H Town Adventures: January 2015

January's photo dump and quick stories:

Nothing sweeter than a daddy snuggling his baby. :)

We took Devry to church for the first time the first week in January. It wasn'y "real" church though. It was only 45 minutes to meet our new bishopric and see who was going to be in our new ward. (Two new wards were created and there was a massive restructuring. Our old ward was split in such a way that people ended up in four different wards. Crazy. But that shows how the church is growing!)

As I have mentioned before, keeping up with Pierscen's energy was (and is) the biggest challenge I have to face with him. One day he decided to dress himself and came back like this:

Nothing but four pairs of underwear. Hahaha

On another day, I came into the kitchen to find that P had dumped all of the popcorn into the toaster. And it was soaking wet. We were able to get the popcorn out and dry it and it even still popped. Boys.

We finally attacked the other bedroom upstairs in preparation of P moving up. This room was a vibrant grass green. It too, is all white now and looks so much better!

Here is P on his first day of sunbeams. Don't let the excitement fool you. It didn't go very well. That transition is rough. He spotted Ry in the hall during singing/sharing time and ran to him and wouldn't go back. He did go to class, though part way through he told his teachers he needed to go potty and proceeded to go to the gym to find Ry in Priesthood. After giving him a hug, Ry sent him back to class. Only he didn't go to class. He took himself to nursery where he was just in time for snacks. They let him eat and then escorted him back to class. Well played little man. :)

Another one of Pierscen's adventures: Ice cream. To make this delectable dessert, just throw one whisk, one bread hook, one beater, one spoon, a whole head of garlic, a dozen ritz crackers, and a healthy dose of Hershey's chocolate sauce into a bowl and mix. Yum!

Tummy time was all but useless in the first month or two because the only purpose it served was to make her fall asleep.

"Auntie" Tanya came over to let the boys play and snuggle with Devry. We sure love her!

First semi smile caught on camera. My favorite thing was listening to her giggle in her sleep.

One day as I was walking out of the kitchen I heard P yell, "Help! I have yogurt in my eye!" I couldn't believe that I heard that right, so it was worth investigating. My ears did not deceive me. Hahaha. This is why you don't look at your yogurt while you squeeze it. Life lessons.

Here's a fun comparison of how much babies change in just a few weeks:

One day while Ryan was painting the "green" room, P was in the room across the hall. Ryan called out, "How's it going buddy?" P replied, "It's looking really good!" This was an odd response and Ryan went to investigate...

P had found a sample size paint container and decided to repaint the old "blue" room, blue again. It was one of those moments that is really hard as a parent. I was so angry inside, but he was so dang proud of himself. He was trying to help. You don't want to tear them down, but boy - that is not okay! We made sure that he knew that he had done the wrong thing and thankfully because we caught it so soon, I was able to wash most of it off. Then we took some white paint from next door and touched up the rest.

Devry and Pierscen's first bath together:

How Devry fell asleep during one of my piano lessons. Boring...

And the result of falling asleep on my shoulder with her hand and jacket in the way. I couldn't stop laughing!

One very exciting thing for me was purchasing a new vacuum. Our old one was worthless. I did a lot of asking around, and the overwhelming popular vote was the Shark. It was on sale at Target and I had some gift cards from Christmas that made it even more affordable, so we gave it a go. I was thrilled and mortified to see the container after doing one room. Guys. ONE room. Isn't that horrifying that we had been living with that? That just goes to show you how worthless the other one was. AND that was after I had used the shop vac to try and clean things up first. Wow. I love my Shark. Love it. Love it. Love it.

The following pictures were taken as Ryan was telling her stories. I love all her expressions and how interested she was in talking to him.

The following pictures were from one of our first real outings - if not the first. Where to? Where else but Tanya's! Haha

Apparently Pierscen needed some piece and quite so he shut himself in the kennel at Tanya's.

One day I heard a huge crash coming from Pierscen's room/Devry's room. (The pictures below show you why we needed P in his own room. Total chaos). Anyway, I ran to the room and found this hall chest of drawers pulled over. Pierscen was no where to be seen. I rounded the corner (behind the white desk in the picture on the left) and found Pierscen in fetal position on his bed.

"It was an accident!" he blurted, then burst into tears. He did get bonked on the head as it crashed down, but it was a miracle he was able to move quick enough on jump on his bed so that he didn't get smashed. Holy cow that could have been bad. So what happened? Well, the drawers have little rings you pull on to open them. P was just being a boy, trying to figure out how things work, and looped a long ribbon through the top drawer ring. He was using the ribbon to pull open the drawer when instead he pulled the whole thing over. I think this boy must keep his guardian angels pretty busy.

And at long last: the real smiles!!! Many of the pictures were blurry because she was wiggling so much, but I love capturing those first smiles!!!

I took the picture below simply because I made that little blanket in Nauvoo for a project. I meant it to be much bigger, but I didn't have enough fabric. (Actually my mom made a couple aprons with the leftover scraps that we use all the time). I remember thinking what a waste the blanket was because it's so small - when would I ever use it? Well, here you go! Baby blanket!

Pierscen's mystery respiratory issue came back (as it does every 4-8 weeks) and he was pretty miserable. And then he passed the bug on to Devry, though it wasn't super bad... yet.