And the HOTY Award goes to....

...my honey, Nathan Knutson!

The HOTY (Husband of the Year) Award recognizes those individuals who exceed in their husbandly duties by demonstrating outstanding service in one or more of the following categories:

• Romance
• Thoughtfulness
• Parenting
• General

Nathan recently demonstrated excellent parenting skills while flying solo for 3 days while I attended a work meeting in Salt Lake City. I never heard one single complaint from him and he handled it all perfectly. Mr. Mom himself! He is such a great dad and I love him for that!

But seriously, he does deserve so much credit because he is such a natural at this whole dad thing. He is especially great with Madeline at bedtime. He has perfected the "tickle lion" routine, in which he pretends he's a lion coming to get her, which forces her to hurry up and get into her pajamas. Anyone with a 2 year old knows how hard it can be to get a toddler to easily commit to PJs and bedtime. The next part of the routine is that she hides from him under the covers, he finds her and tickles her, and then she fake throws him out of the bed. It's the same thing every night, it works, and it's so sweet. And to overcome her dread of getting her hair combed, he created this routine where he pretends the comb is stuck in her hair and then throws it in the air. She was laughing so hard at him tonight that she was crying. How sweet is that?

(Please note that this is not his first HOTY Award. His first award was received several years ago when he randomly sent me flowers at work to wish me luck on my first day of MBA classes.)

Updates on Frank

Check out the link to the "76th Brigade" blog link on this page to get updates on our brother-in-law Frank's brigade. A reporter and photographer from the Indianapolis Star are going "in country" with them, as they say, to follow the troops and document their experience while deployed in Iraq.

Frank's brigade just completed their final 2 months of training at Fort Stewart, GA, and get a few days with their family and friends before being deployed to Iraq on March 5th. Amanda is going down there to spend these next few days with him, and then she won't see him until he comes back home, which will probably be 12 months or so. Please say a prayer for Amanda, Frank, and his platoon for a safe deployment in Iraq.

Toddler math....

Hypochondria + fake crying = Terrible Twos!

Okay, so I can't complain about potty training anymore. That wasn't a very glamorous subject anyway, so I'm happy to move on. (But, before I do that, I'll just let you know that Madeline is doing fantastic with the potty and we are just so proud of her.)

The new fun thing for Madeline is to be sick. She told Grandpa on the phone that her throat hurts, but he thought she said "my TOE hurts" and repeated that to make sure he heard it right. On my end of the conversation, I heard her say "yeah, my toe hurts" and then she pulled her toe out from under the covers so I could kiss it. And yesterday on the way home from school, she said "I need to throw up. I'm supposed to throw up in the toilet." Well, at least she knows what to do when it comes to that, right? It's always a scratch here or a tummy hurting there. Talk about crying wolf! She hasn't had a fever or anything, so we're trying to balance medical care with overindulgance. So annoying....

Fake crying is another fine skill she seems to have mastered. I remember this working on her dad in college, so like mother like daughter. I'm just impressed that she's already discovered its true merits already at age 2! But that's as far as I'll go. This fake crying crap has to stop. Which means Nathan and I need to stop giving in to the whining and tantrums. We're working on it. We'll gladly take any advice - even if it's just "suck it up and be the adult." Like I said, we're working on it!

Big boy in the Exersaucer

This video isn't really too exciting, but I wanted to post it for our long distance family members who haven't seen Henry since Christmas. He's outgrown the newborn stage and is now "just a baby." I knew it was official when I started holding him on my hip.

Lots of Love

Happy Valentine's Day! Although we didn't do much to celebrate, I did take the time to reflect on how lucky we are as a family to be so in love, so healthy, and so utterly blessed. And I couldn't ask for more.... Today is the perfect day to tell all of you that we are so grateful to have you in our lives. Thanks for caring about us enough to check in on us every once in awhile.

We had a great day... Madeline wore a special red dress and Henry wore his "stud muffin" onesie. This morning I went to a Valentine's Day party at Maddie's daycare. I had elementary school deja vu as the kids passed out Valentines to each other and put them in their little boxes. Although no one threw a tantrum over getting a Nemo Valentine as far as I can remember. We had a romantic family dinner of Taco Bell (daddy's favorite). And we had champagne after the kids' bedtime to celebrate mommy's promotion! Hope you had a great day, too!

I'm the Little Brother

Henry is finally getting strong enough to sit up in his new Bumbo chair (thanks, Katie and Amanda!) Check out his cute "I'm the Little Brother" shirt (thanks, Kera!)

The kiddos are getting over colds, and Madeline seems to also have a minor bug of some sort. Good news is that she is about 90% of the way there to being "poopy trained," which is definitely needed for this latest little bug (poor thing).

Becky's Celebrity Look Alikes

This is hilarious. How can they say I look like both Florence Henderson and Beyonce Knowles?!!! When I did this over a year ago, I matched up with Paula Abdul.