Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was a long one, with lots of driving in it. Tuesday Susan flew back, and stayed with a very nice friend in Effingham that evening. Then on Wednesday I drove down to pick her up. The rest of the workweek was spent getting our lives back in order. Just when we were feeling a bit normal we drove to the temple in St. Louis on Saturday to go to the temple. I am not sure where, but somewhere on the way to the temple, or in the temple parking lot we picked up a nail in our tire. So I then had to spend 15 min in the freezing cold, and my Sunday clothes changing a tire and then the next hour taking it to get the tire fixed. In the end it only cost $10, and about 2 hours of my time.

At least someone was paying attention

I may not have remembered to take any pictures while visiting family in Utah, but thankfully my sister snapped these for me. Alice acts modest in a couple of them and hams it up for a few others. She loooooves the camera.

Garden 2009!

That's right! It's gardening season...almost. Ordered my seeds today. A few goals for my garden this year:

1. growing and freezing all the shell peas we'll eat over the winter

2. garlic, onions, and carrots for the root cellar (aka my freezy cold and moist garage)

3. rhubarb. It's a very appealing fruit when you're trying to eat seasonally :)

4. working in my friend's family farm/garden and getting paid in produce

5. raspberry plants! My mom gave them to me for my birthday

Struggling to Remember...

...what Alice was like before she learned to say "Aubrey" and "Ella." Their names are her mantra, as if asking so fervently will simply plop her back into Utah in the heart of cousin country. When she's upset or crying, she sobs "Ah-bee-Ella house" and sometimes she throws in "baby atty too" for good measure. She says it so much that she even plays with the sounds, sticking out her tongue really far to get just the right "L" sound in Ella's name. She called me "Mommy-Ella" this morning. And sometimes her "Daddy" sounds a lot like "Ah-bee." She cries for grandma and grandpa, too. We try to explain that all these wonderful people live in Utah ("doo-dah?") and we live in Illinois ("noi?") with a bunch of other wonderful people. She just asks to go to "doo-dah" again.

I didn't take ANY pictures on this trip. Don't know why, exactly. Wasn't a conscious effort, so it didn't happen. The flights were much more enjoyable than anticipated. I highly recommend using a car seat if at all possible. Containment is 90% of the battle :)

Happy Family

Alice and I are still in Utah for the next couple days. Alice has re-met a bunch of family she forgot she ever knew. She's talking a lot more, too, which makes these interactions MUCH more fun. Saturday night, Alice, Heather, and I spent a very entertaining few hours with my sister Erin and her darling pet rats, Chet and Javier. Alice is into mice these days, so we just told her they were mice. She fed them treats, gave them hugs, and was only scared once when Chet tried to climb onto her chest.

Driving home that night, I was singing Alice songs to keep her calm. I started singing a song I learned as a child called "Happy Family." It's a fun song because you can insert the names of family members as you go. Here's how we normally sing it:

I love ALICE, she loves me.

We love DADDY, yesiree.

He loves us and so you see,

We are a happy family.

Since Alice is talking more these days, I decided to pause at the names and see who SHE wanted to include in our family. Here's how it went on this ride home:

"I love..."

"Neh-nin!" (Erin)

"She loves me. We love..."

"MOUSE!"

"Yesiree. He loves us--"

"Deh-dur!" (Heather, another of my sisters)

"Uh,  Heather loves us and so--"

"Doggie!" (Heather has a little dog that Alice loves)

"Hm, and so does doggie. We are a happy family."

"Bappy mam-ee!" (Happy family!)

Welcome to the family, Erin, Chet, Javier, Heather, and Sasha!

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been very alone, not lonely just alone.  I have been in sunny 70+ degree California all week.  I was out there working with my boss to get a new internal customer adopt our product.  My boss really only showed up twice during the week for a pair of meetings with the people.  The rest of the time I was on my own for a lot of it.  Also with Susan's attempts to fly standby to Utah, and her eventual success this is the third Sunday out of the last four Sundays that I will be here all alone.  Now don't get me wrong, I don't need anyone to invite me over for dinner today.  I just didn't realize how much time I actually spend playing with Alice.  I have hours upon hours free right now, and I don't totally know what to do with it all.  But that is OK they should be back on Tuesday.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was a somewhat stressful week, but a good week.  We have ben preparing for Susan to fly off to Utah.  She still has the standby tickets and we are hoping that she will be able to fly with it not being a holiday weekend and all.  I also am going to be leaving on Monday for a business trip to California.  It has been interesting getting both of us ready to leave.  It has also been a lot of preparation at work to get everything ready to go.

Media Misunderstanding

Alice and I were flipping through a Christmas pop-up book (no, I haven't put them away yet) and Alice stopped at the pop-up manger scene. She always likes to point out the baby Jesus and Mary. This time, though, she asked if she could hold the baby. I wasn't sure what to say. I told her it was a picture, not a real baby, and that she couldn't hold him. Pouting, she pinched and pinched at that baby Jesus in the manger until she was so frustrated she collapsed into a sobbing heap on the floor. A hug and distraction later, she was off playing something else.

The next day, we were looking through a magazine and there was another baby and his mom. Alice asked again if she could hold the baby. I told her it was a picture again, and not something she could really hold. I could tell she was distraught trying to figure it out. She asked, "Baby Mommy deet-do (deet-do translates into "hold or pick up you/me/it")?" I agreed that the baby's mommy was indeed holding him. Then she asked, "A-yiss baby deet-do?" and I had to reply that this baby was not one that Alice could hold, but she could hold the picture with the baby in it. She snuggled the picture and kissed it, then asked to hold the baby again. She started pinching at the picture to try and extract the babe from his mother's arms. To no avail. This episode also ended in a frustrated, sobbing heap of babe.

Then we were watching a movie together and there was yet another baby! This baby was moving around and interacting with people! Alice asked to hold him. I was prepared this time. I agreed that this baby would be lots of fun to hold, but he was only a picture and therefore not holdable. I asked if she would like to hold HER baby instead. She smiled and we ran off to find Baby before watching the rest of the movie together. All three of us.

Tonight, as we read her bedtime stories together, she pointed out a cute little black dog. She then had this little conversation with herself:

"Deet-do doggie?" (Can I hold the doggie?)

"Nooo. Ni-nuhr doggie." (No. That's a picture of a doggie.)

"No deet-do doggie." (Can't hold the doggie.)

"Mummer." (Bummer)

"Behr nine!" (Prayer time!)

I found myself all sad and happy and bewildered at once. She figured it out. She worked herself through the whole situation and didn't even need a hug from Mommy. I kinda like giving those comfort hugs, so I was a little sad to have missed it. I kinda like her finding solutions to her own problems, so I was happy for her. I kinda like to watch her do emotionally complex stuff, but I was bewildered that my BABY was capable of this. Well, she used to be a baby.

And, for the record, she has yet to ask to hold a REAL baby. She'll point them out anywhere, anytime. She'll dig through piles of blankets and toys to see if there's a baby in that carrier/carseat. She can identify a baby cry, squeak, or sniffle from a hundred yards away, but she hasn't asked to hold one. Yet.

Ventriloquist Mommy

Kidding around the other day, I used my hand like a puppet to talk to Alice. My plain old hand, my plain old voice. She loved it! In fact, she started calling the puppet "Mommy." Now she'll come up to my hands at random times and try to get their attention, speaking close to them with sustained eye contact, "Mommy? Mommy? MOMMY?!" She ignores my regular verbal responses and keeps talking to my hands "Mommy?" until the hand puppet responds. Then she tells it what she's doing, shows it her toys, asks it to read her books, etc.

I find it funny...and a little creepy.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This has been a very long week.  Susan originally planned to be in Salt Lake the entire week, but due to stand by issues she came back on Monday evening.  Don’t get me wrong it would have been an even longer week without her and Alice.  What made it feel long has been work.  Everyone else was gone this last week, or at least almost everyone.  And partly because of that I was working on a somewhat large project that is harder to do when other people are around trying to work on things too, which I need to get done before the week after next when I fly off to California.  It has been a bit stressful.

Yesterday was a very long day, and that might be the thing messing with my perception of the entire week.  Alice woke up tired.  I think it has something to do with the new night-light we got her.  We played for a while and then at about 10 she was very tired and went down for a nap.  A 10 am nap for Alice is a bad thing.  She was grumpy and sensitive all day long.  We went to the library and had a good time there.  She loves to go up the stairs and down the ramp in the children’s department over and over again.  After the library we were trying to decide what to do for the next few hours.

The following is the result of that.

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2009/ABCF.flv[/flv]

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2009/Moon.flv[/flv]

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2009/RollerCoaster.flv[/flv]

The last two are done with a green screen like thin, but it doesn't work very well.

New Year's Week

It began with the hope of flying standby to Salt Lake City for New Years' week. And then...
2 hours in the car

2 hours at the airport

15 terrifying minutes going through security with 4 kids (aged 2-8 years, each one of us having been selected for "further screening") and 100 pounds of coats, shoes, and carry-ons while Denise ran back to check one of her carry-on bags because she forgot to put her son's brand new pocket knife into a checked bag. Yikes! Thankfully, the kids were well-behaved and the TSA personnel were supportive and helpful.

1 overnight visit with a friend of the family. Since I had checked my only bag, the babe and I had no luggage, no clean clothes, no contact solution, and only 2 diapers left for the entire next day.

1 early morning wake-up call (5:00 AM)

2 hours checking bags and getting through security with 4 hungry and tired kids

7 hours in the airport entertaining 4 intermittently hungry and tired kids

$80 in airport food

4 extremely full flights

0 seats for us ending anywhere near Salt Lake City :(

5 calls to family members to share the sad news

1 strange train ride and 1 short shuttle ride to meet our ride home

3 more hours in the car to get home

Ah, well, it was an adventure. And there are pictures...

Watching cartoons in the terminal while we wait for one hopeful flight.

The closest Alice got to an airplane this trip. She's actually signing it to Spencer here. There are 3 Spencers in Alice's social circle. She calls them all "Memmer" with slight variations. This is Memmer Neece (Spencer Denise). Her other friends are Memmer Mie-may (Spencer Mary) and Memmer Mair (Spencer Bair).

This adventure gave me more respect for my friend and her kids. Alice never understood the disappointment everyone else had to work through. It turns out I'm more flexible than I thought I could be, too. I had a few "motherhood" learning opportunities. One of them was HUGE: exploring boundaries/conflicts between my role as a mother to Alice and a fun "aunt" figure to her friends. The others were more typical: three navel oranges for breakfast will lead to many horrific diaper changes in the evening. I also found myself pondering the changes that would take place if Alice were to have siblings.

I spent the next couple days at home as usual and then spent New Years' Eve and most of New Years' Day with the Demers. Here, Alice is watching a movie with Scott, Memmer Neece, and Baby Neece.