Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Rub a dub dub, 2 boys in the tub


The boys were having such a great time splashing in the tub this morning. It was one of those rare occasions when they actually seemed to both be having fun at the same time (usually it is Will having fun at Sawyer's expense).

Sawyer now pulls himself up on everything he can find. This drives Will absolutely crazy and whenever he sees Sawyer standing he has to run over and push him backwards.

My mom was supposed to fly in on June 7th in preparation for Megan's wedding. Instead she flew in yesterday night because my grandma had a stroke on Sunday morning. My grandma is doing better than would be expected for a 90 year-old who wasn't in very good health before the stroke. She has regained some movement in the right side of her body and responds to questions although she can't speak. She is supposed to be moved out of the hospital to a rehab center tomorrow. As my cousin said, I think she has 9 lives!

I got sworn into the Utah Supreme Court on Friday. I am now officially an attorney! Oh wait, no I'm not because I put my license on inactive status and they informed me that while on inactive status I can not even refer to myself as an attorney. I'm also not allowed to have a business card, letter head, sign letters as an attorney, or in any other way trick people into believing that I went to law school, passed the bar, and got sworn in. Oh wait, I did do all those things. Hmmmm. If you can't tell I am a little annoyed with the process. For the privilege of calling myself an attorney I would have to pay an extra $200 to be on "active status" on top of the $200 I already paid them for the privilege of not being able to call myself an attorney. So I am currently paying about $200 a year to not work as an attorney. Only lawyers would think of a system that requires you to either pay to use your license or pay not to use it!Here I am signing the roll for the Utah Supreme Court. (Actually it might have been the paper next to it, but you get the idea.)





Here I am not looking amused by the guy telling me that I'm not on "the list"...eventually we determined that I wasn't on the list because I wasn't supposed to be signing in for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah because I am on "inactive status". We could have avoided this confusion if they had mentioned that that was what the "list" was for since I already knew I wasn't supposed to sign for that.


My matchy boys at the so-called reception after the signing in. No offense Utah Bar, but that reception was kind of a let down - about 100 square feet crammed full of people, half of whom were for the business convention going on at the same time, some punch that I declined to try after 3 people in a row took 1 sip and said "Eww, that is gross", and some store-bought unfrosted sugar cookies. Lawyers apparently are not trained to throw parties. My brother Kyle and sister Mollie also attended and suggested that we go to lunch afterwards. The signing-in was at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake so I suggested that we head back to Orem for lunch because I knew where things were down there and thought we might as well get back before rush hour started. This was an unfortunate idea since an accident occurred about 4 miles in front of us on I-15 and we spent over an hour just parked on the highway. It took us about 2 hours and 15 minutes to get from Salt Lake to Orem...with two tired, hungry kids in the car...3 if you count me! The whole thing ended up being a lot more effort than it was worth I'm afraid.

Will informed me the other day that if he "keeps eating lots of different foods he will be a grill (i.e. girl) some day." I told him I didn't think that was likely. Then he changed his mind and said that if he kept trying new foods he would be an octopus. Equally likely, but possibly more socially acceptable.

We were driving somewhere last week and Will was talking to himself in the back seat. It went something like this: "Nacho (Libre) eats tacos and he goes on the potty because he is a big boy. He does not wear diapers." At this point I don't really care who he chooses as a role model if he decides he is ready to start potty training.

Sawyer's first tooth poked through on Saturday. It was his bottom right tooth. Yesterday I noticed that the bottom left tooth has poked through just barely as well. He hasn't been particularly crabby except when it comes time for bed. The last three nights he has started screaming at about 10 and hasn't gone to sleep until 12:30. Hopefully the teething has something to do with it and it will soon go away.

The next month and a half are party central at my house. My mom's birthday is Thursday, mine is 10 days later, my brother Kyle's is the day after, then Father's Day, then Megan's wedding, then my 6th anniversary, then Will's 3rd birthday, then Sawyer's 1st birthday. All within about 7 weeks. Add to that the quarterly Enrichment activity (for the women at Church) that I'm in charge of, 2 wedding receptions, a bridal shower, a trip to Connecticut, and a family reunion in southern Utah and the summer will be more than half over before we know it!

Will is still bottle-free, but a week or so ago he hurt himself and wouldn't stop crying. To try to distract him I told him he could "have a drink out of the bottle" meaning the gatorade bottle on the table. He stopped crying and looked up at me all teary-eyed and said "a bottle?" and I said "well not a baby bottle, this juice bottle" and he took one look at it and burst into tears again. Poor guy. Who knew ditching the bottle would be so traumatic.




Monday, May 05, 2008

Long time, no blog

Let's see...what has happened in the last 3 weeks or so. Megan and Chad changed their wedding date - they are now getting married on June 18 (instead of August 26th). So that has accelerated the plans a bit. Mollie and I are having zero success finding anything to wear as bridesmaids despite extensive internet searches and driving all over Utah Valley. Chad and Megan are both living here in town for the summer.

Sawyer started crawling in the traditional manner about 2 days ago, but if he wants to get somewhere fast he will still revert to "the worm". "The worm" is what Bryce calls the way Sawyer has been crawling for the last 3 weeks. He pushes himself up on his arms and leaves his legs dragging behind him and then launches himself forward onto his chest and then repeats. It looks like someone trying to swim the butterfly stroke on the floor. He can now crawl up the two steps from the family room into the kitchen. He also goes from a crawl to sitting and back and can pull himself to a standing position. He is a happy little guy. I took him for him 9 month check-up last Tuesday. He is about 80th percentile for height and 10th for weight. He didn't cry at all even when they pricked his toe and gave him a shot. Bryce supposed it was because he is used to being beat on by Will. He is definitely more sensitive than Will though. He doesn't like loud noises and will cry if Will gets yelled at or if Will is being wild and screeches in his face. He likes to feed himself little pieces of anything you give him - It is so nice at this age when they aren't picky eaters and will just eat whatever you put in front of them.

Will got his first bicycle on Saturday. We were planning on getting it for his birthday, but since the weather warmed up Will has been having daily meltdowns because all the neighborhood kids are out riding bikes and he doesn't have one. He didn't even have a tricycle or anything so we gave in and got him one. We are an easy sell obviously. Bryce helped him pick out a little red and blue bike and we got him a Lightning McQueen helmet which he now wears for all dangerous activities such as eating dinner and watching cartoons. I thought he was a little young to grasp the whole pedaling, steering, braking concept, but I guess I was wrong because he is already pretty good. We let him go out for about an hour the night we got home with the bike and by the end he could pedal if you helped him get started and kind of knew how to steer. I tried to teach him how to brake, but he kept telling me "No Mom! Bicycles never stop!" When he woke up yesterday he came into our bedroom and wanted to go ride his bike. He kept saying "I need to keep practicing!" After lots of nagging, he went out for another hour or so yesterday and can now pedal on his own and brake hard enough to leave a skid mark on the sidewalk (which he then showed off to Mollie and her boyfriend - he's very proud of that skid mark). He looks like such a big boy riding his bike down the sidewalk!

I was using the computer the other day and Will wanted to use it because he needed to "do some work". I told him no and he yelled at me "No Mom! Go find Bryce or somethin!"

Mollie and the kids and I were at a bridal store looking for bridesmaid dresses. We were unsuccessful and as we were walking out through all the wedding dresses Will announced "I would like a little dress Mommy." A woman standing nearby responded "I had one just like him....(pause)...he's perfectly normal now though!"

As you can read by clicking on the link to Mollie's blog, Mollie ripped her pants when she was at my house the other day. When she left that day Will shouted "See you later Mollie! Don't rip your pants!" It has become his standard farewell now. Bryce left for work the other morning and Will said "Bye Daddy! Don't rip your pants." My cousin stopped in the other day and when she left Will shouted "Bye Lizzie! Don't rip your pants!" (which made even less sense since she was wearing a skirt). I guess it is good advice for anyone.

I can't remember if I previously posted this one...a few weeks ago Will had once again gotten out every toy he owned and scattered them around the family room. I told him that he needed to clean up and as usual he said "No!" I told him again and he said "I can't Mommy!" I said, "I'm pretty sure you can Will - you need to pick up these toys" and he replied "No I can't Mommy! It's in my story - Will can't pick up toys!" This only makes sense if you have ever seen the show Super Why in which fairy tale characters frequently lament that they cannot take certain courses of action because it says otherwise in their stories.

Will is officially done with bottles. He hasn't had one in about 3 weeks. When he gets upset, or hurts himself, or doesn't feel well he still asks for one though. Like yesterday in church when he just kept crying "I need a bottle....I'm a baby...Babies use bottles..." He never had a blanket or stuffed animal or something so it is his security item and it seems kind of harsh to just refuse it, but I have to take him to the dentist this week (an event which Will is inexplicably excited about) and I didn't want to have to tell the dentist that my almost 3 year-old still wanders around with a bottle hanging out of his mouth. Sawyer, however, is starting to drink pretty well out of a sippy cup so we are just going to skip bottles all together with him.

My camera memory cards are all full and I don't dare delete them because of an unfortunate incident involving all the pics of Will's first year of life being lost from the computer where they were saved prior to the last time I deleted pictures off of a memory card--so the result is that I don't really have pictures for this post. I did find this one recent picture though: This is how Will "plays" with Sawyer.