It's All About the Little Guy

Congratulations to me, I blogged TWICE this month! (I totally made it. There's like an hour and 20 minutes of February left.)
I was just looking through our pictures of this month and realized that we ONLY have pictures of Joey. We make casual appearances when one of us happens to be holding him, but it's clear who's in charge at our house. His siblings will be jealous.
We got a surprise visit from Lindsey, our "cousin". She's actually James's cousin's daughter, so it's really complicated how she's related to me (my cousin once removed in law, I suppose). Anyway, she came down for the weekend from school in Rexburg and spent an evening with us. She was a big hit with the little guy.

Joey is big enough for his high chair now! We started putting him in it about a month ago and it's been a lifesaver! He doesn't eat solid food yet, so it's pretty clean. He loves being up high enough to be a part of everything. Since we discovered this miracle chair I can:
--put him in front of the mirror to entertain himself while I shower

--and dry my hair

--do the dishes with BOTH hands
--eat dinner without his hands in my plate

--fold the never-ending laundry

He'll just play happily with his toys/washcloth (his favorite teething toy) for quite a while...and then when he's had enough, he gives us subtle hints like this:

Here's the newest trick! He can sit up!...well, sort of. As you can see, it takes a lot of concentration and a little side support to keep him from tipping over after 5 seconds.

Anything can be a teething toy

Enjoying some delicious fingers together

Happy high chair boy

Baby's first sponge...it's kind of a joke that I want my kids to play with sponges instead of expensive toys. I unwrapped him a brand new sponge and it stank like chemicals...so we took a quick picture and didn't let him chew on it. Oh well.

My March goal is to take pictures of something besides the baby and write about it. He's just so darn cute though!

2011, bring it!

Dear People with Babies,

How the heck do you find time to blog every week? Between hours of nursing, bouncing, and changing diapers there are precious moments of hands-free naps, but isn't that when you do that mountain of laundry, make the bed, scrub the spit-up off the linoleum and out of the carpet, take out the trash, eat something, do all the two-handed dinner preparations (because you-know-who will be awake and wanting to be held when the time comes to cook it), check your email, read your scriptures, get some exercise, take a shower, and maybe catch up on some sleep from that 4 hour night you just had? And that's just a day without any errands to run or house cleaning!

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Dear People with a baby and a toddler,

You walk on water. The end.

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That being said, we are absolutely loving parenthood! Joey has had a nasty case of colic/acid reflux that makes him sad a lot of the time, but he's a trooper. He's the happiest little guy in the world when he's not hurting.

Also, I can't say that I've always used my freedom at naptime in the most productive way. Today, for example, I spent 15 minutes snooping around in other people's lives on Facebook, and another 15 sorting out a bag of trail mix. What? I needed peanuts for pad thai, and raisins for cinnamon rolls.

We've also found a little time for fun too. Joey, bless his little tired heart, goes to bed at 7pm! Of course, he's rearing to go at 4 or 5am, but whatever, we have our evenings back! I've been making a lot of baby quilts (since it seems like everyone I know is having a baby), working on our food storage with my new pressure canner (so far just beans, flour, spaghetti sauce and jam...not much of a balanced meal, but we're trying), and taking a zumba class 4 nights a week. James has been doing a lot of reading, learning how to invest so we're not living in a box when we retire, and making lots of plans for future projects (making his own moped and water-powered car are among the most ambitious). He's also got a new calling as a Scout leader and has a whole slew of 14 and 15 year olds that circle around him every Sunday after church.

Here are some pictures of our latest adventures:

In honor of James's last Saturday going to work at 10am (now he goes in at 7am) we had crepes for breakfast. I think he had about 4 too many.
This is a project for our friend Gianni in Italy. He can solve a 3x3x3 Rubik's cube in less than 50 moves. We got him a 4x4x4 to challenge him. Oh, and he's blind, so we stuck little things on the cubes so he could tell what he was doing. It turned out pretty stinkin' awesome, if I do say so myself.
And here's our little 3 month old. He's an expert at sticking out his tongue, scowling, blowing bubbles, kicking his little chubby legs, and being a cute little punkin.