Royal Heritage

Last Saturday, we all went to Seattle for Eva's second birthday party. I can't even believe that she's that old already! The party was princess themed, with all of the little girls wearing tutus and tiaras. It was ridiculously cute. Carolyn didn't have a tutu, so she borrowed a leotard with tutu from Eva. She got dressed after breakfast (it wasn't quite warm enough to wear it alone), then she passed out in her Boppy while I was in the bath.


















Carolyn had the best time! She absolutely LOVES watching other kids. She smiles and watches them intently, then turns around and looks at me as if to say "do you see all of the other little people like me Mama?". It is so sweet. The girls ranged from age 1 month to almost 3 years. They all looked so sweet, and it touched me on a deeper level to see all of these tiny princesses. It is true that Carolyn is literally of royal heritage, but even more than that, she is a Princess - a beloved daughter of God. They all are. And they have a lot of scary things that they will have to face much sooner than any of their parents are ready for. But I guess as a parent you are never really ready for the spirital onslaught that will inevitably come. I am so humbled whenever I think of the task that is before me of raising a righteous young woman, and I think about it often. These girls are such precious, choice spirits, and they are equal to the task of rising above the temptations they will encounter. I know they are, and I know they can. With mothers who recognize their sacred responsibilities and try every day to be the woman God wants them to be, I believe they will.

I am a cleaning Goddess!

Okay so maybe not quite a cleaning goddess, but I am getting pretty good. And I have to say I LOVE good ol' powder cleanser. It's not always the fastest way to go about things, but I have yet to find a job the cleanser didn't do as good a job (or better!) as other products. My kitchen floor frustrates me because it is really old and textured, which makes dirt and stains just hang out. So no matter what I do, it always looks dirty to one degree or another. And there are holes in the linoleum, which have become black. Gross. Well, Thursday is floor day in the Cannon household, and I took my cleanser and attacked some of the holes in the floor today, and while it isn't perfect, it's gray rather than black in a lot of spots, which makes me happy. Because really, I work hard and it's nice to see visible results. Especially with the nasty kitchen floor. On to the "LOST" season finale. :)

I lied . . .

I lied . . . I have purchased one pop album in the past decade. I bought Maroon 5 "Songs About Jane" in the summer of 2004 :)

More huge smiles

This baby has such delightful cheeks! I love them love them love them. People in the community comment on them whenever we go out. They make her smile so precious and it's really funny when she is getting burped - her cheeks jiggle. Tee hee hee!

Bliss . . .

Every once in a while when my sweetest girl isn't too busy to cuddle with her Mama . . .

I can't even handle myself!

Oh my gosh! I am so excited! I've been itching for some jazziness in my life. It's been way too long since I've really had a good project to sink my teeth into. I mean, I did a few tunes at the end of my senior recital, but it really was more of an after-thought because I just didn't have much time to think about it while preparing the graded portion, and I had to scramble at the last minute to find a replacement accompanist. Being a Mom is the best job ever. I am so thankful for it, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But since it was such a huge part of my life until I got married, I miss performing, and I find that I miss jazz most of all. Probably because jazz isn't so much about technique and showing off your instrument as it is about authentic personal expression. I don't mean to imply that a singer can't express herself through classical music - it's just that the goal of classical singing is to reflect as closely as you possibly can the intent of the composer, and in jazz, if you are singing something the same way as someone else (including the composer), that makes you a square and no one wants to hear it. So the other night a tune list came to me, and I e-mailed Caz to see if he could help me out. CBC has invested in some really nice equipment that allows FreeForm to record right at the school rather than going to Seattle or Portland like when I was in the group. So I am going to CBC to record, and Caz is going to play for me which is was fun. He was the piano player on the first half of my first album, and he's really good and way fun to jam with. YAY!!!!!!!!!!

Memorial Day Fun

We celebrated Memorial Day by having a picnic in the park.

Sleeping Blondie

Carolyn had lots of dark brown hair when she was born - enough for a lovely curly peak AND bangs! Then in January, when the weather was ridiculously cold, it all fell out :(. It has finally grown long enough on top for a peak again, but now her hair is a medium ash blod color. Funny! This picture shows it quite nicely. It also makes me laugh because it shows how huge she is (really pushing it as far as her swing goes - but she loves it so much!), and how she still requires swaddling for sleeping. She will take short naps without it, but really needs it for her afternoon nap and at night. I've started the weaning process though by keeping one hand out. She has to wear a mitten on it though because she has a nasty habbit of pulling at/scratching her ear until it bleeds. With an ear infection or in perfect health, she just seems to be drawn to it.

Olfactory Memories

I know this is weird, but I seriously like the smell of certain cleaning products. Obviously there isn't anything inherently pleasing about the aroma of windex . . . to most people it smells awful. But to me, it smells like going to the furniture store to clean 3 times a week with my family. I didn't particularly enjoy cleaning the furniture store, but 20 years later it really is synonymous with the comforts of childhood. Same thing with pledge. As for comet cleanser, it transports me immediately to the basement of the Decatur house, and reminds me of Saturday mornings waiting for Amy to clean the bathroom and finish whatever Sunfire novel she was reading so that she would play with me. I don't associate the smell of lemon lysol with childhood, but I like it because it reminds me of my nesting instinct that kicked into overdrive in the last stages of my pregnancy. In fact, overdrive might be an understatement. I went a little nuts :)! I "lysoled" every surface in my apartment . . . walls, doors, cabinets, etc. It was pretty intense. Craig and our friends thought it was hillarious. So the smell of it remonds me of the excitement of those days. The brain is truly an amazing organ, because I don't assosiate it with the bad sleep or aches or ridiculous swelling that happened at the same time :). Now anyone who knows me knows that organizational skills and the like have never been my strong suit. I've always been a bit of a germ-a-phobe, so I have done a pretty good job of keeping kitchen surfaces sanitary, but keeping things tidy is quite another story. Well, I'm still not great at it, but I am getting a lot better, and more efficient. And it has become important to me. When I was a student or a working girl, I wasn't thrilled about the nasty ring in my toilet bowl that had been there since I moved in, but it didn't matter enough to me to determine to get rid of it. Or the stains in my sink and bathtub. When I got back from my Christmas travels, it was a pretty scary time because I had just started meds for my post-partum depression, which got really intense really fast. I was feeling pretty successful if I was able to get myself and baby dressed, and do the dishes in a day. Eventually when I felt up to it, I made myself a list of chores so that I knew that everything would get done in the course of a week - from grocery shopping to mopping the floors. Every task was assigned to a day, and it has helped me a ton. Also, the paradigm shift that occured when I changed careers into a full-time homemaker made me care a lot more about those things that I was able to close my eyes to before. In my past life, I had tangible things to look at at the end of the day to help me feel productive . . . pages of music learned, tests taken, papers written, hours spent at work. But as a homemaker, what I have to show for my efforts at the end of the day are the atmosphere in my home and the health and happiness of my husband and daughter. With a little ingenuity and lot of elbow grease, I conquered the stains in my sink, toilet, and tub; I also feel like I conquered my need for feeling productive by allowing myself to take pride in the atmosphere in my home and give myself high-fives for every chore that I got done in a day.

Finally!

Baby's night light burned out the other night, so we walked to the Dollar Tree today to get a new one. While we were there, we found some really cute wall decals. So we picked them up too. Then I remembered that I had a couple of sheets at home that I never put up. So this evening after I finished all my chores, Baby sat in her crib and helped me decorate her wall! I put up the "Carolyn" on her bedroom door before she was born, but added to it as well. And for good measure, here's a picture of her too ;). This one is really old - from the red pajamas you may guess that it is from Christmas time.

A True Idol

Not surprisingly, I am a huge American Idol fan. Not that I'm that into pop music; I haven't bought a pop c.d. in a decade. I do, however, like to see the competition between talented singers who (hopefully) sing in a healthy way. Obviously as we have seen recently with Jordin Sparks (last season's winner), that is not always the case. This season, I picked my favorite immediately: David Archuleta, a teenager from Murray High School. I picked him for a few reasons. Number one, of course, was is unique and beautiful instrument. I also appreciated his technique - I wasn't worried that he would injur himself - and his demeanor. He just seemed like a really nice kid. After hearing him a few times, I decided that he must have had some exposure to jazz because while the inflections he used were very "poppy", the placement of those inflections and overall interpretation were more in line with the way I would approach it than most contestants I've heard. Sure enough, David's Dad is a jazz trumpet player. Then I found out that he was in fact a member of the church. He's from Murray Utah so it wasn't surprising, but these days you really can't assume anything based on that. He has been Simon Cowell's favorite all season, and after the final showdown Tuesday night, the media really had him pegged as the winner. Randy Jackson said he was the most talented singer this season, and Simon said he came out to win, and the end result was a knockout (there was a boxing theme going on all night) after declaring him the winner of all 3 rounds. So I was very excited to finally see my favorite win. Well, he didn't. But in some ways that's acutally better. He will for sure be signed for a record contract, but without American Idol controlling him. Now there is pretty much no way American Idol could keep him from serving a mission, which would have been really sad. I am just so happy to see a true idol out there - I nice kid whose values you can count on and whose face you don't need to worry about seeing in the wrong places. Here is a segment from today's cover story from Meridian Magazine: Brenda Fisher, who dubs herself his number one fan and is the secretary of the Murray High School seminary, says that there is no worry about possible stardom and the love of fans ruining David. “He is the perfect example of an LDS youth,” she says. “He is showing the world what being LDS is all about. As people get to know him, they'll learn the gospel through his words and actions. I've heard him bear his testimony. I've heard him sing his testimony. I don't think his morals will change.”

Maybe blogging is the way to go

Well, it's been a long time since I've written an update (a way of keeping in touch that my older siblings started doing on a weekly basis), and I find that when I get behind, trying to get caught up is really daunting. This is increased by the fact that I just don't have time to sit and do it in one sitting. I don't have big blocks of time available to me, but I have 10 minutes here and there that I can use to jot down a quick post while Baby is napping or busy playing by herself. So I think maybe blogging is the way to go for me! I guess after a few weeks we'll se how it goes :)