Emma-isms

On Friday Emma and I were at a strip mall that had bells playing. The bells were electronic and were staticky, and cutting in and out. High quality I tell you what. It was a far cry from the bell tower at BYU. Emma would comment on how the bells would stop and start. So that is the background for this next part of the story. That night there was a thunder storm. When the thunder had stopped Emma asked, "Did they turn off the thunder?"

Emma was washing her hands and noticed that the bubbles weren't going down the drain like the water did after she had turned off the water. She asked if the bubbles were resting. Then she asked if the bubbles want to watch her (as an offer of explanation as to why the bubbles weren't going down the drain). It is good to be two years old and have the world love you - including bubbles in the sink.

4 Months

Our life seems like it has been a little nuts lately, but then I talk to other people and they truly have nutty lives. So I think that I have a low tolerance for nuts.

1. Our washer died. I had a love hate relationship with our washer. It came with the house and there was no stain that it could get out. On the other hand, it somewhat worked and I wasn't in love with any washer on the market - particularly washers that are worth more than our Civic and don't actually wash but do develop a moldy smell. I chickened out on purchasing a new washer because I had zero confidence in its ability to wash so I elected to get a used washer from someone online. This decision process took 1.5 weeks. In infant laundry time that is multiple eternities. John spits up on me multiple times a day so we were both out of cloths by about day 2. I spent one day in a laundromat and was sure I did not want to duplicate that experience again. Aaron looked at our washer to see if he could fix it and he found that a duck had molted in our washer. I was totally grossed out that this had been in our house for 4 years.

 2. John turned 4 months. We started him on solids and here are the milestone pictures:

This picture pretty well sums up his opinion - not quite sure I like this change. It appears that John isn't into change. He is 50% Anderson and from a variety of personality traits, he might be more Anderson than Russell.

3. Swimming. It is flaming hot here and we have taken Emma to the pool and she is in love. She asks every day all day long to go to the pool. She is so hard up to go swimming she is willing to go poops in the potty if she can wear her bathing suite in the bath tub. She isn't sold on the whole poops in the potty thing so that just shows how much she loves swimming. She puts her face in the water all by herself and jumps in to the deep end all by herself. One upside is that swimming appear to make her tired:

This is John waking up from his nap.

4. Dress up. Today Emma spotted princess dresses in the closet. They are hand me downs. She has had zero, maybe even negative interest in dress ups prior to now. She spotted them today and was in love. She didn't want to take off her Cinderella dress at all.

We dressed John up in these. I have to return them because his noggin is too big. It is those Scandinavian genes - they have big heads and he gets it on both sides of the family.

John's Blessing.... One Month Later?

I did this with Emma - we took her picture in her blessing outfit one month later. So here is John in his blessing outfit, one month later.

Hindu Princesses and Boppies of the Sea

We had Shrimp Teriyaki bowls for dinner tonight. Emma held a shrimp on her fork and asked me if it was a nursing pillow.  

Today Aaron asked Emma what the name of the fairy princess was on her shirt. Emma responded, "She's Hindu." Apparently she was listening when we were discussing the proposal to put in a Hindu temple in our neighborhood.

Mother's Day

Aaron made a video for me for Mother's Day. It was of Emma singing "A Child's Prayer." It was adorable. So far we haven't figured out how to post video from our Cannon camera. This present is about as close as a human can get to turning water to wine seeing as we don't really have video editing software. Aaron earned his father status a million times over because he was up late two nights in a row making a video and then took care of the cooking and kids today. He wins an award for making a wonderful Mother's Day.

On another note I have been thinking about Motherhood. I have two sick kiddos right now. Last night was particularly rough with John. I would try and feed him and calm him down and he just cried and fussed. I finally got him to bed and he would wake up and scream every 20 minutes. After doing that for a while he woke up every 3 hours to eat. So I have been pondering about what it means to have someone (and most likely there are multiple people in our lives) that cuddle us and calm us down every 20 minutes when we are crying so to speak. I think that really Mother's Day is a celebration of those people in our lives that are happy to sacrifice their personal comfort to help us. I think that the role of mother lends itself (and father as well) to that description but it has given me pause to think about all of the people in my life that have done that for me. Certainly being a mom has made me think about all of the things that my mom has done for me throughout my life that I don't even remember and she doesn't remind me of. Like keeping her up in the night when I was sick.

Three Months

So John is 3 months old and I thought I should write something about his personality. John is the worlds smiliest baby. He will smile at you if you smile at him. I can tell how far he can see because if I am smiling at him, and he isn't smiling, then I know he can't see that far. He makes the world's cutest baby noises - the kind just like in the movies. It is easier to get John to sleep than Emma. You put him in his bed and swaddle him, stick a pacifier in his mouth and he is out. He is a social baby. He gets cranky if he is left by himself. He is instantly happy if he sees a face. Emma was happy to look at whatever was around her. I could leave the room and she wouldn't care. John hates being on his stomach. He is just beginning to look to the sides to see what is going on around him. Overall he is a very laid back baby as long as there aren't loud noises and there are people around him.

Emma has decided she likes John. She loves taking care of John. What that means is that she shoves his pacifier down his throat in an attempt to calm him down. John is a good sport about it and will be a tougher kid for having had to survive the love of his sister.

Father-Son Campout and Mother-Daughter Date

Aaron asked if he could take John on a the Stake Father-Son Camp out. I am very supportive of such an idea. That means 50% less work for me on an evening. And how cool is it that Aaron wanted to spend an evening with his son. This also meant that Emma and I could go on a mother-daughter date. So Aaron took John to his first camp out. Apparently it went well until Aaron tried to feed him a bottle, it didn't go so well and there was some screaming.... I think it was from only one party, but I can neither confirm nor deny it.

Emma and I had a better time getting ice cream. I went to get Emma out of the back seat of the car and found her looking like this:

She didn't want to leave the sunglasses in the car so she walked confidently into the ice cream shop with both pairs of sunglasses on her face and shoes on the wrong feet, a flowered shirt and a plaid headband. on her head. I let her choose her ice cream and she choose cake and chocolate ice cream with chocolate  and rainbow sprinkles and chocolate covered raisins on it. I choose cheesecake and strawberry and kiwi sorbet with berries on top. Emma looked at mine and hers and said she wanted mine. Since I can't eat a lot of chocolate right now (doesn't agree with John) I couldn't really switch with her. Fortunately Emma was willing to eat what she chose.

Surprisingly Emma didn't eat all of her ice cream. So when I told some people that I took Emma out for ice cream they were surprised that I would do such a thing. The irony of the matter is that apparently totally unbeknownst to me, it was a soy based frozen yogurt shop - called Tutti Fruitti. Essentially it was tofu masquerading as ice cream. Most people are grossed out when I tell them but it was good ice cream and if it weren't then they wouldn't be in business. Just sayin'.

Aaron came home from the camp out that night (it was planned that way). Aaron never intended to spend the night with John - nursing would have been a bit awkward. We put John to bed and called it a night after Aaron said he had been mentally assaulted by John. Three month olds pack a punch some times.