thoughts on cleverness

As a mother, I am inclined (and allowed) to think that my kid is the cutest and cleverest of them all. I don't always think this, particularly when a tantrum ensues--but most of the time, yes, I definitely tell Jake about how he is the sweetest and smartest boy in the world.

My mom told me that as a child I was talking in sentences by the time I was 18 months old. I know, I know, every kid is different, and the girls are usually earlier talkers. (I also didn't take a step until I was 15 months.. you can't win 'em all.) But still, I would say that Jake is a little late on the communication side of things. We made feeble attempts to teach him sign language ("more" was the single glorious result), and we got to THREE!!! when counting (and only because it is SO FUN to shout). Words were coming here and there, but up until a few weeks ago, I had a difficult time even imagining that sentences were on the horizon. The main problem, I think, was Jake's complete and utter lack of interest in the "repeat after me" game. you know the one: "can you say mom?" ...... nothin.

I knew he wasn't stupid. He just didn't care.

About 6 weeks ago, a good friend of mine told me about this DVD series called "Baby Signing Time". Long story short, the friend told me that these videos were not only teaching her daughter to sign all sorts of words, but she was talking a lot more as well. So we decided to give it a shot. Jake watched maybe 20-30 minutes a day, and something amazing happened. ***communication!!!***

I know what you are probably thinking--videos are not a substitute for actual parent/child interaction. And I agree--They aren't a substitute, but for us they were a launching point. In the last few weeks we have turned a corner with Jake. He now thinks the "repeating" game is great fun, and is really letting me work with him and teach him. He can say and sign all sorts of new things, and is letting me know that he understands me.

Yesterday Jake had a very clever moment. It was about 4 in the afternoon, and the cabin fever was setting in. After staring out the window for awhile, Jake came over to grab my hand and tow me over to his lookout. He pointed to the window, knocked on it, and looked up expectantly: "Out?? PEEASe???"

I looked back at him and said "silly Jake, you can't go out right now, you don't have any pants on!! it's too cold!" I expected one of two reactions to this. either--

1. a blank stare and acceptance.. then off to play with toys.

2. a tantrum

But there turned out to be a secret option three!

Jake simply turned and ran to his room, grabbed a pair of pants from his closet and brought them to me. "Pants? Peeease? OUT!!"

So we went out.

And I took pictures.

Which turned out lovely in my opinion.

By the way..

Now when I ask Jake "can you say mom?"

I almost always get a "mon!" right back.

And yes, that's an "n" :)

reunions

Things have been pretty busy around here lately, but I wanted to quickly put some pictures up on my blog to let you know about the fun things that have been happening! Here is a list of highlights, and then some lovely pictures to illustrate some of them. Enjoy!

1. Discovery Museum in SLC with Jake and some friends

2. Roommate-reunion girls weekend in SLC

3. Wesley's guys weekend in Phoenix

4. New nephew (and the momma popped 3 weeks early!!)

5. Wesley's mom--flew in from Thailand

A couple weeks into January we took Jake up to the Discovery Museum. We met up with our friends Meghan and Tyler and their adorable little girl Caitlin. The kids had a blast, and lets be honest--so did we!

Ladies first!!! Although Jake is supposed to be older and wiser, he was a little nervous about all the other kids at the start. So he let Caitlin play at the water feature first, and hung back with daddy for awhile :)

Jake loved playing in the henhouse!

and being on the news.

but his favorite was definitely the car. (no surprise there)

Last fall my friends and I decided to plan a reunion for sometime in January. In the last couple years, Jessica has had 2 kids, I have had 1, and Sarah has been away on a mission. So we decided that a little get together was just what we needed. It was SO NICE to take a few days and vacate our lives with some shopping, fun restaurants, and lots of girl time.

Thank you to the husbands for watching the kids so we could have that experience!

A couple weeks later Wesley went to Phoenix for about 4 days. Most of his old mission buddies live down there now, so when I saw a really good sale on Southwest, I encouraged him to plan his own little weekend away from the fam. I also encouraged him to take a camera and snap a few photos for my blog...no dice. So, know that he had a fabulous time, and came back alive :)

Wesley's sister Melanie was due to have her second baby boy on February 17th (hey, thats today!) Her mom was planning to fly out and help her for a few weeks, and had booked a flight from Bangkok for Feb 15. At around 3:30 in the morning on January 26th, we got a phone call from Mel saying that her water had broken. They live just up the street from us, so I ran up to the house and slept there with my nephew Scott, so mommy and daddy could head up to the hospital. Later that afternoon I took Scott to meet his healthy new brother. Mark Austin weighed 7 pounds even though he was 3 weeks early. It was such a blessing. (and holy cow, what if she had taken him full term??? he would've been enormous.) Both mom and baby did so well, and were able to go home after 2 days.

It was such a touching experience to see Scott meeting his new brother for the first time. At some point, if God sees fit, we will be able to see Jake do that with his own siblings. I have always been a bit apprehensive about that part of growing my family. I just love Jake so much and it's hard for me to imagine splitting my attention. But watching the Riggs family, I could see that the attention and love aren't split. Our capacity to love just grows. Even Scott, at 2 1/2 years old, seemed to understand how special his brother was, and really seems to love him.

A couple days ago, Wesley's mom flew out to help Melanie. We haven't seen her since Jake was about 8 weeks old, and it was a happy reunion. She will be here for about a month. Pictures to come!

Christmas in VA--Part TWO!

I'm finally on to the second half of my Christmas post! (I've been sick for the last week, and now I'm starting to feel better and Jake is sick. Isn't that how it always goes?? In any case, I stand by that excuse for the large gap in my update.)

So, the second week in Virginia we packed up the cars and drove 2 hours to the Massanutten Resort. My parents booked 2 condos for the week! They were stacked liked a townhouse, and it was awesome. During that week we did plenty of laying around of course--But in between the relaxing we went to the rec center pool, sledding, the waterpark, and tubing! Some of the family even took one day to go skiing and snowboarding. And then every night after the kids were all asleep, we stayed up playing games and watching movies. It was so nice to be "away together" as a family like that--no distractions.

We started a new tradition over the break, and it's one that I hope to continue every Christmas. On the first night in Virginia my dad presented the idea of having a nightly devotional. Basically, we pulled topics from a hat and took turns sharing a brief spiritual thought each night. It was a really wonderful thing to experience as a family, and I think it's safe to say we grew individually and as a whole by doing this. I highly recommend it :). after all, it's so important to remember Christ during this special time of year.

Here is a small sampling of pictures from Massenutten. (really--I know it will seem like a lot of pictures, but my family takes A LOT of pictures..so it's only a few by comparison)

Day One: Grandma builds a fort with the boys. What a cool Oma huh?

At the Rec Center pool. Luckily the room was heated up nice and toasty!

"teaching" jake how to swim.

Sledding on a random little hill. The snow was packed and icy, so we got going pretty fast!

This picture is too awesome not to post. The hill was small enough that even David got to go by himself! His expression was priceless.

The waterpark was soo cool! They had a lazy river, a bunch of big water slides, a kiddie playground pool, and even a hut tub for kids--heated up like a warm bath! The only downside was that the Flowrider was broken :( but other than that it was awesome!

After spending all of News Years Eve day at the waterpark, we could barely stay up til the ball dropped! And then Jake had a night terror around 11:45. By the time Wes and I got him calm and back to bed it was 12:20...(Maybe he just wanted to be a part of the New Years celebration!?) I can't think of a better way to spend the holidays than with family around you--even if one of them is screaming his head off ;)

We flew into the New Year at the speed of light.. well maybe not that fast, but I swear, those inner tubes got some air a few times! We went tubing in groups so that the kids didn't have to go out in the cold. Thanks to Mom, Dad and Syd for watching our babies so we could double up!

We were so sad to leave the resort at the end of the week. On the way home we stopped at Yoders--a little Mennonite farm and country store. Jake loved feeding the goats there!

As always, the trip ended too quickly.

Thanks to Mom and Dad for hosting a wonderful Christmas...We miss you already.

Christmas in VA--Part one

It's hard to believe that the holidays are over. Every year they seem to go by faster and faster. And now we are into the dreaded winter months. I don't call it dreaded until January--before then the snow is somewhat fun and tolerable because of the warm christmas fuzzies. But here we are, ready to find enjoyment indoors as we wait for spring and sunshine. We just flew back home this past sunday from our 2 week Virginia holiday. This trip was full of adventures, some awesome and some not. This post will just be about the first week of the trip.. the part spent at my parent's house.

As much as I want to get to the parts of my story that include heartwarming photos, I just can't skip over the journey it took to go home for Christmas. If you know me well, or follow my blogs, you'll know that I have major travel anxiety. I will spend the entire week before a trip planning and making nazi lists and pretty much organizing down to the smallest detail. In my opinion, traveling with babies is not for the faint hearted, and being OCD organized on a flight with a wiggly toddler is the only way to go. So here I was on that fateful friday. We had a 5 pm flight and I was just about to put jake down for a nice long nap. Wes was at the gym, and I was feeling pretty smug, thinking about how all my planning was paying off. I would have a good 3 hours leftover to pick up the house and make myself pretty. Finally, a relaxing travel experience to come. Mostly relaxing anyway--We knew that there was a blizzard brewing in Virginia, but I had double checked with my airline that morning, and everything was scheduled to go on time.

Thats when I got the call.

In an annoyingly cheerful voice comes the automated message: "Your flight has been cancelled." I sat in shocked silence for a few moments and then did the only thing that made sense. I called my dad, and tried not to cry.

Delta (the devils airline) had rescheduled us for the next day. The thing is, that blizzard was starting friday night and was supposed to reach record breaking heights on Saturday. My dad knew right away that the airport would surely be shut down, and we would all be stuck until at least Monday. After some magical maneuvering, he was able to get us flights out on Southwest (Heavens Airline) that would be leaving almost 3 hours earlier.

Pro's: we were able to get home that day!

Cons: The next two hours were incredibly stressful, I didnt have time for Jake's nap, or to make myself decent, and we barely made the flight. (not to mention the sinkful of dirty dishes and the unemptied diaper pail that were really smelly to come home to..yikes..)

That night was quite an adventure..Jessica's husband was flying from Phoenix, and Syd's new boyfriend was coming to meet the fam, flying from Nashville. AND WE ALL MADE IT!!! our flights were literally the last ones to get in before the airport was shut down. so despite delays and cancellations, (and even baggage stuck in snow on the jetway half the night), everyone made it home for Christmas.

**Props to dad for driving us home in the blizzard at 3 in the morning. You are an animal :) **

So for the rest of this post I am just going to post some pictures from those first few days, when we were all snowed in together.

Wonderful things about Virginia:

I LOVE my parents house at Christmas. My mom is a first class decorator.. Its pretty much Christmasland and I know I'll never be able to do it as good.

I love being able to sit down with the whole fam.. We realized this year that with the new addition of the boyfriend, we are starting to have a pretty crowded table--and I love it!

(this is the morning after the horrible travel day/night. we were all pretty out of it)

EILEENS

The best bakery/deli ever. The snow and ice couldn't stop us from venturing out for lunch!

Jake and Sawyer finally got to become little friends!!! It was so fun watching them interact.. (maybe in 6 more months Sawyer will be able to keep up with Jakes speed--and maybe by then Jake will learn to share, and stop stealing all Sawyer toys...)

We finally got to spend some time with Mitch! For those readers who don't know, Sydney wrote him for the second half of his mission. They had only met once and its been a whirlwind romance since he got home in November. We loved getting to know him for the few days that he was in Virginia.

It was great having Wesley with me for the entire trip. Usually he has to work, so he'll come for just a few days, or often not at all when I come to VA. But this time, he was able to come for the whole 2 weeks! Thanks Wes!

Jake helped make sugar cookies--I'm not sure if he liked pressing the cookie cutters into the dough or eating it more--Its a toss up.

I don't think this picture needs any more explanation than

YUM.

Christmas morning!!! Rice cereal!!! (and no, not the gross baby food stuff...if you are curious, I'll send you the recipe.)

Davids teachers helped him pick out Christmas presents for the whole fam! He got cheesy christmas ties for the men.. they even play Christmas songs when you squeeze them! (I will definitely be forcing wesley to wear his at least once a season--forever.)

And he got us all fun socks!

I was worried that Jake would open one gift and be totally distracted, but he caught on pretty quickly with the whole unwrapping thing--He really seemed to take a few minutes (alright, seconds) to appreciate each gift before ripping into the next!

Riding Grandpa! (by the way, this is now his new obsession. He tries to climb onto my back any time I'm not standing up)

If you've never been to a Wegmans Grocery Store, you haven't lived. Its like a theme park of foods. My first stop was to buy a sweet scoop of gelato. mmm.

Well, I think this post has dragged on long enough. But there is still a lot more to post!!! My next one will be about week two in VA--at the Massenutten Ski Resort. Stay tuned!