April Fools, solid foods and Italians, oh my!

Oh, I'm just so excited to finally have this up to date! Please, please PLEASE load right! If it doesn't I just might swear off computers forever.

April's been a good, but seriously bipolar month so far. One day it's 70 degrees, the next day it snows. Joey got his first bad cold. It was so sad. If there's one thing he loves in life, it's milk, and a stuffy nose kept him from nursing like he wanted to. The only time I've seen him madder is when I tried to use the booger sucker on him (I'm sure there's a nicer name for it, but I don't know it).

On a brighter note, on the sunny days we've been spending a lot of time outside. Joey loves playing the grass, scratching at the trees and riding in the swing. The 2 year old neighbor girl loves mauling him half to death in her version of affection.

The best news of all I don't have a picture of yet, but I WILL remember the camera today...putting it by the door now...This nice man in my mom's ward has a big garden plot that is used exclusively for growing grass and dandelions. He's letting us use it to tear up and plant as we please. Awesome! We got some library books on gardening and are trying some pretty crazy ideas involving cardboard, bags of compost, and sprouting seeds in wet paper towels on a foot warmer. More to come.

Ok, blah blah blah, here are the pictures.
James and I hatched this great story to tell my parents on April Fools' Day about how a family he home teaches asked us to puppy sit their giant pit bull...but we're really not worried because Ruggles (see, we even named him) is great with kids and only pees outside. We were even going to have a giant water dish on the kitchen floor. And then we forgot to tell them. Oh well. Above is a picture of half my April Fools dinner. I made a meatloaf in two cake pans, layered them and frosted them with mashed potatoes and ketchup. It was awesome. I told James that we were having hamburgers for dessert and cake for dinner, since the hamburgers weren't quite done yet. He got a little shock when he took his first bite of meatloaf cake. True to my word, we had "hamburgers" for dessert. We remembered to take a picture only after the "cake" was gone. I think the hamburger cookies turned out awesome. The ketchup and mustard were a little disconcerning, but they tasted like frosting, honest.

This month Joey had his first experience with solid foods. Here are pictures of the first 3 times he tried rice cereal. As you can tell, his opinion of the stuff has improved.


The only hard thing is getting the spoon free of his death grip to reload. He's also learned to grab the food off of the spoon before we even get it to his mouth. So now dinner is immediately followed by a bath.

I guess you can't tell in this picture, but if you blow it up really big, you can see that he has 2 little toofers! He got one last Wednesday and the second one the next day. Our little punkin is growing up!
April was Italian party month...didn't you know? Elena (my mission trainer) came down with her mom and brother who were visiting from Torino this month. We had nice noisy party where everyone gained at least 3 pounds. Everybody had a good time, except Joey who woke up hopping mad to see all these strangers in his nice quiet house.
Elena and her family came back down for a quick visit the next week. It was her birthday, so we had some (delicious, if I do say so myself) cupcakes. Fun times. I miss Italy.
Now that Joey is basically an adult (eating cereal, sitting up, 2 teeth, how much more grown up can you get?) he let us know in no uncertain terms that he was done with his infant tub. Above is a picture from last week of him, reclining in his little whale tub, chewing happily on his fishy toy.
And here's what he does this week. He won't lean back no matter what we do. You can't see it, but he's got a death grip on the side of his tub, lest we try to make him lay back...that was SO last week!

Oh, and he wants to crawl too, but can't (much to my delight). This is my favorite stage where he can sit for a long time and entertain himself, but he can't get away and destroy the house.
Our little stud muffin turned 6 months old yesterday! No cake for him yet, but I did bake him a yam. My quest is to make him like all the things that his daddy hates (Grandma Affleck calls them the finer things in life): yams, squash, cantaloupe, asparagus...so far I've been successful. He's got his Daddy's good looks and his Mommy's good taste. As it should be.


He liked it! Now we've got another color to wash out of his clothes.

Here's a video that is definitely sideways and possibly won't even work. I tried.

He's still napping...

Much to my surprise, Joey's still asleep, so I guess I'll keep on blogging. I guess he's helping me make up for lost time in March.

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He's a mind reader. As soon as I typed that, he cried. Anyway, here are the cliff notes:
My mom had a birthday. She didn't want to let me put 67 candles on her cake...oh fine. The cake was pretty awesome. We used to have this amazing recipe for "The Carrot Cake That Ages Gracefully", but it got lost in a move or something. BUT, thanks to allrecipes.com (where I spend a little too much of my life) I found it! What they don't tell you on there is that you have to make this cake at least 3 days ahead of time and let it age in the fridge. It sounds gross, but it's SO GOOD! Go on, give it a try. I dare ya! http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Grandmas-Carrot-Cake/Detail.aspx
Here I am with my little doodlebug. It's a rare moment when he'll lay on my chest like that. He's gotten so strong and wants nothing to do with cuddling with Mom anymore. Time for a new baby! (Kidding, geesh! Not for at least 9 months.)
Check out those thunder thighs!

2 more naps and I think I'll be up-to-date!

Let's pretend it's March...

I don't know what happened. Nothing happened actually. March came and went...in like a lion, out like a wet, but slightly warmer lion...and I didn't write anything about it. Stuff happened though, and I've got pictures to prove it.

Joey made great strides in entertaining himself for a few minutes. Not so great as his April strides, but you'll just have to wait for the next post. Here he is, wedged in between the pillows on our bed, chomping happily at his bath toy while I fold (gasp) a whole load of laundry with NO patty cake breaks! I love this picture because he's making a total James face. I see this one all the time when James is reading something perplexing.

Ok, for some reason I can't drag my pictures into the order I want them, so we'll just jump around.

We had a bridal shower at our house for Shannon Swiss, one of my mission companions. The shower was only for mission friends, so we pulled out all the stops and talked exclusively about stuff that bores everyone else out of their minds. The pictures turned out a monster step below average, but here's proof it happened.

On the right is Shannon, the bride-to-be. On the left is Amanda McCollough. We were all companions together. It took both me and Amanda to train that wild Sorella Swiss.

James spent hours on photoshopping a Swiss Miss label so that it read "Miss Swiss" and the part that used to say "marshmallow" said bride-to-be. It was awesome. We taped them over the labels on real boxes of Swiss Miss hot cocoa. Yeah hubby!
Melissa and Lindsay made a video with Eric, Shannon's fiancé. So mostly they did all the work and I made the food...as it should be.
Ok, back to Joey. Here he is when he had just woken up from a nap. I love it when he wakes up and just starts playing instead of screaming bloody murder. It happens seldom enough that I still appreciate it.

Ta da! Joey can actually sit up by himself! At this point he could only stay there for a few seconds. As soon as he reached for something he'd bonk on the floor. Never broke his concentration though. Who knows why falling smack on his head doesn't make him cry, having a wet diaper does.

Here are my cute boys. James is Joey's favorite person by far (unless he's hungry--then it's Mom all the way). They love to play together. Aaaaawww cute!

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.

Merry late Christmas everyone! We didn't even manage a Christmas letter this year...you can tell how Joey feels about it from the picture. He was a little happier about the festivities after we took the hat off him.

We had a double duty Christmas this year. One celebration in Utah and another in Colorado. James's brother gave us some flight vouchers so we were able to fly to Denver instead of drive--a lifesaver with a new baby and icy roads.

Here's the baby update: Joseph is 11 weeks old now. He can now say all of his vowels, along with hooooo and guuuh. He has also discovered his arms and hands and spends most of his waking hours grabbing things (mommy's nose is a favorite). He also seems to be teething a little bit and takes breaks from grabbing things to chew vigorously on his fist.

Baby's First Disney Trip

All of our pictures, our sleep schedule, and pretty much all of the rest of the universe center around baby these days. Good thing he's so stinking cute!
Little bitty hand
Fat tummy
We went to Disneyland (courtesy of DigiCert, once again). It was really fun, although we spend most of the time in the hotel room (feeding baby) or here, in the very convenient baby changing and feeding stations.
Here we are before the World of Color show.
This is some random kid who talked to us in line to meet Mickey. I think he just went around meeting characters all day and didn't ride anything. Our friend Julie made Mickey ears for Joseph. He HATES hats, but we made him wear it for pictures anyway. Mickey went to lunch before we made it to the front of the line.
Aawww, cute baby. I'm about done typing with one hand now. A certain little someone always wants to be held. More later.