The Johnsons: Uncut

On Wednesday, we noticed that Paisli could stand up alone. We hadn't ever stood her up because since she just barely started crawling on hands and knees, we thought it would be a while before she stood or walked.

Wednesday: Day 1 of first steps


Standing and walking on Day 1


Saturday: Day 3...walking across the room

Paisli has learned how to copy cat.

Kiersa has been going through serious withdrawals. She is addicted to her Aunt Maren.
Ever since we saw her earlier this month, Kiersa has been pestering me all day every day with Maren, Maren, Maren!

"Maren's house! Shoes on...Maren's house."

It was cute at first. Now, it's just plain annoying.

On the 14th, Kiersa complained about her ear feeling hot. By 9:30 that night we were on our way to the ER to see if I could get her some medicine and relief. The hospital here is so nice and updated! And I was in and out in a matter of minutes, which NEVER happens for me at an ER.

The whole time we were in the ER and the rest of the night, all Kiersa wanted was her Aunt Maren. Not me! (Yes, I'm jealous.)

Lucky for Kiersa, her dream was coming true. Aunt Maren, Nana, Braxton and Jaiden came up to visit that very weekend. The kids got some singing and rocking time with Nana...

And some snowman building time with Braxton.










An icicle seemed more appropriate for the nose than a carrot, since icicles are everywhere!

Sadly, Jaiden came down sick and everyone had to head home for his sake. Poor guy. We had a great time though and can't wait for your next visit!

A little white, gloss spray paint...some fabric...some plastic that people put over their tables to protect them...and the chairs look brand new!

I love gingham, especially red and white.


























The plastic is important!!! I didn't put the plastic over the fabric last time and the kids stained them until they looked nasty. It's thick, heavy duty plastic, and wipes up wonderfully!

Talea's and Hyatt's first word was "DaDa."

Kiersa's was "MaMa." (Finally a score for the mom!)

I was hoping Paisli would even the score, but no. Her first word was "dog."

Thanks a lot, Paisalilly!

Paisli started saying dog at 10 months, and I swear that she's repeating words she hears, but she'll only do it once with each word, so I can't ever be sure that she's saying what I think I'm hearing.

She tries to sing too. She sings the tune to the rock-a-bye song her Nana sings her. Paisli would sing it all the time, but I didn't realize that's what she was singing until she started doing it while I was singing the lullaby, then it clicked. I just had no idea she'd be repeating a tune this early. 

When she eats, she often falls victim to Hyatt's kryptonite: food. It's so funny to watch her trying to stay awake while she eats!

When Kiersa was 14 months old, she showed some interest in going potty on the toilet. She did it a few times, but we knew it wouldn't last.










Then suddenly, on the 9th, at 22 months old, Kiersa decided to potty train herself! What a sweetheart! I didn't think she was ready since my other kids didn't start until after they turned 2, but Kiersa one day decided she was done with diapers and wanted to go on the toilet like the big kids. Unfortunately, she decided this when our sewer drain line was frozen and all the toilets were backed up.

Even so, she was vigilant about going on the toilet. The first two days she ended up pooping in her underwear, but after that, no more of those accidents. After 7 days of no diapers, she stopped having pee accidents. It was fabulous! She would go in the bathroom and use the toilet without me even knowing, until I'd hear a flush and she would walk out of the bathroom with her underwear around her waist and her pants on backwards.

I didn't know it could be this easy! It never was before with Tilly and Hyatt. They took 3 months to become day and night trained. Kiersa took a week to be day trained and is mostly night trained after a couple of weeks, and she's not quite 2 yet! She rarely even uses a potty seat now!


Thanks, Kiersa, for making it so easy this time around!

Kiersa's newest game goes like this:

Kiersa: Guess what.

Me: What?

Kiersa: Love you!

She does this over and over and thinks it's so funny. I got her on video doing it too. In this video, she's saying the guess what game to me, then there's a moment of nothing as she goes to pick up her doll, after which she says to her doll (named Jada), "Jada, guess what. Love you!"



She'll reference her love to someone by saying, "Guess what, Dad (or Mom, or Tilly, or Paisli, etc)."



Super cute!

Our sewer was backed up for 2 days. The water pipes WERE frozen, and the drain pipe was frozen for 2 days without any sign of thawing even with a heat gun on it for hours on end.

The toilets were full almost to the brim, so using it was quickly becoming impossible. Hyatt was allowed to pee in the toilet as long as he stood (no one is allowed to stand at my toilets on a normal basis). The only reason I allowed him to do that was because he couldn't sit, since his...uh...anatomy would have become a sewage submarine. If you've seen Hyatt naked, you know what I mean. Let's just say he's "blessed". Kiersa, too, was allowed to use the toilet since she suddenly decided she wanted to potty train instead of using a diaper, and you can't turn back once that begins or you ruin any effort you exerted. She has a potty seat that would hold her above the flood waters. No one else was allowed to use the toilet.

So what did we use? Good ol' Ziploc bags, just like the desperate days while trucking! Have you ever tried doing that? Not an easy task, and not a fun thing to hold the bags under your kids. I had no choice though! The sewage was backing up into the bathtub!

But, at least Ziploc duty wasn't as bad as what Hyrum had to do. Since plumbers didn't want to tackle our nightmare, he had to go under the house and cut the line himself and have raw sewage dump down on him into a plastic container, but a lot spilled out everywhere. I won't go into details about that, but he had to bring the pipe in the house and run hot water in it...in the bathtub!!! The whole root of the problem was that a pair of tweezers (from the previous owners) had been flushed down the toilet and got caught in a 90 degree turn. Then, after using wonderfully soft, strong Charmin toilet paper, it (and all the stuff that flushes down with it) got piled up against the tweezers, and since Charmin is indestructible, it didn't ever break down and the whole mess froze up in layers.

In the end, Hyrum sacrificed himself for us and fixed the whole problem. We are now back to a normal, toilet-using family. I'll never take a toilet for granted again.

I attended BYU-Idaho back when it was Ricks College from 1994-1996. The reason I only applied there instead of anywhere else? My friend Nancy Lacy (Powell now) convinced me to apply so we could be roommates together. I ended up getting accepted, and for unknown reasons that baffle and infuriate me, she didn't. So I went off to the land of snow and icicles alone.

I was painfully shy and had a hard time adjusting to life away from my family. There were two people who rescued me from wallowing in self-pitty my freshman year. Kathy and Mahana. Polynesian cousins who were my roommates. (Left to right it's Mahana, me, and Kathy.)


They kept me laughing and took me to luaus and even a trip to Salt Lake. They made life enjoyable. They were sophomores though, so I lost touch with them after the school year ended.

Thanks to Facebook, I found them again! And this past weekend, I finally reunited with Kathy, 14 years after being roommates! We didn't have very much time to spend together, but it was great to see her again! I loved hearing her laugh again and talking with her. I was swept back to the old days and I loved every second of it. She has 5 kids now and I have 4, but funny enough, our husbands and our lives have a lot of similarities, and Kathy is about to go to nursing school! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she comes back to Rexburg so we can see more of each other.





We managed to snag a family photo while there, but Hyatt was tired to the point of tears, so it looks like I have a choke hold on him (though I'm just holding his head as he cries). Poor guy.

Here are the lovely ripe bananas I had shortly before 8 am.


I packed one in Hyrum's lunch before he left to class. He left his lunch sack in the car during his classes. When he retrieved his lunch sack at noon, the gorgeous golden fruit had transformed into a popsicle.


It's COLD here! Everything freezes. When it's negative temperatures here, it's 50 degrees back on the Oregon coast. *sigh*

Talea's stick pony that Grandpa got her for Christmas had a huge rip in the neck seam and the stuffing was about to fall out, so I told her she needed to sew it up. She was anxious to try, and she did an excellent job, especially for the first time. She's only ever machine sewn before. Looks like I'll have a talented tailor in the family. If only she picked up reading as well as sewing. She must be her mother's child.

Hyrum: Say cheese, girls!

Talea: Mmmm, just the thought of cheese makes my mouth water.

Kiersa: I LOVE CHEESE! YUUUUUUUUUUUUM!

Paisli would never let us feed her, until now. She would only eat food if she could put it in her mouth with her own hands. Just today, she finally realized we weren't offering her chopped liver and roadkill, so she took a brave step in letting us feed her. She'll take food from our spoon, but first, she sticks her tongue out slightly to taste it, and if it tastes acceptable, she'll open her mouth and eat it. She'll do this with each bite, even though we've already fed her several spoonfuls of the same food. She's just not sure if she can trust us yet or not.

So, I'm redeeming myself for not taking pictures of Tilly on her first day of school by posting a few of Hyrum coming home from his first day. I just snapped them quickly as he was coming in so he wouldn't protest, so they're not "poses", but they'll do.

On New Years day, it was snowing like crazy!











Might we actually be able to sled in a decent amount of snow? It's a first! I mean, last year our sledding hill in the hills of Ashland, Oregon looked like this!











This year we were able to take the kids down the street to a park with a great sledding hill. In typical American fashion, we drove, even though it was only a few blocks away.











Do you blame us? Towing 4 kids through a foot of snow for several blocks and then dragging them up a hill over and over in puffy snow clothes and boots was beyond our energy capacity. We knew we'd be dying for the car by the time we were done.

It was so much more work than we anticipated. We've always gone sledding with the twins before, and they would assist with being our work horses.











This year we were on our own. When you have one kid who can't walk, so she just has to sit on a sled waiting,














and 1 kid who can't walk up the hill unassisted,














and 2 kids who whine the whole time climbing up the hill because it's slippery and difficult,











the fun of sledding wears out REALLY fast.

We did manage to have a good time before that point though.