This morning I set Abby down in the living room and went into the kitchen to clean up the breakfast dishes like I always do. I put the last dish in the dishwasher, gave the sink a quick wipe, and turned around. And yelped! There, grinning up at me from the dirty kitchen floor was Abby. Her gleeful look said "Ha, mom, I followed you in here! You were hiding from me and I found you!" She was just so pleased with herself. I knew she could crawl, but before today I didn't know how far she could go. So now I have to make sure the floors in my house are super clean. Or attach a rag to the front of her shirt so she can drag it around the floor and clean it for me. She's finally past the super-clingy stage, so I can put her on the floor with a box full of toys and she'll be happy for 20-30 minutes. Woo hoo!

The other exciting news around here is my potty trained boy. Shay has known how to use the toilet for ages, now, but I haven't been able to get him to go consistently. Finally I got fed up with changing two sets of diapers and wiping adult-grade poop off of his bum. So, this week we went for it. I got out all 10 pairs of underwear we have for him and told him that he was a big boy now and that we were going to wear underwear from now on (excepting naps and nighttimes). It's Thursday and we haven't had a leak yet, I'm proud to say. I remind him occasionally, but most of the time I get a "No, mom, I don't have to go." When he does have to go he runs into the bathroom, stands on his stool and does his business into the big potty. The other day he even pooped in it with no help or invitation. He simply had to go, so he went! All you non-parents out there might be saying "Big deal, I do that every day..." but for a kid this is an amazing step. Just think, it's the first bowel movement he's ever had where I didn't have to manually wipe it off his nether regions. So, yeah, I'd call it a breakthrough. And the fact that we haven't had an accident yet tells me that he was more than ready for this. He occasionally asks for a diaper, mostly for convenience I imagine, but I tell him that he's a big boy now. On Saturday, if he makes it through the week well, we're going to have a Potty Party. It coincidentally coincides with our Elder's Quorum BBQ across the street at the park, so I think I'm going to tell him that that's his party. There'll be food, games, desserts, all his Nursery friends... sounds like a great party to me!

After reading this article in the newspaper this morning, called "'Silent tsunami' of hunger threatens world", and having random dreams about emergency preparedness I really feel an urgency to complete the food storage I've started.

My mom and I have decided to pool our resources, she being by herself now and us needing better organization and suggestions. She's only 2 blocks away so she can get here easily in a disaster, or can eat with us if there's a food shortage. We're getting together this Saturday for a Preparedness Seminar in Lindon to identify what we need, and then get it. I had a dream about two weeks ago where I was in a grocery store and a 20 pound bag of rice cost $300. It was most of the money we had with us, but we decided to get it, since rice goes a long way, is easy to cook, and it was one of the only things on the shelves.

It was scary. We had the money, but there was just no food to buy. I have the feeling that something like this is coming to us. Did you know that the cost of rice has doubled in the last 5 weeks? Doubled. I know rice wasn't to expensive to begin with, but this is just the start of the rising food costs. Luckily, the problem hasn't hit us here in Utah yet, but it's coming.

In Northern California, there is a rice shortage in predominately Asian populated areas. So much so that Costco has started rationing the rice there. You can only purchase ONE bag of Indian rice (20 pounds for $16) and only if you have consistently purchased it for the last 6 months!! Incredible. In Queens, it's cooking oil and flour that are being rationed. Can you hear the prophet's words echoing in your ears yet? Two years of food storage...be prepared for troubled times ahead...don't procrastinate your preparation. Rationing. In the US.

I always thought food storage was for floods or earthquakes or disasters. We haven't had any of those, but the food is still scarce. And it's only going to get more expensive. We've seen oil prices rise, but have you stopped to think how that affects everything else? Trucking companies are going to have to pass along their expenses to us. Everything from diapers to meat to canned goods are going to get more expensive soon as those transportation costs get passed along to the consumer.

I don't know if anyone else feels this sense of urgency. I'm still renting a house and my plan was to wait until I'm settled somewhere before I accumulate much. I just didn't want to hassle of moving 100 pounds of wheat and rice around, but what if the food isn't available in 6 months or a year. What if it's not available in 3 months. When I see how much we shell out for satellite and internet and how easily that could go toward food storage it makes me cringe.

I don't mean to be an alarmist. Or maybe I do. A little alarm goes a long way towards motivation. Like I said, I just feel a great sense of urgency. My little family now has four mouths to feed (five if you count my brother who is living with us, six if you count my mom) and I know that the stuff in our cupboards wouldn't last very long. The issue isn't how much money you have. You could have a nice savings account like us...money socked away for a rainy day. But will there be any food to buy on that rainy day? The ants worked hard and put away food for the winter while the grasshopper played and said "Oh, there's time to do that tomorrow." Then when the winter came he was left out in the cold. He was willing to work then, but there wasn't any food to collect.

So, are you an ant or a grasshopper?

Such a happy girl. Can you tell that she's a drooler like her brother? See that shirt? It's supposed to be the light-pink of the sleeves. Instead it's the dark pink of a wet shirt. I've started putting bibs on her all the time which goes a long way to catching the drool. We can see two white bumps on her bottom gums and two big white dots on her top gums. No wonder she's so fussy and drooly! Here come the teeth!



All ready for Church this last weekend. My two angels are just adorable, I think. Ok, so maybe I'm a little biased.





Abby starting to crawl. She pushes way up...and then...

She shoves her bum up in the air and scoots forward. Shay never graduated from scooting to real crawling, he just army crawled right into walking. Think she's going to do the same?


As I said, we got Rock Band. Guess who loves jamming on the drums just as much as his dad. We've had to place a moratorium on playing while Abby is sleeping. The boys just seem to get way too enthusiastic and wake her up. I'll admit, the game is fun, if noisy. Seamus is carrying his backpack in this picture. But what's in it? He came out and told us he was "ready to go bowling". Curious, we asked him what was in the pack. He showed us: trains, train track, a few toys, and some snacks. He was ready to go bowling, all right. :)


Abby is sitting up really well, or was a few weeks ago. Now she's decided to move right along to crawling. Pictures of the pre-crawling are posted below (or above, maybe). She was a little wobbly in sitting up when Mimi and Poppop were here over Easter, but I think that's because I wasn't letting her do it enough. I was holding her or putting her down on her back. I've since rectified that and she's a total pro. She even reaches way far down by her feet to pick up toys without falling over. Of course, everything is going into her mouth, so we have to be careful about what's on the ground around her.



Abs and Shay hamming it up in the morning. Shay usually gets up before me, but if he hears Abs he goes into her room, brings her toys, and plays with her until she gets tired of playing. Then he comes and gets me. It's such a wonderful alarm-sound to hear your two little ones playing together through the baby monitor. Shay talks to her and Abby squeals back at him.


We thought we were done with the snow. It is April, after all. Mother Nature decided to bless us with one last huge storm. I say "last" with wishful thinking and crossed fingers. We can't wait to get out and enjoy the weather. I wish it was nicer this week because it's Spring Break for the kids and we want to go play in the school playground/park across the street. We usually can't play over there during the day since the kids are there. Too bad it's like 45 degrees and windy outside right now or we'd be over there.