Many Tanks

I want to be sentimental for a minute and thank all the people who helped make the move out of our house possible. We hate living in boxes so we wait until the last possible moment to pack and find the help of others to be invaluable. We had two different sets of missionaries help, one in the morning and one in the evening. Then there were the Young Men in our ward along with our leaders (moving is a great mutual activity). To help pack as well as move big heavy things were the Knickerbockers. Amanda worked with us on our kitchen and basically kept me company and motivated to do the dreaded task of packing.

And last but not least there was William Duresky (I think that is how it is spelled). He is an older guy from our ward who used to be Jason's home teaching companion. He said he wanted to help and I must admit I didn't know how much help he would be as he is older and has a hard time breathing. But he came in Wednesday morning and helped. Then in the early afternoon we took a break and saw a movie and he wanted to come back after that. Naturally we didn't quite finish up that night (it always seems to take one more day than you think it will) and he wanted to come the next morning as well to finish up the packing and help clean. Not only was he there a lot, he was a really good packer. He would tie up the cords and keep hardware together when he took things apart. He didn't even need a lot of direction. Jason could point him in a direction and he just did what was needed. He was a great blessing to us and really made the move possible. I have been sufficiently chastised for judging someone based on appearances.

Enmity

I have discovered something that I like even less then making phone calls. Up until now, calling has been the bane of my existence but this morning I found myself making calls to avoid, wait for it, PACKING (cue scary music). Yes it seems that packing is the new bane. This would explain why I put it off until the last possible moment. Sometimes I wait until past that to the point so I can't do it all on my own and have to bring in help. The problem with that is that I'm then embarrassed at how much I have to do so close to the deadline and feel bad asking people. Fortunately I have Jason who doesn't seem to have a problem asking people to do things for us. I think the next time we move, we should get Jason's job to pay for professional movers.

She Likes Me!

Now that Anna is getting older, she is starting to show recognition and it's so cute. I love getting her up in the morning and having her smile when she sees me. To go with that, she seems to miss me when we are apart for a long time. Today at work, Jason came by for lunch and I was able to feed her so he didn't have to deal with the formula. Then a little while later, he was still in the area when the time came for her to eat again so they came back and I fed her again. The funny thing was, the second time, she had a hard time eating. She ate on the first side ok but was not very interested with the second side. She would eat a little bit then let go and just smile at me. Then I would get her back on and the same thing would happen. If I smiled at her, her grin would get bigger and she would sort of laugh. At first this was pretty frusterating but then I decided that she wasn't going to eat and just enjoyed her smiles. It occurred to me that maybe she missed me as this was the second day in a row that I was working. It's nice to be missed as long as it's not too much.

She just keeps getting bigger

Anna is starting to discover her face muscles. She will arch one of her eyebrows. It's really cute now but I have a feeling that it will drive me crazy when she does it in about 14 years. She also raises her lip in an Elvis sneer which is also very funny. Naturally I haven't gotten a picture of either of these things yet because they are fleeting things.

She has also discovered the joy and excitement of sucking on her fingers. Generally she likes her first two but occasionally the third one will get in there too. It's funny because she is a loud sucker and drools out the wahzoo when she does that. I can't wait for her to start sucking on her toes.

The final big excitement is that she can roll over. She goes from front to back. She first did it last week while I was at work and wouldn't do it again once I got home. Then the other day, she did it for me. She does need a little bit of set-up help in the form of the couch's slight slant and having her arm under her but I still think it counts.

I feel like having her is like being in a flux in the space-time continuum (Star Trek). It seems like she has been around forever and should be doing more than she does but at the same time am shocked at how big she is and surprised when she does new things.

That was a pretty good day

(Groundhog Day) Yesterday was a good day. It started out with getting jewelry in the mail. Naturally this didn't just show up all on it's own, we were expecting it. Way back in August, we went to a jeweler in San Luis Obispo while we were visiting family and we asked him to make the ring for us out of some spare parts we had. Let me give a little bit of history. When I turned 18, Jason and I had been dating for about a year and a half and he wanted to buy me a sapphire ring (my birthstone) for my birthday. This prompted a lot of speculation as to what it meant but to me it was just a birthday present (whether that was also what Jason was thinking or thought of it as something more and I was just dense, I don't know. I was pretty dense in our dating so that is a distinct possibility). Then, for our three year wedding anniversary, Jason bought me a pair of sapphire stud earrings but when we were moving out of our house in Utah, I lost one of them. Then, about a year ago, we were in the car and I looked down at my ring and saw that the stone was gone. So we asked the jeweler to put the now single earring in the empty space of the ring and then bought some earrings to replace the first pair. It took them a while to make it then it took us a while to pay for it but it finally happened and I got them both in the mail yesterday. And there was much rejoicing "Yeah" (Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

The ring on my very dry hand

Then last night we had a party. It was a movie fondue party. This is not where we watch a movie about fondue but one in which we eat chocolate fondue while watching people's favorite movie clips. I got the idea (the movie clip part, who needs inspiration for eating chocolate fondue?) from my brother's work Christmas party one year. It sounded like fun so I thought we would try it. And it was a lot of fun. There were some fun movie clips from such great movies as Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre, Hero (Jet Li), Clue (a personal favorite), Ratatouille, and Moonstruck and probably more that I can't think of right now. I hadn't realized how many people we had invited until they were all in our kinda small living room (I'm more of a small group person) but it was a lot of fun.

Signs, Signs Everywhere is Signs

There are some funny signs around Philadelphia. Particularly traffic signs. We love the ones that say "Wait for Green". Apparently you can go on red if that sign is not there. When we first moved here we thought that was a little obvious but it didn't take long for us to discover that you do in fact have to tell people to wait because they don't always. A funny billboard (kinda a sign) near our house says "Bank fees are like financial wedgies". That one makes me chuckle too. I think my favorite sign so far was one I saw today. It was at an intersection by a light and said "No Pedestrians Do Not Use Crosswalk" and it had a picture of a person walking with a red circle and line through it. Now the obvious questions is, why put in a crosswalk if you don't want people to use it? I think it's just to taunt us.

On an unrelated note, I'm liking my hair better. I've had more time with it and it seems to be out of shock (I heard that hair goes into shock after you cut it which makes me chuckle) so it's falling better. So that's good especially since I don't think I'm likely to have another haircut until we get back in the country.

And I'm spent

Sometimes things get a little silly before bath time

(Austin Powers) I mean, back. I worked the last two days so needless to say, posting was not a big priority. Work both days went really well. It was surprisingly slow and I had a lot of fun telling people of our plans for the next few months. I've decided that it's a lot of fun to tell people that we are going to India. They always take a minute and are like "India India?" and I just say yep and smile.

While I was at work, Jason watched Anna. They did great. Anna had her first taste of formula and seemed to like it ok. Jason said that when she first started eating it, it took her a minute to realize that it wasn't breast milk and wasn't so sure about it. After a little while, she decided it was ok and ate it like nothing. I really appreciate that she isn't a picky baby. When I talked to Jason half way through the first day of work he said something great. He said that he now understands why I don't get more done (not that he thinks I'm a slacker but let's face it, anyone who hasn't stayed home with a baby wonders what it is about them that takes up so much time) because either she is asleep and you can't go anywhere or she is awake and you play with her. Definitely an experience every father should have.

And to sing Jason's praises some more, today after I had started dinner, Anna woke up from her nap to eat. So Jason finished getting dinner in the oven while I fed her. Yeah!

The Wedding

Tasanee and Cory coming out of the temple

So finally about the wedding. It was great. This was my best friend Tasanee (the name is Thai, she isn't) and she married a guy named Cory. I'd heard about this guy since she met him and had been pulling for him all along. They are so cute together.

The babies on the grass waiting for them to come out.

The wedding was in the afternoon. I helped her family finish setting up the reception and got to see Tasanee a little bit beforehand. They were married in the Mesa temple. Unfortunately I was not able to be in the temple because my recommend had expired (as you can tell, it's been a while since I've been to the temple). Surprisingly, I was not as bummed as I thought I would be. Instead, I watched my friend Amber's baby in the visitor's center with Anna. We hung around for pictures a little bit then went to the reception place where they had sandwiches.

As you can see, I got a haircut right before I went. I don't know if I like it yet or not.

A little later they had a ring ceremony for his family. It was outside and pretty hot. I was glad they they didn't have the reception outside like Tasanee wanted. That would not have been that fun. The ring ceremony was very nice. There were two musical numbers and then their bishop talked about marriage and they exchanged rings.

The ring ceremony

Immediately following the ring ceremony was the reception. This was indoors and very nice. The food was really good and the decorations were lovely. Her colors were blue and silver. There were a ton of people there. A number of people had come from out of town to be there. Like me, I'm sure it was prompted by the fact that she was at their wedding. Tasanee's loyal like that.

Their first dance.

Anna went to sleep for the night before the ring ceremony and slept through the whole thing. While it was nice to have her sleeping, I kinda missed her. Naturally I didn't get to talk to Tasanee like I would have liked but that was to be expected. It was all very nice and I was glad that I had gone.

Daredevil Daddy

I can already tell that Jason will be the one to add excitement to our kids' lives. He is definitely the one who wants Anna to try new things while I am more cautious thinking she is too young for whatever. The other day, we went for a walk and wanted to take a little break so we went to sit down on the grass. The only blanket we had was her receiving blanket that I keep in the diaper bag for a nursing cover-up mostly and was going to get that out to put Anna on. Jason thought we should put her right on the grass and see how she liked it. So although I was a little bit wary (why I don't know now) we did and I think she liked it. It's hard to say, she didn't fuss but she had never held her head up for so long at one time before or since.

Then last night we were out to dinner at Olive Garden and Jason thought we should see how Anna liked the minestrone soup. So he dipped his finger in the broth and let her suck it off. She loved it. Every time he would do that, she would suck on his finger as if she was trying to get more out of it. She didn't like the sweet and sour apricot sauce and wasn't quite sure about the melted butter with garlic or the Italian dressing. We've given her different taste sensations before. I shared with her the last time we had sweet and sour sauce. That time she furrowed her brow but had more. After all thins I think I'm kinda excited to get her going on solids when the time comes.

Come Fly With Me

Anna seems to be a great little flier. Shwew! On Friday I flew 5 hours to Arizona and then back on Monday (only 4 and a half hours back, interesting). I was really apprehensive about the whole thing. This was because 1. I didn't know how she would do, that's a long time in a small space 2. I've been on flights where the kids couldn't get their ears to pop, so sad and frankly annoying for the rest of us 3. she was a lap child and I read on a web site (bad idea) about how important it is to get babies their own seat because turbulence can kill babies and the price of a ticket is worth your baby's life (although I have never been in turbulence anywhere near that bad and hope to never be, how scary) 4. I was a little wary about checking her stroller at the gate because the airline's website said I could have either a stroller or a car seat but not both. As you can see, I was a bundle of nerves.

The night before the flight, I called a friend of mine whose little girl is 8 months and had flown and lot and she alleviated some of my concerns (the stroller one for example) and gave me good tips about getting through security.

So Friday morning I was off. The airport was surprisingly not busy and all the people were really nice. People offered to help and I even let them (a big thing for me) as much as they could (our stroller is different). Then on the plane Anna slept for the first three hours in the air, was awake for about an hour and then slept for the rest. She seemed to have no problem with her ears and although the flight was completely full, she slept great on my lap so I didn't have to hold her the whole time.

Monday was almost just as good. Non-busy airport, helpful people, plenty of time (being late really makes me anxious). Although Anna didn't sleep as much on the way back, we had the whole back row to ourselves which was great for stretching out and letting her sleep on the seat next to me. I also felt better about feeding her with a little bit of space on either side. We did have some kinda scary turbulence (I'm sensitive) and Anna was a bit fussy until I calmed myself down (I realized I was a bit tense) then she did too.

I am so glad it went well. With that under our belts, going to India should be a breeze seeing as we will have Jason with us to help.

Mother's Day

Today is my first Mother's Day as a technical mother. So far it's been very nice but different. Let me explain. This weekend I am in Arizona with Anna but not Jason. My best friend (aside from Jason) got married yesterday and I flew here for the wedding (more on that when I get home). I am staying with my dad's cousin and her family. When I got up his morning the kids were giving roses to their mom and surprised me with a few for me. It was totally unexpected and appreciated. Then we went to church and they had the primary children sing songs which were very cute and had three talks on mothers and motherhood. I was glad that none of them talked too much about their mothers as I don't know them and it would have been less interesting. Instead their talks were very interesting and I cried for a goodly amount of the meeting. I guess motherhood has made me all sensitive. Although I have missed Jason (especially since I left the cards that he got for me at home) it's been a good day so far and I look forward to calling my mom this evening.

Daddy Daughter Time

I have always wanted Jason to be able to take care of our kids on his own. That is a major reason why I wanted to go back to work, so Jason would have a chance to be with Anna and take care of her so that when I have to leave them for whatever reason, I know that things are going to be ok. I have also been working on giving him chances to be a part of taking care of her as much as he can. When he is home, I leave her with him when I shower, allow him to get her dressed in the morning and even put her to bed. He is very good at it. One time, when she was younger, he was getting her dressed I was watching. He politely asked me to back off (he's very tactful, more so than me) and said that I was hovering. Since then, I have worked very hard to give them space when they are together. This can be hard with a control freak like me but I think I have succeeded. That was confirmed to me last night. Anna needed a bath and I was making dinner. I said we could bathe her when dinner was in the oven and Jason just went ahead and gave her her bath. I was so glad that 1. he took the initiative and bathed her and 2. that he and she were comfortable enough with each other that it went great.

Funny Hair

Anna's hair can be a lot of fun. There are parts of it that never go down except when wet and the minute it dries, it goes straight up again. Also, with so much of it, I have been enjoying putting clips in it. The other day, I bought little rubber bands so I can do ponytails. So here is a picture of her hair in a ponytail.I thought it was funny how the part that sticks up in back was just as tall as the ponytail. Then when I went to take it out, her hair seemed to want to stay in because it stayed sticking up. I tried to brush it down but to no avail. Here it is the next morning.
As you can tell, she was super self-conscious about it so we decided that she needed to wear a hat to cover it up. (Ironically not even the hat persuaded the hair to go down.)

Fiercely Loyal

Jason has finally finished studio for the semester. This is the class that takes up all of his time and has been the thorn in his side pretty much all semester. Without going into specifics, his teacher drove him crazy and he had a different way of working than his partner so on occasion there was friction. Monday night I picked Jason up from school after his having been there for 24 hours. I has actually had to tell him to come home, he seemed to think that he could keep on going and get a nap on one of the couches in the lounge upstairs. I told him I put my foot down at 24 hours. So while I was driving there to get him, I was mentally telling off both his teacher and his partner. The way they have treated him all semester really made me mad. And I am not someone who gets mad, at all. I've noticed that really the only things that do make me mad are when people I love are hurt. I can stand mistreatment of myself much better than mistreatment of Jason and I can only imagine what will happen if someone tries to mistreat Anna. Someday maybe I will say some of the things I think to the actual person at fault because for now I'll only say them to myself or to Jason.

I scream, you scream

There are a lot of questions that they say you should discuss with your significant other before getting engaged. Oddly enough, that list never includes "How do you eat ice cream out of the container?" I admit it, with Jason and I the only people eating our ice cream, we rarely get bowls and over time we've noticed that we have very different eating styles. Jason is a tunneler. He likes to dig a hole down to the bottom of the container and then widen it until the container is empty. I'm an evener. I try to make sure the top is even the whole way down. As you can imagine, this makes sharing a container a little bit tricky. Jason will start his tunnel and I try to even. Then, just as I get the top vaguely even, he will deepen his tunnel. Guess who ends up eating more ice cream.

Back to the Grindstone

Today was my first day back at work since giving birth. I put this off as long as I possibly could and am only going back for about one day a week for only three weeks before we leave the country. As you can tell, I'm not exactly a career woman. I'm pretty sure at one point I did enjoy my job but once I wanted a baby and then got pregnant, it just started to feel like a time suck that was keeping me away from my home. And now with Anna, work really is not where my priority lies.

Back to my first day back. I had been kind of dreading this day. I was worried that I wouldn't remember how to do my job. Not that I would forget how to run the tests but how to do the computer work and things like that. Fortunately I was not worried about Anna. I have a friend from church who watches her for us and loves doing it. Her little boy (3 yrs old) asks every morning if baby Anna is coming over today. I knew she would be in good hands.

I was desperately hoping it would be a mellow day at work. I didn't think I could handle craziness. Unfortunately this was a bit of a vain hope. When I walked in, there were a number of people in the OR including a bleeder who had been going on since the day before. There were a number of different things that we were out of on the shelf but we did have some from Red Cross that just needed to be brought into inventory but of course there was not time for that with everything else going on. Things seemed to calm down a little bit after I got there. Then after the afternoon people came in and the day people left we had a couple of traumas and an exsanguination which is always a lot of work. Mostly I kept to bringing in inventory and irradiating products which kept me out of the worst business. The day was long and I was pretty tired when it was time to go home. It's amazing how eight hours can go by so quickly at home but so slowly at work.

So that was my first day. I did remember how to do things. Some stuff I had to think about but others I just seemed to know what to do. Fortunately I won't have to go back next weekend but then I will have to go back for two days the week after that (Friday and Saturday). I hope I have the stamina for it.

Feet

Anna loves to have her feet played with. She smiles the biggest smiles when we have her "run" while she is lying down. She also loves being folded in half and having her feet on her head. I don't know that I would find it that much fun but she loves it. Head, shoulders, knees and toes with her feet is possibly her favorite game.

Putting her socks on can be a bit of a trick. I've heard about how when my siblings were younger, we would curl our toes when my mom would try to put our shoes on us. Anna doesn't do that yet (I'm sure she will once she wears shoes) but she spreads her toes out when I try to put on her socks. This gets annoying because then her end toes get caught on the socks and she gets fussy and tries to free her foot from the evil sock that is hurting her toes while I am trying to uncatch the toes and get the sock on the whole way. One definite plus to warm weather is that she can go barefoot and we can avoid the whole process.