Toothward ho!

This morning I forced Rachel to let me see in her mouth. That tooth is still giving her grief but I think it's almost here. I tried to take some pictures of it...and succeeded, a little bit.


Mostly it looks like Rachel got a hold of the camera and did some autophotography. In a way I guess she did because she definitely was controlling where the camera was aimed--her mouth. She even got parts of it in her mouth at times. A lot of bad pictures were taken this morning. I'm just glad it was a digital camera and not a film camera. Of course, had it been a film camera I probably wouldn't have attempted to take a picture of a tooth that hadn't even broken through the gums of a baby who didn't want me to look in her mouth but instead just wanted to eat the camera.

Don't knock my yoga

Andrew was teasing me about doing yoga today. I don't know why he was teasing me because he's the one who looked ridiculous.

Rachel was on the floor rocking on her hands and knees. Being the encouraging father that Andrew is, he got down on his hands and knees and started crawling in circles around her saying,

"Come on, Rachel, this is how it's done!"


He then proceeded to tell me that if I were to crawl around all day tomorrow, Rachel would surely start crawling.

"You could just do everything on your hands and knees," he said, "even yoga!"

Then he started walking on his knees while doing an awkward sequence of arm movements.

"Hey," I said, "I don't think you should make fun of yoga until you try it."

Mostly I think that because it kicked my trash the first time I tried it. Haven't made fun of it since.

"Why don't you do PM yoga with me?"

Andrew got me an AM/PM yoga DVD for Christmas. The AM routine is pretty straight forward but the PM routine is rather difficult. Andrew looked at me with mock terror in his eyes,

"My bodymind is screaming, 'No, not PM yoga!'"

At least he recognizes that it's hard.

Anyway, I'd better go. He just crashed into the baby gym/couch/wall screaming, "Ahhh! These legs don't have breaks on them!" I think he might actually be in pain.

Please, Mum, I want some more!

To keep Rachel occupied during our supper we often give her food-related items to keep her entertained, such as a sippy cup or a fresh food feeder. She trusts that something yummy will come out of these things. The sippy cup is bound to have water inside, her personal favorite (I've never seen anyone get so excited about water) and the feeder will usually have apples or peas or carrots or some other healthy treat. She loves to try to feed herself, however, she rarely can get these tools in her mouth the right way. She sucks on the bottom of the cup, the handle of her feeder, the wrong end of the spoon...but she is persistent and with a little help she's able to get enough food-taste in her mouth to keep her happy while we eat.

Sometimes we even feed her during our mealtime, but Rachel is quite demanding so this proves rather difficult. She loves eating and so constantly asks for more, giving us very little time to feed ourselves. For example, my family babysat Rachel while we went to the temple this morning. My mom had to mix her up three bowls of cereal to satisfy her. If we do choose to feed her while we're eating we usually do a tag-team approach so that we have hope of getting a little bit of food in our own tummies.

This evening I wasn't feeding Rachel fast enough for her taste. I had given her some frozen peas in her feeder, which she enjoyed smashing on her sore gums, and was digging them out to smash them some more before feeding them to her. She kept whining to me so I started taking a pea at a time and smashing it and then giving it to her.

Once she was full (or entertained) enough to have a little patience with me, she started singing in between each pea-smashing session.

"Ah, muh, ah, muh, ah, nuh, muh, nuh, muh..." she'd go.

I think that translate as, "Come on, get in my mouth, peas, peas! Come on, get in my mouth!"

You can see her gearing up to say her ems and ens in this picture. Pictures 2 and 4 are "m" and picture 7 is an "n." The others are just some pictures that I took because I just can't get enough of my own baby...


She's also starting to open her mouth for the spoon. I was teasing her at dinner, airplaning the spoon toward her mouth with nothing on it. She didn't really appreciate that she didn't get a consistent reward for opening her mouth and eventually grabbed the spoon and chastised me with a high pitched wail.

So I gave her a pea. She's spoiled.

First walk of the year

We just de-Christmasified our house, which is just as much of an art as putting up all the decorations in the first place. By the time we take them down again we can't remember what went in what box and end up shoving things helter skelter until we can close the lids on our boxes. It's kind of like a puzzle.

Somehow we added a box of Christmas stuff this year...it could be the Christmas Village sets that Sister Kitchen gave to us. Those take up a whole lot of room. No matter how we packed the boxes we couldn't get them to fit in the three designated Christmas boxes, so now we have four. Plus our tree. That's what we get for getting married in December, I suppose. Half our gifts were Christmas decorations.

When we had gotten all the lights back into their original packages, a feat in itself, and checked our house over to make sure we didn't miss anything, Andrew took the boxes outside to put them back in our shed.

Our poor little storage shed is full to bursting. How we got that much stuff I will never know. I guess the storage shed is more like an outdoor closet and half the space is taken up by our many suitcases, but still...we have a lot of stuff.

Andrew used his tetris skills to work the Christmas boxes back in there. When he came back inside he remarked,

"It's eerily warm outside."

The high today was 47 F. We took the opportunity to enjoy the warm(ish), melty weather and go for our first walk of 2008 wearing nothing but light jackets (and our clothes, of course).

It was so nice and warm--the day could only have been improved a) the sun been out and b) we knew the warm weather would last, which we're quite certain it won't since it's only the 4th of January.

Rachel had a great time though! She loves going outside.


She's getting to be such a grabby baby. The first thing she did when I put her in the stroller was to grab onto the tray with both hands. By the time I got out the camera she was down to one hand.


She explored snow with Daddy. We took it away when she decided it would make a good snack.

What do we have here?
Can I touch it, really?
It's cold...
There's snow on my face!

She loves when Daddy does crazy things with her in the stroller. He runs around and steers crookedly and tips her backwards.

Wheee!

It looks like this is the last of the warm weather for a while so I'm glad we got out to enjoy it.

When's that tooth going to come, anyway?

I think we'll be seeing at least one tooth emerge in the next couple of weeks. Rachel is being particularly cranky lately and I believe I can see some semblance of a cusp on the verge of breaking through her delicate and swollen gums. Poor baby.

Of course, whenever Rachel is abnormally grumpy I blame her teeth. I suppose it's a defense mechanism of sorts for me: don't blame the baby, don't blame myself...blame those dratted teeth! If I have to displace my frustration somewhere I suppose teeth is a good place to put it.

So far we've had plenty of whiny days and no teeth so perhaps I should find some other excuse for her bad temperament. I'm lucky though because the bad days are far outweighed by good days. I don't have to excuse her behavior very often.

Anyway, I'm going to guess that the first tooth she gets is her lower central incisor on the left side. I'll have to double check my guess in the morning because she's in bed right now and I'm trying to picture her head in my lap...prying her mouth open long enough to take a quick peek inside, risking my finger's well-being to feel her gums. Yup, I think it's the one on the left...but I get left and right confused sometimes. Anyway...

Any other guesses? (I know my mom has some).

I fear that this tooth will come any day now, but it will probably take a week or two just so that I have to live in fear for that long. I'm really quite worried about her teeth coming in--she's not always very gentle. She bites down so hard on her fingers (with her gums) that she's made herself cry and has brought me pretty close to tears myself.

I'm also kinda used to how she looks without teeth: little, infantile, brand new. I hate the fact that she's growing up so quickly. I guess I just should enjoy every moment while it lasts. Motherhood is hard though and that sometimes makes it hard to enjoy every moment...

Today she cried and cried and cried and when I finally got her to stop crying she whined and whined and whined and when I finally got her to stop whining it was because she fell asleep and when she woke up she slowly worked her way from an annoying whine to a gut-wrenching scream.

She was happy only if she was on my hip and chewing on my shoulder/hair/shirt while I walked around and got little to nothing done.

Looking back I should have been more patient. I should have cuddled with her and empathized with her pain and told her that everything would be "alright." Instead I almost cried myself and kept begging her to "please stop crying!"

Nap time was heaven-sent today. Mommy was going a little bit nuts.

But she is so, so, so cute and lovable just the same (even if I have to go in to her bedroom at 11:30 at night and soothe her back to sleep after giving her some teething tablets that I still have to give back to Kim...I just did that).

Playing with Daddy(WOW! Chubby cheeks!)

Confiding her teething woes with Panda, a good friend

All ready to go to the basketball game

I spend so much time complaining about being a mom even though I love it most of the time. That's because the hard days are so very, very hard. The good days are good but it's winter and I tend to be much more of a pessimist in the winter so I forget the good days when I'm having a bad day. I suppose I should write more about the good days. I'll try to remember to do that. The next day we have a phenomenally great day (we have a lot of those) I'll start my post like this, "Today was great!" And that way I'll remember that we had a lot of good times, too.

On a funnier note...when we were over at Andrew's parents' house on New Years, Jacob asked about Rachel's teething.

"Is she teeting?" he asked.

"What?" I asked back.

"Isn't that what it's called, 'teeting,' when she gets her teeth?" he clarified.

"Teething," I said, "Because you get teeth."

"Oh," said Jacob, coming to a realization.

Her teet should be coming in any day now, Jacob!

BYU looks good on Emily

I want YOU!

Emily's a little nervous about moving on to college life. Not that I blame her--it's a pretty big step to take. Growing up, moving out, competing for As in classrooms full of hundreds of people. It's all a little daunting.

I could have left high school when I was 16. When my mom presented this option to me I cried.

I hadn't been on a single date that summer and if I left high school and went to college, my chances of ever going on a date would be null. As it were, I only went on three dates that last year of high school and then didn't date again until the summer Andrew got home from his mission.

Anyway, it seemed to me that college was too big of a step to take, so even though I hated high school I endured one more year of it. I guess it was a good thing because Andrew was two of my three dates.

And then I started college and life was so much better than high school. Even though Andrew completely forgot I existed.

So there you have it, Emily, college was good. When you get that letter in the mail, be sure to let us know.

I don't blame you for being apprehensive about it, after all we're in the same boat as you. Andrew graduates in less than four months and then...

Dot, dot, dot is a scary term. So we're probably going to go to grad school, seeking the comfort of four more semesters. Knowing that you have another semester to go is comforting when you're in college--you know what you're doing and it's easier to count down than a full year of school.

When you get to the "dot, dot, dot" point in your life, that's when you should worry.

None of that really has anything to do with much except that Emily got to try the Marriott Center on for size today. I hope she liked it. She looks good in blue.


The Timpanogos Marching Band was asked to play in place of the BYU pep band since the semester hasn't started yet so the majority of the pep band members are still away from campus.

They looked good, sounded great, and overall did a wonderful job.

Rachel with the Timpanogos Marching Band

We got to go watch them play for this evening's basketball game. Reid and Karen treated us. It was a pretty fun game to watch, as far as watching sports goes; it was definitely better than the last game we went to. We could actually see what was going on this time!

And we know a player--Sam Burgess. He's in our ward. Sports are so much more riveting to watch when you know someone who's playing. He's number 20 and scored at least two 3-pointers--maybe more. I paid about as much attention to the game as Rachel did--apparently knowing someone doesn't make it riveting enough to actually watch...but it does make the parts you do catch a little more exciting.


We won, by the way--the score was 91 to 62. Rise and shout!

Forgetfullness : Elephant :: Punctuality : Andrew

So, Rachel decided to wake up early this morning--6ish. She fell back asleep in our bed for a couple hours, but by 8 she was completely restless. Since she refused to sleep and Nancy, the sore broken one, refused to get up, I played the hero and woke up early to play with Rachel.

8 AM is early for a vacation. There was only one day this break that I had to get up earlier than 10--the day I had scheduled for the GRE. On my mental calendar, this event was scheduled for 8 AM on January 3rd. Tomorrow morning.

As I let Rachel roll around for a couple hours, I dinked around on the internet looking at news, blogs, and such. At 10 Nancy emerged and came and joined me in my internet dinking.

At 10:18, I checked my e-mail and saw a weird item on the agenda for today, scheduled from 9-1: the GRE. I panicked. I frantically searched for the confirmation page I got after registering. Surely my mental calendar was right--I was taking the test tomorrow and would be studying and practicing all day today.

The confirmation page confirmed that in fact, I was wrong. My mental calendar failed me. Google Calendar won. I was 1 hour and 19 minutes late for a test I had paid $140 for!

I called the testing center (as per Nancy's advice) and discovered that I could still take the test and not be charged any cancellation or reregistration fee if I got there before 1 PM, so I rushed down to Lindon to take the GRE.

No relaxing day of studying for me today. Nope. Just a stressful 3 hours of crazy test taking.

Now the GRE is done. Tomorrow is no longer doomsday. I can now revel in the remainder of today, basking in the height of my scores, which were, umm.... something. I had forgotten them by the time I got in my car to go home.

Phew.

Happy 2008

Rachel slept until 7:00 this morning. It's a new record for her. I fed her and we all fell back asleep until 9:00. Andrew was a nice husband/daddy and got up and played with Rachel while I slept longer.

My whole body hurts. I feel like an old person or that I just worked out. Every bone hurts. It could have something to do with sprawling across the ice yesterday. Maybe. I finally dragged myself out of bed around 10:30 because Rachel needed me again. The minute she saw I was out of bed she was "mommy's girl." She cried when Andrew tried to take her from me and just wanted to snuggle, snuggle, snuggle. I guess yesterday was a little rough on her as well.

Soon after I got up, Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Frank called us from Germany. They told us all about their travels through Jordan and Egypt, making us want to go to school in Cairo even more (c'mon, Andrew, finish that application)! I can't wait to live somewhere where I don't have to worry about snow.

My parents invited us over for a very yummy pancake brunch with sausage, eggs, and bacon, So the minute after we hung up with Grandma and Grandpa we grabbed our griddle, diaper bag and pizza stone (because you never know when you might need a pizza stone) and headed at the door.

Aftger enjoying that wonderful meal, we watched the fifth Harry Potter movie, which was pretty good although a little too long for Rachel to sit through. She had a grand old time with grammy, though.

She ate frozen peas, discovered how to go backwards in a walker, and pulled a lot of hair. She has a fistful of Auntie Josie and Grammy's hair here. I'm smiling because she doesn't have my hair.

We spent most of our time goggling over Rachel and her little antics. She loves being the center of attention! She was hard to keep track of--everyone kept stealing her from one another and taking her off to see new things. She was a very happy girl the whole time and wasn't too pleased when we started getting ready to go.

Of course, she's never to happy to be getting ready to go anywhere. She hates bundling up. (She thinks Daddy should hurry up and finish his application, too!)

On the way over to Andrew's parents' Rachel grabbed a toy dangling from the handle of her car seat and held onto it for dear life. Five minutes later when we arrived at their house, Rachel was still clinging to it. She brought it into the house and wouldn't let go of it for the longest time. Then someone showed her a cup and she traded her toy for the cup. I don't know what it is about her but she just loves water, especially if it comes in a cup.

We broke out our pizza stone and made some wonderful homemade pizza with everyone's help--except mine. Usually I'm in charge of making the dough and rolling it out but I was out of commission so we got to watch Andrew struggle through it.

Red was the color of the day, apparently. I didn't get the memo.


Dinner was wonderful. Pizza always is. We could eat pizza every day and never get sick of it. We ate pizza for dinner almost every day during our honeymoon. It's kind of like the "rice and beans" of Italy. Pizza and pasta. If you had the choice between rice and beans and pizza and pasta, what would you choose? As for me and my house, we would choose pizza and pasta. Although I do like beans and rice, just not every day.

We introduced Andrew's family to Set, and I'm happy to announce that I won every round. Even while helping entertain Rachel (although Grandma did most of the work there) and missing part of a round to give a diaper change.

Now we're back home. Rachel's asleep already. Andrew's taking a practice GRE. And I'm sitting here blogging. We had a good day. Definitely a good start to a new year!

Our Exciting New Year's Eve

We're both exhausted. Spending time in the hospital just drained us.

Regardless we decided to stay up and celebrate.

I had made a cake earlier in the day and had the icing all mixed and ready to decorate with before we left for skating. And that 2 hour trip turned into a 6 hour trip so the cake never got decorated.

I had even iced it yellow because yellow is Bonnie's favorite color. We were going to go and ring in the new year with the Parkses and since I don't know my, Andrew's or Matt's favorite color I just did Bonnie's. It was an easy way to make a choice.

When we got home from the hospital and Rachel went down for the night I finished the cake. It was difficult using my shoulder as a substitute elbow and squeezing the icing tubes was painful, but it was worth it. Andrew was happy to see me using the cake decorating set he got me for Christmas. Or maybe he just likes seeing me in pain... I don't really know what he was happy about. Maybe he just likes me. That's probably why he was happy.



The finished product isn't really what I envisioned, but I was working with only 1 good hand so I think it turned out alright.


I even pretended that I was a fancy chef and decorated the plates with swirls. We had extra icing.


I'm really feeling a lot better. We played Set again. We've been playing it almost everyday since we opened it (thanks, David) and I've beaten Andrew every time. However, tonight Andrew beat me. Pain killers muddle my mind, what can I say? Once I have my arms and my mind back I will probably beat the pants off Andrew.

So now all we have left to do is watch Andrew's polar clock switch to the new year...and go to bed. Goodbye 2007!

(Sorry that we didn't make it, Matt and Bonnie! If you want some cake you can come over and get some...we have plenty!)

My elbow is contuted

To begin celebrating the end of 2007, Andrew and I went ice skating at Seven Peaks with Josie and David. My mom watched Rachel for us at our apartment where they could be warm and cozy.


We started off well enough. Josie rented some figure skates but she didn't like them so she traded them in for hockey skates. Unfortunately for her, she had pulled off into a box to retie her skate just before the Zamboni came out so she had to skate from the box and off the ice with one of her skates untied.


I was glad that she got the hockey skates because she kept wanting tips from me about how to skate on figure skates. I'm not really a good skater so I couldn't help her out that much--you go forward...and if you're really brave you go backwards. David is a pretty good skater though so he was able to help her with her hockey skates. There's a very big difference between figure skates and hockey skates.

Well, we all made it off the ice and waited for the Zamboni to finish cleaning the ice. David was being rather rebellious.


I was happy to get onto the freshly cleared ice. It's a good feeling. You feel like you're flying, weightless, across the ice. You can hear your blades cutting into the newly healed rink, marking your own path. The wind rushes past your face as smoothly as your skates glide across the ice.

And then someone going in exactly the wrong direction skates right into you.

That's not a good feeling. But that's what happened to me.

Some girl (I'll peg her as a high schooler) decided to skate diagonally across the rink to join her friends. This said girl, who was probably 50 or 60 pounds heavier than I, was an even worse skater than I. She was sailing across the rink to join her little posse, consisting of her friends and some of her sisters. Being unable to stop when she reached her destination, she turned her body so she was going against the direction of traffic.

That's when we collided. We grabbed each other but her momentum was no match for mine. I flew backwards and landed flat on my back, right on top of my elbow. Seconds later this girl was on top of me. Not pleasant.

She said sorry and asked if I was okay and then jumped up and skated off.

I peeled myself off the ice and hobbled over to the exit. Hobbling on skates is very difficult.

My tail bone hurt. My shoulder hurt. My neck hurt. My head hurt. But worst of all my right arm hurt.

My hand was shaking uncontrollably and I had pain shooting up and down my arm. My fingers were tingly. My elbow felt like it got left behind on the ice. In general I was just not a very happy person.

I stood by the rink watching all the many faces fly past, looking for some relation of mine. Finally I saw two little faces that look kind of like mine zoom by.

I waved my good arm at them and choked, "Go get Andrew!"

Andrew came and I told him my sob story. David went and talked to the paramedics. They put me in the first aid room and treated me for shock, took and accident report, and checked out my arm.

Getting my pulse taken(note the smirk)

Meanwhile, Andrew keeps asking about the "girl" that hit me.

"Is she okay, is she alright?"

"She's fine. She just hopped up and skated off."

"You skated off, too--is the little girl alright? Did you even check?"

"Little girl?" I asked, "She was bigger than me!"

"Oh, alright then. I feel no remorse for her."

He then turned his full attention to me.

We waited in the first aid room for a while, icing my arm, trying to see if the tingling sensation would go away. It didn't.

We went home and fed Rachel and waited for the tingling sensation to go away. It didn't.

We drove all the way to the InstaCare facility. My arm was still tingly and painful. Every bump in the road was horrible.

Two hours had passed since the collision on the rink. Surely my arm would feel a little better. It didn't.

We got to the InstaCare facility. Wouldn't you know they were closed? I tell you, every time I have a quazi-emergency it happens on a weekend or holiday or after 10 o'clock at night.

We went to Andrew's parents' house to grab some food, even though they weren't home. We debated what we should do. My arm was starting to feel a little better but it was still numb and painful.

After his parents got home, we decided to go to the ER. His parents took Rachel back to our place and we headed to Orem Community Hospital.

One hundred dollars, two hours, and three x-rays later...we find that my arm is not broken. Instead we found that my "injury has resulted in a contusion--a crushing of the deep tissues."

In other words it is very ouchy but there is little they can do for it. I fell with all my (and the girl who fell on me) weight on a lovely little nerve in my elbow--thus the tingly feeling and shooting pains. Elbows, Dr. Roberts (who saw my dad for his heart back in August) tells us, are amazing inventions--they have great shocks and are "designed" to carry the weight of our entire body without breaking. Thus the reason why football players can elbow other big, big players without ill effects.

He said I should get better in a few days if I didn't bend and lift things. Then he asked if I typically bend and lift things. So I said that I was a stay-at-home mom.

In that case, he informed me, it could take two or three weeks to get back to "normal."

The nurse came in, after we waited for 5 minutes ER-standard time (or 35 minutes regular time), and gave me a sling and a prescription. Then we rushed out the door.

Rachel had been "without" me for six (or more) hours, minus the one piddly feeding I gave her when we came home from skating. She was not a very happy person although she was rather happy to see Andrew and me.

(I'm smirking again...)

I feel bad that all we did when we got home was put her to bed. I didn't really see her all day! We missed each other...but it kinda hurts to hold her so it's probably good that it's bedtime for her. Perhaps I'll feel more up to cuddling her in the morning.