Buddha Baby

We took Anders to his six month appointment this past week. We expected him to weigh more than he did, but he is definitely still a large child. He is the height of an average nine-month-old, the weight of an average one-year-old, and his head is the size of a 13/14-month-old.





He is sitting up on his own now. He is wanting to crawl, but still working to build up his arm muscles. He LOVES to stand. He is dying to eat big people food but gags whenever we actually give him any. He is starting to do well with eating rice cereal, but he doesn't really like to. It was the exact same struggle we had to get him to start nursing! AH! We are now saving up to buy a Champion Juicer. We want it to puree our own baby food for Anders. Our friends used theirs to make us some frozen pineapple puree. It tasted like pineapple ice cream! It was AMAZING! So we are now converted. Hence the saving up.


Some other great news from the week:

Syd finally got the grade from her last class that she finished before Thanksgiving. She got an A. We celebrated with her favorite sugar cookies from THE CHOCOLATE.

Three of David's graduate school applications are complete and submitted. The fourth he will mail out this week. So now we just wait to hear and we are hoping that he will qualify for early consideration at all of the schools. He made the deadline for early consideration at BYU.

Christmas Decorating and Anders being cute as always!

Now that we have had Thanksgiving and a day to recover, we put up the Christmas Decorations! Anders had fun helping! He kept getting this cute look on his face filled with wonder as he looked at the lights being hung and the red and green objects all over the place.

Here is the final result of our tree once it was decorated.


As we were working on the tree, Anders was playing with his toys and ended up spitting up all over himself and so Camrose came to help clean him up.


After we got him cleaned up and dressed, he wanted to play with some of the shiny wrapping paper and was so happy with his 'toy'.


Then... on Sunday, for some reason, the hot water just wasn't hot. Normally it is because of sharing the tank with the neighbors but we had waited what should have been long enough for the water to warm back up in the tank and it didn't. Anders had been about to get in with momma to get clean so daddy thought: "how can I keep him warm?" and the result is Anders in a diaper and hoody.


When he is smiling for momma!


He has also started to do this neat thing when momma tickles him by play biting with her lips, he has started to do it back:


We are so excited for this Christmas season! First Christmas for Anders so we do feel a little pressure to make sure that he knows that Christmas is all about his Savior Jesus Christ. Pretty sure that he won't understand on an intellectual level yet but we are going to make sure that we sing hymns about Christ, point out images of Christ and his birth, and read him scriptures about the birth so that as he grows up, he knows what this time is all about: celebrating the one who made it so we all can live with our Father in Heaven again!

Day of Turkey, Thanks and Giving

This Thanksgiving was our first with a baby! We had a blast. We planned out everything in advance so there was no stress with baking and cooking the Thanksgiving meal for ourselves and David's two brothers: Sam and Adam. We spared no expense with the food, but the decor was definitely lacking. We will have to work on that for next year. It was also Sam's birthday on Thanksgiving day and Adam's is tomorrow, so we opted for a homemade cake, rather than pies.

Here is the table right before we dished up to eat. Not festive, I know!


Here we have corn, croissants, candied yams and turkey. Not pictured are the mashed potatoes that were warming up in the oven.


Next is the salad and the must have jello with fresh whipped cream. We are Mormon and not afraid to admit it!


Last but not least: THE STUFFING. Syd's favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal.


Here are Sam and Adam blowing out the candles on their birthday cake. It was actually quite the adventure to make. I accidentally bought a cake mix for a yellow cake, instead of our favorite butter yellow recipe. So David made the cakes (we like to do a layered cake with our pudding frosting) but he couldn't get them to come out of the pans no matter what he did. When I came into the kitchen to see them, they were literally in pieces. There was absolutely no way I could put together a cake out of the pieces. And so we started over, after David ran to the store. That was the only drama of our Thanksgiving day. Luckily David had made the cake early enough that it really wasn't stressful or a big deal to start over again.


Here is the family shot we had to get on our first Thanksgiving together!


After all the Thanksgiving festivities we decided to do Black Friday shopping for the first time. We went up to the outlets in Park City to get Anders all his new clothes and Syd a new winter jacket. We got such killer deals we were grateful we made the trip. And it worked out well because we started shopping at midnight instead of waiting to go up at six in the morning. Syd was in heaven: she and Anders are the night owls in the family.

Baby Steps

Okay. So Anders isn't walking yet, but he is developing along pretty quickly for us. What is he doing now you may ask? He is able to sit on his own. He can't quite sit up from a laying position, but once he can find leverage to pull himself up (like a finger, or something that keeps his feet down) he can remain sitting and keep himself balanced. We have the proof!

Here he is sitting on his own. It was so funny taking these pictures because he wanted to follow his momma around the room as I was trying to get him to laugh while Daddy was taking the pictures. So he kept falling over because he cannot smile at momma without kicking out one of his legs in excitement. He melts momma's heart!

What's better than Santa coming to town?

AUNTIE JESSICA coming to town. Jessica flew in on Thursday morning to come visit us because they had two days off school due to budget cuts and Veteran's Day. We spent lots of time talking while she ate up the opportunity to hold Anders. I did find it funny though because she would ask to hold Anders and two minutes later I would look over and she had put Anders down (she wasn't used to holding such a heavy baby). haha.

We also ate desserts from THE CHOCOLATE (a dessert cafe). I think we got desserts from there the three nights she was here. Don't judge. Her favorite was ironically "the husband". I am sure it would be my favorite too if I could eat chocolate.

We saw a dollar movie for our night out on the town.

We took family and sister pictures. It was chilly but tons of fun.



















We also made a memento for Jessica to take home with her so she could remember this trip and us every time she looks at it.



And then the time came for us to take her to the airport. It was a teary goodbye for some, and others (Anders) had big smiles (it helped he got a long nap on the way to the airport). He loved getting all the kisses from his momma and his auntie.







The End. Hopefully she will be able to come back and see us again soon!

Papa, Momma and Baby Bear

So tonight was Anders' first Halloween party, and our first party with a baby. We purchased Anders' costume about two months ago when we were browsing the baby Gap. He was three months at the time. We figured we should probably go with the 6-12 month costume size if we wanted Anders to fit into it by Halloween. We tried it on him two weeks ago and were worried it might not fit him on Halloween. Luckily, it fit him just right. Our 20 pound five month old...

Our ward was throwing a Halloween party with a costume contest. We kind of wanted to compete, and not be completely lame showing up dressed normally while Anders looked so dang cute. So we decided to copy him and only look a little lame. We were the three bears! Maybe we can be this again next year. David was saying that if Anders keeps his blond hair, he could be "Golden Locks" and if we had another baby (a big "if") he/she could wear Anders costume from this year.

So here we are as the Three Bears from behind. We got little decoration pillows from the craft store for stubby tails.


Happy Papa and Momma Bear, Baby Bear feeling a little too warm.


Momma Bear decided to compete against the other momma's in the ward in the donut eating contest. I would have won, but a piece of my donut fell on the floor. I was debating eating it off the floor and by the time I looked at David and got his stamp of approval for doing it, I was a little too late.


Anders has started hibernating early with the help of Bishop Williams.


He was very stubborn about staying in hibernation mode all the way home. I tried to wake him and he knew I was trying, so he stubbornly squeezed his eyelids closed tighter and refused. He is seriously the funniest little person.


David caught me on video during the donut eating contest. Momma bear has an appetite...haha. Don't judge me!



David also competed in the pie eating contest. He won! It was a close call though. The guy in the lead was quite a bit ahead of David, and then he turned green and had to run to the hall and "spit-up?" all of his pie. No one else was even close to David by the time they were done. So we won a gift card for ice-cream. Or HE won a gift card for ice-cream that will help HIM dote on ME. I didn't realize I had the camera while he was doing the contest or I would have gotten it on camera too.

Fire in the hole!

This is David writing today: So Anders was sitting in the bumbo on the kitchen table while Momma and I were eating lunch today. He learned that he could knock things over... and his favorite was Momma's 1 liter water bottle. He knocked it over the first time and I caught it on the way down and set it back up. I then went back to my sandwich and he knocked it over again...

This time, no catching by me but instead it hit my mini can of Pringles I was eating with my sandwich and catapulted them across the kitchen. Boom! Pringles were flying through the air and Momma and I both couldn't register what had happened. There ended up being Pringles all over the floor with little tiny pieces everywhere from the impact of the water bottle. I looked up at his face... and he had this expression like: Why didn't you pick the bottle back up again for me? What are you doing down on the floor picking up those orange things when you could be setting this back up?

Cute boy! And smart... too smart.

Belly Laughing

The other day when I was in the kitchen doing dishes, I had to resort to all sorts of silly games to keep Anders patiently in his bumbo. I started to bob my head really fast from side to side, which he thought was hilarious because he was too slow to follow me back and forth. So he would stop trying and wait for me to stop and suddenly appear in front of his face. When David got home from work I wanted to show him how funny the game was. David caught the video after Anders had been laughing that hard at me for almost five minutes. It was so funny I could barely breathe. I haven't had such a good laugh in a while. It was definitely a full belly laugh for both of us.

FUGITIVE

We planned a HUGE game of Fugitive for all our married friends. And boy did it take a lot of planning. The first step was the invitations. Most people had never played Fugitive (a type of cops and robbers but for grown-ups) so the invitations had to be amazing or people wouldn't show up. They were custom made by yours truly. Here's one we made for a friend:




The next step was creating an awesome directive for the fugitives and the cops. We had our friends with babies be the cops so that they would be able to play too. The fugitives had five destination points where they were required to take a picture for proof that they went to all 5. The cops knew of the destinations and boundaries but were not allowed to cherry-pick. Couples had to stay together (we didn't want any of the wives to be left alone in the dark because their husbands were too competitive).




Then the day before preparations commenced. I was an over-achiever in my dessert choices. It took us Friday night and almost all day Saturday to make all the desserts so they would look just right.








AND THE WINNER OF ALL THE DESSERTS? STRAWBERRY CAKE BITES


We also put together the photo directory for the cops on Saturday with all the people that RSVPed. Due to rainy weather and BYU, a few people had to drop out of the game just before it started. Three couples came down with something the day of, and two had to cancel because of school projects. We still had 15 couples show for the game, and everyone had a blast!!! David and I were only able to go out and be cops for 20 minutes, but we were able to catch four couples and spot one more before it was time for us to go back home to wait for the first fugitives to start trickling in. Anders was a great cop with us. He fell asleep two minutes after getting into the car. I don't know how he did either because I was the driver and a little bit crazy! I peeled the tires twice because the road was wet, and I would slam on the brakes to let David jump out and chase people down. I even followed a couple around a bank twice because I couldn't figure out who they were. We were very lucky that nobody got hurt!

We had 3 gift card prizes when everyone finally got back to our house. The couple who got back in the fastest amount of time without being caught won the biggest prize (a $25 gift card to Olive Garden). The second prize went to the runner-up couple (a $10 gift card to Coldstone). And there was also a prize that went to the cop with the most points (Two movie tickets).

There is no way Fugitive game night could have happened without the teamwork of David and myself. He was so great to help me make it happen. It is totally do-able for anybody and people just love playing even if there are not desserts and prizes afterward.

Pause Please

Anders is growing up too fast. He is now pushing his elbows into things behind him so that he can sit up. Hasn't quite figured it out so he continually gets into some really interesting positions that get him worked up. I am trying to give him his space though so that he can learn how to do things on his own. It is so hard not to be there to fix everything right away for him, but I have got to learn how to do it now.

Anders loves playing with Daddy! This picture captures it perfectly!!!



The following pictures are of his new hats for the cold weather.





This is the sound that he makes when he is trying to put himself to sleep. He does it the most often while I am getting ready after we shower and he is ready for his first nap of the day. It cracks me up!!! I thought I would get it on camera...so I did catch some of it, but the minute this kid sees the camera (like most babies) he stops everything to stare at the pretty shiny thing.