Sleeping like a (weird) baby

 When my little sister came to visit a couple months ago she brought her then 4-month-old with her. Whenever she put her down for a nap she gave the baby something to cover her face with because otherwise she wouldn't fall asleep. Uh, weeeeeird-O! Fast forward two months and meet Isaiah who will no longer fall asleep unless he has something covering his face. He will be screaming his head off and you can lay a blanket over his face and he quiets right down, it's the weirdest thing! Anyway, Jerel is afraid Isaiah will suffocate under a blanket (although I do remove it once he's asleep) so the other night I found my eye mask and we used that instead.

PS--if you read my previous post about silly things you can buy for babies, I just checked online and there are several places where you can buy eye masks made just for infants, which actually seems like a great idea to me. Somewhere out there is a mom with a kid wearing a helmet wondering why anyone would ever want an eye mask for their baby. If you're really bored check out www.babylilac.com and see their assortment of $20 eye masks. (Note that the eye mask Isaiah is wearing is one I got free on an airplane.)

Isaiah's head gear

 Isaiah was born with special radar that detects when I am trying to eat and makes him start crying. Usually I end up holding him while we eat, but this time it was Jerel's turn. He wanted to make sure Isaiah was protected from anything landing on his head so he put a burp cloth on his head. He looked like a little Arab boy wearing a keffiyeh. Except that he's white and most keffiyehs don't have nursery prints on them. Other than that though you would totally have thought he was middle eastern.

Along those same lines I was looking through a baby magazine the other day and saw that they sell helmets for babies. I can see two cases where it would be legitimate to put a helmet on a baby: 1--if you are riding a bicycle or something and have the baby in a carrier. 2--if you baby has some sort of seizures or other medical condition where they are likely to sustain a head injury. That's it. There are really no other reasons. And yet you can buy ThudGuard to protect a perfectly healthy kid who happens to be learning to walk. As the ad explains, "the head is an important part of the human anatomy..." True, but since there are many other important parts of the human anatomy I am going to hold off on purchasing one until they come out with the full-body version.

That's not fun.

I love Snickers. I love chocolate, I love chewy, I love crunchy, I love peanuts. Snickers has them all. I remember in Junior High we had some sort of assembly encouraging abstinence and they gave us each a Snickers bar because (at least this was the slogan back in the day): Snickers satifies the urge. But that is not the point of my posting. My point is that it makes absolutely no sense to take a delicious candy bar, shrink it down to a miniscule size--so small you barely get a taste--and then call it "fun size." I have so much experience with candy bars that I am practically an expert and I'm here to say that I find a King size snickers bar MUCH more fun than the fun size. The fun size is almost offensive. It's like the penny of candy bars--so tiny you can't do anything with it unless you have a whole bagful.

In other news, I was delighted to see a Verizon FIOS commercial today explaining that now whenever we DVR something we can play it back from our DVR players in up to 6 other rooms...because, you know, SO many people have televisions in 7 rooms of the house.

I better go, it's going to take me a while to convice Jerel he should go to the store to buy the truly fun size snickers for me...

A Lazy Saturday

 
Isaiah and Jerel watched the BYU football game together on Saturday. You can tell Isaiah was really into it. We enjoyed a lazy Saturday. Good thing too because Sunday has turned out to be a Cranky Baby Day. And the fact that he required 4 diaper changes during church made it a Cranky Daddy Day as well.

Speaking of church, today the dreaded--but inevitable--question came up during my class. "Sister Atkinson, how did that baby get out of your tummy anyway?" I suggested she ask her mom about that and quickly pulled out their coloring sheets as a distraction. But then the worst possible revelation came: there was another girl in the class who knew (approximately) how babies get out of a woman's tummy and she started explaining it while I was frantically handing out coloring sheets and markers. Why is it that the over-educated children are always the loud ones? It's never the quiet kid in the corner who knows about babies' exit routes from the body, it's always the noisy ones who take it upon themselves to educate the rest of the world. I'm sure this conversation happened in several minivans today, "What did you learn in church today" "Oh, Sister Atkinson taught us that babies come out of your . . . "

In other news, we got a new microwave this week. The old one gave us 8 good years before giving up the ghost Monday afternoon. With six months worth of leftovers in the fridge we had to replace it the same day. I realize I'm grasping at straws here, trying to come up with non-baby things for the blog, so I guess I'll just throw in the towel on this one.

A non-Isaiah related post

I've been trying to come up with something unrelated to the baby so that our blog wouldn't become completely boring. I mean it's interesting to me--sometimes when Isaiah is asleep I turn on the blog just to watch the slideshow of pictures of him--but I realize it may not be quite as exciting for other people. Anyway this is the best I can offer:

On Sunday we ran out of lesson material in our kids' sunday school class (5 and 6 year olds). I suggested they each take a turn and tell us a story about Jesus. They did a pretty good job, although they do mix up the details sometimes. One little girl always tells about Jesus praying in Gethsemane and explains very carefully how his disciples were supposed to stay awake, but since they fell asleep it made Jesus bleed all over the place, even from his armpits. Anyway, another girl was telling us about Jesus dying on the cross and she told the story pretty well including this line "and then the bad guys came and nailed Jesus to the cross and they took away all his clothes. Except for his panties, they let him keep his panties." Those kids crack me up! (Of course I don't think either of these stories are funny in their actual facts, just in the interpretive retellings by the kids).

Two-month checkup

 Today we took Isaiah in for his two-month checkup. He now weighs in at 12 1/2 pounds and he's officially hit the 2-foot mark ("2-foot" meaning 24 inches. He's had 2 feet all along). If I remember correctly his height is 85th percentile and his weight is 65th. His head is below 50th percentile now, which Jerel immediately assumed means he will not be smart because there won't be room for a good brain. Of course Jerel was already worried about that since he's been trying to teach Isaiah how to count to ten for a full month now with no noticeable results...He is also trying to teach him how to tie a tie. Apparently Isaiah's preference is the Single Windsor knot in case anyone was wondering.

The poor baby got his vaccinations today. It was the last thing they did before we left and I decided to sit in the back seat with him for the drive home. We'd forgotten his pacifier and I knew he would scream the whole way home. Truth be told, I sat in the back next to him and held his hand while he slept peacefully. I guess the shots traumatized me more than him.

Isaiah's Baby Blessing

 
Here is a picture of Isaiah and his dad before his blessing on Sunday. It was nice to have a day set aside to express our gratitude for having Isaiah in our family and also for Isaiah to receive a special blessing. Jerel performed the blessing with Isaiah surrounded by both grandfathers, five uncles, and our bishop. Jerel gave a sweet blessing and baby Isaiah didn't even cry. I was also glad that Jerel didn't do one of those ridiculous 10-minute long show off the baby displays...Traditionally after the father blesses the baby, he sort of holds it up for the congregation to see. I'm fine with that, but sometimes the dads think their kids are super cute and hold it up there for-evvvvv-er until they think they've heard enough oohs and ahhs. I'm not really sure why it bugs me. But Jerel just did a quick "here is he" and then came back to sit down. Perfect. Also, I've been planning for several months what Jerel should wear on the baby blessing day. (We had a precious white outfit for Isaiah but everyone else just wears whatever). I had the ideal outfit selected but then I decided that would be rude or silly or something for me to tell my husband what to wear. Plus it might lead to the whole argument where Jerel says boys don't wear "outfits" even if it is a matching set that came together. Anyway, I must have been thinking really loud about what I secretly wanted him to wear because that's what he put on--even the tie I had selected!

Cousins

 17 of our 20 nieces and nephews were here this weekend. Here's the rundown on ages & quantities: 1 each of age 12, 10, 9, 8, and 7. 2 of age 5. 1 age 4. 3 age 3. 2 age 2. 1 age 15 months. 2 age 6 months. 1 age 2 months. We have three more who couldn't come and next summer when my sister gets married we'll add one more--her fiance's son--bringing us to 21. And now, I think for the first time since we got married, there are no more currently on the way (that we know of). It was kind of noisy at our house this weekend!

More Isaiah

Do we have a cute kid or what? Thanks Rick for taking a great picture!

All You Can Eat Pasta & Breadsticks

 and you don't even have to pay $8.95 like at the Olive Garden! Here are a few of Isaiah's cousins eating lunch after church. Isaiah was blessed at church today so we had lots of family in town. 17 of Isaiah's 20 cousins were here along with his 4 grandparents and 5 sets of aunts/uncles. If you need help with the math that works out to 34 people at our place for lunch! Jerel pulled off a great pasta bar. I helped with the prep work and then after church he and his brother Ryan took charge of everything. We had baked mac & cheese, fettuncine alfredo, spaghetti with homemade meatballs, salads, garlic bread, etc. Jerel and I are used to cooking for 2, which is a little different than cooking for 34, and our quantity estimates were a bit off...that means that all this week and probably some of next week Jerel and I will be eating baked mac & cheese, fettucine alfredo, spaghetti with homemade meatballs, salads, garlic bread, etc.

It was lots of fun having all the kids here but Jerel and I have decided we will have less than 17 kids!

The Atkinson Family

 Here it is, after two long months, an actual photograph of the three of us together! This is just before church this morning and you can tell how excited Isaiah was about the picture. Fortunately we got some cuter ones of him later in the day. (By "we" I mean my brother Rick. I gave him the baby and said "take some good pictures" and then left. Ivy and Lisie helped him too & they got some darling shots that I'll post later on.)

What happened to Charlie?

 This is Jerel's sister's son Isaac. He asked Karee, "I thought the baby's name was going to be Charlie?" and Karee told him that Charlie is Isaiah's middle name. So Isaac says "I . . . sai . . . ah . . . I don't hear 'Charlie' anywhere in that name." So just to clarify, his name is Isaiah. He has two middle names--Charles (Mandy's paternal grandfather) and Bernard (Jerel's paternal grandfather & also Jerel's middle name). We each have a great deal of love and respect for our grandfathers and hope that as Isaiah gets older he will learn about them and have a desire to develop the strength of character they both had. Also, just to give everyone fair warning, Jerel is strictly anti-nickname so if you want to stay on his good side you'll call the baby Isaiah. Although when I agreed to name him Isaiah instead of Charles it was with the stipulation that I could occasionally call him Charlie and my grandma can call him Charlie all she wants. All that said, I currently call him Burrito . . .

Anyway, this picture is of a tower Isaac built with some blocks we have. It was so tall and he followed the instructions all by himself. We are so proud of how smart he is getting!