How to destroy your child (1 yr)

1. Sleep in a new bed in a different house.
2. Leave your child with a babysitter all morning.
3. Give up on the afternoon nap after 30 minutes and pick him/her up.
4. Go to a cousin birthday party at a park for the next hour
5. Drop your child off at another babysitter until an hour past his bedtime.
6. Let daylight savings start the next day and
7. It's now Sunday, and church covers nap time.

Yep, got them all. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

A group in which Isaac belongs

Isaac has a strange propensity: he really doesn't like taking toys out and throwing them around. No, he'd much rather put them away. Three examples --
1. A week or so ago, he found a dirty sock by the laundry bin. He picked it up, carried it into our room, and put it in Andrew's sock drawer. Don't worry, it's not because he knows where it is, but because it was the only drawer open.
2. Yesterday, I watched him take my brush from the bathroom counter and put it into one of the drawers.
3. Today, this was what he did.
Everything in the cupboard he plays in came from the kitchen into this bin.

Given the preceding evidence, I offer my son as a future member of the following group. I apologize for the subtitles and attribute them to the joys of Youtube.

Moving Forward

I have finally realized that the main reason I never post on my blog is that I'd then have to cover months of family life, and I find myself unwilling to do that. So there. Life has moved on. Isaac is now almost 14 months old. He walks, falls down stairs, and bangs his head on things. He likes making people laugh and has a funny face he makes when he's being funny. We have a few temper tantrums too. I think that covers the last six months adequately, right?

Movers and Shakers

The title of this post comes from two of Isaac's favorite things to do: move himself, and shake things. Hitting should have been in there too, but alas, no clever titles that I could think of involved all three. Because of these three favorite passtimes, Isaac now sports a very lovely red bump on the side of his eye, and I think he'll have a rather large one on the back of his head soon. Marble will do that to you.

All in all, I knew that the day would come when my child would always look a little worse for wear. I never expected it to come before his eight month mark.

On the other hand, there's nothing quite as beautiful as watching him sleep. Because he's never still any more, I treasure these times. Yes, I admit that I crawl into his room just to watch him sleep. Pretty soon you'll find me singing "I love you forever..."

Being a mom

Sometimes, I wonder about this whole mom thing. Only as a mom...

1. I find pear puree in my hair and consider it normal.

2. I hear the words "No, we don't chew on power cords" coming out of my own mouth and I consider it normal.

3. I participate in a variation of red-light, green-light while going to bed. Isaac's the stop light.

But then again, only as a mom do I get baby hugs and smiles and the joy and worry of a first tooth. Life is good.

An Eventful 3 months

Since my last post, we've moved into Alpine, gone on a month-long cross-country road trip, moved out of Alpine, and moved into a single bedroom in Fountain Valley. Hey, real estate is a bit more expensive here. I'd say that qualifies as eventful. Isaac went from swinging his arms and legs wildly to being a fully active crawling dervish who can pull himself to a standing position in his crib and cry AT us. Andrew went from being a stay-at-home dad with no responsibilities beyond himself and Isaac to being a full-time medical student, and I went from being a full-time working woman to a stay-at-home mom. I wondered for a minute if I could fit any more hyphens in this paragraph, but I think I'm done.

With all these changes, life is still great. I love being a mommy, and it's especially fun right now because I'm living with my sister-in-law who has a baby about three months younnger than Isaac and near another sister-in-law with a baby about five months younger. Another sister-in-law is expecting in the beginning of October. It's so fun to be with family who are in the same place. We trade screaming baby stories.

This is a fairly boring post, but I felt like something was required to bring us up to date. Currently, we're waiting for our apartment to open up, and then we'll once again have our own home. Right now that sounds like paradise. I was going to post a picture, but since the cable is missing, I will consider this a sign: time to stop.

Singing Baby

While we sat in our living room, with Andrew at the piano and Rebecca singing, we found that Isaac likes Handel. A very poor version of "Rejoice, Greatly" went from a solo aria to a duet. Isaac was not on pitch, but was very enthusiastic in his singing and very happy while doing so. On the Isaac front, he has a flat head and a twisted neck. I guess if you have to pick problems for your child to have, these aren't too bad. On the other hand, he woke last night at 1:30 for the first time in a LONG time, and kept his daddy awake for a long time - like an hour. We weren't really sure what to do about that, since he's spoiled us so much. We take him into the doctors office this week for his 4 month appointment. More immunizations and a check for his growth. Everyone we'ved talked to lately has commented on how long he is. Last time he was the 50th percentile, so we'll see if that changes. We've been so lucky with how healthy he's been.

On to the Becca front. I'm excitedly counting the days to when I finish work. 14 work days, if you want to know. Memorial day is in there, so I keep telling myself that I only have two full weeks left. This last week, my supervisor became my former supervisor. I feel kind of bad, but I had a feeling his job was in danger several months ago, and he didn't seem to realize it. If he did, he certainly didn't make any adjustments to what he was doing. Now, we're leading the team by committee and it's great. I'm doing way more interesting things and remembering why I liked this job in the first place. Andrew's also trying to convince me that I should get my wisdom teeth out in the next three weeks before we lose dental coverage. My head knows that he is right, but I really don't want to go through that. My mom was mentioning that my brother got pills to take to knock him out. If they can do that for me, I'm all in. We'll see if my knowledge that Andrew is right can beat out my fear of nasty pain. My days are great, because I work from 6:30 to 3:00. I love that schedule. I went biking this last week for the first time since the triathlon last year. It hurt. I was on one of those really narrow seats, and they are NOT comfortable. I really can't think of anything else to say about my life.

Andrew has become the ultimate male slug. He sleeps in, rarely gets out of the house, and generally does nothing. Just kidding. Kind of. He takes care of Isaac in the morning while I'm at work. He says he takes care of Isaac all day long. At the very least, he is our resident diaper changer. I like it. Since graduating from BYU, he's been gradually boxing up our possessions, and trying to convince me that we can take most of our stuff to DI. I'm not buying it. He's also slightly disgusted by the number of holiday decoration boxes I have. Sue me. Sometimes he plays Wii, and he goes running with Isaac in Sarah's jogging stroller. He also looks up and sends really obscure YouTube videos to the family, as I'm sure you've noticed. Isaac is sitting in Andrew's lap, and he just pulled himself into a half sit up position. If only he could do that on his tummy.

The weather here has been absolutely beautiful. The lane that leads up to our house is bordered by lilac bushes, and they will be fully blooming in about three days. The tulips
have been absolutely gorgeous, and are just now starting to fade. All the blossoms are starting to fall off the trees, and leaves are appearing. I love spring in Utah. We've had temperatures in the high sixties and low seventies, which is perfect here for taking a walk outside to appreciate all the flowers. We even, after much begging on my part, went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point. It was gorgeous, but then again, it always is.








Friday night, we went to take family pictures with one of my friends who is considering a side job in photography. She wanted free models, and we wanted a free photographer. We'll see if anything turns out from that. I hope so, but Isaac was in one of his rare bad moods and wouldn't smile. Oh well. That's what you get with a four month old, I guess.

Our ward choir is uniformly bad. We're speaking in church the 24th. We're also singing in church the 24th. I'm also playing the organ the 24th. The exective secretary came up and asked if we'd also like to say the prayers or pass the sacrament or something. It's our last week in the ward, so I guess they want us to go out with a bang. That is, with everyone glad to see our backs. Church today was really good. We had a youth speaker, and then two adults, one of whom had been a single mother for years. She gave a great talk on how much she loved being a mother, even though it was a lot harder to do alone. The last talk ended with 20 minutes to go in the meeting, and we sang the closing song and ended. I was a little surprised, but I definitely remember what was said in the talks.

Yes, this letter is definitely long, but hopefully it makes up for the fact that we haven't written in months, and for all of Andrew's bad YouTube videos.

Hasta la vista, Baby.
Andrew and Rebecca (not Isaac, he can't talk yet)