Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Christmas Pictures






So I finally broke down and paid to get some professional portraits of Bella in her Christmas finery. She did great, it was probably one of the easiest photo session the photographer had ever done with a baby. Literally took about 20 minutes including changing the backgrounds to get 8 or so shots. The entire experience left me kind of Meh... and irritated at the incredible markups on the photo sheets. Using extreme self control and a couple coupons I made it out of there with 4 picture sheets (one of them supposedly free) for about $25. I will probably end up scanning the pictures and print off any additional copies I need myself.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Spanish Branch, Different, Hard and Awesome

Bella in her Christmas dress from Grandma. She stripped off the headbow and shoes that go with the outfit. So for a couple weeks now I have be reflecting on the past year and our experience in our Spanish speaking branch and I wanted to write down some of my experiences. I initially though of making a good and bad list but none of the experiences so far can really be classified as bad. Instead I have decided to make a list of things that are "Different" from what would happen in a normal English speaking Utah ward, things that are "Hard" or that have been hard to deal with, and things that have been "Awesome".

Different:

  • Going from no calling, to being the Primary Secretary, to being the Primary First Counselor, to being the Primary President, to being called as the Relief Society President all in the course of 9 months.
  • Testimony meetings where 80 year old sisters bear testimony of the curative powers of onions and lemons, and the evils of modern medicine(okay this borders on Awesome).
  • Most of the members are recent converts or first generation members of the church.
  • Latins tend to be more focused on the supernatural, leading to many class discussions on dreams and visions that I generally have to redirect to more general gospel doctrines. So far I haven't had to correct any completely false doctrine, yet.

Hard:

  • Okay, so I'm only 28 years old with a small, very mobile daughter and I'm supposed to lead Relief Society?
  • Being scolded on my parenting abilities by the older sisters. Heaven forbid they should see Bella outside without a hat, or that I should not carry a blanket with me everywhere to wrap my overtired and thrashing child in when she has missed another nap.
  • The fact that both my husband and I have callings that require us to be at morning church meetings, and that of course means the little one comes too.
  • "What is this Visiting Teaching of which ye speak?"
  • The frustrating level of poverty and need in the branch. I did 6 food orders in the past 2 weeks and arranged sub for Santa for 12 of our families for Christmas.

Awesome:

  • It is fantastic that my husband gets a chance to participate in leadership positions and to learn at the feet of some awesome Spanish speaking leaders.
  • We are in a small branch where we can get to know the other members.
  • Everyone LOVES Bella, she flirts with everyone during Sacrament, she crawls into all the leader's laps during presidency meeting, and people beg to hold her at activities.
  • Lots of opportunity to serve and grow.
  • Being told our first week in Sacrament that they "prayed us into the branch"
  • Getting to work with a wonderful, gruff, hard nosed, teddy-bear inside Argentinian Branch President.
  • And the most awesome: Sweet nursery leaders who are more than happy to take my wiggly 10 month old into nursery 8 months early. (I know you are all horribly jealous)

public service announcement

The blessed replacement shower handle.
Bella modeling the blessed replacement shower handle.



Yeah!!! our replacement shower faucet handle finally arrived. You may not think this is such a big deal but unfortunatly it became quite an ordeal. We got this faucet as a Christmas gift last year from my father, it's a really nice bamboo pattern and quite distinctive. We got it from Home Depot which was probably our first mistake. When the handle broke the first part of November, I thought, "no big deal we can just go back to Home Depot and get a replacement part". Thus began my odyssey through Home Depot's customer service inferno. Our faucet was sold under the Home Depot brand Pegasus, which come to find out is actually a fake brand that Home Depot uses to sell faucets from 20+ different manufacturers from around the world. And as the Home Depot itself only keeps specific faucets on hand for 6 months tops, they are compleatly clueless as to how to help if something goes wrong in spite of the fact that the faucet comes with a lifetime warranty. The sad part is that even Home Depots own customer service people were clueless as to the fact that several manufacturers made this brand of faucets and they had me calling around all kinds of places until one of my e-mails finally made it to the desk of someone who had the tracking database that could look up faucets by model number to direct me to the right place. Luckily when I did finally get ahold of the manufacturer they agreed to send the replacement handle free of charge, I only had to call and have it re-shipped once. So the moral of the story, if you buy something at Home Depot keep all your packaging materials so you can bypass their "Customer Service" and talk directly to the manufacturer.

It is so nice having a fully functional shower again in our only bathroom.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Being contrary

So we finally got our camera back from Grandma's house and so our picture famine is over. Bella has started doing several new tricks including giving kisses. She usually will imitate anyone who makes a kissing sound even when my husband and I are kissing each other. The other day I even saw her blowing kisses when she saw a picture of people kissing. It cracks me up and I thought "wouldn't it be fun to get it on video to save for posterity". Unfortunately due to her funny personality and general refusal to perform, I now have about 10, 30 second videos on my camera of me making kissing noises and her just staring into the camera. This is the best of the bunch where she is showing another of her new tricks.

Monday, December 3, 2007

My one concern for my daughter

While visiting my grandparents over Thanksgiving my father and stepmother gave Bella a pink baseball they got while visiting the Baseball hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Bella really liked the baseball and one evening before going to bed I gave it to her to play with on my lap while I continued chatting with my family. She is now at the stage that the first thing you do with any object is try and stick it in your mouth so she proceeded to try and bite the baseball. Unfortunately, she was tired and instead of tasting the ball, she smacked herself quite hard in the mouth with it and started crying. The funny part was, that after calming her down, I gave her the ball back and she proceeded to repeat this process 4 or 5 times. Now my daughter is a fairly bright and in all other ways intelligent child but these types of incidences make me really question her grasp of cause and effect. We are going to have a very long and eventful road together if she continues to insist on trying painful things 3-4 times before deciding that it is not such a good idea. We are still working on the eating leaves/paper thing. But then again, it did only take one handful of sand to convince her that eating dirt was not a good idea, so maybe there is hope yet.

Thanksgiving Adventures

For Thanksgiving this year we decided to head down south and visit my Grandma and Grandpa Leavitt in Leeds (Utah not England, though that would have been cool too, though not very Thanksgivingish). The push and pull of who we are going to spend each holiday with is always interesting, made even more so by the fact that it is all within my own side of the family. One of the unforeseen perks of international marriage has been that his side doesn't even get added into the equation as an option, and while on one hand it's sad on the other it makes things less complicated. I figure if we ever do make plans to visit his family in Uruguay for a holiday, my family will be automatically swayed by the logic that it is their turn and there will be no argument (not that the Uruguay contingent will ever be clamoring for equal Thanksgiving time, but anyway....). So, Thanksgiving with the Leavitt Clan was delightful as always. Lots of food, and 3 separate and meticuliously scheduled desert courses rounded out the evening. They were each timed about an hour and a half apart to take full advantage of food settling. I got to watch my dad and uncle eat an entire banana cream pie by themselves.
The only downside to the evening was a fall that my Grandma had by slipping on the tile floor and hitting her head on a stool. She got up and said she was fine but the next morning she was horribly dizzy. Only the next day did I think to ask Grandma if she was on any blood thinning meds. "Only Coumadin" was her nonchalant reply. That's about the point when I started twitching internally and begged my dear grandmother to go to the hospital for a brain scan or at the very least call the doc on call at her doctors office. She, disliking doctors and hospitals as a general rule, decided that going to the ER would be too much of a hassle, so after formally registering my opinion I had to let it go. When I spoke to her latter she said that she had taken a nap and was feeling much better, but urrrggg that woman is stubborn. Well at least now I have a new example to share at work of what not to do when you have a fall while anticoagulated. I love how I can spend all day with Seniors at work telling them about fall risks and how to keep safe but any of that same advice with my family is completely ignored.