FAQs

I thought I'd take this opportunity to answer some questions you might have been asking yourself.

1) Why haven't you posted anything for a week, you did so good there at the first of the year?

Well, this last week I had a dear friend come and stay with me. Yes, it was the person pictured above. We romped around Dallas and had too much fun to bother about blogging or anything like that. But don't worry, pics and stories will be posted soon.

2) Have you heard anything about Johnny's work and possibly moving?

Like me in this picture, we are still waiting. However, the grapevine has had its ear to the ground and we have found out from it the possible location for one of the six people waiting to hear about moving to plants. That person was not us, however, from that information Johnny was able to put together the locations of the other five people, ending up with the large possibility that we will be in Illinois like we want. Now we can just hope that if this grapevine is to be believed, we will be one of the first people to get the official tap on the shoulder.
But no news yet.

3) Why doesn't G know sign language?

Well, in order to fully answer this question, there are a couple of things you have to know about G first. G lives by the philosophy that "life imitates art" not the other way around. And in this motto, of course, G = art. Which means, G is not a mimicker. He does get really tickled when we mimic him, which we do often. But normally what happens is that he will think and process something new until he has it down, then just start doing it. For instance, he didn't do a lot of the pre-crawling activities that many babies do like rocking around on all fours, he just started crawling when he was ready. And he can crawl normally, by the way, he just prefers his method. He also practices a lot. We learned this coming back from Salt Lake when he was falling asleep on the plane. He was waving with one hand, and working on his pinching grasp with the other. It was ridiculously cute. Now he has started pointing at things, and you can really see his brain working when you repeat the names of the things he is pointing to. So, while he doesn't sign anything now, I'm sure he will when he gets it all figured out in his little brain. In the mean time, he uses things like tilting his head to communicate. (I'll try to post pictures of that as well.)

Happy New Year

Me and G just wanted to wish you a happy new year.

Reaching Equilibrium

G has now reached equilibrium. He has been alive for equal amounts of time inside and outside the womb. To celebrate this, we got for him a new friend. We call him Otto von Sea Otter, and he has helped G sleep better because although he is not as warm as the cat, he doesn't bite, scratch, or run away and is equally as soft. Thus making him ideal to snuggle up with. He is also a great marker of time, so look for monthly updates with Otto.
9 Month Stats:
G: 28 inches, 24 lbs.
Otto: 30 inches, 8 oz.

Dear Hair

We have lived together continuously for 25 years now. The first five were a wonderful honeymoon where we were both able to close our eyes to the idiosyncrasies of the other. But after all this time, I must honestly admit to you that I don't understand you at all.

I know that your need for independence, your desire to "do whatever you want" steams from childhood horror stories of being stabbed with scissors while cutting your bangs, mediocre hair cuts, and homemade hack jobs. Not to mention the "growing out" period we would both like to destroy all record of. But though I can trace your past, you continue to confuse and frustrate me in the present. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to your decisions to look good. If I knew who you were trying to impress, I could help us both out. But alas, feeble attempts at communication are too new to bring out any soul-rending secrets.

So I fear that I will continue to wonder why you fly away despite any humidity reading, why sometimes you will straighten and sometimes you won't, why some days for no reason at all you reveal effortless natural beauty.

But fear not, I will continue to live with you. I think we've both invested too much time in this working relationship to throw it all away with one fell swoop of a razor. Just please, work with me from time to time. Let's make this grow into something lovely.

Love,
Me

Crawling

Since G conveniently waited to crawl until we were the only ones to corral him, here are some videos. As you may notice, he has a unique crawling style. This has not slowed him up in the least.

Christmas!

This is what we woke up to Christmas morning. If you look close, you can see our tree.

G is sporting his new Christmas pjs. Yes we cheated and opened them early. Here he is saying that he wants to get on with it.

So we let him get into his stocking.

He really like the clementine.

Opening presents . . .

Enjoying the stash . . .

Then we let him try his clementine. Don't worry, he ended up liking it.

Then there was lots of play time.

Then we feasted on Christmas ham and potatoes. Thanks to Johnny's work we will be eating ham for the next week at least. Anyone know any good ham recipes?

Well, Merry Christmas to all. We sure had a good one.

Christmas Eve

We went to my grandma's house for Christmas Eve. You may notice my lighter choice of clothing. That was because of the beautifulness of yesterday. It was until we left and it was snowing that I felt myself slightly underdressed. Luckily my grandma had the fire going and it was toasty warm.

We got her a lovely bouquet from my parents for Christmas. Not only was it lovely and Christmasy, but it smelled really good.

She didn't want to be in the picture, but I'm sneaky.

We played Upwords--it was a tough game too, you really do need to start with a 5-letter word, sung Christmas carols and watched the snow. G was tired, but when Grandma reached out and took his hands he walked over to her lap.

And after a 2 hour car ride, we came home to this. Sadly, this picture doesn't show how awesome the topiaries looked topped with snow.

So a kind of white Christmas for us.