Mother's Day

The annual attempt at the Mother's Day photo (now with more kids!)




I asked Doug not to get any cars in the background. Apparently he didn't see that bright red one right by my head. And we would have had better lighting if we'd waited about five minutes. Ah well. You can't always plan these things.

Andy at 18 weeks

Yep, still a week behind.







He's getting a little better at tummy time, but still doesn't like it.



Andy's hair is growing a little. I keep nuzzling his soft fuzzy head.

Improvising

We've been blessed with good weather for Children's Day every year since Kate was born, so we've been able to do the Korean thing and go out and take pictures in front of the flowers. This year it was not to be. So what do you do on a rainy and windy May 5th, when you really can't go to the park? We decided to take pictures at the library.

I don't think I've ever taken my camera to the library before. They have lots of big windows and nice lighting.



I got Kate to sit with Andy on her lap. They were both a bit uncertain about this.



But very cute!





Dad holds Andy while looking at some books. (I was going to say "checking out some books" but realized that has rather more specific connotations in a library.)



Kate plays with the library toys (and her own rubber Tyrannosaurus, which she had to bring along).



Andy gets a ride in the block wagon.



Children's Day last year was the day I found out I was pregnant with Andy. And here he is! Such a sweet little smiley boy.



I forgot to mention that we have new Korean neighbors! We just met them on Sunday. They have two little girls, ages 7 and 4. I hope we will be friends.

As a parting shot, here's an outtake. Ha!

Andy at 17 weeks

Once again I am a week behind on posting these. I'll try to remedy that soon!






Andy had his four-month checkup on the 20th (though he was not actually four months old till the 27th). He was 24 inches long and weighed 12 pounds. Apparently we were going for the nice round numbers.

About a week ago Andy was on the bed with Doug, and he rolled onto his tummy three times in a row. It was downhill a bit, since Doug was making a dip in the mattress. He hasn't shown any inclination to roll onto his tummy when on a level surface (he doesn't like tummy time, anyway). He does go onto his side a lot.

Pinks and Potatoes

It's National Scrapbook Day! And I finished my big digital design project that I've been working on. This is a collection of fun handmade embellishments, all in different shades of pink.



(Update: Since NDISB has closed, this set is now available here.)

I've been working on pieces for this over the past year or so (my felt butterfly is in there), but I've been really focusing on it for the past couple of weeks, trying to get done in time for NSD. I kept coming up with more and more things, and probably could have kept going, but I figured this was a good stopping place!

I got to play with so many things in making these pieces... paper, ribbon, Sculpey, felt, beads, wire, cardboard, paint... and potatoes, of course. I made a potato-print flower and stamped a cardboard frame with it, and then turned the potato over to Kate to play with for a while.



I also stamped the potato in black and made some coordinating brushes.



HelenaJole_FlowerStamps.zip (Click on that to download the zip file. Includes recoloring instructions.)

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

But wait, there's more!

I haven't been doing very well on the catching up thing. I feel like I lost a week or so in there somewhere. In fact the entire month of April just whizzed by at an alarming rate.

We've had a bit of illness--I started writing it out in more detail, but realized nobody wants to read and all the ins and outs to the doctor and late-night runs to the drugstore... let's just say it involved a surprise vomiting, an ear infection, and an Amoxicillin reaction. Kate has two more days to go on her second antibiotic, and seems to be doing fine now. Doug and I were also a bit under the weather. I stayed home from church this last Sunday. Andy has, thankfully, been just fine. Everything seems to be mostly back on track now, and I'm finishing up my huge design project that's been keeping me so busy, so hopefully I can catch up on a few blog entries too. I still have more pictures from Easter to post. Is it too late to post Easter pictures?

Andy at 16 weeks

(Last Saturday)




This one makes me laugh. (Not sure what he was reacting to.)



Cute little smirky smile!

non sequitur

This morning we heard Kate wail, in her sleep, "I can't see the leopard!" I wonder what that was about.

There's a girl in our complex named Skye. I recently realized that Kate thought her name was "Disguises." Ha. She's got that straight now.

Kate really likes the "Look Down" reprise from Les Misérables. She asks for it over and over. When Doug asked her, "Why do you like this song so much?" she said, "Because it's very important."

The other day (Friday?) Kate got Doug to play house with her, and she put him to bed under the kitchen table. Whereupon he fell asleep and started snoring. (I didn't get a picture, dangit.)

I recently discovered some amazingly cool paper sculpture patterns at the Canon Creative Park site. This is the sort of thing you'd want a photo printer for. (I wonder if I could get some printed at a place like mpix. Would they do that?) I was especially impressed by some of the architecture.

I enjoyed these two "Writing Excuses" podcasts: Episode 14: Magic Systems and their Rules and Episode 15: Costs and Ramifications of Magic. I haven't listened to any of the other episodes yet--that might be fun to do while I'm working on Photoshop stuff.

Cami is going to Korea. I am insanely jealous and plan to stalk her blog obsessively.

Andy at 15 weeks

Behind again. I've been working on some design stuff with a deadline, so I still haven't gotten to the funeral pictures. I should be doing those within the next few days (I hope!). These are from last Saturday.




Andy's been chewing on his hands a lot. I remember when Kate started doing this around the same time we thought she was teething, but she didn't cut any teeth till she was a year old. He's also getting more mobile. I'll put him down one way and he gets himself rotated counter-clockwise.



Look at those eyes!



Before we went to Portland I put some olive oil on his head and scrubbed off most of his cradle cap. I love to stroke that soft baby head. It's even nicer now!



Cuteness!



He's been giving us lots of smiles and giggles. Kate's good at getting him to laugh. She says, "I like to cheer up babies!"

Thoughts on Easter

It's a drippy sort of day. I remember when we were in Newfoundland, our friend Patrick told us that he always felt kind of down around Easter, since his mom had died at Easter time, and, he said, it seems like it always rains. (Probably true, in Newfoundland.) I was all set to take Kate out with the umbrella to do our little egg hunt, but the rain let up just at the right moment.




The purple egg had a message inside--"Look behind Andy's crib." There was a DVD of Bolt (which we still haven't seen, but I figured Kate would enjoy it). There was also some candy in the other eggs, which I'm thinking we shouldn't have let her eat all at once.

This Easter, thoughts of life and mortality and hope and faith have been on my mind rather more than usual. On this day that we celebrate Christ's resurrection, we also reflect on what this means for our own families. I haven't lost anyone in my immediate family yet (my last grandparent died when I was twelve), but having gone through this experience twice in such a short time with Doug's family, I've been pondering such things. We appreciate Doug's brother Al sharing with us a dream that he had after their dad passed away. We know that death is not the end, and we will be with our loved ones again.

Today I wore the Belgian lace blouse that Matt Budge (an old friend from BYU) sent me while he was serving a mission in Antwerp. Matt passed away in September of last year, after a sudden and brief battle with cancer, leaving his wife of twelve years and their six children. I never met his family but I've been thinking of them a lot, wondering how the kids are doing without their father. Maybe they will find some comfort at this time.

Spring is creeping back--we see it in the blooming trees and budding leaves, and the beautiful yellow daffodils so bright against the rainy gray sky. Life continues.

Andy at 14 weeks

We made it to Portland and back for the funeral. I was fine on the trip but had a couple of really cranky days upon our return. I haven't even looked at any of the pictures yet. I'm sure I'll be posting about that soon. In the meantime, here are a couple of Andy from last Saturday.




Andy had three blowouts yesteday, two of which were on me. I think it was the pizza I had the night before.

He's starting to laugh a little. So cute.

Marker Board

Doug made Kate a marker board, with a piece of dry-erase paper taped to a 12x12 canvas board. (Who knew there was such a thing as dry-erase paper? I didn't.) Kate's been having a lot of fun with her marker board, along with the Ed Emberley books that Grandma sent (that I used when I was little). She draws and erases, draws and erases, but I've managed to get pictures of a few of her creations before they were erased.



Kate says this is "Bambi all grown up."



I'm told there are three unicorns and a tyrannosaurus in this drawing. I was impressed by the curly mane.

Andy at 13 weeks

The Empty Envelope called this "baby honeymoon time"--when we're nicely adjusted to each other, and teething hasn't started yet. We sure are enjoying this time. Andy is such a good-natured baby, and a great sleeper.



Kate nursed to sleep all the time, which turned out to be a big problem. It just never occurred to me that I would need to help her learn how to fall asleep. So, determined not to repeat the same mistake, I've been working with Andy on going to sleep by himself. It seems to be going really well so far. (I figure it's okay if he nurses to sleep every once in a while, as long as he doesn't do it all the time.) He sleeps with us at night, but during the day he's taking naps in his crib. When I can tell that he's getting tired I lay him down, stroke his head and sing to him, and his eyes just start drooping. Today I even put him in his crib while he was awake and happy, went to do something else for a few minutes, and when I checked on him he was asleep. Yay!

a loss

Doug's brother Craig died suddenly a week ago (the night of the 25th). He was only 41. I think everyone is still kind of trying to wrap their brains around it. This comes only five months after Doug's dad passed away. We'll be gathering again, this time in Portland, and with a group again diminished.

We're still waiting to hear exactly what happened (autopsy results take a while). We do know that he'd had a stomach bug for a few days and was taking some medicine that made him dizzy, so the doctor had him cut the medicine in half and then in half again. Wednesday night he was apparently getting out of bed and just collapsed. Other family members are anxious to learn the details, for their own peace of mind and also to find out if there's anything they need to get checked for.

Craig was the third son. He took after his dad in looks and had an easy laugh. Doug mentioned the other day that he shared a room with Craig for many years growing up, and now he's the only one with those memories.

Our thoughts are with Craig's wife and children at this time.

March 25th

I mentioned to Doug that Andy is the same age Kate was when we took her down to Utah for Peter and Karen's wedding. (That's the thing about having kids with the same birthday--you don't have to do any math to compare their ages.) They were married four years ago today. Since that was a few months before I started blogging, I thought it would be fun to share some pictures.



Kate was such a cute little peanut!



She had a bit more hair than Andy does (darker, too, and all rubbed off on the back of her head, as you can see).



Ah, how time flies.



Happy Anniversary Peter and Karen!