We’re still trying to shake the cold and cough around here. This last week my days alternated between survive… work hard and get a bunch done and get all tired so that all I can do is… survive again. This verse keeps me going: 

It has meant extra grace with each other as we cope with our aches and illnesses, extra snuggling time with Kyler on the couch, extra space in the budget for takeout, and extra big piles of dirty laundry and dishes (and tissues!). I believe we are emerging into the light of better health. We really do have so much to be grateful for, though. Others around here have experienced much worse, with several kids being tested for strep throat, school being closed for two days due to sickness, and concerns of rubella or scarlet fever… and several relapses. Yes, we are quite blessed just to have to deal with the common cold for one and a half weeks.

But life goes on and here is what has been happening on the Bushnell home front.

I’m trying to learn to keep my phone (which is the only photography instrument I have right now, besides Jacob’s phone) handy to snap pictures to share on here. I was fully intending to post two recipes complete with illustrated steps this last week, but I was in a terrible hurry to get the food served, that I missed the finale pictures. You know the ones of the finished product that should pull you in and make you want to try this delectable looking dish. Like this Chocolate Cupcake (which I forgot to take step by step pictures of the creation process):

It’s almost to the end of February and spring breakup came a few weeks early this year apparently.  It makes for such nasty mud messes everywhere. And then more snow. We looked out the window Wednesday morning to find a winter wonderland once again.

So I decided to help spring along a little sooner indoors by crossing a few items off my spring cleaning list. Kyler loves to help me too, especially if there’s “spitz”-ing involved. 🙂

I dearly love to clean and organize …and decorate. Spring is coming!

And lastly, I leave you with a few snapshots of daily family living 🙂

Turkey Cucumber and Laughing Cow Cheese Wraps. A delicious and nutritious lunch! Why yes, I did find the inspiration on Pinterest. 🙂

Kyler often showers in the morning with Daddy and then begs to “sive” when he sees the bottle of shaving cream. A comb makes an excellent toddler shaver.

When he saw the snow outside, Kyler wanted to run out and play with Annie. Barefoot!

Thursday evening we went down for the Taste of Sandpoint event. A bunch of local restaurants set up booths and offer a few samples from their menu. A great way for us to find some new favorites to check out! The way we roll is usually with Jacob carrying Kyler on his shoulders when we’re walking almost anywhere as a family. We do it because that’s what works best for us, and a lot of people send adoring looks and comments our way. A news photographer snapped some photos of him up there and jotted down our information. I don’t know but you might see us in the paper.

Here’s Kyler talking with Grandma Friesen on the phone (using Mama’s cool headset!). He’s blowing her a kiss… aaww! 🙂

Keeping it real… by dumping the canister of Splenda all over the floor.

And what do you know, Kyler has actually discovered that toy cars are fun to play with!

You know those baskets or boxes or drawers that collect the batteries from the broken remote, one rubber foot that won’t stay on the crockpot, two pushpins you found behind the couch, a drawstring that got pulled out of your hoodie’s hood, a blade that somehow detached from its pocketknife, and a pile of Canadian shrappers (coins) that your overnight guests left as a “thank you for your hospitality” a year and a half ago… Catchall is what I call ’em. They’re small and insignificant on their own but you don’t want to pitch them just yet.

That’s the idea of this post. I have a lot of little tidbits to document, but each one of them is hardly a post in itself. So without further ado, here is our collection.

• I just heard the sound of gurgling water coming from the coat closet and ran to find Kyler dumping half a gallon of water on the shoes in the box.
• At my last prenatal we tested for Vitamin D count in my blood and it came back really low. So I’m snarfing 10,000 IUs a day along with extra calcium magnesium and trying to soak up the sunshine as much as possible.
• Kyler found a pile of quarters and dimes and has been everywhere with them in his little fists.
• Kyler caught the cold and Sunday night we didn’t get much sleep. In an attempt to relieve his earache around 3 in the morning we baked an onion to try to get the juices to put in his ear. Which maybe we were impatient because after half an hour we couldn’t really get much juice so we blended it up and tried to press out some juice with our coffee aeropress. Fail. Ended up popping a garlic gel cap and squirting that in his ear. We were desperate for something that would soothe him, so we camped out in the living room and tried to catch some shut eye while he watched Shaun the Sheep. In the morning he was feverish and Jacob had to work and I had no strength left, so Mom came over to help us out. She helped get the fever down by crushing up pills and mixing the powder in a popsicle so Kyler would swallow it. (We didn’t have the right kids medicine around.) She cooked a lovely pancake breakfast for me, cleaned up the kitchen and did the laundry. Oh, what a blessing! I can’t sing her praises enough. And Kyler slept in my arms most of the day.
• Next night was way way better. He only woke up once.
• Now I caught the cold. And it pretty much did me in.
• It’s uncomfortable to slouch. Baby girl needs her s…p…a…c…e! I believe she’s practicing ballet in there.
• This morning Kyler was begging for cookies, which I didn’t have on hand. So when we ate lunch at the bakery we got a dozen to take home. I’m trying to eat healthy (so this baby is not quite the whoppin 8 pounder that Kyler was) which means low to no carbs and sugar, but I’m afraid Kyler can’t eat all those cookies by himself. Shhh…don’t tell Mom (she’s also my midwife in case you didn’t know). Oh wait, she’s probably reading this anyway. 😉
• Whenever we go out to eat and get a fountain drink, Kyler loves to punch in all the options on the cup lids… of everyone at the table.
• Our driveway security camera and garage door are broken. The toilet leaks. All of Kyler’s favorite plugs are either lost or chewed up. Jacob’s jawbone headset is missing and my phone dies every so often.
• Jacob can handle any technical/computer/electronic question you can throw at him. 🙂
• We clean church on Saturday and Sunday it’s our turn to go to our outreach church in Newport.
• I cried at the end of the last Chopped (a cooking competition) episode I watched. And this is why: the winner, an outspoken Christian young man, gave the $10,000 prize to the runner up French lady who really wanted to go see her ailing grandma back in France.
• I love the way Kyler says “Oh!” whenever he gets excited and wants to say something. “Oh! there’s Annie! Oh! Oh! Jacket and Oh! shoes!”
• Vertical blinds are not kid-friendly.
• Today completes 29 weeks for me… or rather baby girl. 🙂 I told Jacob this morning, “If she comes one week early, we’ll be holding her in our arms in ten weeks!” I think that way of spinning it made it seem just a little closer…

First of all, here’s my two favorite men enjoying their morning coffee together.

How could such a sweet, innocent little fella be smart enough to know how to push my buttons already?? He’s still one (closer to two… however, he’s still one) and it’s like he’s got his eye open for anything that gets a rise out of me. Just this morning while Kyler was outside playing with our dog Annie, he grabbed up a handful of snow… and raised it to his face. Now the snow in our backyard is no longer the pristine wonderland stuff anymore. It’s mud-flecked and strewn with a rotten twig and a spruce needle or two. Plus who knows what all else with the dog running over it all the time. In my mind, gross. And I made the mistake of conveying these thoughts to him. Sure enough, a few seconds later Kyler yells, “Mama, Mama, LOOK!” When he’s sure I’m watching him from the kitchen window, he proceeds to deliberately cram his mouth full of dirty icy snow with the hugest grin on his little face and says “Mmm yum yum!” as he smacks down on his cookies and cream. I believe he was rewarded with the desired response. Sigh.

I shouldn’t be surprised, after all he’s just like his father. And Jacob’s mom laughs, “Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait!” as they reminisce about the octopus Jacob dangled in front of her kitchen window, trying to make her freak out about it being a huge spider or the time he told her he had a spider in his ear. NO!! Not spiders. Please don’t tell Kyler I’m dead. scared. of spiders. He’ll figure that one out soon enough!

I didn’t realize how multi-useful these humble household items really could be… until one morning as I was cleaning out the coat/trash/potato and onion closet. I pulled out the empty wire grill basket I usually store potatoes in to wash it and Kyler knew right away what it’s for. “Tatoes!” Caught me a little by surprise there, little fella! Actually yes, that is for potatoes. I fished out five healthy potatoes from the top shelf and handed them to him.

Oh boy was he happy! His imagination took him all kinds of places with those potatoes. He lined them up on the coffee table and then yelled for me to come see his “choo choo tain”. He hid behind the throw draped over the arm chair with his precious potatoes… a long time. I didn’t notice everything he did with those new toys of his, as I was delighted to hurry wash up the breakfast dishes without his splash-ful “elp” for once.

It’s not a happily-ever-after story here with the potatoes. He took them outside and started throwing them to the dog to chew up. Which I didn’t particularly appreciate because that’s wasting some perfectly good food, so I had to put a stop to it.

A few days later… enter pushpins. I know it’s not usually considered a safe alternative to the lovely basket of toys in the corner, but trust me, I watched him closely on this one. I’m pretty sure he got into them by pushing the coffee table (It has wheels on the bottom so willingly goes anywhere with a little kid-sized umph.) over to the shelf where I had a container of odds and ends, including a handful of the brightly colored thumbtacks. Kyler has this fascination for anything that he could harm himself with…cleaners, knives, guns, pins, scissors. And he rightfully calls these pushpins “owies”. He entertains himself with these for literally hours. He’ll balance them on their heads standing up on the coffee table and when all five of them are standing in a row he’ll look over at me, point both index fingers into the air (he hasn’t quite gotten the thumbs up yet) and say “whoo hoo!” Or he’ll poke them into a cardboard box and pull them out again and repeat the process with a little different pattern every time.

And then he’s got this tenderish side to him I guess. I just bought a sweet little book with the music buttons on the side that you can push and it’ll sing a song to you while you look at the pages. And so he’ll corral his little pushpins all into a small pile and gently lay the book on top of them, push a button and tell me he’s singing to his “owies”. 🙂

Who knows what’s the next imaginative thing he’ll come up with next. He might even decide to take a little more interest in his toy basket.

That is if his Daddy isn’t flying his cool new quad-rotor UFO helicopter around the room. 😉