So Darling

Maggie is such a sweet little baby. I love watching her. She has these huge, bright eyes and she looks like is constantly drinking in the world around her. Right now she is fascinated by her fingers, and she is getting the thumb sucking down quite well (despite my attempts to hook her on a pacifier instead of her fingers). At three and a half months her eyes are still blue, so I think that may be her permanent color. Her new hair is not as red as her baby hair, but there is definitely a hint of red, so I think she may end up being a strawberry blond.



There are days when I feel a little overwhelmed with Matthew. On those days I pick up Maggie, snuggle her and rejoice in her simplicity. How nice it is to have one child that goes to sleep when tired, eats when hungry and smiles contentedly the rest of the time. Of course, Matthew was that way as a baby too, but he has become much more complex as he ages. I know that Maggie will become more inscrutable as she enters the toddler years, but for now, I am glad that I can figure out the desires of one of my children.

Conversations with Matthew

Living with Matthew is like having an accidental comedian in our house (I think that is the best kind of comedian). After worrying so long about not talking, we now wonder why we wasted the energy. He is definitely talking now, and he has the cutest inflections. Brian and I must pitch our voices higher when we talk to the kids because Matthew's voice gets significantly higher when he talks to Maggie.

So, here are a few samples of conversations with Matthew.

While walking to the car:

Matthew: "Dad, you carry me?" (With the higher inflection of a question.)
Brian: "No, you carry me."
Matthew: "Dad, you too big for me."
Brian: "When are you going to carry me?"
Matthew: "When you smaller."
Brian: "When will I get smaller."
Matthew: "Tomorrow."

While talking on the phone to Dad, who was away on a 48-hour fire ride:

Matthew: "Hello, my daddy father friend." (friend is pronounced prendt)
Brian: "Hi, Matthew."
Matthew: "You come home play with me?"
Brian: "Yup, I'm coming home tomorrow."
Matthew: (high pitched) "Dad, you come home morrow, play with me, take nap with me, in my own big bed, be happy."

While praying: "Father in heaven, eight, nine."

While cuddling with mommy:

Emilie: "I love you Matthew."
Matthew: "I lufv you mommy. I lufv daddy. I lufv Maggie. You lufv daddy. You lufv Maggie. Daddy lufv me. Daddy lufv you. Daddy lufv Maggie. We lufv each ufver."

While building a tower: "I'm fwustwated."

All day long, every day: "Are you happy?"

Talking about Maggie: "My Maggie, Margaret sister." or "My Maggie." or "My Maggie sister."

While putting on shoes: "I big. My feet big. My toes big. My leg big. My tummy big. My arm big. My head big. My ears big. My nose big. My mouth big." (All very fast.)

No printed words really capture the essence of his speech because his inflections are so funny. Just imagine all of these sayings with the pitch going up and down like a roller coaster. That might bring you a little closer to the real thing.

Update

I just wanted to let everyone know that we are good and happy. Almost two months have passed since my last post and I don't want anyone to worry. My project list has expanded in the last little while and it seems that blogging, although it is on the list, gets de-prioritized (I think I just invented that term).

My projects have kept me happily busy. My brain loves to think and plan; before Maggie was born my brain was busy with the upcoming birth and the preparations for a new member of the house, but once I got into a routine, I was antsy for something new to think about. So, here are a few recent projects: refinishing an armoire and a dresser (completed), hanging curtains in our bedroom (completed), making peach jam (partially completed), canning pears (completed), making baby shoes for Maggie (completed), making more baby shoes for Maggie (not completed), making baby shoes for my newest niece and nephews (not completed), making a 30 day menu (completed), recovering the glider (partially completed), making pillows for the living room couch (not completed). I actually have more projects than that, but as always, once I get going, I put too much on my plate. Now, I need to pace myself before I add anything new. I also need to mention that many of the completed projects would not have been finished without Brian's help. With two small children, one of which is nursing, I never have a long enough stretch of uninterrupted time to complete my project. And some projects really can't be left half-way done. For example: when I was canning pears, I thought that I would have enough time to do one batch. I didn't. Maggie wanted to eat earlier than I expected, which was at the same time that I was at a crucial point with the pears. Thank goodness that Brian was around to take over with the pears so that I could feed Maggie.

So, blogging has gotten moved down the priority list and I apologize to all of our loyal fans. I will try to post small updates more regularly.


The first pair of baby shoes. It's hard to tell from the pic but they are a light pink corduroy with a green, pink and cream strip fabric on the inside.


Again, the picture is not great, but these two pieces actually turned out really pretty. Considering that I have completely redecorated my living room for under 200 dollars (that includes a new-to-us couch and armoire), I am pretty pleased. I think that cinder block, in Navajo white, adds a certain touch of class. Student living is awesome!

Baby Maggie

Maggie has been such a joy in our family. She is content and sweet, and I have been amazed at how much we love our new addition.

Maggie takes after her brother Matthew and is growing by leaps and bounds. At her two month check-up she was in the 75th percentile for weight (11 pounds 11 ounces) and the 50th percentile for height and head size. She sleeps easily through the night and when I hear new moms and dads complain about their lack of sleep, I have a hard time relating (both Matt and Maggie were great sleepers within the first couple of weeks).

Maggie is smiling a lot, and is at that adorable stage when the smile seems to take up her whole body. She loves to coo and it really seems like she is talking. Just yesterday, she made a sound like a laugh, so I think that developmental milestone is getting close.

My dad, my brother Matt, and my sister Ann came from Oregon for a visit, so we decided to bless Maggie at our house. She was blessed on July 29th, 2008 by Brian, my dad and Brian's dad and a member of our bishopric, McKay Anderson. It was a beautiful blessing that reminded me of the purity and beauty of this little soul.

So a friend passed this book thing on. It is supposed to indicate how literate you are. Some of these selections are strange selections and not ones that I would say are necessary reads, or even good, reads. Other books should be on this list, but aren't. Some of these books, I have not read, but have read other books by the same author. I don't know if it counts, but I think that it should. I put those books in parenthesis.

If your interested, you can do this yourself.

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or for whatever reason loathe.

5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Otherwise known as One Hundred Years of Snoozitude)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (LOVED)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (short stories by the same author)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Fun with Big Brothers

Porter joined us for part of the summer. It was great to have him. At first I was worried about my ability to handle three children when I was still adjusting to having two, but Porter actually made it easier. He and Matthew played a lot, making my job of entertaining Matthew much easier. Matthew loved having his big brother around.

The funny thing about the two boys is how much they act like brothers, even though they don't see each other that often. They played like brothers (swords and lightsabers as the favorite) and they fought like brothers. Who knew that an eight-year old and a two-year old could find things to squabble over? But they did: swords, lightsabers, pennies, food, etc. . . It actually made me happy to see them play and fight, because it meant that they were interacting normally, like brothers do. Brian and I want them to feel like natural family, not awkward and stiff as if Porter were just temporarily inserted. It really felt very normal and easy to have all of us together.

Some highlights of Porter's time with us included his baptism and his birthday party. We can't believe that he is eight years old already.

Brian and Porter at Porter's baptism in San Pedro, California.
July 19th, 2008.


Porter's Indiana Jones Birthday cake. I have found that I really enjoy making cakes for the kids. This year, I said that I would just make a plain sheet cake, but I got carried away. It looked awesome (if I do say so myself).


Porter got to eat the giant rolling stone part of the cake. The stone consisted of cake crumbs and frosting that a smooshed up and rolled into a ball. Essentially it was a giant cake wad. I have to say that there is something about a "giant cake wad" that is extremely unappetizing.


Porter wanted a squirt gun fight for his party. Most of the adults declined the fun, but Porter, Matt and Maggie are lucky to have a dad who is a kid at heart. Brian joined in the water fun with gusto--whoever marketed these as kiddie pools, never met Brian.

Family Life

Family is fun, family is fabulous, family fills my time each day!

Brian and Matthew with a baby pygmy goat. Aren't they cute?




Wholesome family recreation at Fort Douglas on the 24th of July. It was a day of too much: too much sun, too much junk food and too much fun. We enjoyed the time, but collapsed gratefully in our air conditioned home at the end of the afternoon.

Liberty Park

Today, Brian, Matt, Maggie and I went to Liberty Park. Although, getting out the door with two kids takes a little bit more coordination than I am used to, once we were on our way, we had a lot of fun. The weather was beautiful and hot--perfect for playing in the Canyons at the park.

Brian spent most of the time experimenting with the camera and taking lots of pictures of Matthew. I nursed Maggie and watched the fun. It was really nice to get out as a family--I love having Brian home more.

Matthew thoroughly enjoyed himself and looked like quite the adventurer. He climbed waterfalls, investigated rock formations and swung a big stick around. What more could a boy ask for?

Check out the larger views of the pics to catch Matthew's facial expressions. They are worth seeing. He was so absorbed in his play, out of 200 or so pics, only a couple are of him looking at the camera.

Zoom Zoom Zoom

So the post title probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but since I feel a little like my life is speeding by, the word zoom seemed to fit.

I am loving having Maggie in our home. She is a sweet, good baby. The inevitable adjustments are taking place, but so far, so good.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the last month or so.


Brian's promotion to staff sargeant (May 12, 2008).


First pool day in the court.


Last day of Little Gym with mom, dad, uncle Ben, aunt Mary Alice and cousin Katie. Matt and Dad matched their clothes.


Matt reading scriptures. He has developed an attachment to the little military Book of Mormon that his dad has. Now, Matt has one too.



On Tuesday, June 3, Matthew and I met my friend Dawn and her two girls at Heritage Park (This is the Place State Park). Dawn and I were due two days apart, and we both hoped that a walk in the heat with our kids might start labor (it didn't). However, we had a great time. Matthew loved the animals, while Dawn and I enjoyed the admiring looks cast at our beautiful pregnant bellies.



Aren't they darling? And does anyone else notice that we wear a lot of pink and green? These pics were taken on Sunday, June 15.

Matthew, snakes, and more Maggie

One of our neighbors graced us with his dads constrictor. Sorry, I can't remember exactly which type of snake it is, but it was a constrictor. Matthew thought it was really cool, until he got too close, and then it was another story.


Matthew riding his bike around:


"Why can't I have a cool bike?"

And for her adoring fans, and because I am shamelessly promoting my own offspring, more pictures of Maggie:


When she decides she's ready to open her eyes and look at you, we'll let you all know. Until then, you'll just have to wait.