This Might Take a While.

I keep getting requests for a blog update. I promise that I don’t really do anything cool, at least I don’t think it is cool enough to write about. I guess that is my problem. My day to day life doesn’t excite me all that much so I assume that it wouldn’t excite anyone else either. I could be wrong.
I will try my best to recap the last month and a half for you in the next few paragraphs.
We have been working a lot on the house. The new AC/heating unit is in. I love it. I have only had to use it a few times because it is supposed to be 80 degrees on Halloween so we don’t really require much in the way of heat yet. We ordered our new windows also. I had a nearly four week long fight with Home Depot in order to get my 20% discount that I was supposed to get in the beginning. It was a mess, but I won. The windows should be delivered in the next week or two. As for when they will be installed…I don’t know. But at least we will have them when we are ready to put them in. We took down the large bookcase in our living room and put our new computer armoire in its place. I really live the armoire and I am glad that I could get the computer out of my bedroom. Walter and Thad replaced the wiring in a good portion of the house. It was the old cloth wiring that was just a fire waiting to happen. Luckily, it is now replaced and we don’t have to worry about our house burning down. We took the heater out of the wall that was between the baby’s room and the guest room and replaced the wall. It still needs to be plastered and painted but at least it is a solid wall now and we don’t have the weird paneling that we used to have in the babies room. I think that is it for the house except for a few minor changes. I would put pictures up but nothing that is completed is really picture worthy. Do you want me to take a picture of the wiring? Maybe a nice pic of the air conditioner? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
The little boy is doing wonderful. He is talking like crazy. I love the he is getting to the point that he can actually ask me for things that he wants. It is always such a struggle when they don’t speak and you are trying to play a game of charades with a little person that isn’t very good with their hands. He is pretty good at both English and Spanish. Well, he is as good as you can be for a 15 month old. When I get a chance I will write down all of the words that he knows. He also started putting words together to make mini sentences. This doesn’t seem like a big accomplishment but it is a milestone for babies. He is still walking around like crazy. He has started to run now as well. He thinks he is soooooo fast. And, his new favorite game is peek-a-boo. The only problem is that he covers his ears instead of his eyes. He really thinks you can’t see him. It is hilarious. He will also try to say peek-a-boo but he isn’t very good. It sounds more like bee-boo.
The other big change is the addition of Baby Kate to our daytime routine. For those of you that don’t know who Kate is, she is Corinne’s little girl. For those of you who don’t know who Corinne is, she works with Walter and Renee, she is Laurel Kowssar’s daughter-in-law (Laurel is in our ward), she was the camp nurse at Girl’s Camp for a couple years, and so on. I am sure there are other connections I could make, but it is late and I am a bit short on ideas. Anyway, Kate is 4.5 months old. She is a good baby and Little Walter loves her. He gives her hugs and kisses ALL THE TIME. She is really good with tolerating his affections most of the time. Occasionally, she gets a little tired of him but it usually takes 10-15 hugs/kisses before she gets fed up. Little Walter also tries to help her but ends up sabotaging her more than anything else. For example, he likes to take her pacifier and hand it to me. It doesn’t matter that he had to take it out of her mouth. He just wanted to make sure she didn’t lose it. Sweet, right?
Well, I think that is about it. We are all doing well. The two baby thing is tricky but we are figuring it out okay. As always, I will try to be better at updating. But, as always, I might just fail at that.
P.S. Little Walter is going to be a monkey for Halloween, I will be “thing 2” from Dr. Seuss and Walter will be something that has yet to be determined. I will take some pics.


This is a picture of the rash that the baby had a few weeks back. It was an allergic reaction to something unknown. It was quite scary.











He is pretty hard core with he saggy pants. I guess this is supposed to work better with boxers than a diaper. Whatever.








This is Walter and baby Kate. They quite like one another.









One day he wouldn't get out of his crib and wanted every one of his stuffed animals in with him.












Forget that saggy pants thing. The saggy diaper is totally hip. I was sewing a button back on his shirt and since his shirt was off he kept trying to take off his pants as well. Unfortunately, the diaper came with it.

The guys in their Big Guy/ Little Guy shirts.

We like to call this one blue steel. There is more to life than being really, really ridiculously good looking.

The Walker

Well, I am a little sore today so I won't write much. First Brittany tried to kill me with pilates yesterday morning, then Renee tried to kill me with a nearly hour long walk last night. They're crazy.

Anyway, here is a video of Walter walking. Now you can see for yourselves. The rest are just a few recent pics.














Walter decided he wanted to eat a roma tomato. The problem is that he wanted to eat it whole.










Yes, he is crawling with one hand in each cake pan. He lifts his legs, but scoots his hands across the ground so he doesn't lose whatever it is he is holding.










Here he is walking on his knees. It looks a little painful to me but he will put his hands up and walk around on his knees.









He has discovered a new love of boxes. They are the greatest toy. he decided to plop himself right down in my box from target. Target box=cheap toy. Love it.

Done!

Walter finished his MBA. Yahoo!!! That is the big news with us lately. He finished his classes last Thursday and did really well. He got an A and an A- on his two classes this quarter. I am very proud. He won’t get the actual diploma for a few weeks because they make sure he is done before they send those out, but he is done. His transcripts even say so. Now we are just trying to figure out if he is going to go back to school again.
I know, I know. Why would the guy with the MBA want to go back again? Well, he doesn’t really want to go back, but it might be a great career move if he does. He is looking in to two different programs. The one at CSUB is the “Master’s in Public Administration-Health Care Management” and the one at University of LaVerne is “Master’s in Health Administration”. He is going to find out if either of the programs will accept classes from the MBA as electives and then he won’t have to take as many classes. I think the program that accepts the most classes might be the one we go with. Who would want to be in school longer than necessary? Not Walter.
The reason he wants to go back is because he will need this degree to move up the ranks in the Hospital system. He could do well with degrees he has but couldn’t be the big boss. Since all of the big bosses will be retiring in the next 5-10 years he will have some opportunities to move up and wouldn’t want to get passed up just because he doesn’t have this degree.
It is all still up in the air, but we will let you know as things come to fruition.
Little Walter is doing well. He hasn’t graduated from anything, but we are still proud. He is talking more and more. We went to the grocery store yesterday and he kept asking for “ball, ball, ball, ball, ball” while pointing at the balloons. I didn’t realize he cared about balloons, but I guess he does. Cookie is still his favorite word. However, I think that is mainly because everything he wants to eat is a cookie. Pudding=cookie, goldfish crackers=cookie, graham crackers=cookie, kiwi=cookie. Since we don’t usually know what cookie means we just let him crawl over to the pantry and pick something out. That is much easier than picking up each item to see if he shakes his head at it.
He still isn’t walking much. He is getting better and is becoming steadier on his feet, but he just doesn’t want to walk around. He still walks to you if you are close by and will walk between pieces of furniture, but that is about it. I think he has turned his energy from walking to yelling. He won’t walk for you but he will scream at you. It is usually in a loud, high-pitched screech. Lots of fun.
Now for the Stefanie update. I am now unemployed. That is the reason that I am updating. I actually have time. The last few weeks I have been at the office almost every day. I would work in the office in the mornings, take care of the boy, take care of the house and a days worth of chores, run a full day worth of errands, make dinner, etc. in the few hours I had in the afternoon plus I would still do work from home. It was tiring, but it is now over. I feel so much less stress now that I don’t have to check e-mail and voicemail constantly. My biggest issue now if trying to workout a routine that doesn’t involve work. Friday was my first non-work day and it was great. I actually got chores done. I never thought I would be so excited about chores.
Not much else and no picture to share. We set up our new computer and I don’t know if it has the software for the camera on it. I will put up a post with pictures soon.

Feeding the Cravings

I decided to be a good wife and get the laundry done this afternoon. Our washer and dryer are in the garage so I have to distract the baby for a second and run out the door before he can catch me in order to accomplish this task. He always follows me and usually stands at the door in the kitchen that leads outside knocking until I come back in.

Today, however, was a little different. I went outside and he followed me to the door as usual. He yelled and knocked for a few seconds and then he was silent. Upon my return to the kitchen I found him partaking of a little tasty treat that we had just thrown out. He really is gross.

Happy Birthday, Baby!!!

Today is Walter IV's first birthday. I can not believe it has already been a year. He seems to have done well so far this year so we think we might keep him. : )



Here are a few pics from his birthday party. It was just a small affair with the family. Too bad that ended up being 23 people. I guess I should resign myself to the fact that we will never do anything small. I will admit it is more fun to have all of the people around.
















The next two pics are not from the party but they are recent and cute.

Vaca and Other Stuff

It has, once again, been a LONG time since I have posted. In the last month we have had July 4th, I quit my job with Weight Watchers (My last day at CSUB will be Aug. 30), we went on family vacation, Walter got his grad check back and he will graduate Aug. 29, the baby is working on 2 more teeth, the baby also had his first real illness and went to the ER, and today my parents are on their way to Bakersfield and we will have Little Walter's first birthday party tomorrow. There was some other stuff mixed in there as well but when you only post once a month it make it easy to forget.

This month has been pretty busy but a ton of fun. This was Little Walter's first fourth of July. He enjoyed most of the fireworks but fell asleep toward the end. How do you fall asleep during a fireworks show? I still haven't figured that one out, but he did it.

On the 6th Kelsie and Cameron got to California. We didn't see them until the 7th when we were all down in LA to go to the Temple with Bobby for his first time. It was great to have the whole family there. The Temple is so peaceful and beautiful that you can easily forget that you are in the heart of Los Angeles.

On the 10th we took family pictures. I don't know who invited the babies to come but they made that picture taking very difficult. I guess it wouldn't really be right to not have them there but can't we just photoshop them in next year?

The 12-14th was mostly grocery shopping and packing for vacation. I can not believe how much food we needed to get. I got a definite work out lifting all of that stuff in and out of the cart. A little girl as FoodMaxx even commented on how full our cart was and that wasn't even 1/2 of the food.

July 14th was the first day of vaca. We drove to Morro Bay and got situated in the house. It was really nice and very close to the beach. Plenty of room for everyone. Well, everyone but Bobby. He had this weird loft bedroom. The ceiling was maybe 4 ft. high at the tallest spot. It was weird, but it had a bed so he made due. Poor Andi was sick to begin with and by Sunday Bradon, Brittany and Bobby were all feeling the effects of some weird bug. Wednesday Little Walter was sick. He was running a fever of 103 and he cried uncontrollably. I am not used to him being sick so I didn't know what to do. We decided to take him to the ER because we didn't know what to do with him and how to make him better. I have to say it was the BEST emergency room experience of my life. Next time I need to go to the ER I am driving to San Luis Obispo and going to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center. We walked in the doors at 5pm and we were discharge by 7pm. And in that time they gave the baby meds, drew labs and got the lab results back and we saw the doctor twice. Two hours in and emergency room is just unheard of. The coolest part is that the doctor was named Cinnamon Redd, M.D. It made me giggle to think that my son was being treated by someone named Cinnamon, but she was great.

Cameron got sick toward the end of the week and he had it worse than anyone. I guess he doesn't get sick very often but he might want to start. He really needs to build up an immunity.

We got home on the 21st and went back to life as usual. Work for me. Work and School for Walter. Church. The usual.

Here are a few pictures from this month. I will post some of the birthday party after we have it.

I owe you one

It appears that my attempt to update more reguarly has not gone so well. I have several weeks worth of information to share. Luckily, (for everyone but me) not much happened so it won't take long to update.

I have been working on the world's worst project for work. Due to circumstances beyond my control I have had to redo almost an entire year's worth of work. Everything from 7-1-06 to 5-18-07 had to be redone. The best part...I had about a week and a half to do it. It was horrible. I can take comfort in the fact that there were people at every Cal State campus doing the same thing but that didn't make it any more fun. I finally finished on Monday and have now been working on everything that I neglected the last to weeks while I was focused on this other project. It is a vicious cycle. So, after that project was done I promptly put in my notice and told my job I would be quitting soon. I tried to have my last day be July 13 but that didn't work for them I guess. So, for now my last day is Sept. 1 but hopefully that will change and I can be out of there sooner. There are a few things that need to happen between now and then so we will see how it all works out.

Walter's last quarter at CSUB started yesterday. He is taking two classes online this summer. The nice part about the online classes is that he doesn't have to drive all the way to Cal State. He can get on the computer at his liesure and take care of his assignments. He will be done sometime in the end of August though we don't know the actual date. I turned in his "Grad Check" yesterday. This is what they use to tell you if you really are done, how your name will be spelled on you diploma, where they will mail your diploma, and so on. I am so proud of him.

Little Walter is doing well. He still refuses to walk because walking is for sissies. Real boys crawl super fast with their mouth wide open and their head down. At least that is how he does it. We are working on the walking thing a little each day but he is still just too afraid to fall. I get that he is tall for his age, but his tushy is only a foot away from the ground. How much damage can he really do?

Other than the walking thing he is just working on growing more teeth. He no longer looks like Nanny McPhee and now has six teeth. He looks like such a big boy when he smiles now. I love it. Of course he bites occasionally, but we are working on that.

There really isn't much else to report. I told you there wasn't much going on. That work project really stopped us from getting anything done.

Here are a few recent pics. In the videos at the bottom you can see him as he helps clean up his tissue paper mess and in the second video you can hear his weird laugh. This is the same laugh he likes to use during church. Very entertaining.

The Widow

As usually, we have been a little busy lately. So busy that I have forgotten to take the camera out to take any pictures so you won't get any on this post. Sorry. We travelled up to Napa this week to visit my family. We kept trying to figure out the best time to go and couldn't come up with an ideal time. it seems that there is something going on every weekend. Weekends are the time that we like to get house and yard projects done but those will have to be put on hold for quite a while. Anyway, Napa was really nice and we enjoyed getting to visit with the family. We saw my great-grandmother while we were there. She turned 90 this month and she is still as feisty as ever. They were all amazed how much little Walter has grown. He was great with everyone and very well behaved this weekend.

On our way back on Saturday we got a phone call letting us know that Bobby (Walter's brother) got his mission call to the Argentina, Buenos Aires West mission. He has to be in Provo at the MTC on August 29. This is going to be a wonderful experience for him and I think Walter is secretly a little excited that there will be another Spanish speaker in the family even though Walter says that Bobby will "sing like an Italian" when he speaks Spanish.

On Sunday Walter got a new calling. He is now the second counselor in the Bishopric. This means that he will now attend High Priest Group and will be the youngest guy there by more than a decade. I told him that he should get a hearing aid and then he might feel like he fits in a little better. I believe the median age is somewhere around the mid-50s. It was a bit strange for me when I was sitting in Sacrament meeting and realized that I was going to be sitting alone every Sunday. I can not tell you how thankful I am that I have family in the ward that will keep me company and help with little Walter when I need it. I think the oddest part of the whole thing for me was how many people congratulated Walter and then turned to me to offer their condolences. I was told that I am now a widow and to kiss my husband goodbye. This calling will take some more of Walter's time but he is a good guy with his priorities in line so I am not too concerned.

Walter is currently working on one of his final papers. He has a presentation to give on Tuesday for his Master's project and another assignment or two for his online class and he will be done with this quarter. I know he is a little stressed but he is trying to hide it as much as he can.

The baby is still teething. He has 4 teeth now and is working on at least one more. He is still doing well with saying Nana and Dada and we are sure that he said "duuuuCK" on our way home from Napa. He actually said it a few times when he was repeating me after handing him a rubber ducky. I know that he has no clue what a duck is but it is pretty cool that he will copy me. I guess I have to be careful about what I say from now on.

Walter and I will be spending the evening at a young married people family home evening so I should get to the making of treats.

It's been a while. I've missed you.

I can't believe I have gone so long without posting. Almost two weeks. That is a long time. I really want to be better at the regular updates but I have been a little busy. With all of the working, the Young Women activities, taking care of things around the house, oh yeah, and taking care of the kid. It just takes all of my energy. Unfortunately, I have to pay a little less attention in one area and I chose the blog. I think I might try to get into the habit of doing one post a week for certain. I will post during the week if something exciting happens or I have exciting news, but I will definitely set time aside once per week. What do you think?

Well, now that we have that out of the way I can get to the update from the last two weeks...if I can remember that far back. May 4 I left Walter home with the baby. This was a Friday night, which is traditionally date night, but I had to chaperon the Youth Conference for the 14-17 year-olds at church. I had a good time. Some of the youth from our ward (including Bobby and Bryce who are no longer youth but don't have much else to do) have a band that played during dinner. It was great to see them up there and they did a great job. I could never have gotten something like that together at their age. Forget the fact that I couldn't play an instrument if my life depended on it, I just wouldn't have the wherewithal to organize it.

The next day was filled with shopping, a baby shower and getting Alexis (Renee's daughter) ready for the prom. She looked so pretty. I was in charge of hair. Actually, I was in charge of a dress, shoes and jewelry earlier that week, but that day it was just hair. I have never dealt with so much hair. If you want some tips on growing a lot of hair, ask Alexis. I finally managed to tame it and it turned out pretty well. There isn't much to talk about in regards to the baby that weekend because he was passes back and forth between Walter and I quite a bit and was really a trooper.

I must interject a bit of upsetting news. It is not upsetting for anyone but Walter and I really, but I still want to share. Our neighbors moved last week. Their names are Justin and Anji. They were great neighbors. They would visit with us, keep an eye on the house if we were out of town, never loud, just all around good neighbors. We used to have good neighbors on the other side of us as well, but they moved in December and the crazy lady moved in. She uses our trash can, complains if you park in front of her house and lets her dog use our front yard as a lavatory. That is just not okay. Her dog was in our yard on Sunday, May 6 when Walter was having an Elders' Quorum meeting. One of Walter's counselors comes walking up the front and her dumb little dog with the bandanna around it's neck tries to bite him. I understand that the dog was trying to be protective of his yard, but he wasn't in his yard, he was in mine. So anyway, the experience with this new lady has made us a bit leery of new neighbors moving in. I am hoping for the best, but if the lady that was looking at their house who had the HUGE tattoo on her arm is any indication of what is to come, I don't think I will be very happy.

Things settled down a little last week and I got to spend more time with just the baby and I. He is doing the weirdest things these days. He grinds his teeth now. That is a noise that bores into your skull. He only has three teeth, but he learned how to grind them. Ugh. He has also become a little bit of a sleep stripper. I have gone into his room twice in the last week to pick him up from a nap and found him without pants. Yesterday he took his pants off and threw them into the middle of his room. Why? I don't really know. He has started saying "dada" and "nana". I think nana is supposed to be mama which is close enough for me. I don't know if he understands that I am mom and Walter is dad or if he just likes the fact that I clap and get excited when he says nana to me. I just figure that wishful thinking is probably the best way to go on this one.

Oh, one more thing before I scurry off to get ready for work. I had my first official Mother's Day on Sunday. It was great. Walter and I picked out a new dining room set on Saturday. That is my Mother's day/Birthday present. I am very excited for it to actually come in. The tentative delivery date is my birthday so I hope it comes in then. Walter made me stuffed french toast for breakfast. It was delicious. He usually has meetings Sunday mornings but they were cancelled for Mother's day so he got to stay home and take care of breakfast and getting the boy ready for church. I don't know if I expressed this quite enough that day, but I have a wonderful mother and a wonderful mother-in-law. I am truly grateful for both of them and all that they do for our family.

I must go now. Obligations await.










Little feet during a nap.













Ready for his Nascar debut at Lowe's.













Being destructive. As usual.

In the absence of exciting news

I feel bad sometimes when I don't update the blog. I feel as though I am letting you all down. My fan base is pretty limited but I still feel that I owe it to my family and friends to write something. Unfortunately, there isn't much to write about right now.

Little Walter is still teething. Tooth number two should be in any time now. Husband Walter is still going to school and is getting more and more eager to be done. He will be able to do his last two classes online this summer and will not actually have to attend campus. That is a great blessing. I am still doing the same things I always do and they aren't particularly thrilling.

That's all. No life changing news. No funny anticdotes. Nothing really.

I suppose you can all take comfort in the fact that I don't have anything bad to report.

I promise that as soon as something exciting happens I will let you know.

Just one of those days

There are some days when it seems like Little Walter is out to get me. Every time I turn around he is in something, on something, eating something, etc. I know that you are probably thinking "he's a baby, that's what they do". I get that, but I just can't seem to understand the fact that he is only a menace sometimes. Do I feed him something different that makes him hard to handle? Did I look at him wrong? Does he have a little baby stress disorder that makes him act out?

At the end of the day he is still a very good baby, but sometimes he seems to have too much of his dad in him.

Here are a few pictures from one day of fun. What isn't included is his attempt to be king of the toilet paper mountain. He crawled on to the costco pack of TP and then took a spill. I tried to stop him.

The Tooth

Here is a picture of it. I don't know why you wouldn't believe me, but in case you didn't I now have proof. If you click on the picture it will be bigger so you can see it.










I also tried to get a video. That didn't go so well. I suppose it is a good representation of what I put up with during the day.

I am busy right now canceling my denture order

Yesterday little Walter finally got his first tooth. He has been working on it for almost two weeks now. I was starting to worry about his lack of teeth but I was assured by Corinne (Nurse Practitioner Extraordinaire) that toothless children are not a concern until they are two years old. Exactly what they do with them when they are two I don't know. Luckily, my kid seems to be on his way to actually being able to chew, so I am not worried about it.

The teething process hasn't been too bad. There have been a few rough days. More so for me than him, I think. He was a bit whiny but all in all he was pretty good, I guess. I think it was more traumatizing for me because I am used to him being so pleasant that it is difficult to relate to him when he gets fussy. I seem to have come out of it all okay and the baby came out of it with a tooth so we are doing alright.

There still isn't enough tooth visible for me to get a picture so you will have to wait on that one.

Baby's First Easter

Baby's first Easter wasn't very climactic. We had a lovely day but the baby doesn't understand yet so it wasn't much different than other Sundays.


Walter and I dyed eggs on Saturday night after the baby went to sleep. We really didn't want his help because we knew it would end in a bigger mess than we could handle. We started our Sunday off at church. The baby was grumpy and spent most of the time in the Relief Society Room. He is still teething so he hasn't been his usual chipper self.


After Church we went to Mom and Dad Ray's and did a little Easter Bunny action. Once they arrived home from New Jersey/New York we did an Easter Egg Hunt. All that Little Walter cared about was trying to suck the dye off of one egg. I was more concerned with someone opening their eggs so I could steal their candy.


After the egg hunt was had dinner and settled in for a quiet evening. Like I said earlier, it was a lovely day, but fairly quiet.


Maybe next year we can have the little boy help with egg dying (this thought scares me. Maybe we will dye eggs outside) and he might be slightly interested in searching for eggs. Though I think it will be a few years before he really gets the looking for eggs thing and probably a few years after that before he understands the real reason that we celebrate Easter. I don't know how I will explain the connection between Easter eggs/bunny and the Resurrection since I am still working on that one myself. Oh well, maybe some things are better left unexplained.

I hope you all had a great Easter.

Here is a pic of the boy trying to undye the Easter egg with his slobber.

The Kitchen

It is done. The kitchen is done. If you don't know about the kitchen then I am pretty sure that you haven't been reading anything here in the last month or so. Don't worry, I am not mad if you aren't reading the blog. I am too happy enjoying my finished kitchen.


Is anyone interested in playing a little game? I will post the before and after pictures of the kitchen and you can try to figure out all of the changes that occurred? Sound fun? The answers will be at the bottom along with the obligatory baby picture.
























The answers are below. No cheating, unless you aren't playing. Then you can cheat.

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Here they are:


-Green paint on the walls
-White paint on the ceiling
-Blinds (hard to see in the pic)
-Valance over the window
-Removed corner cabinet (where the Kitchen-aid now sits)
-New sink
-New counter tops with pretty mosaic tile backsplash
-New rug in front of sink
-Lightened and polyurethaned the cabinets
-New cabinet hinges (did anyone catch that one?)
-New dishwasher
-New stove (it does have grates on the top but they are in the dishwasher)
-Extended the counter top by the stove/pantry
-New ceiling light
-Shortened the cabinet by the microwave (opposite side) so that it is the same height as the other cabinets
-Replaced all of the electrical outlets and light switches
-Replaced the Sprite on the floor with some apple juice
-Rearranged a few counter top items and thinned out the junk on top of the fridge
-Put the doors back on around the stove (the were already being stripped when I took the pic)
-It also appears that we finally got the lid on the garbage can correctly. That’s a tough one.


Well, how did you do?



We are really glad that this project is over. I LOVE the kitchen but it was pretty time consuming. The stove that lights by itself is an amazing thing. With our old stove you would have to light a lighter and then turn the knob in order to light any burner. Not only was it annoying, but fairly dangerous.



Little Walter was really good throughout the project. As I have mentioned in other posts, he would take stuff out of the cabinets several times a day, but he never messed with the cleaning products.



Here is a picture of little Walter in the box for the light fixture. He seems to have a mild fascination with cardboard. He loves boxes.

It Keeps Going and Going and Going

There are a few things that keep going and going these days. One thing is the kitchen remodel. We are getting so close, but still have a little work to go. All that is left right now is sealing the grout, caulking the sink and putting up the light fixture. We attempted the light fixture tonight. Of course, in our classic fashion, it didn't work how we planned. The new light fixture is smaller than the last one so we have to paint the ceiling to make everything blend. Just a small setback.

The other thing that keeps going is the little boy. That kid is a speed demon. Well, at least he thinks he is. We try not to tell him that when he moves his arms and legs really fast when he is crawling it doesn't help much. He will crawl as fast as he can, get completely out of breath and still get to his destination in about the same amount of time. At least he keeps trying.

There is not much else that is new to report. Life is a little boring and I sort of like it that way. Hopefully I will be able to post kitchen pictures this weekend. I know everyone is looking forward to that.

The boy has become a huge fan of snacks. The other day I came into the living room to find his cheerios thrown everywhere. Cheerios-a snack and a toy.

AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

The other day I was trying to vacuum. I plugged the vacuum in to the outlet and turned it on. All of the sudden I hear a *pop* and the vacuum stops working and the ceiling fan light goes out. Nothing else on the circuit goes out and all of the breakers in the box were fine. Our friend/electrician has been out twice and can't find the problem. Yeah for old houses.

P.S. I am taking this as a sign that I should stop vacuuming.

Land of the Living

Life has been a little hectic lately. On the 16th we headed up to Utah for Chris and Megan Jackson's wedding at the Bountiful, Utah Temple. It was a beautiful sealing, but an awful long drive. We spent over 20 hours in the car with the baby that weekend. Yuck. The second half of the trip was worse because we had our niece, Andi, with us. It was bad enough having one baby but two was nearly enough to put us over the edge. Luckily, we had some time out of the car and we got to visit with Thad and Brittany and watch Andi and Little Walter play. All in all, I have to say it was a good weekend, despite all of the driving.

As soon as we rolled into Bakersfield we got into the kitchen remodel. This past week we demolished the counter tops, put the new tile in, grouted, installed new blinds, put up new curtains, removed the old appliances, fought with and eventually installed new appliances, put in a new sink and made about a thousand trips to Lowe's. I am still working on the cabinets. Hopefully those will be done by this weekend and I can post finished pictures.

I have a feeling the baby won't be so thrilled when the cabinet doors are back on. Right now he takes the tupperware out of the cabinet and throws it around the kitchen a few times a day. The same thing usually happens with the pots and pans but they are heavier and don't seem to be as much fun. I tried to put up a baby gate to stop him but he just sat by the gate and cried every time I put it up. By crying I don't mean that he just sat their and pouted. Oh no, he had real tears. I guess the baby gate is highly offensive. I felt bad and took it down so it now appears that I wasted money on a baby gate. Oh well.

On top of that we have had work and church responsibilities. I finished my training for my receptionist job at Weight Watchers this week. I am now an official receptionist rather than a trainee. Next Monday I will have my first meeting without my trainer. I thought it would be a super easy job when I signed up but it is turning out to be a little more difficult than I thought. There are a lot of codes to remember and forms to fill out for each meeting. Once I get used to it I am sure it will be easy.

Last, but not least, Walter and I celebrated our third anniversary on the 19th. We spent the day tiling the kitchen. We are quite romantic. We still owe eachother a nice dinner out. I am sure we will get to that one of these days.

The basic point of this post was just to let everyone know that we are still alive. Busy, but alive.







Since you can't live without pictures. Here is a pic of Walter and Andi from last weekend. I don't really think she wanted him touching her toy. Lucky for him, she was a good sport.

Wanna Play?

Things are a bit hectic around here lately. We are in the midst of a kitchen remodel and it looks like a tornado swept through the place. All of the cabinet doors are either on the floor or in the back yard. We haven't done anything with the counter tops or appliances yet, but just taking the doors off and having the inside of the cabinets exposed is enough to make it look pretty bad.

The part that is the most nerve wracking for me is that the little boy is crawling everywhere these days and it is a little difficult to baby-proof when you don't have anything to attach locks to. We are trying to hurry as fast as possible to get at least the bottom cabinets done so that they can be put back and hopefully stop the baby from trying to get to any cleaning supplies.

Over the next few weeks we have quite the project slated. We are refinishing the cabinets (as I already mentioned). This involves two applications of the paint on/scrape off stripper followed by two coats of polyurethane. It is the messiest job I have every done, but the cabinets look really good. Making 20 year old cabinets look new with minimal cost is totally worth it. After we get the cabinets done and put back up with shiny new cabinet hardware we will move on to the counter tops. We picked out some nice 12"x12" tile in a pretty beige color. The grout will be a "latte" color which will be much lighter than the dark brown that we have now with our lovely yellowish tile. After the tile is done we will put in the new stove and dishwasher. Our current stove will only turn on if you use a lighter or match and the dishwasher shakes the whole kitchen when it is running. Very scary. We will complete the kitchen transformation with a new coat of paint followed by a really long nap, I hope.

I like that we are doing this project ourselves because we are not only saving a bunch of money, but I am learning a lot. However, I wouldn't mind letting someone else do it in the future. I told Walter that I don't EVER want to refinish cabinets again. It is a stinky, slimy process.

Hopefully, we will have the whole kitchen done in a few weeks. I took some before pictures and I will take some after as well and post them.

If any of you are in the neighborhood and have a desire to work on the cabinets or lay some tile, let me know. I am sure we could find a little work for you to do. : )

Off and Running...or crawling

Walter is now a force to be reckoned with. Last week he started to crawl. It has taken us a solid week to get it on video but I have finally done it. Every time the camera came on he would stop and stare at it. We would try to sneak up on him but for some reason we couldn't get it. Finally, after a week of bribery we got it. I am now trying to baby-proof the house. Luckily, he hasn't figured out that he can go from one room to the next yet so I have a little time to get things in order, but it won't be long.

In other news, Walter III is almost done with his Winter Quarter classes. He has a final due on Saturday and another test next Thursday and he is done for a whole week and a half. Of course he will start back up again and we will be back to all of the fun, but at least there is a week and a half of freedom. Once he is done with the current classes he will only have four classes left in his MBA program. We can hardly wait until he is done.

Who Knew?

Apparently Walter III and this pillow are the funniest things EVER. Make sure your sound is turned up because I am pretty sure he is snorting.

Smiling for the Camera

We FINALLY got family pictures taken last night. I told mysef before I had the baby that we would get pictures taken as soon as he was born and then every three months. Well, he is about 7 months now and we finally got around to that.

It was great fun trying to get the baby to smile. We did everything short of standing on our heads to get him to smile for us. I find it interesting that he has no problem smiling when you don't have a camera.

Here is my favorite family shot:

You can notice the cute new haircut and the cute new clothes. Those aren't the size 6 jeans I bought, but we can pretend. I think part of me (or all of me) wanted to wait until I had lost all of my weight before I got pictures taken. I would rather remember my skinny. It is a better feeling.

Here are a couple pictures that we chose of Little Walter. He is so handsome.

All the Latest

My parents came in to town this weekend to see Little Walter. They said that they were coming to see all three of us, but I don't really believe them. Hey, my kid is cute, I can't blame them.

Luckily, the weekend was good for the boy and we was in great spirits. I would hate for them to travel and then the baby acts like, well, a big baby.

It is amazing how much he is changing and growing each day. Sometimes when you are too close to the action you miss some of the changes. I see him all day every day and I forget how he used to be. I will have to look back at pictures to remember how he looked. He is really wanting to crawl these day (except that he tend to move backwards and never forward) and I had to think rather hard to remember a few short months ago when he did nothing but sleep and eat. It is amazing that babies really do learn and grow every day. The good thing for my kid is that he seems to be getting cuter as he grows. Total bonus!!!

I didn't get any pictures of the baby while my parents were here. I totally spaced on that one. However, I don't think he could have taken anymore picture moments. My parents took well over 50 pictures in two days. The poor kid is still seeing spots.

Happy Valentine's Day

This is why I shouldn't be left alone with the baby. (And yes, he is incredibly drooly)

Yahoo!!!

I haven't done many updates on myself but I had to today. As many of you know, I have been doing weight watchers for some time now. I lost about 30 pound before I had the baby and started again after I had him.

Well, today I reached my weight goal. I still had about 10 pounds to lose before I got pregnant so I never got the chance to celebrate. Well, now I have done it.

Now that I am victorious I get to treat myself to a day of shopping. I have waited for months to buy myself new clothes in anticipation of this day. Look out Mall...Here I come.

The Stats

We had a Dr. appointment for the little guy today. I never look forward to those because I know that he will be getting shots and will scream uncontrollably. I know it is best for him, but it is not very fun. The only good part about the appointment is that I get reassured that he is doing well.

He got all checked out and is doing great. They did his height, weight and head circumference measurements. The result of those are pretty much what I expected. He is built just like a Ray; tall and skinny. Here are the stats:

Height: 28.5 inches (above the 97th percentile)

Weight: 19lbs. 15oz. (between the 75 and 90th percentile)

Head Circumference: 46.5 centimeters (above the 97th percentile)

Height to weight ratio: between the 25 and 50th percentile

I fully understand why he wants to eat so much. He is a beefcake.

In other news...Walter made the baby a "fort" yesterday. It isn't really a fort. All he did was take the box from his car seat and turn it on it's side. Luckily the baby doesn't know any better and he thinks it is really neat. We put him in it and he started making his new favorite noise. He scrunches his nose up, opens his mouth, and breathes through his nose really fast. He is so weird, but we love him.

That Kid

It seems that Little Walter has become "that kid". You know, that kid who's parents you feel bad for. That kid who waits until the prayer starts at church to make the spitty noises. That kid who is an angel at the restaurant until the food comes and then he throws a fit.

I think it has to do something with the age and the fact that he really wants to be involved in everything these days. He doesn't like to watch others eat. He doesn't necessarily want to eat your food, he just wants to put his hand in it. I am also pretty sure that he doesn't have any desire to say the prayer since all he would say is "da da da ada ada ada". But he wants to be talked to and played with.

So far he has only been mildly embarassing but I have a feeling it will get worse. There is so much to look forward to as the parent of "that kid".

On a lighter note...here is a picture of him in a sweatshirt that is 12-months. It fits really well except that I ripped it trying to get it over his gigantic head. He is six months and can't fit his head in a 12-month sweatshirt. He was doomed from the beginning with Walter and I as parents. The big head is genetic.

Happy 1/2 Birthday

Today is Little Walter's half-birthday. Wow, six months has really flown by.


He is not feeling sick anymore but now I have the cold AGAIN. We just keep passing it back and forth. I would like to keep my head away from his so that we can aviod germ sharing, but I can't. He hasn't figured out how to take care of himself yet so we might pass this cold back and forth a few more times.


Oh well.

Happy Half-Birthday, Baby!!!

Under the Weather

It appears as though Little Walter is not feeling well. For the last two days he has been incredibly boogery and has barely slept. For example, his nap this morning lasted 20 minutes. So, consequently, I am in warm-up pants, my third shirt of the day (thanks to him spitting up), no makeup and my hair isn't done. I was able to squeeze a shower in during that 20 minutes so that was helpful.

I have been loading him up on the baby tylenol and hoping for the best. I really am hoping that he is sick because it is either that or he has some serious emotional issues. Laughing and giggling one minute and crying the next.

Luckily, he was able to take time out of his busy schedule to say a quick hello.