Thank you Whitney for teaching Everett the finer points of sticking out his tongue. It will strengthen his tongue muscles and hone his social-interaction skills.
I am not a fan of being tickled, so what does Dallin teach Everett to do? And for some reason Everett thinks he has to tickle me on my bare belly. I sure hope he never tries this in public.
He did this to his olive without prompting or modeling from me. Did someone teach him this? Benjamin Marr? Because its awesome.
Okay, this picture is just silly, I was trying to tape a fu manchu to Everett's lip but he kept ripping it off and laughing.
Everett woke up from a nap with serious eyebrow dimple creases.
He cheats at bathtub fishing.
He went down for bed easily this week. He couldn't even make it through bedtime stories one night.
He did both of these on his own. Skills! He loved having the bag on his head and tried to keep playing, as you can see in the third picture. The bag does have holes in the top and is open at the bottom, but I still don't want him to make a habit of this.
He really is pretty good at blocks:
D: I came home one night to find Alicia trying to make dinner, holding a screaming Everett. Apparently he'd been like that for about 20 minutes or so. I took him and consoled him as best I could. When I changed his diaper, his buns were en fuego. Alicia had changed him not long before and there had been no sign of it. He wouldn't eat dinner, or fall asleep, he just cried and screamed. Eventually he calmed down when we set him on the table. He still only ate a little, but he was happier. Not to mention adorable.
Everett has gotten a lot better at building with his mega bloks. The creations pictured are 100% his doing. I think the one in the second and third picture look like he put the horse in a fence and then gave it water and hay. (He also looks a little bit like a Jamieson in the first picture.)
We got to watch our friend's two-month old this last week. This is of her doing tummy time (and rolling off).
Dallin decided that a blender would be a good toy. Turns out, it was.
E thought the farm animals belonged at sea.
E climbed up the lawn chairs we had against the couch. He is holding a notepad and pen in this picture. Soon after I took this, he climbed onto the hope chest.
We got this book from our library. And since it has a bite out of the top, Everett tries to take a bite there every time we read it to him.
We have two of these animal puzzles. This works great because we can use the one without the batteries in it when Dallin needs to concentrate on homework. Before I took this video, he had been doing pretty good trying to put the animals in and occasionally doing so. But then he started getting frustrated. And it was pretty funny. Frustration is just part of the process of mastery.
The ones not pictured:
He likes to take his jars of food and put them on the baseboard heater. Maybe he wants his food warmed up before he eats it? If the heater is on, I have to make sure he hasn't left a jar on there for too long because they get really hot.
You know how he likes to clap for himself when he is proud of his accomplishments, well, recently he has started clapping for us when we do things! For example, I put the toy car ramp back together, he claps, I put the arch in it's holes, he claps. And I thought parenting would be a thankless job.
Dallin was trying to find one of his favorite kind of pen for school, so we started looking and found that Everett had put a bunch of pens sticking out of our box fan.
Recent poopy diaper adventures:
One of the dirtiest monstrosities I had ever seen, plus having only two wipes left, lead me to decide that the easiest course of action would be to just rinse him off in the tub and clean the tub.
Everett tried to be a daredevil on the changing table and fell off the back. I caught him but not before he left a bum print of poop on the wall. It was actually kind of adorable.
He just figured out how to open the game cupboard. I'm going to go.
A: In my efforts to get my last post up in a decent time-frame, I neglected to put in these videos. I also did not put in some pictures Dallin wanted me to, so he has done so here. And while we are at it, I'll put in some pictures I wanted but Dallin didn't because they are a little blurry. So here we go.
D:
I guess we should include some actual narrative of what happened in San Jose. Shannon, Jeff, and Axel got into San Jose the Friday before Christmas, and we got there Saturday. We did a lot of watching the boys play, because they were just too stinkin' cute. We played new games people got for Christmas - Perpetual Commotion (Nertz), Loaded Questions, 7 Wonders, We Didn't Playtest this at All (actual name), and Catch Phrase. We even playtested Brennen's game the Legend of Drizzt. Aerin and I bonded over playing on the Wii and the N64. Occasionally we let others join us. The food was delish (ribs for Christmas Eve! Sushi! Chicken Katsu!!!). There were outings to the Discovery Museum, the new Hobbit movie, the mall, farmer's market, and a hearty Christmas Eve walk that turned into quite the photo op. The big family picture and the pictures on the bridge are all from that walk.
The Grandparents Beagley came with Bradley, Sarah, and their two boys. Bradley is my cousin, and he's about Brennen's age. We did not include photos of all of them together out of deference to their policy not to put pictures of the boys up. Totally understandable. But they were so cute! Brennen's nurse also brought over her little boy, and the five of them were a hoot. The weather being as nice as it was, they ran around outside as much as they wanted. We got tired long before any of them did. The other boys were all so active, it was funny to watch Everett being Everett: sitting quietly in one spot, watching all of the chaos around him with a look of "What on earth?" clearly showing in his eyebrows, clutching sidewalk chalk in both hands.
Shannon, Jeff, Dad, Alicia, and I got to go to the very disappointing BYU bowl game in San Francisco. At least the BYU band sounded good. We met up with Alicia's cousin Amanda, who was in the band, at the game. After the game, we found out that another of Alicia's friends was in the area and had been at the game, so we met up with her and her "manfriend" for breakfast. How is it that even when I go back to where I grew up, we end up visiting my wife's friends? It's because I'm a terrible planner. I did get to see Thomas and Candice, but I didn't really have to go out of my way for that to happen.
Our trip back was a bit of an adventure. Our flight to Spokane was on New Year's Eve. We left for the airport at 5:30 for a 7:30 flight, which was already cutting it close. Well, the flight was delayed until 8:50. But, right after we got to the airport we found out that the freeway we had used to get to the airport was now closed because of an accident. Leaving later wouldn't have really worked. We found this little art display in a big empty hallway, and Everett had a blast. He wandered up and down that huge hallway to his heart's content. We got to board at about 8:15, but we didn't end up taking off until after 9 because they were waiting for connecting flights. Everett was a pretty happy camper, except that this is well past his bedtime and we wanted him to sleep. He did not. Once in Spokane, they must have been understaffed for transporting baggage because it took us another hour of waiting to get our luggage. Everett finally fell asleep, and Grandpa said he'd stay in the car with him while we ran in to say hi to everyone at Julie's house. We got to Julie's 2 minutes to midnight, enough time to get our cups of punch and start counting down the seconds for the new year. A few kisses and hugs later, we said our hellos and goodbyes, found our apartment still standing, and went to bed.
That's enough vacation for a while. Here's some pictures.
We are raising a very sensitive child, especially to the beauty of music. He looks like he's about to cry!
Everett loved his Grandma
In case you were wondering, the boys got SPOILED!!
Shocking news: Aerin was indeed there. We have photo evidence. She got the ukulele.
More family pictures
I like the sitting one better. It just fits our relationship with Everett so well (Us: "C'mon! You can do it!" Ev: "But I'm so comfy... and you guys look so ridiculous."). Plus he was crying in the crawling picture. That wasn't fun.
The subtle side-eye. Yes, ribs for Christmas Eve dinner. It was glorious.
And now, more pictures of the boys:
Happy Grandpa!
Textbook examples of parallel play (playing similarly next to each other without interacting). I may use these someday. There was honestly no bickering between these two, just a never ending stream of cuteness, naps, and the occasional tantrum (our son, unfortunately).
So cute!!!
A:
Everett pictures that Dallin says are slightly blurry, but I don't care!
First off: Everett has been standing himself up, and staying standing for long periods of time for the last two days! He has done it for almost a minute straight a couple of times.
Check out Shannon and Jeff's blog at http://amazingaxman.tumblr.com/ for more pictures and videos from Christmas in San Jose. Be sure to look at every post from "First round of pic.." to "Dec. 28 more cake". (click "Next" at the bottom of the first page.)
We wanted to highlight a few of our favorite pictures of us from their post.
The flight from Reno to San Jose was awesome. Everett was super cute, and the people behind us gave him all the attention he wanted. He kept trying to climb over the armrest between our seats to get to them.
Guess which one is from when we were in California and which is the view outside our backdoor right now in Spokane. How are they both winter?
Christmas morning was wonderful, and kind of funny. We had cinnamon rolls and looked through our stockings. Everett and Axel barely made it through one present each when they had been up long enough to be ready for naps. So we took that as a chance to have everyone else open presents. After a short break, the boys woke up and we had them open their presents.
Despite needing a nap, Everett still managed to enjoy some parts of the Children's Museum. Though the stairs might have been his favorite. Poor kid struggled to find pleasure in things, he was so out of it. It reminded me of this. But I had fun.
Axel wanted to play in the bath too. Everett's hair got really curly.
One day, before we got to him after he awoke from his nap, Everett had cleared the desk into his crib. This happened on two separate occasions before I finally put everything out of his long reach.
Playing in the backyard. Everett liked to carry around chalk. I love the porch-sitting with Daddy picture.
Jeff Call took these of our family when we went on our Christmas Eve walk.
