Baby Update

Even though I don't look it yet. Our new baby is 15 and a half weeks. So this is what I found out doing a little research on line. I also found out the stuffy nose I have could be a side effect of pregnancy, though I doubt it since Tyler and Gem both have stuffy noses and I am pretty sure they aren't pregnant. By the way, if any of this list is untrue, I apologize; I just copied and pasted off of various baby websites.

1-The baby now measures about 4 inches long, crown to rump, and weighs in at about 2 1/2 ounces (about the size of an apple).

2-The baby can move all joints and limbs. The baby’s legs have grown longer than the arms and the body is now longer than the head.

3-Although the eyelids are still fused shut, the baby can sense light. If you shine a flashlight at your tummy, for instance, it will likely to move away from the beam. (aside - who finds out this stuff, how many ultrasounds do they do while pointing a flashlight at the baby)

4-There's not much for your baby to taste at this point, but taste buds are forming taste. And the baby can develop hiccups from time to time

5-The baby might start sucking his thumb this week. (aside : How could you possibly know that? are there ultrasounds of thumb sucking babies?)

6-This week, the baby will start producing lanugo, which is fine hair that will cover the baby's body up until a few weeks before birth

7-The baby is spending most of his time practicing breathing, by inhaling and exhaling amniotic fluid. Believe it or not, the very act of doing so will help the baby's air sacs develop during pregnancy. (aside - I guess if you've got nothing else to do, you might as well practice breathing.)

8- Baby’s major organs are fully ready by the 15th week.

9-The baby can hear you and other sounds by now.

10-The skin is very thin and the blood vessels are visible.

Blowing Bubbles

Sometimes things aren't so easy when you first try.

But you eventually get the hang of it.

Our Visit to the Grocery Store

Sometimes I have an angel for a daughter, sometimes I have a booger for a daughter. I won't say which half I think comes from which side of the family. Just kidding!!! I know my family is chock full of boogers.

Anyway my post today is about how much fun it is to go the grocery store these days. For example today Gem and I arrived at Vons with a short list. For some crazy reason I thought we would be in and out in fifteen minutes. Little did I know it would take me ten minutes just to walk through the front door. Gem had chosen today to decide that she did not want to sit in the seat on the front of the cart. So as soon as I put her in the seat she climbed out of it. I picked her up and tried to put her back in at which point she decided it was a good time to begin screaming as loud as she could. I am just holding her in my arms, not doing anything to her, but she is having an awesome scream fit. This is when one of the baggers comes by to collect all the carts in the parking lot. He watches me holding my screaming baby and he looks at me like I am the devil. I then proceeded to beg my two year old to please be a "big girl" and sit in the seat so we can go in the store. I gave her many options, however, it took her at least 4 or 5 minutes to decide that yes she would sit in the cart seat. I know a real adult would have just plunked her in there and buckled her up, but I am too scrawny, she is too big and when she struggles I can't hold her down.

So we finally proceeded into the store, I had appeased her by telling her that I was going to buy some fruit snacks. So when we get to the fruit snacks I gave her the options "would you like spider man, or bugs, or dinosaurs?" She thought about it for a second and said "bugs". So I piled a few boxes of "bugs" onto her lap. Then she looked up at me and quite sincerely asked "Eat bugs?" I said "after lunch you can have some bugs". I say the weirdest things these days. Anyway because she had decided she could not wait until after lunch to eat her bugs, she proceeded to gnaw off the corner of the box, by the time we got to the check out stand at least 3 inches of the corner was missing. And you know what, I didn't care because she was quiet.

The other trouble of the grocery store is the balloons all over the place. As soon as we walk in to the store she says "buy balloon" and every week I say "no we are not buying a balloon" Today there was tons of football balloons everywhere, the second we were in the store Gem asked for the "soccy ball" and I said "no that's a football" then she said "buy football", it really is a never ending cycle.

However she is cute sometimes. Somewhere she learned about pockets, she believes that any hole in your clothing is a pocket. She places any small item that she finds down her neck hole into her shirt and comes to me and says "in a pocket". However that is a little embarrassing when she does it in front of the missionaries and then they look at you as if to say 'do you stuff things down your shirt?' Also not appropriate when she tries to put things in mommy's "pocket". I had to explain to her that we only put things into our own "pockets".

The end has come

Tara usually writes the posts but I figured I'd give it a go because I have good news. I received my results in the mail for my Professional Engineering Exam and I passed all three tests. Woo Hoo! Now that I'm done with this and graduate school it feels nice to know that the only other professional certification I could even try for is elite status in the skymiles program. It's a big load off of my shoulders and I feel great.

Alcatraz

Perhaps you need this sign (from Alcatraz Island) posted in your house. I know we do. If only our daughter could read.

Playing in the Snow!

This video is for our California friends. It is entended to make them jealous because we actually had a white Christmas and Gem even played in the snow for a little while. (Though I stayed inside where it was warm)

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning was lots of fun. Gem did have fun opening presents though as you saw she also had fun playing with packing peanuts.

Old Pics

I knew someone out there had these pics from 4 years ago. (thanks mom). Things change, but some things don't change. (sorry that doesn't even make sense)

Christmas Eve

I've decided rather than do one giant post for our trip I am going to do like four or five mini posts. Less time consuming to do five minutes per day than two hours once. So these are a couple cute pictures of Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa Ross's house. First we have Gem and Colby getting ready to listen to the Christmas story. Then we have a close-up of Gem tearing into her present from Grandma Ross.

Friends and Family

Christmas Caroling was fun, as it always is. So nice to see all my friends from high school, and remind myself that once upon a time I actually did stuff, (a lot of stuff). Nice to see what everyone is up too. We took a big group picture, like we did our senior year, I was going to post the old one alongside this, but I don't have it, so if anyone does have you could email it to me, and I could post it later. Anyways it was fun to see everyone and see what people are up to. By the end of this year there will be at least 5 little ones all told between the ten of us. Who would have thought we would ever grow up. On a different note, I put up our new family pictures from this year. I am going to get 8x10's of both of these with an 11x14 of the picture of Tyler Gem and I that is up in the top left. These are all going to look great on my wall. (I think Tyler wore the same shirt in both pictures, what a faux pas.)

some older videos

I was going through the video camera and found a couple good videos from our trip to San Francisco. This was at the park at Monterey.

This slide was hilarious when someone little like Gem went down it, they proceeded down at a gentle child's pace. However when a larger grown-up, Tyler for example, went down, the little rollers pushed this grown-up down at light speed. You would be at the bottom as soon as you sat down at the top. Too bad I didn't get video of that it would have been much more funny.

I'm Back

Alright I don't have a lot of time for dillydallying but I wanted to make a quick post today to explain that I am home and I am not dead. I know you all want to see posts about our trip however that will have to wait a few days as I try to get things back into order around here, plus it will take me a little while to go through all the pictures and video we took and see which are blog worthy (if any).

Anyways just a few thoughts before I have to run off to the next thing.

I loved my vacation, I spent an entire two weeks doing absolutely nothing (that's right two weeks without a single church responsibility besides sacrament meeting), I didn't even have to watch my own child, since our family loves her so much. So it is a little disappointing to be back home and have to be in charge again. Especially since Gem has been catered to for two weeks and she now has temper tantrums much more frequently than before we went to Utah. I am hoping to time-out the tantrums out of her, before either Tyler or I can't take it anymore.

The other weird thing when we got back is that it appears to be summertime here in California, my poor little brain can't take the weird seasons I give it, winter for two weeks and then summer for 50 weeks. I do miss seasons, without them it starts to feel like we live in limbo and that time isn't really passing.

Finally the other thing I feel I must say is how much I hate going to the post office, not because of the workers but because of the people who go to the post office. Every time I go there (I had to go today to pick up all my held mail from the vacation) there is an enormous line but I think there is a requirement for all people standing in line to be super grumpy. You can just feel the angry vibe of every person in there. I want to shout to them all, "what are you so mad about, if you feel this is such a waste of your precious time, just drive the package there yourself!"

One last note to my mother. Gem loves her dress up clothes, she has not worn any non-fairy-or-princess clothes since our return home.