Funny – Page 3 – Jacob and Marcia

It is a big day for us Marcias

Well, it’s not really any different from other days. But today, today I, Marcia the elder, have held Marcia the younger in my arms as many days as I held her inside mee. My how time flies. This little girl has accomplished so many tasks in these short 37 weeks and 4 days. (I believe it is a big day for Jacob too, he just was at the university or high school during the picture and video sessions.)

She was walking all around the office. I had given her some puffed rice to snack on, with mee in the room I was able to keep an eye on her. While she is good with the walker, I am still quicker. I was watching her, she was eating and loving her freedom. Before my eyes, she got sleepy. No whining or crying, though she was happy I picked her up to lay her down.

Here are some of the pictures taken during the first video. And one that she wanted taken of mee. I figure I ought to include myself at least once in a while.

First video was recorded to capture Marcia’s reaction to seeing her pictures. The second is to showcase her self-feeding skills. The videos are not really “thrilling” and I know that many people get bored of seeing baby videos, but I am happy with what she can do and figure that any grandparents or aunts/uncles or cousins Nana might be interested.

When I checked, YouTube had aborted the video. No reasons, just did. So now, 18 hours and 14 restarts later here is the second video.

She has seven teeth, I can see the eighth right under the gums.
Her favorite color seems to still be red, though I do have some neon yellow fabric that she loves to play with.
She LOVES music.
She is always trying to take the camera or phone. Always is not allowed to do so. Always complains about that.
She is ticklish, and has an amazing laugh!
She pulls herself up on everything she can, she tried to climb up the outside of the walker this evening.
She likes to walk if some body holds her hands. Once she figures out balance, there will be no stopping her.
She claps when she approves, or hears the words “good job.” No matter who did the good job.
She claps when we get her out of the crib after naps.
She loves to look in the mirror. Especially right after napping. She smiles and talks and claps for the baby in the mirror, which I am sure she knows is herself (for a while now).
She roams all over her crib. Standing, sitting, laying. She does all that on her own. She also moves a lot in her sleep.
She loves taking a bath. She stands and sits and crawls all over the tub. She would probably live in there if we would let her.
She likes to eat. Her favorite foods thus far are butternut squash, puffed brown rice, and bananas. I think she would eat anything if I mixed it with bananas. She has not yet rejected anything, however the food she has been least thrilled with is apple. We are also now on the look out for sensitivities to that with a second attempt, after a break.
We have been working on ASL signs. She seems to understand the ones we use most. She has been able to consistently make her version of “more,” “food,” “done,” “what,” and just today I saw her do “milk.”
She loves to bounce. Jacob likes to tell people that “just like a puppy, you can tell how happy she is by how much her butt wiggles.”

Marcia is “independant”

Or so she would have us believe….

Marcia likes to eat. Marcia likes to eat bananas. Marcia likes to feed herself. She has trouble picking up small pieces of banana, so I let her have a big piece of it. This is what she did. I thought she was done, then she started to have more fun, thus the two clips together. I hope you enjoy. Just so you are forewarned, the video is about six minutes long.

After she was done, I cleaned quite a bit of mashed banana off the floor. And Marcia needed a bath, in which, she crawled all over and stood and sat and played and chased her rubber ducky and foam letters all around the tub. She sure is a fun and busy little girl!

Now for a few still shots:

I was working on a sewing project and Marcia was playing with toys in the middle of the floor. I heard her squawk for attention. I turned around and discovered that she had gone exploring. This is how I found her.

Once she saw she had my attention, she was happy.

And this last Sunday Jared (one of Jacob’s brothers) was set apart and left on Wednesday for to serve a mission. Marcia will certainly miss him. We all will.

We are still here

Enjoy the latest antics!

Also, Happy Anniversary Ryan and Anissa!

Our little girl has begun

many things. This one makes mee laugh a lot!

Dreams

A couple of months ago, I had a dream, which started quite normal.

We were attending a friend’s wedding and we were dressed up pretty nicely. (In the start of this dream I did not appear to be with child.) We were asked to go and check on flowers or something to make sure it would be ready for the ceremony to start. We needed to pass through an indoor pool room to check on what ever the thing was. As we walked by the pool, some teenage boys decided it would be fun to see if they could get us wet. Well, when I looked down to see if my dress was wet, I saw something starting to move in my abdomen. I thought that was odd, I had not eaten recently, so it couldn’t likely be indigestion. There was stronger movement, and I saw a distinct foot outline on my stomach. So I got out my camera to take a picture, and before I could push the shutter button, there were 3 strong movements again, and out of my belly popped a foot. This foot was sticking out past the knee and would not relax. We searched all over to find any doctors we could, in hopes that they could figure out how to get the leg back where it belongs. I woke up at this point, with the baby’s leg still sticking out of mee.

When I was awake, I found myself holding my hands as if I was holding the leg, just as I had done in the dream, and there were strong movements/kicks right where I felt them in the dream. Boy was that trippy!

So, Halloween was this last weekend, and I was trying to think of what I wanted to do for a costume. Many people gave ideas, some fun, some cheesy, some I was not interested in at all. I started thinking about how hard it would be to make it look like the alien from Alien. Then it occurred to mee, I had that dream. I could sew a leg. I could make at least one dream become a reality. So I did.

footbellypractice

Jacob said there was a little something missing, blood.

footbellyfinal

It did seem to add that little extra umph. The best comment of the night was when a cute kid (not really yelling, but speaking quite forcefully) said, “Why is there a foot in your belly?” I couldn’t help but laugh as I tried to explain that it is not real. And even better is that every time I laughed, the leg would kick around. It was fun!

And because I love him, here is a picture of Husband, and (fake) baby foot*.

footbellyjacob

And the weekly count down has arrived again. 35 weeks down, 5 to go. Here is what is probably my favorite picture from this weeks photo shoot:

bellyshot35weeks

I sure do love my monkey footie pajamas! Now if only I could find some in Copyright sizes…and if Jacob were willing to wear a pair of them as well, we could have a fun family picture in a couple months.

*Foot is also some times known as fot, this developed when one of the ultrasound pictures, that refused to show us if Copyright is a boy or a girl, was labeled with a fot in stead of a foot.

Ch…ch…ch…changes

Here is a picture of my current condition. 26 weeks.

2010 08 31 26weeks bellyshot

Funny story. A few days ago, I was standing next to Jacob. He was sitting on his computer chair. I turned to walk away, and hit him with my belly. I wonder if I will get used to this belly sticking out so far. And if I do, I wonder how long it will take to get used to not having such a big belly after Copyright is born. Time will tell.

Today was a productive sewing day. I was able to sew a dress, I had already cut it out. And I was able to turn a t-shirt into a half-shirt (someone makes and sells them as half-tees, I think). I have heard great reviews on them, and so I decided to make one and see what I think. I think it will work well for layering.

We got to see and hear little Copyright

If you were not able to get your guess posted, you still have time. Like 3 months* to make your guess.

Little Copyright was not as cooperative as we would have liked. So, no, we still do not know if this baby is a boy or a girl**. Copyright kept legs closed and while we did not learn that, we did learn other things.

We learned that this child is definitely ours***. This child is modest (takes after mom). This child is stubborn (takes after dad, okay takes after mom too). This child is healthy. All the other parts were there, in their proper places, and measured well. Heart beats properly.

I had to laugh as we saw the baby’s face. Copyright was sucking, and as a result we saw the tongue go in and out. It was like it was sticking its tongue out at us for wanting to know the sex. In all seriousness, it was really cool to watch.

*Unless we can find a way to have another ultrasound somewhere before that. Preferably not very costly, and if at all possible some 3D ultrasounds would be fun to see.
**Which totally presents us with the enormous challenge of agreeing on names for both a boy and a girl. We were hoping to only have to figure out one name.
***This child is not a lizard.

I want them to go faster and louder

Almost a month ago (July 6-8) we had our first house guests in our new home. They are such fun three (and-a-half) year olds. I think they left wanting more. Which means they will be happy to come stay again!

They arrived and I showed them where to find the toy box in this house, and we had our was-a-stove-box-converted-house ready for them to play in. G3 said, “We love ours house in yours house, Marcia!” Yay a successful play-house.

Here is a picture of them playing with the toys from the toy box, the hand-cuffs are from our Halloween costumes when we were prisoners. (We keep the other set out of reach of children, thank you very much.) At some point during this playtime, G2 told us, “Daddy smokes. I like him smoking.” Her daddy does not smoke.

First item on the schedule was to get in the car and travel to a drum corps show. G3 fell asleep in the car before we left town.

G2 said, “I am not going to sleep, I want to be awake.” I told her that was fine.

Then not ten minutes later she did not answer when I asked her a question, and this is what I saw.

It was raining when we got to the show location, and we were hoping that it would have stopped, so while the girls and I sat in the car and ate the food we brought, Jacob went to see if the show was going to be cancelled or moved indoors. (We had already purchased our tickets.) The answer was that it looked like the rain would stop soon, and we would wait and the show would just be delayed a bit. So, we went in and waited under the shelter of the bleachers. We had to entertain ourselves. Only when making this post did I notice the sunglasses; I did not see them like that when this was taken.

G3 helped G2 fix her skirt (which is a very cute skirt, btw).

They found drips coming from empty rivet holes.

G3 wanted her picture taken too. And just so you know, that is not a tear under her eye, it is a water drop.

Here is G3 sitting on Jacob’s lap watching the show.

Here is G2 sitting on my lap watching the show. After a while, she wanted to switch places with G3 because 1) the guy in front of us was very VERY tall and 2) my lap was/is not as big as it used to be, she had to share with her unborn cousin.

Here is a picture of the first corps that performed. They won their category/class. And as a special treat that guy there in the front ensemble is/was one of Jacob’s pitt students. We are proud of Jason, he played good.

We enjoyed this pretty sunset over the performances. ( I just realized that could mean that we preferred the sunset, that is not what I intended to say.)

We had arrived right as the show was supposed to start, and we could not see the corps busses. We had brought a lot of fruit with us to donate to Jason’s corps and we did not want to take all that fruit home with us, lest it go to waste. So when the shows were all done we drove around and found where the corps buses were parked, and Jacob went in search of someone we could give the fruit to. This was after 10 pm and the girls were tired, but very well behaved. In fact, all the people that were sitting around us were very complimentary of how well they behaved and were impressed that they watched the shows. G2 at one point told mee that one of the corps was going too slow and needed to be faster and louder. Both girls were in awe of the flags (color guard). If there had been any souvenir flags they would have been able to go home with their very own flags. Fruit delivered, and we started our two-ish hour drive home. They fell asleep in the car pretty quickly.

The next morning while I was walking (the girls were still asleep when I left, but insisted that they go walk with mee the next morning) Jacob got pancakes going. After breakfast, the girls took a BUBBLE BATH in my “tiny tub.”

While they were in the tub, their happy-things took a bath too. A very much so needed bath. Don’t tell Ronda that I let them have Happys with them at the drum corps show, but I did and they dropped them a number of times in the rain puddles, and may or may not have dropped them on the floor in the (public) bathroom when they took turns before getting back in the car to head home. Once it was clean, G3 told mee that she was unable to chew on her happy because it was clean. She makes me laugh!

After the bath they wanted to watch a movie in “ours house in yours house.” (Jacob thinks it is funny that the first thing they did when they started playing with the house was to find the object that was too big and try to get it in the door! We all do it at least once with our own homes, right?)

What did they watch? “Mahana you ugly, get down from that tree!” “Do you want Johnny Lingo to see what a disobedient daughter you are?”

They watched all but the last 3ish minutes of the movie. Then on to another activity.

I let them paint their own nails with what ever color(s) they wanted. They had fun. G3, “Boys can’t paint theirs nails!”

G3 first picture, G2 second picture. (In case you couldn’t have figured it out by the colors they chose.) I offered to paint G2’s right thumb nail, but she insisted she did not want that one painted. Well, okay then.

Lunch time, they asked if I would make them oatmeal, because G3 told mee, “Oatmeal is ours favorite food.”

G2 had her apple slices and cheese all lined up-I suspect we are related.

G2 right at the end of lunch told mee, “Marcia, I am tired, I want to lay down.” I gave her permission, and G3 followed her in and five minutes or so later they were out. About three and a half hours later they were still sleeping, and this is what we saw.

Somehow G2 turned into Dora. They slept for about four hours and 15-30 minutes. I guess we did a good job of keeping them entertained. When they woke up they stayed in there talking for a few minutes and then came out and asked if they could have another bubble bath! I would have let them if we weren’t headed out the door. We went over to Jacob’s parents’ house and they had a lot of fun pillow fighting with the adults. I wish I had taken pictures of that, or even video would have been great!

They went to bed, and before falling asleep double checked with mee that they can walk with mee in the morning with my friend, right?

They walked a mile with us before sitting on the track playing.

I let them take another bubble bath. They loved that, maybe for a birthday or something they need bubble bath soap. While making stacks of toys that I let them use in the tub, I heard G2 say to G3, “G3 do you know I love you, you is my best friend. Don’t put that on mine!” They got out of the tub just in time to start playing when Grammy, Ronda, G1, and G4 arrived to pick them up. We all had lunch and then they went on their way.

We really had fun having the girls here, maybe it can become a sort of tradition? What think you?

The post you have all been waiting for (well, some of you)

Our last post indicated that we were working on securing a mortgage. We did it!!! Hooray for us!! And (finally) thank you taxes! We qualified for the first time homebuyer’s tax credit. We have a home to call our own, we are very excited about this.

Monday the 14th of June (Miss Emily’s birthday) we closed circa 2:45pm (when all was signed and done). We walked straight over to the post office to mail out our “address change” cards to many people. This is why we asked for any addresses if people wanted one…. This is what it looks like:

annhousepageone

Okay, so it looked a bit different, because on what we mailed out had our actual address. However as previously stated, we are not posting our address on here. If you need/want our address, we can email it to you, but only if you ask, otherwise we don’t know we need to get it to you, and if we do not have your address you are responsible for getting it to us.

And for those who were/are unaware that there is a second page to the card, this is what it contains (unaltered):

annhousepagetwo

So there you have it folks!!! We are very excited and (as one of us likes to put it ) “a little bit terrified.”

It was kind of a sneaky maneuver to announce our news this way. Especially since I (Marcia) went camping with our young women for the rest of the week. We acknowledge that. We had good reason for it though. Originally we had set the closing date for when I was going to be camping, as soon as we realized that, we changed it for the day before I left. We also wanted to be sure that we had everything finished with purchasing the house before we announced the pending arrival of Copyright 2010. (And just because I want to explain my taking so long in making this post) We have been packing/unpacking/moving/cleaning/etc for the last half of June, and only this morning did we finally get around to setting up my computer. There, I said it, and I feel justified! And I am pregnant, so don’t make mee cry.

? ? ? F A Q ? ? ?

We get asked many questions with both of these big events happening in our lives. We have decided to do an FAQ (frequently asked questions) list:

Q: When are you going to move?

A: We have moved all of our belongings out of the house we rented and into our new house. We had our family help us. This process was started while I was at camp. I thought that was good timing, and because I have not been too incredibly useful, I figured it would work out better if I could just pack and have as much ready before hand and let them work while I was out of town.

Q: Are you all moved in?

A: That is a tricky question. All of our stuff is in the house, however much of it is still in boxes. We have been sleeping here and unpacking. I would not say we are “moved in” yet, I am not sure what the true definition would be for us to be in that state. Though because most of the boxes are in Copyright’s room, we have to be un-packed enough by the time December comes around.

Q: When can I come see your house?

A: Never, the date is past. We held an Open “empty” House the evening we closed. So I am partly kidding about the “never” part. We will not be holding another “open house” and we do request that if people want to come see it, that they set up an appointment (I hate the Tuesdays), so as to allow us to be home, and hopefully a little more moved in. We are after all living here now. Be considerate about it.

Q: How much work do you have to do on the house? (Also stated as: now you get to have fun fixing up the house)

A: Actually we don’t have to do any work on the house other than unpacking. We did have to get a fridge, stove, washer/dryer, and that is about it. The good people we bought it from gutted the house and made it like new with new cabinets, paint, toilets, roof, plumbing, wiring, everything really! We did get to pick out the carpet for the living room and flooring for the kitchen and bathroom.

That said, there is a detached garage with apartment space above it that needs quite a bit of work before it’s really useful, so that will be fun, but it isn’t something we have to do before we can live here.

Q: Did you buy the house because you are having a baby?

A: No we are having a baby because we now have a house. Joking. We pretty much decided to buy the house before we knew about being pregnant. This is a house we saw about a year and a half ago when it was in foreclosure, we loved it, we talked to the bank about making an offer. Then we were told some one else made an offer and that offer was accepted. Some months later (just over a year ago) we were presented with the opportunity to buy the same house, and it had been “gutted” and was in progress of being fixed up (when it was in foreclosure, the people trashed the house, on top of apparently not taking good care of it at all anyhow). We thought it over and agonized and had to turn down that offer. We did not feel like we could live in a “construction zone.” Earlier this year as Jacob was at the university in his office, he had a visitor and we were again offered the house, this time all the work would be finished and it would be move-in ready. We verbally expressed interest February, talked over details in March, signed a contract in April, and closed in June. We knew about the baby in March and test confirmed in April.

Q: I thought you never wanted to have children. (not really a question, and mostly directed at Jacob)

A: All bark and no bite. He claimed that until it happened he reserved the right to say that. In reality, we are very excited. And of course there is a bit of anxiety in the unknown. Will our baby be cute? Who will the baby look like? When do they toilet train? They don’t already know how to tie shoes? Things like that. However any person that said that to mee, doesn’t really know mee.

Q: When is the due date?

A: December 2010. Doctor’s office says the 7^th based on LMP. I say the 6^th based on ovulation.

Q: Is that a really sonogram or is it photoshopped?

A: It is really a picture from my uterus. Should it really be called a picture, it is an image created by sound waves aimed at my uterus.

Q: Are you having a boy or a girl?

A: We don’t know for sure. Based on biology and time and the moon and the stars aligning and the atmospheric pressure we suspect it will be a girl. However we have to wait about ten more weeks before my doctor will check it out.

Q: What do you want to have? (generally this immediately follows the last question)

A: A healthy human baby. I know they mean sex of the baby. Really though, I will be happy as long as everything goes well. I would love a son or a daughter. I would definitely be disappointed if it was not human.

Q: Do you want to find out the sex of the baby? (a number of people say gender, however there is a very important difference in the words, and for some odd reason it falls under my pet peeves category-sex is male or female, gender is masculine or feminine)

A: I would be okay with either knowing or being surprised, a surprise could be fun, though so could knowing and planning. Jacob wants to know. We will find out if we can. We really are planners and like to be prepared.

Q: Have you been sick at all? (directed at mee since no one suspected, except in hindsight, and we only told doctors and we were surprised at how people had finally stopped asking when we were going to have a baby)

A: Jacob responds with, “Have you not been sick at all?” I have had lots of not feeling well. I did really well with not vomiting, though there was lots of nausea, still is some, though not as constant. Then I got a sinus infection, drainage started and the vomiting commenced. I could probably win a contest for puking on command. Is there a super hero yet?

Q: Have you had any cravings?

A: Hmmm, cravings…. Not too many cravings. Mostly I have aversions. Sugar is the biggest offender at this time, unless it is counter balanced with other healthier foods. I can’t eat lettuce, and the vinegar in most condiments gives me issue. Yesterday I really wanted garlic bread, it was delicious to mee. One day I wanted potato chips (I don’t like potato chips, I like corn chips) in three flavors BBQ, Cheddar, French Onion; I did not get them, but I could taste them in my mind, and I wanted them. Early on I had a strong craving for Chef Boyardee canned ravioli; that stuff is nasty and I refused to listen to that craving.

Q: Are you (or “you are”) going to have fun shopping for maternity clothes?

A: If I liked shopping maybe that would be appealing. However I am short and it has never been fun to shop for clothes, for mee. Also, last year I lost over 60 pounds, and I did not get rid of those clothes (I know you are never supposed to keep “fat clothes” but I did). And there were some of those clothes that I like, and frankly I don’t want to spend money on temporary clothes. And there is the fact that we now have a mortgage to pay, and I don’t think there is a shopping spree in the future of our budget.

If we remember (or any other questions start to come up) other questions we get asked we will answer them.

We are so excited

So, yesterday was a big day for us. We were able to secure more “stuff” aka paperwork, exchange money for goods, etc. in order to be able to own a mortgage. Yay for us!

We (Jacob joined mee last night) went to Wally World again and obtained two more carts full of boxes. We went some time after midnight, and the really good boxes appear for availability around 1a.m. (so I guess it could be considered this morning).

We have been married for just over three and a half years, and have many times tried to set a scripture study habit. We have tried to read from front to back, to have a different topic each day of the week, to do some other things that did not prove to be keep-ables. However yesterday, we finished reading the Book of Mormon, in its entirety, together!!! The strategy this time, was that I wrote (actually I typed it on the computer and printed it out) each chapter and had them in a jar, that we have been drawing at random for each day, sometimes more than one chapter if it happens to be quite short. Honestly, it has been very fun to go about it this way. We already have studied all the stories in there through out our lives, and so as we have been reading this way we end up jumping all over the place. This keeps all the stories fresher in our minds. And as an added bonus, we had the privilege a few weeks ago to attend the annual Seminary Vs Bishopric Scripture Bowl. There is a Jeopardy style portion and a match the scripture with the content portion (for the first time in 10 or so years, the bishopric beat the youth in the jeopardy portion, though they youth won big time with the memory portion). Anydangways, the point of telling about that event is that as we watched them, it seemed as though we had “just read that story” about each of the stories! It was a really nice feeling.

And totally not from yesterday, but a few weeks ago…. A bit of back story. We have two cars. We only drive one car. We have had the other car on the donut for a number of months, because we needed to buy a new tire. Then another tire when flat. And the battery probably needs replacing. And some other thing that makes us “afraid” to drive it out of town, or over 35-40 mph else-ways a couple wheels may fall off. So, it is sitting on the donut, and the wheel with the flat tire that needs replacing, has been leaning upside the porch. One day I went out to do something, and noticed that it was gone, and there was no plant life growing in its place just yet, so it was a fresh disappearance. This morning I wanted to use my hand trowel thing, and it was no where to be seen. I had suspected it missing when the wheel went, though I did not look for it until today when I wanted to use it. Now we are left with two questions: How do we (or even just “do we”) buy a new wheel? and Who steals a wheel and a trowel? All I can figure is that some one must have had a greater need for it than us. And If you see a new plant display in a Honda wheel…well, if I see one, I will laugh. I think we have been laughing about it too much to find a way to be upset over it.