You may have noticed in the news that the northern pacific coast has been hit hard this winter with SNOW. Before the snow from the last dump has time to melt much, we are hit again with yet another storm. So now we are up to a couple feet of snow in the areas that haven't been plowed. I actually love it, except for one thing. You may remember seeing pics a couple posts ago of what our snow plower did in "helping" us clear snow out of our apartment parking lot. I thought that surely it was a mistake and there would be enough complaints to ensure that it NEVER happened again like that. My mistake. A few days ago, we had another storm come through. We got over 12 inches. And lo and behold, the snow plower did the same trick he did before. Every car in the parking lot was stuck behind 4 feet of snow.
Stephen dutifully went and borrowed a shovel again from the office to shovel us out, taking upwards of an hour again. That night it did not snow at all. However, when we went out to our parking lot the next morning, to our annoyance the plow had come by AGAIN and pushed another couple feet up against our car. Apparenty he didn't think he did a good enough job the first time because some cars had managed to untrap themselves, heaven forbid. Oy vay. So, whimpering this time, Stephen again went and shoveled us out of the mess.
One of the difficulites in shoveling a car out is where on earth do we put the snow? Back into the parking lot? No, of course, because then we can't drive in it. So we are left with only one option and that is to *wince* put it behind the cars next to you who have not shoveled themselves out. Stephen tries to avoid this but you can't avoid it entirely. He just hopes that the owner of said car does not makes her appearance while Stephen is IN THE PROCESS of dumping a couple more feet of snow around her car.
In the snow plower or office's defense (I don't really know who to blame), perhaps there really is no other way to do it. It's a big parking lot. And there's no where to put the MOUNDS of snow that just keeps pouring down. Except behind the cars, to leave the shoveling job to any one wanting to get out. Maybe there is no other way around it.
Incidentally, I have noticed many more taxis coming in and out of our parking lot. There's one, albeit expensive, solution.
But have I mentioned how BEAUTIFUL the snow is? It's worth the disturbance it causes.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Nine Month Stats
Nine month stats:
Height: 29 1/2 inches; 84th %tile
Weight: 23 1/2 lbs; 87th %tile
Head circ: 18 1/4 inches; 77.5 %tile
It's strange to me that he only grew 3/4 an inch from his last height measurement. I feel like he's gotten so much taller in the last three months. Maybe the last measurement taken, or this most recent one was a little off... not sure.
My sister Candice has a 20 month old girl and she weighs 24 lbs, only a half pound more than Jonathan. He is so stinkin heavy!
The biggest surprise is that his head is no longer smaller than average. Gradually, it has caught up with the rest of his body.
Height: 29 1/2 inches; 84th %tile
Weight: 23 1/2 lbs; 87th %tile
Head circ: 18 1/4 inches; 77.5 %tile
It's strange to me that he only grew 3/4 an inch from his last height measurement. I feel like he's gotten so much taller in the last three months. Maybe the last measurement taken, or this most recent one was a little off... not sure.
My sister Candice has a 20 month old girl and she weighs 24 lbs, only a half pound more than Jonathan. He is so stinkin heavy!
The biggest surprise is that his head is no longer smaller than average. Gradually, it has caught up with the rest of his body.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
A little bit of everything
I haven't blogged in centuries. I have soooo much to catch up on so I will try to hit the highlights and be brief about it. However, I've never been one for brevity.
First big news that I think everyone reading this would have already heard...We're expecting again! Baby Beus #2 is due July 7th. That makes Jonathan and the new one 14 1/2 months apart! And the craziest part is we wanted this to happen. Not an accident. We felt really strongly about conceiving a second soon after Jonathan was born but didn't know how soon that would be possible since I was exclusively breastfeeding. All my sisters and mom said they never could get pregnant while breastfeeding. But I guess it was meant to be for us! It's only been in the recent weeks that I am starting to get a little concerned about adding a second baby so soon. What did I sign myself up for? Two babies under Nursery age! Yikes!
Oh and btw, we think it's a girl. We find out in two weeks! Stephen is so sure he even wanted to take advantage of some awesome Old Navy deals and start buying clothes for supposed girl baby. I couldn't bring myself to do it! I don't want to get excited about it and then be disappointed if it's a boy because as of now I am equally happy with either.
Stephen and I got new/additional callings this last Sunday. We were called 30 minutes before church starts (it takes 15 minutes to get to church) and were asked if we could come in for interviews 15 minutes before church. I wondered how on earth they expected us to make that happen. But we just sort of threw everything together and scrambled out the door, arriving ten minutes early miraculously. Stephen had an interview with the Stake and I with the ward. We were debating the whole way what calling he'd be getting from the stake and the calling he got surprised us both. He was called as assistant ward clerk. I think that means he'll be really busy, especially since our ward's records are VERY out of date. But we'll see.
My new calling is ward choir director. I think I'm excited about it. The choir in our ward has basically not been functioning for awhile so it may be difficult to get things going again and get people coming, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. I'm also currently the CTR 8 teacher....of 8 kids who regularly come, six of which are BOYS (boys this age are tough in my opinion). I love teaching the class, but it's more work than normal to prepare lessons which will engage them the entire time. So we'll see how this two calling thing goes...especially with pregnancy and new baby, etc. I'm pretty sure I'll need to be at least released from my primary calling as soon as the baby comes. Stephen can't watch a newborn AND a 15 month old for the last two hours of church by himself. But maybe we'll have moved by then....we'll see.
A week ago, we had another snow storm hit our area. We were quite literally snowed in. See for yourself:
I don't really quite know how to describe the irony behind the work of the snow plow. He plowed around the cars, making a nice pathway for driving, but pushing all the extra snow about 4 feet up around the backsides of all the cars, completely removing the possibility of ANYONE going ANYWHERE. The extra snow was even pushed up around all the sidewalks so we couldn't even walk out of our apartment without trudging through 6 feet of snow. It was hysterical. Why he took the time to plow the nice pathway for the cars but leaving the cars totally immobilized by 4 feet of packed snow I cannot understand...not to mention leaving the driver's themselves trapped inside their apartments unable to even get to their cars in the first place.
But it gave us a nice excuse to not go anywhere...particularly for Stephen to not have to go practice :)
Before this post can end, I need to record a few things about our fabulous Christmas with my sister Kashann and her family. They live in New Hampshire, about 5 hours away from us. They generously allowed us to stay at their house for almost two weeks. We had such a great time. One of the highlights for me was sledding with Savannah, Camille, and Caroline. Outside their house they have a good-sized hill to sled down. Unfortunately, the bottom of the hill goes right onto the road. I thought they were all CRAZY for sledding down the hill into the road but they insisted it was no problem since they hardly had any cars come by anyway. It didn't take long before before I, too, had thrown caution to the wind and was having a great time sledding with them!
Christmas morning was terribly exciting. Just the opening presents part lasted close to three hours. Jonathan only got one present -- some wooden blocks. I thought it was silly to spend that much on his presents this year since he doesn't have any idea what's going on. He has been loving his wooden blocks. The game is to see how high Stephen or I can build a tower before Jonathan knocks it down. He loves knocking them down, and we usually don't get past just a few blocks.
As is typical of babies, Jonathan is scared of Santa. It was pretty funny.
These next ones were taken Christmas morning:
Of course, the main thing he likes to do with the blocks is suck on them.
Jonathan is NINE months now. Crazy. He's been learning some new tricks recently. While not yet crawling, he is actually looking like he's close! I never thought the day would come! He gets up on all fours, by himself, and sort of sways back and forth. But so far, he doesn't move forward at all. If I put a toy even just a couple inches out of his grasp, once he reaches for it and realizes it's out of his reach, he just forgets about it and looks around for something he can get his hands on. He does, however, move BACKWARDS with great skill. He'll move all over the place on his belly by pushing himself backwards. I'm not sure if he does it intentionally or not. I think sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes it looks like it makes him really mad because he wants to move forward to something but his body just pushes him away from it and he gets further and further from his destination.
Another new skill he's acquired in the last three days is clapping! He loves to clap! He is SO proud of his new ability. I love it!
Last thing to mention about his developing personality...he loves to laugh.. about EVERYTHING. Stephen even had to take him out of Sunday school because Jonathan was making so much noise laughing at who knows what.
Here are some recent pics of him.
He LOVES to manically pound on the piano keys.
First big news that I think everyone reading this would have already heard...We're expecting again! Baby Beus #2 is due July 7th. That makes Jonathan and the new one 14 1/2 months apart! And the craziest part is we wanted this to happen. Not an accident. We felt really strongly about conceiving a second soon after Jonathan was born but didn't know how soon that would be possible since I was exclusively breastfeeding. All my sisters and mom said they never could get pregnant while breastfeeding. But I guess it was meant to be for us! It's only been in the recent weeks that I am starting to get a little concerned about adding a second baby so soon. What did I sign myself up for? Two babies under Nursery age! Yikes!
Oh and btw, we think it's a girl. We find out in two weeks! Stephen is so sure he even wanted to take advantage of some awesome Old Navy deals and start buying clothes for supposed girl baby. I couldn't bring myself to do it! I don't want to get excited about it and then be disappointed if it's a boy because as of now I am equally happy with either.
Stephen and I got new/additional callings this last Sunday. We were called 30 minutes before church starts (it takes 15 minutes to get to church) and were asked if we could come in for interviews 15 minutes before church. I wondered how on earth they expected us to make that happen. But we just sort of threw everything together and scrambled out the door, arriving ten minutes early miraculously. Stephen had an interview with the Stake and I with the ward. We were debating the whole way what calling he'd be getting from the stake and the calling he got surprised us both. He was called as assistant ward clerk. I think that means he'll be really busy, especially since our ward's records are VERY out of date. But we'll see.
My new calling is ward choir director. I think I'm excited about it. The choir in our ward has basically not been functioning for awhile so it may be difficult to get things going again and get people coming, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. I'm also currently the CTR 8 teacher....of 8 kids who regularly come, six of which are BOYS (boys this age are tough in my opinion). I love teaching the class, but it's more work than normal to prepare lessons which will engage them the entire time. So we'll see how this two calling thing goes...especially with pregnancy and new baby, etc. I'm pretty sure I'll need to be at least released from my primary calling as soon as the baby comes. Stephen can't watch a newborn AND a 15 month old for the last two hours of church by himself. But maybe we'll have moved by then....we'll see.
A week ago, we had another snow storm hit our area. We were quite literally snowed in. See for yourself:
I don't really quite know how to describe the irony behind the work of the snow plow. He plowed around the cars, making a nice pathway for driving, but pushing all the extra snow about 4 feet up around the backsides of all the cars, completely removing the possibility of ANYONE going ANYWHERE. The extra snow was even pushed up around all the sidewalks so we couldn't even walk out of our apartment without trudging through 6 feet of snow. It was hysterical. Why he took the time to plow the nice pathway for the cars but leaving the cars totally immobilized by 4 feet of packed snow I cannot understand...not to mention leaving the driver's themselves trapped inside their apartments unable to even get to their cars in the first place.
But it gave us a nice excuse to not go anywhere...particularly for Stephen to not have to go practice :)
Before this post can end, I need to record a few things about our fabulous Christmas with my sister Kashann and her family. They live in New Hampshire, about 5 hours away from us. They generously allowed us to stay at their house for almost two weeks. We had such a great time. One of the highlights for me was sledding with Savannah, Camille, and Caroline. Outside their house they have a good-sized hill to sled down. Unfortunately, the bottom of the hill goes right onto the road. I thought they were all CRAZY for sledding down the hill into the road but they insisted it was no problem since they hardly had any cars come by anyway. It didn't take long before before I, too, had thrown caution to the wind and was having a great time sledding with them!
Christmas morning was terribly exciting. Just the opening presents part lasted close to three hours. Jonathan only got one present -- some wooden blocks. I thought it was silly to spend that much on his presents this year since he doesn't have any idea what's going on. He has been loving his wooden blocks. The game is to see how high Stephen or I can build a tower before Jonathan knocks it down. He loves knocking them down, and we usually don't get past just a few blocks.
As is typical of babies, Jonathan is scared of Santa. It was pretty funny.
 |
These next ones were taken Christmas morning:
Of course, the main thing he likes to do with the blocks is suck on them.
Jonathan is NINE months now. Crazy. He's been learning some new tricks recently. While not yet crawling, he is actually looking like he's close! I never thought the day would come! He gets up on all fours, by himself, and sort of sways back and forth. But so far, he doesn't move forward at all. If I put a toy even just a couple inches out of his grasp, once he reaches for it and realizes it's out of his reach, he just forgets about it and looks around for something he can get his hands on. He does, however, move BACKWARDS with great skill. He'll move all over the place on his belly by pushing himself backwards. I'm not sure if he does it intentionally or not. I think sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes it looks like it makes him really mad because he wants to move forward to something but his body just pushes him away from it and he gets further and further from his destination.
 |
| He may not have mastered crawling yet, but winking at nine months is pretty impressive. |
Another new skill he's acquired in the last three days is clapping! He loves to clap! He is SO proud of his new ability. I love it!
Last thing to mention about his developing personality...he loves to laugh.. about EVERYTHING. Stephen even had to take him out of Sunday school because Jonathan was making so much noise laughing at who knows what.
Here are some recent pics of him.
He LOVES to manically pound on the piano keys.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Just in time for Christmas: His Two Front Teeth
All he wants for Christmas is no longer his two front teeth. They have already arrived! I had no idea this would be SO exciting. But it is!!! People have been saying since he was two months that he slobbers like he's teething so since then, I occasionally rub my finger along his bottom gums to see the progress. A couple weeks ago, I noticed that there were two bumps along his bottom gums. Then last Friday I felt the bottom front one on the right had surfaced! And then the very next day, the left one did! You can't see them very well yet cuz they don't stick up very far so I'm not posting a pic yet. You know, I'm betting things like this will be less momentous for my next babies. But this time around, I feel like throwing a party!
Thursday, November 18, 2010
More Pictures: Jonathan at seven months
Jonathan's seven months old! It's so weird not to say six months anymore. We took some more pictures of him this last Sunday, the day after he turned seven months. Stephen took the ones of Jonathan and our friend Nicole took the ones of us. She was visiting from Seattle. We really have been needing some pics of all three of us, so having here her gave us the perfect opportunity. Stephen handed her his camera after setting up the settings and said point and click. Some of them turned out really cute! It's nice to have pics together. Thanks Nicole!
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| Still bald as the day is long. |
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| Of course it goes straight to the mouth, just like everything else he can get his hands on. |
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| I was trying to show what Jonathan will look like with hair. Pretty good representation, huh? |
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| Love. this. face. |
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| Jonathan loves being upside down. Looks like we're proudly displaying a trout or something. |
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| This is what he usually does when we go to kiss him. He hasn't quite figured out how to kiss yet. Or maybe he's just ahead of the game -- skipping close-mouthed and going straight to open. |
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Living on Love :)
The other day, it occurred to me how many things we're currently living without. I want to blog about it so I can look back at this post someday and remember the good ol' days.
Since we knew we'd only be here for less than a year, we decided it was best to just sell all our furniture and camp out in a small apartment on campus, instead of spend thousands of dollars moving everything and then spending that all over again when we moved again in 10 months.
Some things we're living without:
Washing machine and Dryer (I have to haul Jonathan and all our stuff once every week and a half to a laundry room in our complex that feels like forever away when you're carrying 50 lbs of laundry and 20 lbs of baby. Oh, and it costs $3.20 cents to do a single load. We usually do three loads every week and a half.)
Dish washer (haven't had one of these since I was a sophomore in high school when we were living on Baumeister Street. We moved into a new house the beginning of my junior year and I haven't had one since then. I am totally fine doing dished without. If I ever had one, I'm sure I'd never want to go back but I guess I don't know what I'm missing. That's good.)
Toaster (for some reason that no one seems to be able to explain to me we are not allowed to have a toaster in our apartment. Fire hazard? Isn't a stove a much bigger fire hazard? Not that I'm lobbying to get our stove banned as well because that is one thing I really COULD NOT live without. Anyway, try living sometime without a toaster. I didn't think it would be a big deal but I guess I didn't realize how much we used our toaster. Kind of annoying. We toast our bread in the oven on broil. As I am writing this, I am sitting next to a lit candle. I imagine if they don't allow toasters they don't allow LIT candles but I haven't heard anything about it and I WILL NOT ask for fear of the answer.)
TV (we've not yet owned a TV in our married life so I'm used to not having one.)
A room/nursery for Jonathan (it's a one-bedroom apartment. We have to tip toe around all the time when Jonathan's sleeping and we can't use the kitchen after he's gone to bed at night -- usually around 7 :30-- cuz the kitchen and living room are basically the same room.)
Crib for Jonathan (not a big deal, he's in a pack-and-play so we can roll it in living room for night time and in our bedroom for day naps)
Some things we're living with:
Sweet little baby Jonathan (It's amazing how much he's completely transformed our lives. He is such a joy to have around...most of the time...also adds much worry and stress into our lives but we're much happier now that we have him.)
Lots and lots of love :)
It would really be nice someday to own all of the things we're currently living without but for now we're doing just fine without them. It really hasn't been that big of a deal actually. We love our lives here in Stony Brook. We're making some fun memories.
Since we knew we'd only be here for less than a year, we decided it was best to just sell all our furniture and camp out in a small apartment on campus, instead of spend thousands of dollars moving everything and then spending that all over again when we moved again in 10 months.
Some things we're living without:
Washing machine and Dryer (I have to haul Jonathan and all our stuff once every week and a half to a laundry room in our complex that feels like forever away when you're carrying 50 lbs of laundry and 20 lbs of baby. Oh, and it costs $3.20 cents to do a single load. We usually do three loads every week and a half.)
Dish washer (haven't had one of these since I was a sophomore in high school when we were living on Baumeister Street. We moved into a new house the beginning of my junior year and I haven't had one since then. I am totally fine doing dished without. If I ever had one, I'm sure I'd never want to go back but I guess I don't know what I'm missing. That's good.)
Toaster (for some reason that no one seems to be able to explain to me we are not allowed to have a toaster in our apartment. Fire hazard? Isn't a stove a much bigger fire hazard? Not that I'm lobbying to get our stove banned as well because that is one thing I really COULD NOT live without. Anyway, try living sometime without a toaster. I didn't think it would be a big deal but I guess I didn't realize how much we used our toaster. Kind of annoying. We toast our bread in the oven on broil. As I am writing this, I am sitting next to a lit candle. I imagine if they don't allow toasters they don't allow LIT candles but I haven't heard anything about it and I WILL NOT ask for fear of the answer.)
TV (we've not yet owned a TV in our married life so I'm used to not having one.)
A room/nursery for Jonathan (it's a one-bedroom apartment. We have to tip toe around all the time when Jonathan's sleeping and we can't use the kitchen after he's gone to bed at night -- usually around 7 :30-- cuz the kitchen and living room are basically the same room.)
Crib for Jonathan (not a big deal, he's in a pack-and-play so we can roll it in living room for night time and in our bedroom for day naps)
Some things we're living with:
Sweet little baby Jonathan (It's amazing how much he's completely transformed our lives. He is such a joy to have around...most of the time...also adds much worry and stress into our lives but we're much happier now that we have him.)
Lots and lots of love :)
It would really be nice someday to own all of the things we're currently living without but for now we're doing just fine without them. It really hasn't been that big of a deal actually. We love our lives here in Stony Brook. We're making some fun memories.
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