2011 in review.

This post is a little late because I spent the first bit of this year dealing with an exorbitant amount of poop. (Oh, come on, I'm a mommy, I'm a blogger, you had to know it was going to show up eventually.) I spent the next bit of this year recuperating from the exhaustion of the first bit. But hey, I'm still ahead of where I was for 2010 in review!

To be honest, a lot of the past year is a bit hazy for me, as a lot of it I spent in a dark place where I didn't like myself much. I was happy with things going on in my life, but there were days—many more than I like to think about—where my sense of self-worth was absolutely nil. I've started coming back out of it in the past few weeks and I'm optimistic that this will be a good year, but I have to say that on the whole, I'm glad 2011 is over. I've loved the time I've spent watching the Little Guy grow and learn, and I look forward to seeing him get even more awesome in 2012 (although really, I just don't know if the world can hold that much amazingness. Maybe that's why the world is supposed to end this year: it will spontaneously burst from trying to contain the sheer awesome that is my son).

And now it's time for 2011 in review!


*Ushered in the New Year very quietly, with just our little family of three. Celebrated later that day with Southern New Year's and the Thompsons.
*Had lots of fun using my new bread machine until it broke. Experienced much frustration on the phone with the people at the warranty office. Eventually just decided to send it back to Amazon and go with another manufacturer.
*The Little Guy started off the year with a bad cough and I had my first experience as the mother at a sick-child visit.
*Eventually did get the Christmas tree taken down about a week into the new year.
*Continued the love affair with Netflix. Notable flings included Better Off Ted, 30 Rock, Monk, Psych, Word World, Mythbusters and lots of fun movies.
*Had my first experience flying on a plane with a small child (3.5 months old). The Little Guy was a champ and pretty much slept through all the flights. On each flight, we had someone stand up at the end to get their luggage and say, "I didn't even know there was a baby on the flight!" Well done, sir.
*Visited Shallow Man's family in Alabama. Flew into Middle of Nowhere, FL, to do so, which made landing kind of weird with no other lights around other than the airport.
*The Little Guy rolled over for the first time ever on the floor in Shallow Man's grandparents' house. Fortunately he chose to do it at the exact moment that his uncle was recording him, so we caught the big moment (and the big reaction) on camera.
*Briefly took the Little Guy to the beach for the first time at the Gulf Coast, although it was too cold to swim.
*Went in for an oil change and left feeling scared to drive because of all the repairs our car needed.
*Learned how to use my beast of an inherited sewing machine to make one of those car-seat covers for the Little Guy because I didn't feel like paying $40 for one on easy. It turned out way cuter than it had any right to.
*Lots of time spent cuddling and nursing my baby. This got less fun during my bout with mastitis, but it turned out okay.
*The massive amount of time spent nursing also lead to my achieving 3 stars in every level of Angry Birds.
*Started feeding the Little Guy solids, beginning his love affair with mush and solids in general.
*Learning how to make an em-dash on my iPod. It was definitely a highlight of the year.
*Feeling smug coming back from actually visiting the dentist and not having any cavities when Shallow Man had some.
*Just Jane again, and always.
*Campaigning to help my friends' band, Fictionist, during the competition to get on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine (they eventually came in 4th).
*Celebrating my birthday at home because we'd finally taken our car into the shop to get everything fixed.
*Walking into the Little Guy's bedroom to find him calm and happy, listening to Shallow Man hum him various themes from Zelda.
*Finally making a decision on the new bread machine model and having it arrive. It's huge and white and we call it the Monolith.
*Making cupcakes for the ward's Pinewood Derby, but mostly enjoying watching Shallow Man get ridiculously excited about helping one of the Scouts with his car.
*More Geek Night parties, although the dynamic changed with the growing number of Geeklings.
*Twilight Time 3. This one was a fun event even though it was smaller, although it wasn't quite as awesome as Twilight Times 1 or 2 for the simple reason that the movie was slightly better than the others and less compulsively mockable. But there were more cupcakes, so that was good.
*Yes, I enjoyed the season of Jimmermania.
*March Madness was both awesome and heartbreaking.
*Saw a play version of Persuasion with KEY that was eye-opening—I didn't know you could ruin such a perfect story so completely. I would have walked out except I wanted to see how they handled the ending. I'm not sure it was worth it.
*Finally had to get a high chair for the Little Guy. Was both excited and sad to see him getting so grown up. It was really nice to see him start plumping up once he started eating solids, though.
*Did a lot more experimenting in the kitchen, coming up with some new family favorites like shrimp tacos, spinach mushroom quesadillas, and chicken tikka masala.
*Bountiful Baskets. Yes.
*Girls' Night Out with my sisters and the incredibly nice person at the Arctic Circle drive-thru who rushed our order because the Little Guy was having a meltdown.
*Making the decision to move to Salt Lake and starting the whole process of finding renters and moving.
*Tea with Mint or Lemon? at USU. The most fun I've had at the theatre in a long time.
*Discovering the best cobbler recipe ever.
*The Law Gals lunch. It was great to see old friends and new babies.
*The Little Guy producing his first tooth the day before Easter, probably in hopes of getting candy. It didn't work, which is probably why he came up with tooth #2 a few days later.
*So much of my time this year has been spent listening to the Little Guy learn to babble. I love all of his crazy little noises.
*Interacting with authors over email.
*Pantruca's!
*Finally getting the postage-stamp-sized backyard into shape.
*Coming back from the birthday party for my dad, Shallow Man checked Facebook on his phone and saw the news about bin Laden.
*I won a laptop from Pixar. No, really.
*Discovering how to make rosemary focaccia with the bread machine. Oh, yes.
*Visited the Carl Bloch exhibit at BYU. Powerful, inspiring, moving, beautiful. Wrote this about it.
*Had my first Mother's Day as an actual mommy. Have to admit I loved it.
*The Little Guy celebrated Mother's Day by saying "Dada" for the first time.
*Celebrated our seventh anniversary. Crazy!
*The old faithful lappy kept having identity crises.
*Read "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson. Wow.
*Hosted the final Geek Night at our old place. Bittersweet.
*Packing, packing, packing. Blech. Trying to find renters. Double blech.
*Moving day made infinitely more stressful by having our car die on the freeway on the way there. Fortunately we were first in line in the caravan and were able to shuffle passengers to get things moving quickly. Also fortunately my dad and brother were able to fix it for $10. That did not help my nerves calm down at the time, though.
*Living in my grandfather's old house and getting used to calling it our house.
*The Little Guy considerately waited to start crawling in earnest until AFTER we had moved.
*Finally finding renters and having them be the best ever.
*Lots of time spent weeding and cleaning up the huge new yard.
*The summer and fall of the nightmare commute.
*Lots of time spent with my sisters and family now that we live a block away.
*Lots of walking on early summer mornings.
*Shallow Man's first Father's Day. I was kind of hoping the Little Guy would take that opportunity to say "Mama" for the first time, but it was not to be.
*Girl date with my mom and sister to IKEA and watching the Little Guy fall asleep in his stroller.
*Red Iguana. Yum.
*Finding Shelob living in my laundry room. Okay, maybe not Shelob exactly, but still a black widow.
*Watching the Little Guy's stats progress throughout the year as his weight started to catch up to his height. His head circumference was always way ahead of both of them, though.
*The Little Guy learned how to give kisses on request and also to say "bye bye" and "night-night" when he felt like it.
*Fourth of July was awesome. We went to the Army Band Concert the night before and the fireworks the night of, and the Little Guy loved them both.
*The Little Guy's makeshift hat for the band concert.
*Major geeking out upon finding that a movie was being made of one of my favorite books. (Yeah, I'm still excited about this.)
*Had to keep cutting the Little Guy's hair because it grows so fast and crazy. He still hasn't quite reconciled himself to the process, though.
*The Princess and the Frog with my sisters.
*Steadily increasing numbers of teeth.
*The week that we all caught the summer cold. Blerg.
*The arrival of a new geekling! The Little Guy was glad to have another boy in the group after all the recent girl geeklings.
*Making a birthday cake for my mom with my sisters.
*July 26, 2011: MAMA!
*Getting a new niece in July!
*Going to Lagoon for Shallow Man's work party. So much fun to have a real date day!
*The Epic Battles of trying to get the Little Guy to fall asleep on his own.
*The car transmission acting up again shortly after we'd gotten it to pass inspection and renewed the registration. D'oh! Finding out it was a relatively quick fix: *sigh of relief* I've said it before, and I'll say it again, my dad is a car wizard.
*The joy of a baby trying to learn how to walk on a hardwood floor. Luckily his skull is super-thick.
*Getting to have lots of talks with my sisters and getting to know them better.
*Discovering Niagara Falls in the basement and having to deal with the plumbers.
*Pondering the differences between editors and ghostwriters.
*Croup. I hate it so very much.
*The month of coughing which ended with the discovery that the Little Guy had a double ear infection, which made me feel like the best mom EVER. Fighting off that ear infection for the next several months didn't help that feeling much.
*Staycation 2011. So much fun. Took the Little Guy to the Zoo, This is the Place, Tracy Aviary, and Thanksgiving Point Gardens. He got to ride a train AND a pony! We also had the chance to go out on our own and see a movie, which was nice.
*Going to the fair with the Little Guy and watching his face light up as he got to touch cows and sheep and bunnies and pigs and . . .
*Getting to see Motion de Smiths again! It was a lot of fun to have them stay with us and finally introduce them to the Little Guy.
*Having our car transmission act up *again* on the way home from finally seeing Harry Potter 7.2.
*The fun of living close enough to the fairgrounds to hear part of the Weird Al concert from our backyard.
*Sibling movie nights = very yes.
*The Little Guy's first birthday was great. Loved celebrating and thinking back to a year before and all the fun stuff that had happened during those 12 months.
*Watching the Little Guy attack his cake. So very awesome.
*Took the Little Guy to the dentist and felt like a responsible parent.
*Learned how to make donuts.
*Teaching in Relief Society like, three times, because my lesson week kept getting bumped by things like Conference and Christmas and such. One of the cushiest callings ever.
*Another trip to the South, this time to Tallahassee as well as Alabama. So many adventures. Loved seeing Shallow Man's home ward and meeting people I've heard about for a long time. Swimming with the Little Guy at Wakullah Springs. Canopy roads. Visiting friends from law school. The Crepevine.
*The Little Guy maintained his "Champion Flyer" status.
*Having the airline break our less-than-three-week-old Britax carseat. *primal shriek* They did eventually replace it for us, though.
*iPhone! The angels sang. Especially because it offers an en-dash as well as the em-dash.
*The Book Exchange Party. One of the best ideas I've ever been involved with (thanks to megcellent and alli for being my partners in crime).
*The Dracula meeting of Just Jane was ridiculously fun with the husbands there. I especially loved the days leading up to it while Shallow Man was reading the book and would say things like, "Okay, seriously, I would sue Van Helsing for malpractice!" Having Kat be able to come and hang out for it was also especially great.
*Finally having the ear infections of doom clear up when we went to the specialist to see if the Little Guy needed tubes. *big sigh of relief*
*Taking the Little Guy trick-or-treating in his garden gnome costume.
*Being lawyerly from time to time.
*Coming up with fun business ideas and working towards putting them into action.
*November 3, 2011: He walks!
*Playing in the leaves with cousins.
*Taking a weekend for ourselves at the Little America, even if it did mean spending my first night away from the Little Guy.
*Winning third place in the Pioneer Woman's Princess Bride trivia challenge. Oh, yeah.
*Making new friends.
*Weaning the Little Guy the week before Thanksgiving. Both heartbreaking and liberating.
*Mice. Ick.
*Thanksgiving at our house with my family. Favorite holiday ever.
*Gourmandise and Banbury Cross.
*The Little Guy's first experience with chocolate pudding.
*Lots of editing.
*Taught myself how to knit.
*Cake Wrecks thinks I'm funny.
*The MoTab Christmas Concert, which was wonderful.
*Playdates with friends.
*Christmas with a toddler—AWESOME.
*Homemade ice cream!
*New Year's Eve with the family at our house. A great way to end the year.


A few books I loved during the year:
*The Mary Russell books by Laurie R. King, starting with The Beekeeper's Apprentice in January. Oh, my. Serious author crush. I've read through book 6 (which was nothing short of amazing) and can't wait to read more.
*The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. This is the one I got at the Book Exchange Party and it was absolutely fascinating.
*The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The best words I can think of for this book are charming, sparkling, lovely, and delightful. It made me laugh and cry within the first ten pages, which takes more than you might think.
*Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. This was a great book club pick by megcellent and I loved it, especially the idea of there being a place somewhere where all our lost things end up.
*Wings, Spells, and Illusions by Aprilynne Pike. I am loving this series and looking forward to the next book being released this year.
*Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. One of the more inventive fantasy books I've read recently.
*Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Wow. Just . . . wow. This was one of the top three books of the year for me (the other two being O Jerusalem and Justice Hall from the Mary Russell series). A new release and a beautifully written and beautifully dreamed fantasy YA novel that was the only YA book to make Amazon's Top 20 books of the year, and with reason. Even if you think you don't like fantasy or YA, if you love absolutely exquisite writing, you owe it to yourself to check out this book.



If I missed listing something that I did with you that you loved, I'm sorry. I probably loved it, too, but my memory does miss some things now and then.