Did she just...

Alice surprised me today with a new solution to the same old problem. She likes to pick up random objects and carry them around the house with her. She uses every spare finger to carry as many objects as possible (i.e. four stacking cups at once!), but often must choose between many exciting objects. This evening after dinner she was toddling around but she stopped near me and started fussing like she wanted to hold my finger. I offered her my finger, not really paying attention to the fact that her hands were already full. The next thing I knew, my finger was 2 knuckles deep in her mouth and I was being led toward the living room. Not a bad way to increase your carrying capacity by 50%, eh?

Bobby's Sunday Summary

We all had a really good time with the family in Utah. Susan already put a summary of the trip up on the blog so I don’t think I need to go into any great detail about it. It was one of the best vacations we have had in a very long time.

After we got home life was mostly back to normal, everything that is except for Alice walking all over the place. She has even tried running a few times, with some success. When we got home there was a message on the answering machine from the Bishop. He wanted us to come in. Well it took us until this morning to have the meeting and Susan is now the second counselor in the Relief Society. Over time she will be released as a Gospel Doctrine teacher and Assistant Den Leader. But for now she has three full time callings.

Blog Tagged?

So, apparently I've been blog-tagged by billkristinandwil. Is that like a chain letter? I get the vague impression I'm supposed to blog something about Bobby now. Well, here goes.

He's okay, I guess.

Food and Kids...it doesn't get any better!

Alice's two favorite things in the whole world (kids and food) were finally combined to make one of the most entertaining and delicious ten minutes of her life. Two of her darling friends fed her a tasty lunch of applesauce and a fruit bar. Bobby was close by with the video camera. Yay! My favorite part is how the girls open their mouths wide when they're trying to get Alice to take a bite. After the first couple spoonfuls, notice that Alice wasn't going to get another real bite of applesauce until she had cleaned off every bit that was already on the spoon.

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/GirlsFeedingAlice.flv[/flv]

Mullet

We're back!

We flew out west for the funeral of Celia the Great. It was one of the best "vacations" our family has had in a long time. I got to meet a gajillion of Bobby's cousins, we laughed and cried about everything, we visited all the family on both sides that could squeeze us into their schedules, and we finally returned home safely. During this trip, I came a little closer to understanding the joy of extended family---cousins, aunts, uncles. I had had limited experience with such relations before marrying Bobby. Nieces and nephews, I understood. I have long loved having family members younger than me (though not by much) who I could play with and rile up and kid around with. A cousin is different. A cousin can be your age. They're in YOUR generation. They are your peers and friends. You are connected to them like family but disconnected at the same time. It's a new feeling for me. A good feeling. I'm lucky Bobby's cousins, aunts, and uncles are so fun. They made it easy on me.

This story begins with a 3-hour car ride to the airport and a restless night at a motel/hotel in a foreign city. Alice sleeps with me in one double bed and Bobby takes the other bed (I didn't realize that hotels have cribs you can borrow). Alice sighs, twists, grunts and rolls all night. At 2 am, she wakes up, flips into her crawling stance and heads right for the edge of the bed. WHY?! That makes no sense! I don't sleep after that. I keep my eye (and a hand or two) on that babe the rest of the night. The next morning, we catch the 5 am shuttle to the airport. As we unload our bags from the shuttle, Alice barfs all over herself and me. A few minutes later, after we had checked in, she pees through her diaper. Then, as we go through security, she barfs again (a little one this time). Finally, 15 minutes before boarding the plane, she poops. Three separate times. The last one, the biggest, happens just 2 minutes before boarding. Alice's prolific gut had caused us to run out of diapers. I had packed a WHOLE DAY's worth of diapers and she flew through them in a matter of hours. We were fortunate enough, thankfully, to be traveling with Bill and Kristin who could loan us a diaper. Yay!

Alice's cousins inspired her to walk and climb like never before. She is now walking at least a few steps on her own whenever she can manage to stand up. She also discovered a passion for climbing stairs on this trip. I put a "practice stair" in our living room this afternoon. It's just one of those long plastic storage boxes that slides under the bed. She's already a pro at getting on top, but getting down will require a bit more practice. She decided (finally) that sliding off face first was not very pleasant.

Alice has also cut her third tooth. This tooth was preceded by loose stools and mild fussiness, not the snotty goopiness we had come to expect from her first two teeth. It's nice to know that you just don't know what's going on half the time.

Unexpected

Bobby's mom called us on Sunday to let us know that her mother had passed away that afternoon. Grandma Luce, or "Celia the Great" as Alice and her siblings will come to know her, has been a powerful influence of love in my life. Directly and indirectly.

I felt that Celia the Great loved me from the moment I met her. I think that's how she is. She can love unconditionally. She openly shares everything she has. Even the most precious things---love poetry between her and her husband, stories from her childhood and adulthood, and the pictures and lives of loved ones I never got to meet. Though I married into her family, I never felt like an outsider. That was the greatest gift of love.

Perhaps my feelings can be summed up with the following story: When Bobby and I learned that the babe was a girl, we started sifting through all sorts of family history compilations and journals to learn more about the amazing women in our families. We happened upon a picture of Celia as a young adult---smiling, almost radiant. I somehow knew at that moment that if I had been her contemporary, I would have been her friend. She simply embodied love.

Yes. That's about right.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been one touched by sickness in our house. Alice was the first to get sick. She caught something and was not very happy. Just see Susan’s post from last Sunday for details. I am not sure if she has ever recovered all the way because she has been very snuggly ever since. I kind of hope that she has recovered and that she has just learned the joy of a good hug.

On Wednesday I got stomach cramps, vomiting, etc. Susan came down with the same thing a little while after me, but managed to keep it all down. Luckily we both recovered rather quickly and with no permanent damage. We think that we may have gotten some food poisoning from some brownie batter we ate, but we don’t know for sure. Today we knew that we had both fully recovered when we both had a brownie again, store bought this time.

Besides that there has not really been too much different that happened this week.

Doot-da-doo delight

The babe just discovered that a nearly empty roll of paper towels from the church building (left over in our diaper bag from the barfing incident on Sunday, and brought out this morning to finish cleaning up a particularly juicy burp...peaches and soy cheese anyone?) has been hiding an amazing gift----not just one, but TWO doot-da-do's. She is singing their praises as I write, holding them high and literally singing to them. She's belting out long, loud yells punctuated with periodic pauses to breathe and/or taste the delightful cardboard tubes. Yes, still delicious. Yes, still praiseworthy.

Rats of NIMH

I just finished reading "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" for the first time in my life. WOW! That's a neat book. The cartoon movie I watched as a child was so dark and creepy that I never had a desire to read the book. It's good for me to have Alice at the library these days. We spend all our time in the kids section where I can browse the shelves for Newberry Award winners and such. This week, I read three excellent juvenile novels: Ida B., The Shard, and Rats of NIMH. All very satisfying reads.

Next on the list of want-to-reads is something called "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan and the Mary Poppins series by P.L. Travers.

Barfin'

Warning to the faint-hearted: this entry contains five references to emesis (i.e. look at the title, dude). Whoops, make that six.

Only minutes after our friend told us his whole family was home from church with a strange barfing illness, Alice pukes Cheerios and a whole lot of stomach acid all over her dear old dad. Woo hoo! Half the ward was missing today for similar reasons.

Alice is asleep now after a bath and a few changes of clothing. I'm glad she's a "snuggly sickie" instead of a "mean sickie." It's a great feeling to cuddle and soothe a little baby, even if she tends to barf on you. I've never been so matter-of-fact about bodily fluids in my life. Love truly conquers all (:

Bobby's Sunday Summary

I went back to work this week after a long and relaxing vacation. It was nice to go back. I was about ready to be done just sitting around, even though that is nice too at times. So my situation at work is a little bit interesting. The person I report to is not the person who is handing out my assignments. I think this is because they want me to report to someone local and not to someone in CA, but I could be wrong.

Well right before Christmas we finished up the previous project that we were working on. Then the person who knows what we are going to be doing next left to go home to India. We all got back from vacation at the same time but he caught the flu and is still off. So for the time being I am on my own trying to figure out what I should do with only the name of the project that I am going to be working on, I still have no idea what section of it I will be involved with.

On Friday Susan hosted a playgroup for Mothers and More. She was a bit nervous about it. We cleaned the house all over, and set up a bunch of treats for the kids. Well it turns out that she didn’t really need the treats at all. Everybody that showed up had an infant. There were almost no toddlers there either. The biggest commodity in our house was floor space to put the baby carrier down on.

And because we cannot write a post without involving Alice in some way here is a wonderful picture of her Susan took last night.