2 more teeth!

After a couple days of fever, fussing, and much snuggling, Alice has almost completely healed from her little illness. She also appears to have cut two more teeth in the process! So now she has four on top and two on bottom. It looks like she has inherited my front gap (see photo below) but only time will tell if Bobby's genes are strong enough to subdue Poulson Pebble Teeth: lots of little bitty teeth with lots of little bitty gaps between them, like a pearl necklace of sorts.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been a real interesting one. Both Susan and Alice have been sick, and it has been a very busy week for Susan. She has had some sort of a meeting nearly every night this week, most of them keeping her out until after 10. She has been absolutely exhausted, but has kept going. All of this exhausting sickness culminated Friday night and yesterday. Alice has had a fever and Friday night all night long she just wanted to be held, so Susan stayed up much of the night and held her. Saturday was the Elder’s Quorum temple trip. My calling is the leader of the temple and family history committee, hence I organized it (Not a terribly difficult job, hey everybody lets all meet at the temple say Saturday the 23rd for the 10:30 session) but I felt like I should be there because of it. Well the wonderful person Susan is she took Alice all day Saturday so I could go, even after a very difficult night.

Now when she reads this she will try and down play it saying that I am just as wonderful because I took Alice last night and I am staying home from church with her today. I will refute that right now, as last night Alice woke up twice and all I had to do was put the pacifier back in each time, and today it is only 3 hours and Alice will practically sleep through it.

On a side note the temple trip was a very good one despite the low turn out. We had close to 15 people signed up to go, but yesterday morning when we met at the church the only people who showed up were me, the Elder’s Quorum president, and his wife. We called around to several of the other people and they were all not going because they and their families had this same sickness that Alice and Susan had. We went down. Another group was going to go down later to do baptisms, as there were two elders that had not taken out their endowments yet. They all showed up, which I think was the real reason for the trip. When our session was over and we went to the celestial room the home teacher of one of the guys doing baptisms was waiting for us. So all of us were able to help out. It ended up being a very long day. We left the church at 7 am and did not get back home until 7 pm. But it was a very good trip.

Can you get drunk from fumes?

It sure feels like it. I volunteered to make some cheese fondue for a Mothers and More event tonight. Someone else selected the recipe and purchased the ingredients. When she handed me a bottle of wine, I realized I didn't even know how to OPEN it. Yikes. I should have known then that I was in over my head. Instead, I borrowed a corkscrew from a neighbor and got cooking. Simmering 3 cups of wine on the stove for 10 minutes can really volatilize ethanol. Phew! My eyes are still burning and I don't feel quite normal. I am the proud new owner of a gloppy, stinky mess that I don't dare taste, but plan to serve to 30 almost perfect strangers...in about an hour. Erp.

Smile for the Camera :)

Alice learned a new facial expression from her dad today.

 

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been an interesting one all around. You may not remember but just before Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo, Yahoo announced that there would be some layoffs. This week they happened. Almost nobody here in Urbana was let go, but a few were. The amazing thing here is that on the mailing list that was set up of alumni of the Motorola facility within the same day there were more job leads in town posted than there were people let go, along with several out of town ones as well. However, me and about 20 other people will be changing what we do somewhat significantly. Yahoo is divided up into several big groups. Originally 3 of these groups hired people here and now the one that I work for is reducing the number of facilities that they operate in, so everyone that I work with is switching to the largest of the other two groups.

Susan has had a bit of a difficult time this last week. She has helped Rachel pack every weekday morning. You saw what it did to Alice in one of Susan’s previous blog posts. But I think she is dealing with it OK, along with her new callings.

Here are some new videos of Alice. This first one really shows how old Alice is getting, despite some commenter's reluctance to admit it. She already can say a few words, and understands a lot more. It is hard to believe that in less than a month she will be a year old.

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

These other two are mostly just Alice carrying things around and playing. Susan took them to satiate the cries for more things Alice.

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

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

Exhausted

I helped my friend Rachel every morning this week to pack up her house for the big move. Alice, excited by the new toys and new surroundings, therefore missed her morning nap six days in a row. Poor girl. She seemed to be making up for it during her afternoon nap, but not quite. Rachel took this video while we were eating lunch on Thursday.

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

Now I have to mop. Sheesh.

More pictures and movies to come shortly. Very shortly. But first:

This evening, while doing the dishes, I heard a slurping sound from under the kitchen table. Alice was on her hands and knees, sucking on the floor. I gasped in surprise and her head snapped up---leaving a pool of slobber around a little blob of dried food that had stuck to the floor. Her smile indicated she was proud of herself. She's been trying to use her pincer grasp to pick up that particular blob for a week.

Okay, okay, maybe I should mop the kitchen floor more often. I keep it well swept, but I really hate to mop. I figured stuck-on bits of food wouldn't ever get into Alice's mouth. Ha! This girl's gonna wring all the laziness out of me.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

The days this week were fairly typical but the nights were a little out of the ordinary. Nearly every night this week, Susan had some sort of a meeting. Some nights she had two scheduled at the same time. So I got to spend a lot of time alone in the evening.

Yesterday was a rather busy day. I went to the church leadership broadcast at 7 a.m. Susan went at 10, while I was in the family history library watching Alice. We did it that way because our stake only broadcast those two due to the rest of the afternoon people were setting up for the Gold and Green Ball, which is basically a really fancy high school dance for everyone 14 and up.

I have to tell you that Alice is becoming a little kid not just a baby any more. She knows the word for ball, dada, and we suspect that mama is in there too. Also she is getting to be much more adventurous and physical. She likes to climb. She likes to climb on people. She likes to climb on stairs. She likes to climb on the furniture. At the family history library today I prevented her from climbing onto the top of the desk by placing her on the floor, as nothing else seemed to work. As soon as she was on the floor she started trying to do a chin-up to get up there. Her little arms are just not quite strong enough yet, but she was determined. We went to the library after lunch and a nap to check out books and play. She was playing in a big plastic playhouse, and was hanging out with a few other girls.

(Susan's addendum: While at the library, Bobby was carrying Alice through the stacks and he heard a clinking sound on the floor. He saw a quarter there and picked it up. It was still warm. Apparently Alice had found a quarter somewhere during her wanderings in the Children's Department. I'm just glad we discovered it before it discovered her esophagus.)

Green Bean Monster

I was feeding Alice some of those skinny little french green beans the other day. They are about 4-5 inches long, the shape of a regular green bean, but much thinner. She took one in her fist, shoved one end into her mouth, chomped down with a grunt, and yanked it out again. The babe only has 3 teeth (two on bottom, one on top) so the bean squeaked as it slipped out of her gums. She tried again and again until suddenly her teeth got a hold of the bean and she tore off a little piece. She opened her mouth with a wide grin and made her little fake throat laugh...it's kind of a gagging sound and a cough at the end...like she's forcefully clearing her throat with her mouth wide open. I laughed so hard that she started laughing with me, which only made me laugh more. Then she did it again and again until she had eaten the whole bean. Our little green bean monster.

Amish Eggs

I have been inspired by some of my recent readings (see blog roll to the right) to try some fresh, local, farm-raised eggs. Heck, I've even tinkered with the idea of keeping a couple chickens on our property (more on that to come). I had the car yesterday and Alice was in a good mood so I decided we could visit our local food co-op. This is the only place in town to buy local eggs in the winter, short of driving out to the farms themselves. So! There they were! I filled up my egg container with twelve beautiful, non-uniform, light brown eggs. Some even had a little dirt still attached. Yes, it was dirt. They came from Amish farms just south of here. When I told Bobby about my little purchase, this is how it went:

"How much did they cost?"

"Just $2." (Bobby seemed instantly relieved to hear this)

"Wow. That's not bad considering the markup for people who aren't members of the co-op."

"Oh, I joined the co-op, too."

"mmgmg. How much did that cost?"

"Well, for a family membership it's $50. But that's a one-time fee and it's fully refundable when we leave the co-op, so it doesn't really cost anything."

"You paid $52 for a dozen eggs?!?!"

"Amish eggs."

Didn't realize how that felt, until now.

This picture was taken 4.5 years ago, moments before Bobby and I started our journey to the great land of Illinois. That's our U-Haul. That's my best friend Julia. I'm brimming with excitement, eager to start this new adventure. My thoughts for the last couple months have been only of our new home, new school, and the endless potential of his entirely unknown place called "Champaign-Urbana". Relations with Julia were rough, to say the least. I didn't understand her. Yes, I would be moving far away. Yes, we would still be friends. I knew Julia was sad, but it seemed like more than that. Only in retrospect do I finally see her position more clearly.

She was mourning.

Like I am mourning now.

Our first day in Champaign-Urbana, we drove the U-Haul trailer up to the married student housing. It was a dismal looking place. Our apartment was miniscule, old, and completely foreign to us. We just opened up the trailer and started unloading. A few minutes into our move, my mom stops me in the stairwell and says quietly, "There's a woman outside watching us move your stuff. You might want to talk to her." I stepped outside to meet this mysterious woman. It turned out that she and her family were the only other members of the church in all of married student housing and she happened to live only two buildings down. This was the beginning of my friendship with Rachel.

Sunday dinners, late nights chatting, temple trips, Chicago, Indianapolis, countless whispered comments in Sunday School and Relief Society, three births, Ladies Night Out, Cub Scouts, and numerous play dates later, she is the one about to begin the grand adventure. Her husband has finally graduated. Next week they are moving to a job on the west coast.

I am in mourning. It was especially bad last week. I wanted to help her prepare, but I couldn't stand to be with her because everything we did reminded me that she would be leaving. That wasn't good for anyone, so I decided to tackle my feelings and figure out what I was really afraid of. No more emotion-stuffing. Time for understanding. It didn't take long once I started talking it out with Bobby. And here it is: I don't want our friendship to change. It's that simple. But you know what? That's not a choice I have right now. Our relationship MUST change. It already has. What I CAN choose is how I will deal with the few days remaining.

I choose to be happy for them. I choose to help them any way I can as they begin this journey.

I choose to mourn after they leave.

I write about "them" and "they" but I really mean "her" and "she." It's just harder to write it that way.

And in these thoughts, I am also thinking about Julia. I'm looking back at what our relationship has become since the day this picture was taken. Yes, our friendship has changed. In many ways, it is not as close as it once was. But something amazing has happened---our friendship has endured. I love it and I love her still. This gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, the world won't cave in on me when my good friend finally loads up that truck and drives away. And maybe there's another Julia or Rachel out there that I will come to love as richly as these two amazing women.

Itching to Garden

It's February! Time to start thinking about the garden. I've ordered my seeds, I'm making plans to put in a couple raised beds, and I'm already dreaming of the delicious fruits of my labors. I'll be growing a few new items this year: kohlrabi, baby salad greens mix, miner's lettuce, and shell peas. Of course we will enjoy the old favorites, too: snap peas, tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, beets, and weeds. Hopefully not too many of that last one.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week started off seeming to get back to normal.  Toward the middle of the week Alice got a cold.  She has had a runny nose and some coughing.  This has been a little difficult, as it has been keeping us, mostly Susan, up at night.  Other than that Alice has been doing well.  She is learning and growing and is getting better at walking every day.  I am fairly sure this morning she brought me a few books that she wanted me to read to her, so we did, but she has never done that before.

Thursday night we had a “Big” snowstorm.  It dumped about 6 inches of snow on us, which I know is not that much for some people, but around here it is a lot.  It didn’t take that long to shovel out on Friday, but I still worked from home in the morning, because the roads were not plowed and more importantly there are a lot of people around here that do not know how to drive in the snow.  I really did not feel like being hit by someone.   I went into work Friday afternoon and got hit with a rather large surprise, Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo!.  It really is a bit rough, thinking that we had finally hit another stable spot, but then Yahoo! announces some layoffs last week and now this.  I am very glad I did not stay with Motorola, because on Friday that also announced that they considering selling or spinning off their mobile phone business.  Oh well.  What ever happens happens and I am really not that worried about it.