Friday, July 25, 2008

We are now Oremites!

Well, we're all moved! Tons of people came to help us last weekend, and we are so very grateful to all of you for your assistance. We literally could not have done it without you--so thank you, Mickie, Steve, Kirsti, Brianne, Becky, Jeshua, Aliesha, Greg, Rich, Christian, Thomas, and Molly (please forgive any misspellings)...I hope I didn't forget anyone! If so, I'm sorry and thank you as well! We love our new home and are eager to get everything unpacked, which is hard to do since we still have all the demands of work and Joshua. Anyway, Joshua seems to love our new home, as evidenced by the following photo:This is in the front room. You can see into the kitchen over Joshua's right shoulder, and over his left shoulder and past the boxes, you can kind of see the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Once we get everything set up, people should come visit us! I promise we're fun to hang out with!

Joshua is becoming more difficult to feed now, as he grabs for the spoon and shrieks in protest when you take it out of his mouth (I think the rubber tip is soothing to his gums...could he be getting another tooth?). Anyway, he gets really messy, but he's still cute. Here he is with sweet potatoes all over everything--he loves sweet potatoes, just like his mommy! Not so much like his daddy, though...
And, finally, he still likes to hide under the couch, as evidenced by these pictures Cody texted to my cell today:
We have such a cute, photogenic baby. I'm amazed that he smiles in almost every picture we take of him now. And that laugh! I really need to get a video of him laughing and post it. Cutest thing ever. Anyway, it's almost time for me to go home to my family, so have a great weekend, everyone! =)

Thursday, July 17, 2008

We've been busy...

We move tomorrow! Hopefully that will explain why it's been two whole weeks since I last posted. There's just so much going on, what with packing, work being a little on the busy side, my transcription work, Cody having a couple of job leads (nothing definite yet, though), and Joshua becoming increasingly mobile. Speaking of Joshua, he's changing so much these days, learning more, and bringing us more and more joy every day. He can get up on all fours, but isn't quite sure what to do once he's up there. It seems like he'll probably be crawling within the next month. He's actually learned how to scoot himself backwards, which sometimes gets him into hilarious predicaments, like this time when he scooted himself almost completely underneath the couch:Anyway, I thought I'd talk a little bit about what's been happening with us, and there are plenty of pictures of Joshua peppered in to make things interesting. First of all, last week I was able to get together with some friends from my freshman year at BYU. Laurel and Amy and I got together first--we all had babies within a month of each other. Then, a couple of days later, Jenna and her almost-2-year-old son Daniel came into town, so we got together with Laurel again. It' s good to see old friends, isn't it? Here's a picture of our babies from the first get-together; they all fell asleep in the car on the way to lunch. On the left is Amy's Madelyn, my Joshua is in the middle (I hope you could recognize him), and Laurel's Noah on the right:My transcription work is going pretty well. I have anywhere between an hour and two hours of work a night, and I'm learning a lot and helping my family earn some money as well. My company had their summer party last Friday, and so we went (mainly for the free food). Interesting side note: while there, we just happened to sit down the table from a family from Fortaleza, Brazil. The president of the company, Kent Gale, was talking to them in Portuguese, and so I joined in the conversation. Come to find out, Kent was actually my mission president's companion in Brazil 30 years ago! It's a small world after all...oh, and here's Joshua chewing on the seatbelt from his stroller. He seemed to much prefer that to the squash we fed him later that night:
This picture doesn't really have a story, but I thought it was cute so I'm throwing it in there. I've started bathing Joshua every night as part of a bedtime routine to help him wind down. It seems to be helping, and I usually have him in bed by 8:40 or 8:45, allowing me plenty of time to get my transcription done. Anyway, as I was lotioning him up one night and flipped him over to get his back, apparently the hooded towel came with him, creating a sort of cape-look:
Like I said before, Joshua is just growing by leaps and bounds. He's thriving on solid foods! He's practically become a pro. So far, we've given him rice cereal, carrots, squash, and peas. Next on the list: green beans. Hopefully he takes to those as well as everything else. We may start introducing fruits for breakfast next week, I'm not sure. Oh, and new development: he's getting another tooth! Cody noticed it last night...it just broke through. I tried to get a picture of the tooth he got a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure if you can see it very well, but it's there:This last picture is just fun. Cody and I got new phones a few weeks ago because our old ones were starting to die on us, and my new phone has a flash for the camera. Result: sometimes Joshua can't keep his eyes open long enough. I promise he's not drugged up or anything, even though it may look like it:That's about it for us! In a couple of days we'll be Orem residents. Exciting stuff. Hope everyone has a great weekend, and I'll post more once we get settled in at our new place! =)

Thursday, July 3, 2008

6 months old, a tooth, and solid foods!

Joshua had his 6-month appointment on Monday (a little overdue, but that's okay). Our little (big) boy is now 19 lbs 12 oz and 28 1/4 inches long! If I recall correctly, that's in the 80th percentile for weight and the 92nd or so for length. I think he's going to be long and lean like his daddy. Everything else looked good, the doctor said! He even had a tooth looking like it would come in any day...which it started to do that night, actually. It's not very visible yet, but I can certainly feel it. Anyway, since Joshua is now 6 months old, the doctor encouraged us to start him on solid foods. Kind of intimidating, but Cody and I were excited for this new development. I went and bought spoons and some rice cereal that night, and we planned to do it the next day. So, Tuesday evening, we gathered in the kitchen, armed with the video camera, the digital camera, some rubber-tipped spoons, a bib, and some really runny rice cereal. We sat Joshua in his swing (still haven't bought a high chair, so the swing has to do for now...thank you, Dana and Melissa!) and started trying to feed him. I won't say he's a champ at it yet, but he certainly seemed to be interested! We gave him another spoon to play with beforehand, but we had to take it away because he would rather suck on that than eat the food. Here he is beforehand, just patiently waiting...he had no idea what was in store for him:And here he is sucking on the spoon...that kid will put anything in his mouth:I love this facial expression. My little bug-eyed boy!:Cody took a break from the video camera and tried it out:Yeah, it got everywhere, and it was really really runny. But he's getting better at it!So, we'll just keep trying it every night until he gets better, and then maybe we'll introduce some veggies or fruit or something. It certainly is fun, and definitely a new experience! If anyone has any advice on this whole new deal, we'd be happy to hear from you!