Happy Presidents Day

Things have been more up-tempo lately as we've returned somewhat to normal life... I've started going back to teaching Institute with Michael on Friday nights and I'm also getting back in my Primary calling. On top of that, Emily decided she wanted to start getting enormous, so she eats about every hour of the day. Thankfully she gives me a respite at night when she sleeps 3 hours at a time like clockwork, but it still means that we have fallen behind on some of our usual routines. However, John has been remarkably adaptable to everything, taking it in stride when he has to wait for something because mom has to feed the baby. He still insists on kissing his sister at least a dozen times a day and has started sharing his toys, food, pacifier, etc. Anything he enjoys and thinks she would want as well. The other day I left Emily on her changing pad and went to get a diaper. When I came back, John had lined up all of his rubber ducks next to her so she could play with them.

Another relatively new development for John is his desire to talk on the phone. He sees us use our phones and, naturally, wants to copy what mommy & daddy are doing. However, he doesn't quite understand the concept of non-face-to-face communication so he will sit with the phone at his ear not saying a word for minutes at a time. However boring this may seem to me, if Michael is out somewhere and one of us happens to call the other, John will insist on “talking” to his daddy on the cell phone. And by “talk” I mean he wanders around the apartment with the phone up to his ear while he listens to Michael tell him about his day.

His affinity for this cell phone thing was emphasized by the following experience:
One song that I am requested to sing several dozen times a day is “The Daddy Song” from the Primary Children's Hymnbook (actually it's called “Daddy's Homecoming” but John has shortened it for easier reference-- the link for the song is HERE.) John loves to follow along, interjecting a word here and there and doing actions along with me: clap hands, climb on knees, hug, cheeks, kiss.
Anyway, I was getting tired of daddy always getting the forefront in the song department so I decided to throw in “The Mommy Song” from the same book (HERE) and subsequently made up some more actions for our mommy song. The first line begins “When my mother calls me,” at which point I put my hands up to my mouth to amplify the word, as if hollering out to someone in another room. The other night we were trying to entertain John and I began singing “the mommy song” with usual actions. At the end of that first line I had my hands up around my mouth “calling” out as usual and I asked a busy little John, who was happily running in circles around the room at the time, “John, can you 'call' with momma?” To which he stopped suddenly and put his hand up to his ear as if holding a cell phone and looked at me expectantly like, “ok, now what?” It was so unexpected that Michael & I just burst out laughing. John just realized we weren't singing anymore so he continued running happily in circles. Just one small way technology has changed the way we interact with each other.

OK, so here are a few more web albums:

More Jan 2008

Feb 2008

monkeys & more

And let me leave you with a parting thought... we had rented a car for 2 months (hallelujah, it has been heavenly!) but we are on our SECOND rental because the first one failed to live up to my standard of not containing any disgusting, filthy, disease-carrying vermin. That's right, we started finding little cockroaches IN THE CAR. And these suckers were FAST. We would try to kill them (OK, Michael would try to kill them, I would try to keep from squealing with horror) but they would dive UNDER the seat and hide somewhere in the nether regions of the "boot". Thankfully the rental company agreed that this was a less-than-desirable attribute for a car that someone actually wants to SIT in, so they brought us another one. Even now it gives me the complete willies just the think about it. And now I've shared it with you. You're welcome.