qirien

I've decided to combine my blog and family photos website into a new blog here:
http://qirien.blogspot.com. Hope to see you there!

First, a picture of Sapphire!



For some reason, ice cream gets very hard in our freezer. I guess I'm not a very patient person, because instead of setting it on the counter for a few minutes, I stick it in the microwave for ten seconds. :-) Of course, I'm not just impatient -- I'm also worried that I will put it on the counter and then forget about it for an hour or two and have really melted ice cream.

Did you know egg nog is good hot? Even soy egg nog! I've been trying to avoid having a lot of chocolate since I'm nursing Sapphire, so I've discovered hot egg nog instead of hot chocolate. She seemed crankier and more spit-uppy on days where I ate a lot of Christmas chocolate, but it could just be coincidence.

Sapphire's started smiling, which is so much fun. Quartz makes all sorts of silly faces and says nonsense words trying to get her to smile. Of course, he's probably only copying me, since I do the same thing. :-)

Sapphire woke up at 5am this morning -- which is great, because it means she slept through the night! When she went back to sleep at 5:30, I assumed the boys would be waking up soon (Onyx has been waking at 5:30 the past few days), so I got up and went downstairs and puttered around, and wrote this blog entry . . . and here it is 6:40 and no one is up. I could have been sleeping! Oh, well, it's been nice to have some time to myself and get a few things done.

Lately we've been playing LittleBigPlanet for PS3. The premise is simple -- a platform game where you jump around and avoid obstacles and get to the end of the level. While we've mostly finished the main game, the cool thing is people can make their own levels. So there's tons of fun levels that other people have made to play, and we made an easy one for Quartz to play (where you feed animals at a zoo). And, they've really done a great job on the multiplayer (both local and internet), where players can easily join or leave, and express themselves through hand movements and costumes. It's a great party game, because it's easy to learn and fun to play together (and not too competitive), and the kids like to watch it because it's cute and has great visuals.

Wes and I have also been reading a book of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories. While they are usually pretty predictable, I am amazed at how much of video games and modern pop culture has been influenced by his ideas. Things like a brain-in-a-jar, technologically advanced aliens, crypts hidden under houses, and people going insane weren't cliches then, but the fact that they are now is in part because of his works, I think.

Well, my parents and brother just left this morning, and it was really fun to have them here. The kids loved all the attention, and I loved all the help, and we even got to play some games together. I showed Joshua Battle for Wesnoth, Blob Wars, Bionic Commando, and LittleBigPlanet, and we played Ticket to Ride and Munchkin with him and my parents. I have to say, I never thought I would be playing Munchkin with my parents, but they actually seemed to enjoy it, and did pretty well. Another thing I never thought would happen -- my dad read the first volume of Girl Genius, and liked it!

On a more sour note, Quartz has picked up the bad habit of name-calling. Seems like twice an hour we hear him say "You're a thief!" and Onyx will reply, "I not a thief. You a thief!" I'm not sure either of them actually knows what a thief is, but that seems to be beside the point.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Greetings from the Landaker's!

Here is our Top Ten list of favorite things from 2008:

10) Wes' parents finishing their house about 30 minutes away, so they can live
here sometimes and the kids and grandparents can really enjoy each other.
Andrea appreciates how helpful her mother-in-law is, too!

9) Wes getting a mini-laptop that he takes everywhere with him. Andrea has to
be content with a mini-van.

8) Going camping in Gila National Forest in February -- the boys loved the
campfire and throwing rocks in the river.

7) Visiting the Grand Canyon with Wes' brother and sister-in-law -- we stayed
in a great cabin in the woods, went geocaching, and enjoyed the wildlife (and
the canyon, of course).

6) Onyx progressing from saying a few unintelligble words to speaking complete
sentences. It has been so fun to get to know him better through his new
words!

5) Receiving a fair amount of rain this summer, and the boys playing in the
mud. We loved that our basement didn't leak.

4) Quartz growing from a clumsy toddler to an energetic little boy who wants
to show everyone how high he can jump and how fast he can run. He is
becoming more independent, and he can now make his own peanut butter
sandwich, chicken nuggets, and hot chocolate.

3) Cramming in as much fun as possible during our week-long summer trip to
Utah. We imposed on lots of relatives, visited a dinosaur park with
life-size dinosaurs, and toured a beautiful cave after a grueling hike. The
best part was sharing it with my parents and relatives.

2) Riding trains, whether it is the New Mexico Rail Runner (Albuquerque's new
Commuter Rail), the zoo train, or the Aquarium train, the boys love them all.

1) The birth of our new daughter, Sapphire, on November 10th. She is so calm,
but very curious about the people and world around her!

We hope you have a joyous season of mirth and merriment, and a bright New Year ahead!

If crabs eat other crabs, is it "crabbibalism"?

Saw two movies recently -- one great and one okay. "Primer" is an awesome independent film about the ramifications of time travel with low-key, realistic acting and accurate techno-jargon. We also saw "Blade Runner", which was kind of disappointing -- I'd heard a lot about it, but never seen it. The setting was cool, but there was no real reason to care about anything or anyone, and the ideas could have been fleshed out a little more (pun intended).

Baby Ernie is creepy. Every time I see his face on one of Sapphire's diapers it creeps me out:


Onyx is very literal and precise, and sometimes gets mad when others aren't. If you call a construction vehicle a truck, he'll say, "Actually, it's an excavator" or "Actually, it's a skid steer loader". Sometimes he and Quartz will get into arguments like "It's a plane!" "Actually, it's an airplane." "No, it's a plane!"

Sometimes Quartz goes to timeout. Sometimes we exasperatedly ask Quartz, "Do you want to go to timeout?!" Onyx says, "I want to go to timeout!". When Quartz has a timeout, he will sit patiently near him and say "I'm having a timeout".

When it's not quite time for bed, and the boys seem to have extra energy, sometimes we will go on a flashlight walk. The boys duct taped their flashlights to their dump trucks and set off down the hill into the darkness. Everything looks different at night, and to combine two of the boys' favorite toys (dump trucks and flashlights) is pretty fun. Tonight's the first night Onyx drove his dump truck the whole way around the block. It probably looks strange to cars passing by -- tiny flashlights bobbing and weaving close to the ground, like snakes riding on bicycles or something. It's something I really enjoy -- too bad it will be getting too cold soon. I guess we can always wear warm coats . . .

And, some random quotes from our family this week:
"Let's go to Budapest!" -Quartz
"I like forklifts." -Onyx, when a stranger asks how he is doing
"Cuttlefish are so cuddly!" -Wes
"I think it's about time for Sapphire to eat. I feel it in my bosom . . ." -Andrea
"Ga." -Sapphire
"I just wanted to climb on the stairs because we don't have a play set in the backyard!" -Quartz
"You're old." -Onyx, to stranger asking about kids' ages

The Landaker's would like to welcome their newest addition, Sapphire Ruth Ellen Landaker, who was born on Monday, November 10th, at 5:36am. She weighed 7 lbs. 3 oz., and is now home with her family and doing great.

Quartz likes to hold her and talk to her in a very cute high-pitched voice, and Onyx likes to give her things (useful: blanket; not useful: tiny legos) and say, "Don't cry, Sapphire".

The boys are NOT dressed as "Bob the Builder". They don't even know who that is (I'm happy to keep it that way). They are very respectable, hard-working, and non-licensed Construction Workers.


I guess the baby could come any time now -- 3 weeks till the due date, though! Is it "nesting", or is it just "getting ready for the baby" when I clean the blinds and vaccuum thoroughly and buy tiny pink socks at Target? All of these are unusual behaviors for me . . . :-)

Quartz has been torturing Onyx lately -- walking up to him and pushing him, or hitting him, or sitting on him randomly. Well, it's not totally random -- he does it when he wants my attention. So we've been trying very hard to practice getting mom's attention by such bizarre acts as tapping mom on the leg, or saying, "Mom!". I know, I have some strange ideas -- but if Quartz would just trust me, I think they would work. :-) Actually, it's very hard not to get raging angry when I walk in and see Onyx crying in pain and Quartz sitting on him -- but supposedly getting angry is part of what he wants, so I'm not going to give him that. Look at me, I'm trying to manage anger by turning it into a competition . . .

Glad the election's over; now all the obnoxious political phone callers can stop calling my house all the time. Sadly, most of their messages made me want to do the opposite of what they suggested . . .

You know how there's some long-running series where the end just isn't very satisfying? You go through this great process where you uncover all sorts of cool plot, and it seems like it's leading towards something awesome, but then the end is just not everything you hoped for. You know, like the Matrix, or Breaking Dawn, or Alias, or the latest Indiana Jones movie. Great fun, but the endings seem rushed or cheap or obscure.

Well, I'm happy to report that the concluding novel to Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy is not at all like that. It takes every detail from the previous books, every bit of foreshadowing, every character, every mechanic of the magic system, and brings them together for an exciting, thoughtful, and satisfying conclusion. It's a good feeling, like playing Tetris. So here's hoping he can do the same thing for Wheel of Time's "A Memory of Light"! Wow, talk about a tough job . . . :-)

Here's some plusses and minuses of recent events:
- 2 year old boys in Sunday white shirts + Jello for snack in the nursery at Church
+ 2 year old boys who love to go to nursery

- Scrubbing the kitchen floor on hands and knees trying to clean up old spills
+ Smelling honeysuckle through the window that wafts in at floor level

+ Kids playing together happily and creatively
- Kids ending a happy playing session with "He hit me!"

- Parents reminding son that he is wasting time by complaining about having to go somewhere
+ Son telling parents they are "wasting fun" by making him go somewhere

And here's a picture from August when we went hiking to a local waterfall (sorry, haven't taken many pictures lately!):

Pet Peeves of Unrealistic Media
1) "Jungle" scenes that show animals together that are from totally different jungles of the world (e.g, tigers and capybaras, or gorillas and macaws)
2) Dinosaur scenes with dinosaurs from totally different time periods (Don't show a Cretaceous Tyrannosaurus eating a Jurassic Stegosaurus!)
3) Otherwise realistic animals that don't eat what they're supposed to (Sorry, a seal and a penguin wouldn't be "friends"; seals eat penguins!)
4) The absence of children in video games where children would be present (is this a fantasy world where people pop into existence as teenagers? Better explain it if it is!)

I realize some of these things are done in the name of making things easier or more fun, but especially in programming that purports to be "educational" or "realistic", I expect more!

Happy birthday, Quartz! 4 years old . . . sometimes it seems like I've been a mom forever. Other times it seems like it's gone by fast.

Lately Quartz has been really into Diego, and likes to play animal rescuer and things. It's pretty good, even though the voice acting on the show is so annoying. (They say everything as if It is SOO Important And You Aren't Very Smart So I'll Talk REALLY Slowly!). You should hear his "Diego voice" where he tries to do a sort of accent. Very funny.

I have found the Perfect Pet for small kids. Pill bugs, also known as roly polys, are easy to find, can live in a small container (I recommend the small plastic "pet carriers" from the pet store), live on food that is easy to get in the backyard (dirt, dead leaves, maybe a vegetable or two), don't escape, don't make noise, don't mind being held, are easily and cheaply replaceable, and are fun to watch because they can climb sticks and hide and curl up. And when your kids are tired of them, you just put them back in the backyard!

Onyx likes Diego too, and is adding lots of great words to his vocabulary. You will often hear him say, "No, thank you" -- it's how he says no, which is very cute. Quartz will be taking away a toy and Onyx will be screaming, "No, thank you!". His current favorite words and pronounciations:
"Dee-go!" - Diego
"No Gank Ooo" - No Thank You
"Mama Coco" - Motorcycle
"Keee-ecks" - Kleenex (usually said after a series of sneezes -- I think he has allergies)
"Fa fift" - forklift (he is obsessed with forklifts)
"Wee it!" - Read it (upon handing you a book)

Looks like we'll be having a girl! I'm excited -- I love my two boys, but we've been thinking that our family is missing a girl. :-)

Onyx's favorite thing to do is get a screwdriver ("Tool! Tool!") and walk around the backyard with it. There's a 2x4 the boys can use tools on, but he doesn't really use it for that -- he just kind of carries it around.

Quartz has enjoyed the mud the past few days, though I'm hoping it's dried up today. There's got to be some kind of mom's award for letting your kid play in the mud (and get their clothes all dirty) twice in one day. :-)

Quartz just said, "I love you, Onyx" with no prompting or anything. I had to write it down because I think I might forget it. :-) They're getting better at sharing, but still need help using words instead of snatching things and saying "Mine!" all the time.

Onyx is developing quite the vehicle vocabulary -- grader, crane, pickup truck, motorcycle, tractor, and forklift are some of his favorite words. But whenever he sees a vehicle, he always has to point out the steering wheel and the driver's seat. "Wheel! Seat!" He will continue to point them out until you acknowledge that he is right.

I was pleasantly surprised that our NWN module, Time Becomes a Loop, won the Best Multiplayer Module award at the 2007 Academy for Modding Excellence Golden Dragon Awards. Pretty cool!




My friend Sharon had this on her blog and I thought it would be fun. Here is how you play:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty cool (and funny) to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. :)

Oh yeah, I forgot to post back in April when I finished this wall quilt. The thing I am most proud of about this quilt is that I did the design myself, from scratch, and it's my first big quilt. The workmanship is actually pretty shoddy -- I'm not very good at making seams even, and I didn't stretch it right, and I took some shortcuts -- but I still like it.


Also, there's this cool script that will take your Last.fm username and calculate your "open-mind index" based on the genres of music you listen to. Kind of fun to see:





At our house, the word "doom" has a very different meaning. For some reason, Wes started asking the boys if they want "hugs of DOOM", which are like normal hugs, but with a little more oomph. Well, the boys loved this. So, whenever it's time to gave dad a hug, the boys say "Doom!" in very cute, excited voices and run to dad for a hug. Sometimes they even ask me for hugs of "doom".

As we've gone through the car buying process these past few months, I have two recommendations:
1) Don't buy a new car without going through Costco's Auto Program (no haggling, good discounts, prices online).
2) Don't buy a used car without checking out Carmax (no haggling, great website, good selection).

I can't believe we're buying a minivan -- that sounds so . . . my mom. Like, I'm too young to drive a minivan (at least ours will be red)! But, actually, if you want to seat a lot of people and don't plan to go off-roading, they're really the best option. Now, will somebody please make a hybrid minivan?

I put a song I wrote recently online. The lyrics are from Eliza R. Snow's "Truth Reflects Upon Our Senses". I always thought the tune in the LDS hymnbook wasn't very good for that song, but I really like her poetry. So here's my version, called Truth Reflects.

We watched two good "family" movies lately. Well, they'd probably be pretty boring for anyone under eight or so, but they both have good themes without objectionable material. The first is "The Twilight Samurai", a Japanese movie about a samurai whose wife dies and he really focuses in on his family, despite forces that want to draw his attention elsewhere. It sounds pretty boring that way, but the acting was great and the script was really like poetry -- maximum effectiveness with minimum of words. And the swordfighting seemed pretty realistic (no jumping wires here).

The second movie was "Akeelah and the Bee", about a girl from downtown LA with a gift for spelling that decides to enter the national spelling bee. Now, that sounds pretty boring, too, but the movie sets up several interesting conflicts and slowly and organically resolves them, and there's something here everyone can relate to. Plus, you'll get to find out how people learn to spell words they've never seen before. :-)

Ah, yes, the kid update -- well, Quartz is in swimming lessons right now, but he's pretty scared. He'll inch around the edge of the pool, but doesn't want to use a kickboard or swim while someone holds him or anything. But he's slowly getting more comfortable in the water.

Onyx is learning lots of words ("hoop" is one of his latest favorites, as in basketball hoop), and he likes bugs and riding toys and raisins. He also likes to copy Quartz, whether it's making obnoxious noises or sitting on the potty or driving cars around. The other day he got out the dress-up box and dressed himself up with a pirate necklace, backwards train engineer hat, and a tape measure. Not sure how those all relate, but it was pretty cute. :-)

And here's a picture of all of us on a recent trip to Colorado Springs:

First, big news! We're expecting a baby in November! Yay! The due date is November 24th. So far it appears human, but we don't have any other information on "what it is". :-)

So, whenever the phone rings at our house, Onyx picks up his toy phone and says hello and talks into it while I talk on the phone. I started playing phone with him, and I put his phone up to my ear and said, "Hello? Who's there?" He just gave me a blank look. "Is this grandma?" "Noo," he says, in a Mom's-so-silly-voice. "Is this Onyx?" "No." "Well then, who is it?" "It's just a phone," he says matter-of-factly (though with his pronounciation it's more like "Jussa foh"). I guess he doesn't get that when mom talks on the phone, she's talking to someone else . . .

So, I've been taking a nap almost every day, but instead of feeling lazy about it, I decided I'm just following the standard Southwestern Siesta Schedule, so that I can stay up until 10:30 instead of falling asleep at 9. I'm quite the narcoleptic, actually -- once my body decides it's time to sleep, I just fall asleep. It's kind of annoying, actually -- I fall asleep at movie theatres in the middle of a $10 movie, at home fighting a boss in a video game, folding laundry, reading to the kids, or reading the climax of a novel. And forgetting driving long distances unless it's early morning or there's incredibly engaging conversation. Even chocolate doesn't help -- it just makes me fall asleep faster once the rush wears off. The only thing that will keep me awake when I want to stay awake is physical action (jogging in place, cracking peanuts in the shell, situps, etc). But I'm usually too tired to think of that when the sleep wave hits. I know a lot of people have the opposite problem of insomnia, so I feel kind of bad -- I wish we could just even out some of the sleepiness, and then we'd all feel better. :-)

I had a request to show the sleep routine posted I made, so here it is:


The steps are go upstairs, brush teeth, use toilet/change diaper and put on pajamas, say prayers, read 2 books, sing a song, read by yourself, go to sleep. If I made it again, I'd probably put "get a hug" instead of "sing a song", because I think that's more important to them. Anyway, the drawing's pretty lame, but my kids understand it (although I think Onyx might think that we always read a book about trains, because he always brings me a train book, and he points to the poster and says "train!").

We got back from a vacation, so the kids had to test and see if we still did the same routine, so it's taken about 40 minutes the past two nights. Still, not that bad.

If you are ever looking for quality hair accessories that don't break, that actually keep your hair and stay in place, and look really awesome, I recommend LongHairGirl.com. I ordered a clip and a claw and both are solid metal, with sturdy springs and pretty designs. The clip even is adjustable for various amounts of hair, so I can use the same clip to hold half my hair or all my hair. And don't worry, they're not all as expensive as the ones on the first page!

Well, after my last post, I was just so fed up with the sleep situation I decided to take initiative and change it. Before I had always been reacting to my kids ("Why won't they just go to sleep?! Go to bed now!"), but I decided to be proactive. I researched various ideas on the internet, but didn't find any one thing that sounded promising. I prayed about it, a LOT. I want bedtime to be a positive time where we can all unwind together and where the kids can be independent within the boundaries we parents have set. After praying, I took a shower (my only "alone time" in the morning) and talked about it to God some more. Then, He prompted me to this plan of action.

I made a "Bedtime Routine" posted, drawing each step of the routine and posting it upstairs by the bedroom. I made a "Good Sleepers" chart with stickers for when the boys stayed in their room when we were done with the routine. Most importantly, I made a commitment not to raise my voice, but to gently and silently lead out-of-bed kids back to bed. Now, none of this sounds very revolutionary, but I had tried the "quietly lead kids back to bed" many times before, and it failed, because I would get impatient and start yelling or picking kids up and putting them back in bed physically. So, I had to agree that I would keep being silent and gentle NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TOOK! To help me do that, I decided that while I was upstairs, waiting outside the kids' room for the next time they got out of bed so I could lead them back to it, I would exercise. This would help get out aggression and frustration so I wouldn't feel like yelling, and would give me something to do so I didn't get bored, and would be something positive that I would be accomplishing in the meantime.

The first day, I showed the kids the routine poster, pointed to each step as we did it, and then said goodnight. I let them read with the light on for about half an hour, and then it's time to stay in bed with the light off. It took 90 minutes of silently and gently putting Onyx back in his bed before he stayed there and went to sleep. The good thing was, since I didn't do anything exciting, Quartz stayed in bed, too. And I got a good workout, jogging in place and doing psuedo-Tae Kwon Do punches and kicks and dancing and stretching. The next naptime, it also took 90 minutes for Onyx to settle down. The next time, 30 minutes, and the last few naps and nights he has not gotten out of bed at all. This has helped me to enjoy our bedtime routine more, to really get into the bedtime stories and hugs and everything, and I feel like God has helped me to become a more patient person through this experience. I needed His help, and He was there with the inspiration I needed to be a better mom.

Here's a Mother's Day song I wrote for church. Like all Mother's Day songs, it's kind of cheesy:
http://qirien.icecavern.net/music/songs/Religious-Hymns/A%20Mother%27s%20Love.pdf

Lately, we've been trying to have the kids share a room. It worked well at first, but now the kids (mainly Onyx) just keep getting out of bed over and over again. Bleh . . . I usually end up yelling and getting really upset, which isn't good, but the "just put them back in bed calmly" approach doesn't usually work . . . maybe I just need to be more patient. Seems like they miss the one-on-one time with mom, too.

We went to the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago; actually, we mainly hung out at our cabin, which was really nice. We went to the local petting zoo, went geocaching, and explored the woods. It was nice to stay in a cabin instead of camping, as it was rather windy, and the kids could have their own room. The kids really liked the Railroad Cafe in Flagstaff -- they have model trains running around the walls. At the Grand Canyon, they liked the Watchtower, though they were sad that they couldn't go out on the very top. The whole Grand Canyon is kind of unreal, but, hey, there it is. :-)

Here we are roasting marshmallows at the cabin: