Peter - 7 months

 Peter is an exhausting little ball of energy these days.  He is always on the move.  He does a quickly little army crawl to get around and he’s obsessed with the garbage can foot petal, those little caps that cover the bolts on the toilet, and the fireplace grate.  So yeah, pretty much anything completely disgusting.  I am blocking and redirecting and trying to get him to play with boring old toys all day.  If I am on the ground, though, he is climbing on me instantly.  He’s pulling himself up to couches, stairs, and anything he can and it kind of freaks me out since we hardly have any carpet in our home.  (I know hard-wood floors are all the rage these days, but I would choose carpet in a heartbeat.)  Even our plush shag rug doesn’t soften the falls quite enough.  Our well, he’s a rambunctious little boy and bumps and bruises are likely to be a way of life.  He smiles and laughs so easily and we just love it.  He loves making spit noises with his tongue all through church.  He’s a little noisy, but so happy.

Peter still gets up 2-3 times a night.  I HATE IT.  He was getting up once a night for a while before we moved, but for the last couple months he’s reverted back to a newborn sleeper and it’s really taking its toll.  A lot of my days start with turning on Curious George for Jane and letting Peter crawls around the living room while I doze off on the couch.  Parenting fail?  Maybe, but I’m too tired to care.  We’ve done some sleep training so he goes down pretty well at night, but it doesn’t seem to help in the middle of the night.  Also, he has been having really bad diarrhea/diaper rashes for the last few weeks, so I always feel like I need to check his diaper when he cries at night. 

He just had his first tooth break through a couple days ago.  That explains some of the sleep problems, but I don’t find it too encouraging.  We have to go through this how many more times?  Still he’s so happy and good natured during the day, it’s pretty easy to forget how rotten he can be in the night. 

Peter is getting close to sitting up on his own, but he’s not quite all the way there yet.  He can last for about half a minute before slumps over.  I can’t believe he can be so mobile, climbing and pulling himself up all over the place and still not know how to sit up.  Maybe he could if he’d hold still long enough to learn it.  He just knows he can crawl, so why sit around?     

Our Provo Home

We loved our Provo home.  Sure we had hot water issues from time to time, and we NEVER got the yard put in that our landlords promised, and our master bathroom was so small you practically had to stand on the toilet to look in the mirror, but it was a great house for us.  The 2100 sq foot house was a complete remodel for our landlords.  We originally contacted our landlord Jeff regarding another property and he told us about this house he had recently purchased.  We first saw the place while it was under construction and signed the papers there start renting it at the end of August 2013.  We were assured that it would be finished by the time we moved in.  Because there would still be some outside work to be done and the kitchen cabinets wouldn't arrive until after we moved in, the landlords gave us a great deal on the rent. In the end, we returned to Provo and found the house was no where near ready.  They put us in a hotel for a week, but the progress was RIDICULOUSLY slow and we eventually pressed them to let us move in while they continued to work on the kitchen and front area.  It was a HUGE pain, but in the end turned out to be a huge blessing.  The landlords let us live in the home rent free for the first two months while there were still workers coming every now and then to finish something.  In the end, we loved our home.  It had 5 bedrooms and 3 full bathrooms.  I used the front office as my project room (which was awesome!), but we spent most of our time in the great room.  We were only in this house for a year, but in that time Chris finished his Psychology Thesis AND his MBA, Peter joined the family, and we created lots of amazing memories.

 

 

 

 

In July we packed up everything and headed to Indiana to start the next chapter of our lives.  Time to make a new home.

4th of July in California

 I'm finally getting around to blogging our 4th of July in Southern California.  I don't know if it's a nice break or a bit of torture to see these summer pictures in the bitter winter, but it sure makes me long for another beach day.  It's also fun to see Jane and Peter so small... even if it was just 6 months ago.

 We got to be there for Tyler's baptism.  It always fun to be there for special occasions and see so many loved ones.

One of our days in California, Chris and I went to check out Thousand Steps beach.  It was a hike down and a more exhausting hike back up, but it was a fun stroll along a different beach.  I can watch waves like that all day.

Jane watching the seals at the Long Beach aquarium.

Jane meeting her great grandfather visiting from Brazil.

All dressed for the 4th of July fireworks.

Peter taking a nap in the living room.