative, selfless, giving, talented husband very, very much. When I was a girl, I fantasized that my future husband would make me laugh and make me surprises. When I was in my early twenties, I realized that that is a fantasy that little girls have and big girls grow out of. I'm so very happy and relieved that my late-twenties self now knows that what I wanted as a little girl was worth waiting for. My days are full of laughter and surprises, more than I ever could have anticipated. It's mushy to say it, but I have to say it: it's like magic. It's like magic that I spent my whole childhood looking for a friend that matched me head-to-head and wanted to do all the stuff I wanted to do; I spent my teenage years trying to talk myself out of believing in such a person; I spent my 20s getting brainwashed by TV sitcoms and dramas that portray relationships as bewildering, muddling, frustrating, and difficult-but-worth-it-maybe-hopefully; and now suddenly I am married to the person I was looking for when I was a kid. And it isn't muddling or frustrating or even all that difficult. It's everything I always hoped that living in a house with my best friend would be. (Which, according to my oldest fantasies, means that David is basically Pippi Longstockings. Only without the horse and the monkey.) How do I write about this? How can I ever sufficiently express what I mean or what I feel? It feels like miracles.

Best little Mother's Day package ever.

And now I'm learning the same thing about motherhood. Diapers don't bother me, baby food on the walls doesn't bother me, staying home all the time and being with my baby all the time is the opposite of bothering me. Everyone warned me that being a mom is a lot of work and one long continuous chore, etc. etc. Of course, of course, I am just the mom of one very happy baby. Maybe it will be different with the next few (I'd like a bushel of babies...the secret is out). But I don't think it will. Hollie is too much of a miracle. I don't think I could ever look at this little person and be tired of her. Even when she wakes me up every three hours all through the night to eat (while most of her baby-friends have been sleeping through the night since they were three months old), I'm always happy to see her and hold her and help her back to sleep. I know what it is like to worry that I may not ever get married and have children. I just don't see how I can ever take my David and my Hollie for granted. I aim never to do so.

This Mother's Day has left me stuffed! I'm full to the brim! Goodnight and goodnight!

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #5—Doorbell Ditching

They can't all be home-runs, ladies and gents. They—can't—all—be—home—runs. These past two days have just been exhausting. David is in the next room right now working on two papers due at midnight tonight. He will likely be at the computer until midnight—as many of you know, almost any paper in the world can be worked on right up to the minute of the due date. But Dave will actually probably be in bed earlier tonight than any other night this week, since he's been writing until about 2 a.m. every night.

So even though we've managed to do Awesome Things every day, it's felt a little sloppy, too. Bilbo Baggins keeps jumping into my head and whispering, "You and me, kid: we're like butter that's spread too thin...so thin...." (This is an appropriate literary character for me to empathize with considering that my sister-in-law Sarah purportedly referred to me as Gilgo Gaggins when she heard her brother was romantically involved with a girl named Gilliland. Of course, my family teased me about David, too: Grover has been my favorite muppet since I could first walk and talk, and one of my first words was "Goh-dee-goh" for "Grover." So yeah, my sister referred to David as Goh-dee-goh for about as long as my in-laws referred to me as Gilgo. Quid pro quo, I should say.)

To my point.

We wanted to go doorbell ditching for Thing #4 last night. Baking these cookies was absolutely not stressful. It was glorious, actually. An absolute stress reliever. And I'd been wanting to try these double-chocolate cookies for a long time, and this was my perfect excuse. But because we started too late, the cookies weren't done until 10:00 p.m. and we felt sheepish about knocking on anybody's door that late, even if we were bearing gifts. So, much to my chagrin, we bagged the doorbell-ditching and let the cookies cool overnight.

We made Molasses Spice and Double Chocolate cookies. We love the America's Test Kitchen cookbook because the recipes are almost always delicious (and scientifically proven to be the best!)

Momma Grover had to be on the road by noon, so rather than bring Hollie with us tonight (after her bedtime), we decided to doorbell-ditch the treats by the light of the sun, around 10:00 a.m. These are the things we learned about the experience:

1. We are old. (Seriously, we can't leave the house after dark anymore? Who have we become?)
2. In high school, you had a pretty safe bet that your friends would be home eventually to pick up the treats on their porch. When most of your friends are university students or university professors, though, and it is at the end of a semester, leaving treats on a porch with no car in the driveway is potentially leaving treats on the porch for a week or more. (Dear squirrels and stray dogs: enjoy, but don't eat too much of the chocolate cookies as they are not good for you.)
3. It is incredibly difficult to find hiding places in broad daylight. We managed, but SHEESH. Furthermore, David and I are big people. The typical shrub is not enough to cover our girths and lengths. Plus, have you seen Dave's hair?
4. We don't run nearly as fast as we used to.
5. Even when you make a bunch of treats and give almost all of them away, you still end up eating more than you ought to at home. (Hey, do you expect me to give out the funny-looking dud cookies? They were funny-looking!)

Our little partner-in-crime.

Our little partner-in-crime's tootsies.

Dave doing some ditching, wearing the carnation-pink adventure watch we bought at a Hello Kitty shop in Edinburgh when we realized we had come to Scotland without the means to tell time. It is ironically too big for my wrist, so Dave wears it on all our adventuring.

Also, we realize that doorbell ditching cookies and then crowing about it via Facebook and a blog is hardly altruistic. But, in our defense, we tried to hit up people who are not frequent Facebookers and who have never, to my knowledge, read this blog. However, if you did happen to get cookies this morning that look like the ones in these pictures.............it wasn't us. *cough*

Thing #5: The doorbell-ditch—ACCOMPLISHED, barely.

As a bonus for my family readers, here are some pictures of Momma Grover and Baby Hollie from this morning.

Thanks for coming to visit us and help us get all our work done during finals week, Momma Grover! We miss you already!

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #4—Hang Up My Awesome Bird Art

All right, folks. This was not supposed to be our Thing #4. Thing #4 has had to be postponed as Thing #5. Today was a royal SLURGE through my last huge paper of my PhD coursework (although I really do need to get around to working out my shorter 15-minute mock conference paper for my final tomorrow..........when will this semester finally END?! Yeeararearaearaeagahahahghaghggggggpfffff!), so by the time we got around to preparing our Thing #4, the day suddenly ended before we could complete the task.

But tomorrow's Awesome Thing is prepped and ready for awesome action.

Fortunately, while I was riding my bike to the store (on a glorious stormy late afternoon! A perfect summer storm day for riding bikes!), Michaels called to say that the custom framed picture that was supposed to take THREE WEEKS to complete was finished in—shock!—TWO DAYS! Oh, Michaels. Please forgive me for all the times I wished you were HobbyLobby (which closes a half-hour earlier than Michaels, and somehow we are always trying to craft it up at 8:30 instead of 7:30 p.m.).

Momma Grover went to Michaels to pick it up for us, and behold the glory that is my birthday present from David:

The art is Etsy's Jason Laferrera's, and I am so impressed with this find. The bird is a Gray Jay, and, if you can see from the picture (if not, click this link!), the bird is composed from different pieces of maps where Gray Jays are found. David really knocked my birthday present out of the park this year—it is always the best when you are given a gift that you would never think to ask for but completely love when you see it.

I apologize for the bad lighting, but our house has no strong light after the sun sets (and doesn't get much strong light when the sun is up, for that matter). Here is a close-up of the frame itself. It was so hard for us to finally decide on a frame, but we're pleased that we went with this two-toned, sort of woodsy, sort of crafty frame. 

A close-up of the frame and mat. It literally took an entire hour to decide this specific configuration. I love how it turned out.

Even though this wasn't the planned Thing for today, I'm glad I get to showcase this gift. David and I discovered birding together after we got married and received a pair of binoculars as a wedding gift. It has been so fun to learn this hobby together (one of our future 30 things will be to discover a new species of bird that we haven't spotted before). Even though West Texas is the pits for a lot of things (frighteningly little water, no really great trees, incredibly hot summers, incredibly windy winters, and literally no cities around us for five hours in any direction), it has been surprisingly rife with beautiful birds. So was southeastern Idaho (I always pictured southeastern Idaho as all brown from April to October, and all white from November to March, until we discovered the Western Tanager and realized that our city was all kinds of colors we had never anticipated. When we saw a flock of White Pelicans and a Sandhill Crane eating a frog at Harriman's State Park, we felt completely exotic).

So this picture means a lot. David once wrote about how learning to bird was not completely unlike learning about each other. Our courtship was wildly brief according to most people's standards today—we were married on the six-month anniversary of our first kiss (Valentines Day. Chicago. The AWP Conference. A brief three-day introduction to the beginning of a long-distance relationship while David finished his graduate program in Ohio and I taught classes at BYU–Idaho.). So while we were learning the difference between Cedar Waxwings and Dark-Eyed Juncos (it seems so wildly obvious now, but we were bamboozled then), I was also quietly learning about how David breathes easier after the laundry is done and the house is dusted, and he was learning about how I start to avoid eye contact when I don't like the way a conversation is going (something he pointed out to me again today when he was trying to tell me that the original plan for Thing #4 just wasn't going to pan out). And learning all the new and different faces, habits, expressions, and tendencies of each other was just as gratifying and captivating as discovering new birds that had been around us all this time that we never had the eyes to notice before.

David in the Chicago Hilton, February 2009. I swooned over his Cosby sweater and his thick wilderness of hair. Looking at this picture still makes me a little wobbly in the knees.

Grover Family Game Night in Dave's Chicago Hilton hotel room. (Maybe I should get bangs again. It's been a while.) Pat Madden is looking thoughtful on the far left, our professor friend who officially introduced David and me to each other. We basically owe him forever.

So today's impromptu Thing #4: Hanging up my Awesome Bird Art Birthday Present = ACCOMPLISHED.

Bird Art safely at home on our painted-over wood-panelled walls. Welcome home, Gray Jay.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #3—Sneak Treats into a Movie Theater

Catch this one here. It's David's turn to blog about it.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #2—Eat Breakfast for Dinner

I know it looks like we just woke up, but we've actually been awake all day, writing papers. *sigh*
Also, our baby is eating a toucan.

Dave's Mom is visiting us this week, and she came up with the great idea of eating breakfast for dinner. To make this awesome thing even more awesome, we dressed up in our pajamas several hours early. Hollie kept refusing to go to sleep, so we let her stay up and play in her high chair with us.

Our Awesome Dinner-Breakfast:

Texas Pecan-Filled Waffles with 100% Grade A Maple Syrup
Sugared Strawberries, Raspberries, and Blackberries with half-frozen Cool Whip
Scrambled Eggs
Bacon Strips and Sausage Rounds
Orange Juice

Evidence that David really was wearing his pjs and not just a blue shirt.

It was a breakfast to rival Christmas mornings.

It takes a real foodie to show off their waffles by picking them up with their bare hands.

Now it is back to the books so that we can have time for another Awesome Thing tomorrow.

Thing #2 = ACCOMPLISHED. Thanks Momma Grover for wearing your pajamas at 6:30 p.m. with us!

P.S. I promise that not every Awesome Thing will consist of eating something. However, given the old adage that "You are what you eat," it should not be surprising that this Grover family fills up on so much awesomeness.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #1—Eat an Ice Cream Cake

So, I turned 30 today. David is 30 until June 11, but he leaves to grade AP English exams in Kentucky on June 8. Thus, we have 30 days to spend together while we are both 30 years old. Ergo, we are celebrating this time by doing 30 *AWESOME* things in 30 consecutive days.

The list is not exactly set in stone, so feel free to post ideas of what kinds of things we can do here.

It is also finals week, and I am the world's best procrastinator of 25-page essays (the one due on Thursday is still only two pages.......whatever, I'm an English major. It's what we do. I'd better be able to whip those out, for crying out loud), so this week's Things will have to be a little less extravagant than the ones to come.

Today's Thing was to celebrate my birthday with an ice cream cake.

I've had an ice cream cake every year since I was pretty young....12 or 13 or something. It's tradition. My mom called to make sure that David got me one since she can't. I like ice cream cake much better than cake with ice cream on the side. But I also like cake with no ice cream on the side. But I get cake on everyone else's birthdays anyway. My birthday is the day for ice cream cake. (By the way, the four candles represent........the four corners.....of.........my....."your squareness," says David over my shoulder as I write this.)

• So, Thing #1 = Accomplished
• Turning 30 = Accomplished
• Having the last temper tantrum of my 20s when I went to Michaels with David to get a frame for this completely rad original art he found and bought for me (pictures to come after it gets custom-framed) and got hiccups (which I HATE HATE HATE) and had to sit down on the floor in the tacky glue aisle complaining about how crummy the end of semesters are and how I HATE HATE HATE hiccups = Accomplished (P.S. David stood guard over me while I sat on the floor hating the hiccups and shrugged his shoulders politely at people giving me concerned looks. We ended up having a great time picking out frames. And my hiccups went away. But seriously: the last tantrum of my 20s. I'm a 30-year-old now.)

And since you made it all the way through this post, here is a bonus video of Hollie from a couple of weeks ago, when she was still toppling over pretty frequently. I'm sure it will bore the pants off of most of you, but I can't stop watching it on my computer. It's so funny to me for some reason. I gobble this baby up.

Happy Half-Year, Babaloo

This baby girl is six months old this week, and here are her quick stats:

Height: 25-ish inches
Weight: 16 lbs 12 oz
Favorite song: Still the Duck Tales Theme Song.
Favorite toys: Mom's glasses, Mom's Nalgene, Mom's laptop, Mom's books, Dad's watch, Mom's hair, Dad's hair
Favorite baby food: Carrots!
Favorite book: Baby Sees Colors (the red page is the favorite page)
Teeth: Still none.

Hollie can roll from her stomach to her back and her back to her stomach pretty well these days, and her new trick is getting her arms and legs stuck between the crib bars. She will do anything not to have to fall asleep. She sits up like a pro and only topples when she is reaching for a toy. She also likes to stand up at church and hold onto the back of the pew for balance (and that's about the only thing she likes about church). Rather than experiment with consonants, this baby has been more interested in voice-range exploration. She likes to practice her high notes (think dog whistles) and her low notes (think dinosaur-grandpa-wolf grunts), instead. This last week, she expanded her repertoire with under-the-sea gurgle-singing. This is always accompanied with big smiles and ends in coughing (still learning to control that spit).

Grandma Hollie came to visit for a whole week and a half! We loved it! Baby Hollie got spoiled, and so did David and I. Utah is too far away from Texas. We did get lots of pictures of Baby Hollie smiling with Grandma Hollie, but I like this picture a lot. Her eyes and lips look so pretty, I think. (Speaking of eyes, they still change colors a lot, but we noticed this month that she has an eye-freckle in one of her eyes, just like her Dad does. I love that.)

While my mom was here, she got us a swing for the backyard! We're looking forward to some early morning and early evening swings (since West Texas summers are TOO HOT between the hours of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.).

A very rare photo of Hollie actually sleeping.

This is a typical picture of what you find at our house on weekends. Babaloo manages to get plenty of sleep, but David and I are still a far cry from fully rested. This girl has yet to sleep more than four hours at a time, and I can count on my fingers how often that has happened. She still wakes up every two or three hours in the nighttime to eat, and she still refuses to take naps in her crib. The pediatrician recommends tough love, but that will have to wait until school gets out. It's easier to read books and type papers with a baby sleeping on your chest than it is to read books and type papers while a baby cries in the next room. She's sleeping on me right now, if you want to know the truth.

We had to take a picture of Baboo's "hobo toe." What can I say? She kicks her feet with too much gusto for us to expect her jams to survive long! (I hope she blows the knees out of her jeans when she gets older, too. I always had blown-out knees as a kid.)

I can't believe our Babalina is halfway to a year old. We are so in love with this baby. People keep asking David and me how we are hanging in there with a six-month-old while also attempting to complete PhD coursework and teach college classes. We don't know how to respond except that it is the six-month-old baby that is helping us get through it! She is a delight and a surprise, and she makes us laugh every day. She puts our feet back on the ground and inspires us to work hard. She reminds us of what matters and keeps us from wasting time on what doesn't matter. It's all for you, Bean! Thank you for being a part of our little family!

For Sarah

P.S. Sarah: Aren't those YOUR hair extensions that David is wearing? Or was this a cover-up story Dave made up to protect me from a past butt-rocker phase?

Scholar-in-Training

Captured on film by our supervisor, Hollie and Dad look over grading materials for a freshman composition workshop. Our good little scholar is always on her best behavior at school. Of course, I was in the next room over with my own grading group when this picture was taken. By the time I came to pick up Hollie, David had his feet up, reclined as far back as those swivel chairs can get, with Hollie asleep on his chest and his own eyes shut. Fortunately our supervisor had put her camera away for that photo opportunity. (Though most scholars will tell you that another great characteristic for PhD candidates is the ability to fall asleep during mandatory meetings.)

Easter Miscellaneous

 

Oh, my. Time is passing so quickly this semester! David and I have been up to ears in schoolwork, grading, and a cute little baby. Unfortunately, we're not out of the woods yet, and I am technically supposed to be working right now...but I need a break. So I give you: Grover Family Easter 2012, in which Hollie wears a frou-frou hair bow (for ten minutes) and Emily learns to tie an Easter bow for the first time without her mom's assistance (also lasted for ten minutes).

Our loot! Hollie got a Hello Kitty Easter basket that her Grandma Hollie picked out for her while she was in town (pictures of that soon. I love my mom and miss her dearly. *sigh* It is hard to be away from my family sometimes). The gorgeously wrapped-and-ribboned stack of book-and-game-shaped presents is to me from Davey (he even stamped the paper all cute with our bird stamps and label-makered my name to the top. *swoon!*). The handkerchiefs-shaped present is from me to David.

After church on Sunday, we somehow managed to invite eleven big people and five little people to our house and get them all fed (with some pot luck help, of course). My contribution was this Boston Cream Pie. It looks sloppy, but I have to admit I was pretty proud of it. David helped me to "render" the egg mixture of the cream—it was a first for both of us, but super fun.

Then, we tie-dyed eggs! Check out this awesome blog to see how you can, too! This is a new Easter tradition for the Grovers.

The end results!

Buzz-Buzz-Buzz, I'm a bumbley egg.

Look at gorgeous red. Fire engine art deco.

I love how the paisley showed up so clearly here.

I wish this one had had more contact with the silk to cover more of the egg. So rad. I can't wait to try this again next Easter. I'm on the lookout for terribly gaudy and bold silk ties all year long in the meantime.

My favorite egg. It looks like stained glass with little yellow paisleys. I can't wait until Hollie is old enough to understand how magical tie-dying eggs is!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Hollie hates being belted into her bouncer, because she prefers to lounge rather than sit in it.

Like her dad, when she's feeling particularly lazy she would rather accomplish tasks using her feet instead of her hands. (David is superb at grabbing remote controls and changing the volume of the music/film with his toes on lazy weekends.)

This is what happens when there is nothing to do until 1:30 p.m. church.

Like Father Like Daughter

 I'm sorry, my poor little baby. It is in your genes to have a lifetime of crazy-haired sleepy photos. I think you are both cute as buttons, though.