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.