January 2011

Is it just me or is this year flying by!? It is now the last day of February and I'm posting about January and it's all just a blur. As you can see from the post date, I intented to post this IN January, but time got away from me. Fortunately, I'm more diligent in my picture organizing than I am at posting on the blog, so I can keep track of what happened when by going into January's picture file. Here are the highlights:


We went down to St. George again for a quick visit. I love this picture because Reed thought he was so big and it was the beginning of him really being able to communicate (very specifically!) what he wanted with us. We were in between church and dinner and he wanted to watch a show and not just any show, the "octopus show" (Aladdin) and he had to have the box and some sugar snap peas with "dip it" (Ranch dressing). He got himself all settled in the chair with his snack next to him and life was good.


Brent's dad sent us home with a cute little red trailer so we can haul stuff behind our car. It has already come in handy hauling our old water heater away and will be so helpful to have around this spring to take away the heaps and heaps of yard waste that our property produces. We've needed one many, many times since we moved in and this one folds and fits perfectly in our garage along with all the stuff we already had in there. It's great!

Reed finally gave up his binky. Well, I had packed away all but two of his binky's (he only had one to sleep or when he had a major bonk) but when we got home from St. George I misplaced them both I decided it was time to let it go instead of tear the house upside down looking for them. He was ready. He missed it for a few days (he would ask for it when he got hurt or it was time to sleep), but would quickly get over it. In less than a week it was a distant memory. Now when he sees other kids with binks he labels them "babies" and doesn't ask for his. I'm so glad that's behind us. I really thought it would more of a major event because he was SO attached to it, but am glad it wasn't. (The picture in the last post of him with his knife and shield is the last binky picture we ever took!).


Reed had a major haircut. I had given him a regular haircut, evening him up, but he still had hair sticking straight out on the sides so I just took the trimmer to it with the longest attachment. It looks much better, but he looks so grown up to me now! Although, the pure joy of the clean laundry being thrown over the upstairs railing reminds that he is still 2...


We had a floor put up in our attic this month. It's a really big space up there that we weren't utilizing so we laid a floor down, invested in some plastic storage bins and got all of our extra stuff out of the way and organized. We went around the house gathering everything we don't use on a regular basis (holiday decor, clothes Reed has grown out of or will grow in to, baby things, etc.) and we didn't even use half of it! Between you and me, I hope we never fill it up, but I have had fun teasing Brent that I can get more stuff now that we have all this storage space. He isn't amused. It has made a huge difference in getting the house totally organizing and making it so everything has it's place. I'm in heaven!


Right before they came to put the floor down (like the night before!) Brent installed a light fixture in our "office" (really just a nook a little bigger than a window seat!). For some reason they had gotten rid of much of the overhead lighting in this house in favor of something that required hooks!? There were hooks in the ceiling of almost every room when we bought the house. They had patched over the wires and put blank covers over the light switch boxes. Fortunately, it's just been a matter of putting the switches back, pulling the wires back down and getting new fixtures (I found this fixture at an architectural salvage yard in Berkeley). I've had everything ready to go for this project for over a year , but the threat of this project soon requiring pulling up part of the attic floor motivated Brent to get it done sooner than later. Now we don't have take up space on our desktop for a lamp.


The really noteworthy thing that happened this month was that Brent started classes at the University of Utah! He has a night class once a week and another one online with the testing being here in Bountiful at the University extension. It works out really well - this semester. At two classes a semester we've got a long road ahead of us, but I'm so proud of him! And he's more than halfway there already!


Brent and Reed having fun with a bag of old clothespins. Silly boys.



Reed loves his books and has fun getting all the props to go with them. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel must have Reed and his "scooper" to go with it. I Stink is followed by over an hour using his dump truck to fill Noah's ark (a stand-in barge) up with "trash". I'm so glad he loves to read.


Mostly, we just take each day as it comes and are having a blast watching Reed grow right before our eyes. He is ALL BOY!

December 2010

My new blog goal: to do a monthly post. Maybe more, but no less. Here goes...

My mom stayed with us for a week after Thanksgiving and left at the beginning of the month. We dropped her off at the airport and kept right on driving down to St. George to visit Brent's parents. We had a really nice visit with them and it was fun for Reed to get to spend more one-on-one time getting to know them. We went down there because we had tickets to a Christmas concert at the Tuacahn Amphitheater. They had a Santa there so Reed got his first picture with Santa. Reed was wary of him, but Santa was giving out candy canes so he gave in.


His face in this picture is pretty much the face we got for every picture. He says "EEEE" and makes a huge smiley face, squints his eyes and then drops it all as soon he thinks he's made that face long enough for the picture to be taken. Sometimes we get this face, sometimes we get a totally normal face. Very rarely do we get the in-between, regular smile. Oh well.


We also went for a few rides on the Rhino to look at petroglyphs and (my personal favorite) a place called "The Glitter Pits". It had flat, layered crystal looking rocks all over called selenite (they used to make oven windows and the sparkles in plaster ceilings with it back in the day). Now it's an abandoned quarry and has shards of this crystal rock all over. It's not dangerous like I'm making it sound! There were serious people there with equipment who were
excavating big pieces of it, but pieces the size of my hand were everywhere. On a sunny day it's supposed to be very "glittery" but it was cloudy when we went. It was still really neat.

Also on that trip, Reed discovered he could easily climb out of the port-a-crib. It was when we came home from that trip that he decided to give his climbing skills a try on his crib and he is now a champion crib climber. He can get in and out in mere seconds. It has been an adjustment and he almost always ends up in our bed in the wee hours of the morning. "Mama snuggles" he says as he climbs up on our bed. Sometimes if it's close enough to when we'd wake up we let him stay. If it's early we put him back in his bed and he cries "more snuggles". It's hard enough to let babies cry it out, but when they're yelling "mama more snuggles" it's absolutely heartbreaking.


Reed made his first snowman. Well, he supervised anyway. It's a dirty snowman because of all the leaves that were hanging on until this storm knocked them down. It rained fairly soon after and it tipped over. Even now, when he sees a snowman of any kind he talks about how his tipped over. The remains of the bottom ball are still out there as I type this.




We met Brent after work one day and went to see the lights at Temple Square and played in the Olympic Fountain at the Gateway. They also have a massive Christmas tree there with flashing lights. Reed had a good time. During all the family things we'd go to in Salt Lake in the weeks following he'd see the downtown light off the freeway and say "big lights, more big lights!"


For Christmas Eve we've decided to do pajamas and a book as our family tradition. This year it didn't go over so well. He loves the book and I've read it almost daily since he got it, but at the time he was so upset that he only got to open those two presents and had to leave all the other presents under the tree that it made for a miserable Christmas Eve. Fortunately, Brent worked late on Christmas Eve and Reed and I went to a dinner so by the time we got home there wasn't very much left of Christmas Eve.


A much happier Reed on Christmas morning.

He finally got the train stuff to go on his train table and it is a track for cars as much as it is trains as you can see in this picture. He loves it though and that's all that matters. After he got his train set I opened an ark ornament from my parents and he immediately rans over and said "a boat!" and put it in the little lake on the table. He was getting a little overzealous with his cars and trains so I put the ornament back on the tree and every time I turned around I would find it back on the train table. Funny boy.


Really, the highlight of December was our dishwasher and water heater breaking within days of each other. A few weeks before Christmas. It was really a bummer. The water shut off valve for the water heater broke off when we tried to bypass the water heater (so we'd at least have cold water) so instead we had to completely shut off the water and it felt like we were camping in our own house. We replaced the water heater (Merry Christmas Brent and Caroline) and I have never been so grateful for hot water-or water for that matter! We planned on washing dishes by hand while we waited for a good deal on the dishwasher I want. As luck would have it, my sister-in-laws parents were getting rid of an old, but working dishwasher so we have a dishwasher to help us get by. Reed had a great time with the tools, of course.


Reed loves egg salad sandwiches!



Reed is talking a ton now and the names he comes up for shows he wants to watch amuse us: Pinocchio:"noke 'n oak" Mulan: "nice dragon show" He has a plastic play knife that is his "wife" or knife/sword that he acts along with. How to Train Your Dragon: ("Hiccup") He uses this same "wife" and a sand strainer as a shield. Snow White: "hi ho's". The Jungle Book: "Bare Necessities" don't even know how I'd type the way he actually says it. He thinks the song "Bare Necessities" is the funniest thing on earth. I tried to upload a video of him laughing hysterically watching it, but no luck.