Marriage Party

Two friends at our church, Dustin & Deena, got married this July for time and all eternity. I attended their wedding in the gorgeous Orlando LDS temple while Dave stayed home with Jessica. I didn't get any pictures, but the day was about like this picture: beautiful, just very hot.

Another mutual friend John Haase had just flown into back to the states with his lovely girlfriend Esther. As John had the key to Dustin's house during their honeymoon, we decided a little 'welcome home' was in order. So we drew pictures of a bride and groom riding an alligator by a lighthouse on their windows:

marked their mirror with X's & O's:

left a surprise in their closet...

and John found some gifts he knew Dustin would appreciate. Who needs Ferrari pictures, when you can look at High School Musical? or DVDs, when you can have Richard Simmons and country line dancing on VHS? What a great friend John is!

We drug Deena's siblings into the dastardly plans by decorating Deena's car (no pictures, unfortunately, but it was cute), and sneaking some furniture into Dustin's bachelor pad.

I helped decorate their reception, which was post-honeymoon and had a great fun beach theme. Congrats you two; we're happy for you!

You can see Jessica at the bottom of the picture.

Hot Holidays

Well, Christmas morning came, and we were so excited to watch Jessica open presents. Ten years waiting for a Christmas with children! Finally! We were so excited, the night before we broke down and told each other our big gifts, after J was in bed. Despite my vow not to get Dave any more tools, I got him a soldering station. (Now that's love.) He does fix a lot of our broken stuff with borrowed soldering irons.

Dave got me new pans. I tease him that kitchenware is a big hint for me to get back into the kitchen and do some home cooking, since I bought a lot of frozen and prepared food for the last 3 months.

We'd also been wanting to buy the Good Eats DVDs (with crazy chef Alton Brown) and make every recipe. (The next week, we started watching with season 1, episode 1 "Steak Your Claim". It was really educational, since I feel like I know nothing about cuts of meat. We cooked a great ribeye in cast iron.)

The next morning we got up about 7 am and brought Jessica out into the front room. She was a champ at opening presents all morning, starting with the first:

Among the highlights are this toddler foam chair, which I think is adorable and fits her just right;

this homemade dress and matching hat sent by her Grandma Eyring;

and a lot of books and toys with buttons and lights. Her favorite thing is turning pages and opening and shutting things. She loves playing with her new foam letters during her bath, so now her tub looks like there's a wee little suckling pig, swimming in alphabet soup!

Jessica didn't need any help devouring this chocolate-covered raspberry stick:

Dave made wood blocks for Jessica from the discarded floorboards of our church's gym floor after it was water-damaged. Both of our fathers made blocks for us kids, so it was a sweet tradition to see Dave carrying on. He wrapped them in saran wrap, since I didn't get around to sewing a drawstring bag.

And after begging for a year, I finally got archery lessons, which I started today. The weapon of choice of my favorite story heroines is a bow and arrow: I blame Chronicles of Narnia and The Hunger Games. 

After the lesson, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face; it was so fun! I felt safe, and was pretty consistent, even though we were only 20 feet from the target. I told Dave everything, and he was like "Yeah, I got the archery merit badge at scout camp." Uuuuuhhhhhnnnn!!!! Boys get to do all the fun stuff!

Anyways, back to last week: We went to Miami for a 2-day trip. First stop: Monkey Jungle. (It was fun, but we thought Butterfly World and Gatorland were better half-day attractions for the same price.)

Monkey Jungle was unique because, like their ads say: "the people are in cages and the monkeys run free!" Jessica liked them a lot when she they were right in front of her, swinging around, and screaming loudly.

The weather was a perfect 70 degrees, and it was fun to get away and do something different.

Jessica was a pretty good trooper, sitting in the car and stroller so much. Below she's pictured in her smaller car seat, which she's really too tall for. (Her weight gain has slowed down: less than a pound in 6 weeks---great news for us, whose arms are falling off from packing her around.)

When we let her loose in the hotel room that evening, she was on turbocrawl and high speed jabber-scream. And she decided it was time to start pulling herself up to stand. The low side of the bathtub and her pack-n-play were her first. It was the day before New Year's Eve, so she was exactly 10 months old.

Last week on Christmas Eve, she showed us she can clap. And in the last 2 weeks, she's learned to comb her hair, sit Indian-style, hold her breath, identify and say "dots", point her finger, raise her hand, and cover her ears. Her hair is long enough I can put a *little* tiny clip in the top center of her head. When we reach across the table to hold hands during the blessing on the food, she puts her hand on top of ours for a second. She knows how to say "mmmm" for yummy food, and since she can't do the baby sign for 'more' (food), she's trained us to feed her with her own: she either yodels with her lips together, or growls with her "mmmm" if she wants food.

Unfortunately, she also squirms in her stroller (turning around or jumping out--which earned her that forehead scrape) and throws bigger fits. When she is really angry at us, she'll stare straight ahead, hold her arm up, then punch us in the mouth and try to rip our lips off. But now we usually see it coming and stop her. She's going to be great in martial arts.

But really, she's a sweetie. And a waffle thief, caught red-handed, below. Today she decided she can put her hands on the tabletop and stand on her tiptoes. Yesterday she stood at the piano bench and listened to me play. After a while she started whimpering, and I thought, 'I'll just finish playing this line". When I looked down she was stuck halfway down in the splits, one foot under the piano, the other under the rug, and her nose just over the bench and wobbling all over. {I made Dave snarf and choke on his own spit when I told him that story.}

Anyway, back to the narrative. The next day (New Year's Eve Day) we went to the Bill Baggs state park on Key Biscayne to see the lighthouse. This lighthouse is older than the Jupiter one, with a more tenuous history: blown up in the Indian Wars; surrounding area almost sold off for development; plant life stripped off in Hurricane Andrew... The tour of the lighthouse and keeper's home was good and included in the park admission.

The climb was a bit scary because the stairs are only anchored on the center pole, which swayed a lot with the tour group all climbing it. But the view was beautiful.

The keeper's house was quaint.

But Jessica's favorite part was her 10 minutes in the water. IT DIDN'T EVEN PHASE HER THAT THE WATER WAS COLD, or salty, or rushing up to her. She was trying to crawl straight into the sea, and threw a 10-minute fit when we left. Little Miss No-Fear won't have any swimming issues...Come to think of it, we also now call her Miss Wiggles, and Destructo Girl. (If she were raised in an Indian tribe, she would be very easy to name.)

Our favorite part was the family bicycle ride, after which we had a delicious seaside meal (paella & plantains and crab dip).

Dave's brother Danny, who lives in Idaho, texted Dave a picture of himself on a campout, waste-deep in fresh snow. So Dave texted this tropical picture back: surrounded by blue water and fluffly white sand. Tiny contrast in habitats for these brothers. (oops, their caption should read Dec 30 and 31 of 2010.)

We also tried to visit the nearby Barnacle, home of a famous old Florida shipbuilder. It was in beautiful downtown old Miami, which was gearing up for New Years. After waking up Jessica, paying for parking, and paying for admission, and walking a stretch, they were going to charge us again just to get inside the house. The tour guide sounded boring, so we just read the signposts and left. But we did see several beautiful peacock art statues, which I guess represent old Peacock family founders.

 
We detoured to Vizcaya, a very old, elaborate, expensive estate of a farm machinery baron. It's pretty much a shrine to old world culture and mythology and money. We weren't allowed to photograph the insides, which were tapestried, gold-leafed, carved, and embellished to the hilt. It's like the Flagler Museum, only more pagan, with better gardens. Some of our pics include Ponce de Leon,

a lady lion statue,

 and the mazey, awfully romantic gardens and fountains.

The funniest part of our trip happened on the freeway our drive home. Dave, despite his habit of keeping his tank at least a quarter full, and preaching to me about riding around on emtpy, RAN OUT OF GAS. I just laughed and read a book while waiting to get refueled. We got home in time to watch the new Karate Kid, play Yatzhee & drink sparkling grape juice, say happy new year and go to bed. Despite my holiday stress, and the fact that we were sad to be away from our family, it was a great end to the best year of our lives.

A Whole Month's Worth of Posts

I've been busy working with my congregation for our 3rd annual Nativity Experience for the community (nativityexperience.blogspot.com). I work on it every day, so I'm behind on Jessica's blog. So I'm warning you: this is a long entry.

This October, with high temperatures still in the 80's, we got a visit from Dave's old lab buddy from University of Texas and his new wife. They had just finished a cruise, and since one of their adventures got rained out, we went snorkeling here in Jupiter. 

I drug Ruth along for some letterboxing, since there are 2 hidden near the inlet. (One I still can't find.) Jessica played and napped, and Dave kept his cell phone out of the water.

Apparently it was jellyfish day at DuBois Park. About 7 people were stung by some bad, unseen jellyfish, including a little kid all over his body (he was OK after a vinegar spray), and Dave and Jay got a little zapped when they were snorkeling in the inlet.

There were also some harmless comb jellies, less than 4 inches long. They have rainbow lights along the edges and we picked some up in our hands. If you look close you can see tiny orange, green, and purple lights.

On Conference weekend, Jessica went to the hospital. She had had a 102 fever for a week, and the doctors decided it wasn't teething, ear infections, or viral, so they took some blood and urine tests and gave her antibiotics. The next day her white blood cell count was HIGHER, not lower, so they sent her to the hospital as a precaution and for more tests. Her only other symptom was sleeping more, and probably peeing less, although we didn't notice it.

It turned out all she had was a urinary tract infection, but those results didn't come for days. In the mean time, the hospital came up with all sorts of creative tests to figure out why her white blood cell count was higher than a UTI would indicate.

We were just along for the ride the first few days. We found out Jessica's veins are hard to tap, and I couldn't stand to see her hurt, so Dave held her. She didn't like her left arm tied up to an IV, but she figured out how to wriggle some fingers out of the tape and use just her right hand. She perked back up with fluids and antibiotics, and soon acted like she was just there for fun. She had a hightech crib and a gold star helium balloon and lots of attention. Dave and I stayed with her 24 hrs for 4 days, until the last night, when she was back to her 12-hr sleep schedule: we broke down, went out to eat, then slept at home.
  

By this time, to make a long story short, we were getting tired of waiting, testing, and the parade of doctors. A misdiagnosis of pneumonia didn't help. They wanted one more test, but I wasn't buying it. I stayed up two nights for hours reading medical information online, and we discussed it. We decided to check her out. And she is just fine so far--happy and healthy. We learned a LOT about when to trust the doctor and when to trust our instincts. We appreciated the attentive care she did get and the blessings of technology.

OK, back to the fun stuff! Jessica, in the last month, has learned a lot. After self-feeding only crackers for 2 months, she finally figured out pincher grasp and started getting Cheerios in her mouth. Hooray for self-feeding babies!

She can't pick up those slippery fruits, so we tried this game one day:

She also likes to try drinking from a cup (no love for the sippie, yet)  . . . 

. . . and last week I came in after her nap to see had she sat up on her own. 

She gets on her knees sporadically, so this is my best picture. We cheer every time she does, so she knows she's doing something good. Now if she's on carpet, she can move forward to get toys. It's more of a kneel-flop forward-kneel-flop forward procedure so far. She can sit up and lay down at will now, and we are so proud. 

She is wandering farther from where we put her down, and so pleased with herself!

She's learned to drum, and babbles all the time. She says "dadadadada" all the time, occasionally says something with "k" when she sees Smokey, and knows how to say "MA!" randomly, but we're not counting anything as words yet. She knows when we ask her a questions she's supposed to say something back, and when we are telling her the name of what she has in her hand.

A friend of mine watched Jessica while I did the sound checks for Nativity. Jessica  babbled "dadada", and their family dog ran to the door thinking that their "dad" was home from work!

But she has her bad moments. She's learned to pitch fits: throwing her head back, leaning to the right, grabbing her right ear, and wailing like she's dying. But you put Cheerios on her tray and the tears suddenly evaporate. She poops in her bath, pinches us, and tries her best to jump from high places. But not too often. It all melts away when she leans forward to kiss us without being asked.

Here's a clip of me trying to secretly film her doing her new "evil laugh". I was trying to only video her from the waist up since she was taking her bath. (Now we know why she does that evil laugh in the tub!) The bathtub surprise we caught on tape made me laugh too, but disgusts Dave. We've talked seriously about early potting-training techniques . . . 

Dave is training Jessica young to root for the family alumni college football teams . . .

and Mommy spent several hours sewing a biblical costume for Jessica's first Christmas.

And there's lots of time for laughing; at anything that comes near her chin:

And the cat, of course:

Jessica Lately

I apologize for the big gaps between posts. We traveled a lot this summer, and are looking forward to a lot of time at home for the rest of the year. I have so many things I want to do, and there are so many pictures it's intimidating to tackle.

Jessica turned six months on Aug 28, 2010. She is bigger than 97% or more of her peers for height, weight, and head circumference. And on Sept 14, with a runny nose and a smile, her first tooth appeared. I was at the church with some other women, setting up for sewing night (for our Nativity pageant in December). I stopped to feed her some squash & oatmeal for lunch, and I saw she had a little tooth peeking out of her lower gum, and another about to come up next to it, and I flipped out! She runs her tongue over it, and of course, chews on everything.

It's hard to see her tooth in this picture, but it's the best of about 50 pictures.

Jessica is getting much better about sitting up. And she still loves baths.

Most evenings, Dave still pops her in the umbrella stroller for a walk . She tans nicely. This night though he took her swimming.

After working 40 extra hours last month, Dave took Friday off before Labor Day weekend. He was so excited to play with Jessica in the water, he forgot about the cell phone in his pocket. Oops. Good thing it was old. We were in too good a mood with a 4-day weekend in front of us it didn't "dampen" our spirits. And we actually caught this moment of brilliance on camera:

I'm just as glad his brain got a rest--he works so hard. Below is a non-swimming visit to the beach a month ago.

Jessica stares at us when we eat. She and Smokey are good beggars. Dave wants to feed her everything, and I spoil the party. "No toast; it has butter on it." "No box rice; too much salt." I'm fairly certain he slips her a lot of food when I'm not looking. She can hold her own bottle, and gnaw on biter biscuits, but she can't pick up Cheerios yet. That's another milestone I'm looking forward to.

Dave is excited for college football season. He insisted getting both BYU and Univ. of Texas longhorn baby clothes, which I'm sure will get good mileage with future kids. I asked him, "In 2011 when BYU & UT play each other, will you be rooting for the Lord's school or worshipping the golden calf?" We laughed. We like watching sports--we enjoyed watching the US Tennis Open this weekend.

She still gets called the Gerber baby once a week, and her fat cheeks and thighs attract lots of attention, with reassurances it will come off as she grows. I love dressing her. Thanks to all those who donated to this cause: after 10 years of waiting, clothing and caring for this little doll makes me terribly happy. And when she's cranky, I'm terribly happy I've got a husband who loves her too.

This is by far her girliest outfit, and although I got some good smiley pictures, I want to include some realism. "Darn prickly grass! Church was fun, but I need a nap! Pick me up now!" "Gladly child. I want a nap too, and it's too hot outside to take pictures."

And she is getting AROUND. She rolls and reaches and rolls some more. When she cries, I know it's time to rescue her because she's scooted backwards, away from her toys, and underneath the furniture where she can't roll over. She is so wiggly she needs a toy to distract her during diaper changes, and loves rough-housing and happy screaming. When I push her in the shopping cart, she can raspberry so well she sprays me with spit, even at arm's length. I'm bad because I encourage it; it is funny.

She likes it when I play with her ears or sing her favorite songs. She likes other people and loves little kids. She opens her mouth like she's singing opera when we she sees a spoon full of food. She loves paper, fuzzy and noisy toys, books, and especially our kitty. She gets the giggles when she sees herself in the mirror or dogs, which always gives her hiccups. What a goon.

I had a happy realization a few days ago when I saw her on her stomach, reaching for something higher than her head. It was a precursor to pulling herself up on furniture, then walking. I've seen her figure out lots of things, and reach all these milestones, and it culminated in this thought: "This girl can learn. She is going to grow up and have a happy, normal childhood, and life." I figured that before, but now I am just really happy for her.

What a good kid. That's all for today.