Adventures of an Orange Sock and a Blue Prince

Wow its been a long time

2010-02-04T07:29:00.004-07:00

Um yeah, so I had a baby and stuff and suddenly found out how hard it was to type one handed. So that is the main reason I have not updated this blog. By a strange twist of fate I woke up early today before both of the girls and instead of doing something responsible like cleaning the sticky spots off my floor I decided to update my blog.

A quick update on our lives. Bella is turning three on Friday. She is so excited about her birthday she keeps singing the happy birthday song to herself and talking about the pinata she is going to have. How does a three year old know about pinatas you may ask? One of her favorite shows right now is the old Disney show "Saludos Amigos/ Three Caballeros". She asks for it by name and loves to samba around the house wearing only her white tutu that auntie gave her. It is kind of a fun show for us as it has several cartoons based in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. She likes the little one about the little airplane named Pedro. She calls him Pedo which makes papi cringe. (I'll let all the non Spanish speakers google that one to see why). She tends to be an obstinate little stink at times but we love her and her funny personality.

Our new addition born early October is Tali. (Again like Bella not her real name but to protect the innocents from the Internets it will work). She is an adorable, rolly polly little 4 month old. She is getting very cute and smiley and is fascinated by her big sister. Seriously she will just sit and watch Bella's antics and copy her laugh. She can turn over from back to front and front to back and with her strong legs she will scoot along face first. (Usually towards things like the edge of the bed). We were somewhat hoping for a calm one for number two but it looks like Tali will be up and moving and into things even quicker than Bella. Oh well.

I went back to work, again part time shortly after Tali's arrival. We have been blessed with a fantastic babysitter who is wonderfully flexible with my sometimes sporadic schedule. I am really liking my job and where I am at professionally right now. I have had some fun opportunities to make formal presentations on Dementia in the last couple months and have really enjoyed it. (I got a fruit flower arrangement as a thank you for one of my presentations yesterday, which was kind of fun and made my day). I am also starting to see a few more private counseling patients. We moved to a new physician office space that is more convenient for patients and a lot nicer looking but unfortunately quite a bit smaller. My coworkers have been stressed with the move. My office is now a nook in a hallway next to the lab table where they run urine samples. Okay, that makes it sound somewhat worse than it is, but I still find it kind of funny. I have other spaces that I share to see patients and such.

As for the Blue Prince, he is slogging along making the final push to finish his last semester of school. Its amazing how fast the four years have gone. (Speaking of which we celebrated our four year wedding anniversary last week too). He hates winter here working up in the cold in the mountains. It has caused him some serious issues with bursitis and other pain in his knees. Due to that we may be looking at making a move to warmer climes down south in the next year or so after he gets his journeyman licence. Of course there would have to be work down south as well, which is another complicating factor. Nothing is decided, and it is mostly fantasizing for the time being.

We all enjoyed the trip back to Uruguay in December to visit family. It was a long trip and somewhat overwhelming with two little ones but an adventure to say the least. If I ever again get the motivation to post I'll try and put on some pictures. The family dynamic with my husband's family tends to be difficult at times but it was lovely to see everyone and especially watch Bella interact with her cousins. It is amazing to me how they all look so much alike.

I am hearing some major rustling from the ranks so I guess it is back to being a mom for now. Hopefully my next post will not be so long in the future.

Baby News (just kidding)

2009-09-24T21:19:00.007-06:00

I have been in close contact with many of my family members this week, often consisting of phone calls starting out : "Soooo, how are you doing, any baby news yet...." The answer is unfortunately no baby yet. Lots of contractions, lots of nesting, but no baby. I don't think I would be feeling so bitter except for the fact that almost every day this week on facebook every random "friend" of mine who had a due date after me is posting newborn picts. Grumble Grumble... oh well I guess it is just a sign I need to spend less time on the Internet and more time walking around or something. Since I don't have any big news to share I figured I would post some of the pictures I recently downloaded from our camera.

I like this last picture because it shows Bella's favorite outfit for summer. She strips down to her diaper and finds one or more of her dress-up skirts to put on over it. Generally she stays bare chested but will occasionally accessorize with a hat or one or more shoes (Or in this case bunny ears).

Just Lovely

2009-07-21T14:27:00.003-06:00

I went in for my second ultrasound the other day to make sure everything is going well with the unborn and to check the placement of the placenta. Everything is looking good. Luckily it looks like the placenta is moving away from the cervix so I shouldn't need a c-section and hopefully I won't be at risk for bleeding. As part of the ultrasound they usually take several pictures and print them up to give to you as cute first shots of your baby. In general they are blurry profile shots or the money shot between the legs to show you the gender. I guess our baby wasn't feeling particularly cooperative that day, so this is the picture we got.

What parent doesn't want an up the nose shot of their unborn baby. It makes me giggle a little bit every time I see it, so we now have it hanging up on the fridge.

June and July

2009-07-21T13:26:00.007-06:00

It's been an interesting summer so far and I thought it was time to share a couple pictures. The Blue Prince has been very busy the last few weeks working a side job in the evenings so we could save up for our Uruguay trip/ new arrival. It has been a lot of hard work and late nights but hopefully will be worth it. He is done for now and it is great having him home in the evenings. Here are some pictures I took of Bella playing with Papi on her bike, one night after he got home for work. (I realized after I took them that there was a large fingerprint smudge on the lens) Having Papi work extra was hard on Bella as she is such a Papi's girl and many nights he wasn't home before her bedtime. This threw off our sleeping routine as she started climbing into our bed in the middle of the night, and getting up at 6:30am so she could see him before he left for work.

We managed to squeeze in a couple fun family activities over the weekends. Some friends of mine invited us over to participate in a children's circus. All the kids dressed up and performed circus acts. Bella did an acrobatics routine with Papi and rode a play pony blindfolded (her crown fell down over her eyes).

Caitlin sent us some free Real Salt Lake Soccer tickets for The Blue Prince's birthday. Being for the same night as the above mentioned circus, we got there a little late, but we had a good time. Bella enjoyed climbing and swinging on the handrails and cheered with the crowd when our team made a goal.

For the Fourth of July we spent the day in Brigham City with my mom, sister and Grandma. Grandma got out the baby pool, and Bella spent the day running around the yard, playing with Barbies and eating junk food. At night we went to the park to watch the fireworks. Bella again ran around, danced to the music and took advantage of Grandma's willingness to hand out candy. She ran around so much that she ended up exhausting herself and fell asleep 10 mins before the fireworks started. Even with all the booming going on around her she didn't stir a bit, and slept all the way home in the car.

Our church sponsored a day at Lagoon on the 10th and provided us with free entrance passes (rides were extra). This actually worked out perfect as I am too big to go on rides and the Blue Prince isn't much of a roller coaster fan. We just bought a ride pass for Bella and let her at it. She is now big enough to go on the kiddie rides by herself and she had a grand time. She still struggles a bit with the concept of taking turns and waiting in line but all in all she did well. She even had her first cotton candy.

So anyway, that's the highlights of what we have been up to. Just enjoying the summer and trying to make the most of our time together.

boring folk

2009-06-09T14:26:00.006-06:00

People keep calling and asking what we have been up to and my answer recently has been "not much". Lots of work, a conference last week for me, and not much drama. The only recent crisis has been big medical problems and surgery with The Blue Prince's dad which have crystallized our plans and priorities to try and make a trip back down to Uruguay in November. I'm trying not to worry about the logistics of international travel with a 6 week old and a 2 1/2 year old yet, but it should be an adventure. At least the airline prices have come down somewhat, can you even make plane reservations for an unborn child?

Anyway, I also recently discovered that we have not downloaded any pictures from our camera since before Easter. Not that there were many pictures on the camera since we have chronically forgotten to bring it for most recent outings and get togethers. These are some pictures that I took yesterday and today of Bella and my garden. I am unnaturally obsessed/proud of my little garden boxes and due to a combination of warm weather, good planting soil and lots of rain everything is taking off amazingly. I am getting little tomatoes and squashes that I didn't get till the middle of summer last year. I also planted lettuce and spinach which has produced enough to keep us and all our neighbors in daily salads.

I am using a modified Square Foot Garden method and while it is somewhat hard to tell from this picture, I have Lettuce, peas, Swiss chard, 4 squash plants (Uruguayan Zapallitos), some cucumber seedlings and strawberries in this box. I already harvested a radish section, and replaced it with more Swiss chard.

In this box I have 5 different types of tomato plants, tarragon, oregano, 3 types of basil, 2 peppers, 1 onion, peas on the trellis, another squash (Zapallito), a couple cabbage plants that never formed heads and two cucumber plants hiding in the back.

This is a picture of Bella, that I took yesterday, she found some stickers and decided to decorate her face. It made me laugh.

Here is an updated picture of Bella in her lovely pink hat. She found it when we were shopping at old navy a couple weeks ago and papi and I couldn't say no. She has started into the phase of wanting to pick everything, especially what she wears. The only way I got her into pajamas last night was by letting her pick between the Tinkerbell shirt (the one with the small fairy on the front or the tiger shirt (it had stripes). I seem to have less fights if I let her pick dresses, hence the pink princess dress today. And so it starts, curse you Disney and your princess marketing skills.

As for the status of the unborn, it seems that according to the first ultrasound we are having another Girl. Everything appears to be moving along in a healthy normal manner and I am feeling fairly good. The feet swelling has started, which is somewhat concerning as it is only June. It is going to be a long summer.

New Poll

2009-04-04T23:19:00.003-06:00

My sister keeps teasing that I need to add some sort of countdown widget for the coming of our new baby. I have generally been ambivalent about them in the past but as I try to be as user friendly as possible, here is your opportunity to let your feelings be known. You can find the poll on the left hand column of the page. If you have additional feelings on the topic that you feel are not adequately addressed by the poll feel free to add a comment.

Funny Naked Monkey

2009-04-04T14:28:00.004-06:00

I have been chastised for the month long gaps in my blogging. The days are galloping by with little distinction between one day to the next and one week to the next but I did want to share with the interested what is going on in our household.
Bella continues to be a funny, busy little kid. If possible she has become more agile and active than ever. She has learned to use things such as the laundry basket or Papi's lunch cooler as footstools to reach previously unreachable heights. Here is one of her most recent discoveries (the washing machine).

She has also figured out that she can climb out of her crib and so we have been forced to move her into a toddler bed a little earlier than we had planned. She can now open bedroom and bathroom doors often greeting Papi or me with a cheerful "hola" or "peek-a-boo" when we are in the shower. At night I am often woken by the sound of little hands fumbling with the doorknob and little feet scuttling across the floor, dragging her blanket behind her, till she can sneak into our bed to cuddle with Papi. The other day we went to wake her up from her afternoon nap and found the following scene:

Hence the naked part of the post. She finds it hilarious to jump out of the bathtub and streak into the living room wearing nothing but a smile. Last night she refused to leave her footy pajamas on and stripped off her diaper after I put her down to sleep, of course she woke up at 2 AM soaking wet and crying. I think it may be time to try potty training (most of the time she is stripping off her diaper it is because it is wet) but I don't think she has figured out she can do something to prevent walking around in a wet diaper. Since this is my first attempt at potty training any advice on how to get started would be appreciated.

In other news, for those who have not heard, we are expecting a new baby in the end of September. We are very excited by the prospect of another child but it has defiantly increased the stress level in the household. The Blue Prince is crushingly busy with work and school, extra jobs when he can get them and church callings. With this pregnancy my energy has plummeted and my nausea is just starting to recede to the point where I can enter in the kitchen let alone cook and clean there. The plague of colds and viruses have been cycling through the house with waves of ear infections, vomiting, eye infections and breathing issues leading to a miserable kid and parents. The weather has been cold, grey and snowy further discouraging the desire to emerge and be social. Um, so yeah we have been hibernating and will be very pleased with the real start of Spring and the uplift it brings.

Dancing with Papi or Conecting with her inner Latin rhythm

2009-03-08T11:22:00.005-06:00

Bella loves to dance, at home, in the car or at church whenever she hears music you see her bending her knees or swaying to the music. This is a trait I wholly attribute to her Papi and she has a willing partner when she wants to get down.

Happy 2nd Birthday Bella

2009-02-09T11:47:00.004-07:00

Bella in her new jumper dress made by Bubbie Ishi.

So my little one turned 2 this week, and it has been a week full of celebrations with various family members and friends. Starting off last weekend my dad came to visit to celebrate with both Bella and her aunt Emily. My dad subscribes to a very simple school of kid gift giving : take the kid to the store and whatever toy they stick to and refuse to release is the winner. Which is fine if you don't mind the tantrum that comes when you get ready to pay. Bella is the type who knows her mind and she did not want to release her baby doll to anyone especially not the stranger at the cash register. So yes, Bella got another baby doll, with a bottle and a stroller, thus feeding into her newest obsession with anything baby related.

The next celebration was at her daycare/school where they threw her a little party on Wednesday and I brought cupcakes. I of course forgot my camera (I was walking out the door that day with a tray of cupcakes, a package of diapers and Bella's blanket so the camera oversight is not too surprising). These pictures are from the teacher from a card she sent home a couple days later. I have to say I love her new day care, they are fantastic. Bella loves to go and the little touches like sending home pictures of what she does during the day are wonderful.

On Bella's actual birthday, we didn't do much. We had a play date with her friend Ella but since it was a school night for Papi we mostly just ate cake and gave her our present. On Friday Grandma came to visit and took us out to dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. The sweet old Chinese man who runs the place told my husband that he looked like Barack Obama. When he found out that Bella was having a birthday he brought her a box of Chinese pretzel sticks which were surprisingly flavorful. They are called Pretz, and we will have to look for them next time we go to the oriental market.

Being a general slacker mom and knowing that she is still to young to demand a birthday party, we decided just to invite a couple friends over last night, eat more cake and call it good. The other big barrier to hosting an actual child focused party is the space limitation at our house. We can fit one extra family comfortably and sometimes stretch it to two but beyond that we run out of sitting space and plates and things and it stops being fun. We decided to invite our two Argentinean family friends, they had actually never met each other but got along fabulously.

Here are some pictures of Bella and her cake. She wasn't sure about blowing out the candle and got a little grumpy at that point. She got a lot happier when she realized it meant she got to eat more cake.

Ariel, Andrea and Bella's friend little Ada. She was crawling around under our feet all evening.

Mario and Marcella, and their kids Francisco and Kaprielle also joined us. The kids were a little bored with the conversation but happily played Wii all evening.

And Bella did a good job of entertaining herself and everyone else. She found Marcella's glasses laying on the couch and decided to play movie star. Man I love this kid. Happy Birthday Baby.

Christmas Winter Wonderland

2009-01-09T14:01:00.004-07:00

Here are our pictures from Christmas.
Bella and Papi trimming our little Christmas tree. It's fun that she is getting to an age that she can somewhat participate in the festivities.

We spent Christmas in Brigham City at Grandma's house. Christmas came in the middle of a week that we all spent sick. Bella got sick first the weekend before (while we were visiting family in Southern Utah) and of course she passed it to me a couple days latter. Deviating from the usual course of things the Blue Prince managed to avoid this round of the Plague. His foreign immune system usually catches whatever is going around the house and gives him a worse version of it. Anyway I was the one sick on Christmas which turned out to be fairly good timing since I had my mom around to take care of me and aunties to keep track of Bella.

This is Bella opening gifts Christmas morning. Santa got her a little red wagon and a stuffed monkey that she loves to pull around giving rides to. She got a little miffed the other day when I wouldn't let her take the wagon in the car to daycare.

A couple family shots

We have been getting a ton of snow for the last couple of weeks. This is the view of my mom's back yard Christmas morning. We decided to take Bella outside to play.

She liked the icicles that Papi let her take off the roof. Mom forgot to bring her gloves so she is wearing a pair of socks on her hands for mittens.

She wasn't crazy about the whole walking in snow part. (She is actually standing in a snow bank here)

Her favorite was of course Grandma's swing. Tears were shed when she was forced to come inside when her fingers were turning into Popsicles. The impromptu gloves didn't last too long.

Finally an update

2009-01-09T13:45:00.006-07:00

As many of you have undoubtedly noticed, it has been quite a while since I've updated my blog. The main reason is that the mother board on my laptop died and so I was virtually computerless for several weeks. I did get a new computer for Christmas (thanks Dad) but since then I have been working on other computer projects and unfortunately this blog has taken somewhat of a backseat to those. I did want to share some recent pictures we had taken as a family. Those of you that are family members who would like copies please let me know which ones you would like and what sizes.

An actual family portrait. We went primarily to get pictures of Bella but figured that we would try a family shot while we were at it.

This is probably my favorite picture of her out of the bunch. As Aunt Caitlin pointed out, she looks so sweet and innocent with her "who me?" face, and then you look closer and realize she is strangling the stuffed puppy.

Halloweenish type activities

2008-11-02T22:28:00.006-07:00

We started our Halloween festivities a couple weeks early this year with a trip to Lagoon. My mom gave us some free tickets from her work at the beginning of the summer but there was always something going on that prevented us from going. Finally, knowing they were expiring the end of October, we decided to just pick-up and go on a Friday afternoon.

Bella seemed to enjoy all the rides and movement. She drove her boat all by herself and didn't even try to lean over and play in the water. There was of course a fit after each ride stopped as it blew her little 20 month old mind that we would put her in a toy to play for 2-3 minutes only to tear her away when she was just getting the hang of it.

She clambered all over her train seat and tried to climb into the ones in front of us. Did I mention she answers better to the name "Monkey" than her own.

Here are Mommy and Bella bugs. Buggy is another of her nicknames, given by a doctor in the ER during our first visit when he mentioned that she was such a "happy and active little bug" in spite of being covered as she was in full body hives.

The Blue Prince hanging out in his shackles. He keeps complaining that living here (or my cooking) is making him fat. We keep reassuring him that he is fine but I think I will make a copy of this as photographic proof the next time he brings up the subject. :)

For her actual Halloween costume Bella was dressed as a Fairy princess/Butterfly. Mostly butterfly as she refused to keep the princess crown on her head longer than 3 seconds. She thought it was a game and would joyfully pull it off and try to put it on my head or on Papi's. She is pictured here with Aunt Emily who is of course dressed as Sarah Palin. I think she pulled it off quite well.

Here is the back view of Bella's Costume. She tolerated the wings well but didn't really understand that they stuck out farther than her body and so they would occasionally get mangled or knock things over when Bella tried to squeeze into small spaces.

She learned to say the phrase "trick or treat" quite clearly and would say it all the way up to the doorway, she would give a little knock on the door, and then would go suddenly silent the moment someone answered. She really liked her "Pumpkin" or "Box" as she calls it. She became quite adept at picking out her treat and putting it inside the hole. We stopped by my grandmother's house to show her off and of course she got several pieces of candy for her box. While we were chatting in the next room she snuck off and figured out where Grandma had stashed the candy bowl and helped herself to a couple more pieces before she got caught.

I guess that's what Halloween is all about, to see how much candy loot you can collect before some responsible adult puts a kibosh on all the fun.

Videos, get your videos here

2008-11-02T21:51:00.006-07:00

I have stored up several videos from the last month or so and decided to put them all out for your viewing pleasure at once.

This first one is from our San Diego trip, playing on the beach with Papi. Sorry about the dizzying camera action half way through. The incoming wave was soaking me as I was recording.

This one is a video I affectionately call "Ping". It's for all those individuals who love baby laughter. No one can make Bella laugh like her papi.

This is a video I took a couple weeks ago when Bella was helping me harvest the green tomatoes from our tomato plants. Apparently she found a little green hard tomato and decided that it was a ball. She spent the next half an hour playing catch with herself, throwing the "tomato ball" across the courtyard and chasing after it. What can I say, the kid needs more playmates.

Bella is fascinated with animals and animal sounds recently. When aunt Caitie was here for a visit she found several leaves outside and decided to fashion wings. Here is Bella's birdy impression.

GIA graduation

2008-10-17T00:29:00.006-06:00

At the beginning of the month my family all met up in California for my sister Caitlin's graduation from the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad. She is now a real live certified jeweler and has two sets of letters after her name. We are all impressed that she has turned her love of all things sparkly into a viable career.

Oh and when I said my family met up in California I was literally referring to almost all of my fun mixed-up family together at the same time. Here is a picture of "The Clan" (listed from the bottom left and moving up and around the table) when we went out to lunch. We have: My sister Shoshana, her boyfriend Casey, my mom, my mom's mom, my dad's current wife Kathy, my dad, My dad's second wife's mom Joanie, Family friend's the Jimenez (Joyce, Ron, Steven, and Nicki), my sister Emily, My sister Caitlin and her boyfriend Tom, myself and Bella. The Blue Prince is taking the picture and missing is my dad's second wife Ishi, who unfortunately had to go home the day before to support my littlest sister in taking her SATs. Needless to say it was quite a group. The term herding cats comes to mind but everyone got along well and it was fantastic to see everyone.

As you can tell from the picture, Bella is the only small person in the family so needless to say she got lots of love and attention. She held up well under all the adoration but by the end seemed to get a bit clingy with mom and dad. It is tough work being so overly loved all the time.

We stayed in Carlsbad and decided to spend Saturday afternoon on the beach. It was somewhat chilly and so we all decided to walk and wade a little bit on the beach instead of swimming.

Of course Bella didn't quite grasp the whole wading instead of swimming part and ended up more that a little soaked. The waves were quite rough so she wasn't the only one. All of us ended up with wetter than expected pant legs.

Bella had fun playing with Papi being lifted out of the way of the incoming water.

Shoshana and Casey decided to bury my husband in the sand, reminiscent of the sand necktie episode of Mythbusters. They didn't make it much farther that this, but it is a good view of what he would look like as a dwarf.

Caitlin and her boyfriend Tom were being all shmoopy and cute on the beach (and everywhere else). We liked to tease them about inadvertently matching. (I mean seriously, from the brown pants all the way up to the red hair). It was the first time that Tom met "The Clan" and bless his heart he had the initiation by fire of meeting us all at once. Well I guess we can't say that he got to meet everyone. The Big Brother and his Russian Bride were not present which probably made things a little easier as he likes to play his big brother protector role to the hilt on the few occasions he gets the chance. It's hard work having 5 younger sisters.

I didn't notice when I took this picture of the cute couples starring off into the sea, that Emily was sitting in the middle of them playing in the sand. Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning the juxtaposition of it to her, leading to a comment of "gee thanks, I didn't feel like a third wheel till you pointed it out". Emily understandably got a bit tired of all the coupledom by the end of the trip.
Always in search of a good family picture, this is the closest we got on this trip. Which is kind of sad considering the blurriness and scowl on Bella's face. All in all it was a lovely trip and a nice break from the cold Autumn weather in these parts.

Bathroom Remodel

2008-09-25T21:50:00.003-06:00

The other Summer project that got mostly finished this month was my Mother's master bathroom/entire home plumbing project. Here are some pictures of the original bathroom.
We ended up tearing out the built-in cabinets, most of the back wall (to accommodate the new plumbing and electrical work), and enclosing the side window leading to the other bathroom. We also took out the gross 30 year old green shag, put down tile, installed a shower and a new toilet and sink. And of course when I say we, I mostly mean the Blue Prince. Other than some demolition, clean up and painting I mostly just chased Bella out of the work area.

Here are the post construction pictures. There is a reason my mom adores her son-in-law. "We" are taking a bit of a break before tackling her other bathroom.

One month catch up

2008-09-25T19:42:00.010-06:00

So as my friends and family are wont to point out, it has been over a month since I updated my blog... No real excuses, I've thought of several blog topics but none of them have really panned out so instead you get a travel-log with many pictures.

My garden:
Still doing well, we have a ton of tomatoes that are slowly turning red at the rate of about 3-4 a week. My dad and Kathy came to visit a couple of weekends back and we turned some of my 2 foot basil plants into fantastic pesto. I loved these pictures of Bella with the cucumber right out of the garden. She ended up eating it down to a nub. Pickles were her first food as they calmed her when she was first teething. I guess the food preference stuck. (insert weened on a pickle joke here :))

Hill Air Force Base Museum:
Since he arrived in Utah three years ago, every time we drove north to Brigham City the Blue Prince would look longingly at the Hill AFB aerospace museum. Finally this month his dream became reality. So many airplanes, so little time.

Notice Bella standing up in the stroller in protest of being strapped down. She figured out how to walk anyway.

Peach Days:
We made it up to my mom's for the yearly pilgrimage back to Brigham City for Peach days. Everyone enjoyed the parade and Bella enjoyed getting all spoiled and sugared up by her grandma and aunt.

Notice the sucker and the hair bows. A prime example of what happens when we visit Grandma (she pitches a fit every time I try to touch her hair)

Mill Creek Canyon:
We took advantage of a beautiful fall evening to go up the canyon with some friends a couple Monday's back. We lit a fire with much lighter fluid and the blue prince's welding torch. Due to the Uruguay/Argentine contingent, dinner was of course grilled meat followed by rounds of Mate by the fire. One of the most pleasant evenings we have had in a long time. Pictured are a side view of Ariel playing with the fire, a decent family shot, and a good picture of Andrea and little Ada.

Watching Ella:
Ella is the youngest daughter of my dear friends Brandon and Kelly. She is about six months younger than Bella and she has been coming over to play every Tuesday afternoon while her mom is teaching a class. The two girls play quite nicely together in a toddler, parallel play kind of way. I have known Brandon for over 11 years now, and the other day we were commenting on how bizarre it is to see our children playing together.

Memory Grove:
Last Friday we decided to explore sites around Salt Lake that we had never visited and ended up at Memory Grove. Considering we lived a time in a nearby neighborhood, this was a glaring oversight. The park was beautiful and made for a lovely hike.

Following the hike we were resting on a bench and Bella decided to explore my diaper bag. She pulled out a swim diaper, and the changing pad and proceeded to see how many ways she could put on the diaper. After several minutes of sticking her arms through the holes she lighted on the next logical challenge: balancing the diaper on her head.

Notice the intense look of concentration.

Anyway, along with a memorable trip to the state fair (that included a Virgin of Guadalupe hat, many animals to pet and a new horsey toy) you are basically caught up on our month. I hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Thanksgiving point

2008-08-18T12:49:00.006-06:00

On Saturday we got tired of boredly staring at each other and decided to leave the house. Our destination: Thanksgiving Point Gardens. None of us had gone before and as I tend to geek out with plants and gardens in general it sounded like a good fit. (Is it silly to say that one of my favorite parts was the demonstration tomato garden? I was feeling slightly smug that none of their full sized tomatoes were ripe yet either). The Blue Prince just kept sighing with pleasure about how calm and peaceful everything was. (I think we have been working him too hard)Anyway, on to the pictures:

Bella and myself on the bridge of the Monet Garden. Bella is peeved that I wouldn't let her play in the lake.

Bella inside the Caterpillar slide in the Children's Garden.

The Blue Prince in the Wisteria tunnel leading to the Secret Garden.

I told him to pose like a Greek God statue and this is what he came up with. I won't lie, I kinda like it.

We were standing on a pier in the middle of the fish pond covertly throwing Cheerios to the Koi fish to make them come to the surface when Bella decided to join in the game and threw in her bottle. The fish proceeded to happily drink the milk out of the nipple. Through ten minutes of precise Cheerio throwing skills we were able to get the fish to move the bottle towards the shore where a valiant Blue Prince was able to pluck it out of the water.

Here is Bella riding on Papi's shoulders and of course pulling his hair. She has recently developed a bit of a troubling violent streak. If anyone knows the best way to deal with screaming, hitting, face slapping, and head butting tantrums (I think she nearly broke my nose this morning, when it got in the way of a flailing head butt) I am all ears.

A family picture self-portrait by the Blue prince. He is generally very good at these.

The Artist

2008-08-16T10:52:00.002-06:00

On Wednesday the Blue Prince was sick with the most recent plague making its way through our home and decided to stay home from work. As Wed is my big work day, he decided that we would save the babysitter fee and he would watch Bella all afternoon. Blue Prince has an odd habit of filling Bella's crib with toys when putting her down for a nap. Wed. he apparently decided to put her down with a coloring book and a pencil. When he went to get her out of bed a couple hours latter he discovered this lovely example of budding talent. He said that she pointed it out to him with the biggest smile imaginable on her face, so proud of what she had done.

Allergy testing

2008-08-15T13:06:00.008-06:00

As many of you know Bella ended up at PCMC at the end of June for an overnight stay due to an allergic reaction to an unknown source. Today we had our visit with an Allergist for skin testing and we are a lot closer to an answer. The three main allergens are:

Eggs:

Which basically we knew. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a little girls face shouldn't look like this after eating a scrambled egg Christmas breakfast.

Luckily so far, the facial swelling has been the extent of the effect from eggs, and it goes away after about an hour. We just have be careful of less obvious sources such as the "ah-ha" moment in the Buenos Aires food court when we remembered too late that Chinese fried rice is made with scrambled eggs. Dr. Allergist also said that raw egg is often more allergically potent than the cooked stuff, so we will be avoiding cookie dough for the time being.

Shellfish:

Also not a huge surprise as it is the familial allergy group. The weird thing about it is that each member of my family with a seafood allergy is allergic to different things. My grandmother is allergic to Trout. My father gets deathly ill with Scallops and I have a mild allergy to Shrimp that I have mostly grown out of. One of my earliest memories is of being rushed into the bathroom by my dad to wash the hives I had developed after eating a shrimp dinner. I think I was about 5. Now I just get itchy hands if I have to peel shrimp. Dr. Allergist seemed somewhat surprised when I was asking in depth questions about what is defined as a shellfish. His comment of "most kids foods are fairly safe" in the tone of "what are you feeding your 18 month old" made me realize that most families eating habits are somewhat different from my own. We don't really go for Kid foods vs. Adult foods around here. My cousin Conner's favorite food as a toddler was Crab Legs. I'm sure that Bella has probably had Shrimp before without problem, but it will be interesting trying to figure out which Shellfish is her specific No No.

Number 3 and the real Kicker:

Cats

Bella loves cats, Kitty was one of her first words. Thinking back, it makes sense and is probably the one that ended us up in the Hospital. She would always get a little congested when we would visit Grandma's and she would play with the Ancient One (i.e. Crystal), when she was still around. Two of the upstairs neighbors have cats but luckily they mostly run away from her before she can get too cuddly. For the time being I am just going to watch this one and try to prevent her from rolling around naked with felines. At least we have a good excuse now to turn down free kitten offers. We had a narrow escape from this the other weekend when we visited with Aunt Leanne. She tested borderline positive for dogs as well so no furry friends at all for us. Not news that will break either my or the Blue Prince's hearts. The down side is that this allergy leaves her at high risk of developing asthma, so another fun thing to look out for.

All in all I think it was a worthwhile visit and I appreciated my friend Kellie's referral to the Doctor in question. Anyone else have any fun allergy related comments to share?

100 Facts about Liz

2008-07-30T09:01:00.004-06:00

I recently found this site that generates 100 hard core facts about you based on quotes about Chuck Norris. Here are the highlights:

3. Superman owns a pair of Liz pajamas.

8. Whenever Liz plays Chutes and Ladders, she treats the chutes as ladders, because she's not some sissy who can't climb up a plastic slide.

29. The United States Federal Reserve Bank decided that Liz's basement was a much safer place for their gold than Fort Knox.

43. Liz can predict the shuffle on her iPod.

58. Liz can set ants on fire with a magnifying glass. At night.

74. Liz's calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Liz.

79. Liz is the only one who can "try this at home."

88. Liz was born with the right to party. Unlike the rest of us, who have to fight for it.

96. Liz can tie her shoes with her feet.

Feel free to give it a try if you are feeling a little down on yourself. :)

Previously promised videos

2008-07-21T13:26:00.005-06:00

Last Post today I promise. Auntie Caitlin wanted some videos of Bella talking. Hey, I aim to please. The second one shows her climbing skills and the third her rocking out to her singing bike.

Gardening update

2008-07-21T13:09:00.004-06:00

I bet you are all wondering how my garden is doing. It is doing fantastic thanks for asking. The only problem I am having is that my huge tomato plants keep getting flowers but they fall off and no fruit is being produced. Any master gardeners out there that have any ideas?

I picked my first Zapallo after several disagreements with the Blue Prince about when they are ripe and when they should be picked. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet I discovered that my lovely Uruguayan squash (zapallito de tronco) is actually both a summer and winter squash so you can pick it either early and use it like a zucchini or latter and let it harden and use it like a pumpkin or other hard squash. (So we were both right) The plant is huge and I have to cut it back frequently so it doesn't block our back gate. So enjoy the pics and thank you for humoring my new little obsession.

Mommy please let me out of my highchair and quit making me pose with squash.

Recent happenings

2008-07-21T12:07:00.005-06:00

It has been a while since I updated my blog and I have been severely reprimanded by several Aunties... So here are your Bella pics. You can stop the harassment anytime :).

This is a recent photo from the front of our house. I like the cute smile on her face, and it is only slightly blurry so you can get the feeling of constant motion that accompanies the child.

This pic is from a recent overnight camping excursion that we went on with a group of my friends from college. There were 10 adults and 11 kids under the age of 5. They put us in a campsite a little too close to the river for comfort sake. Luckily, we only had to fish one of the little ones out of the water and no one fell in the fire this year, so all in all the trip was a rounding success.

We brought our two hammocks and they were a hit with the kids. Here is a picture where we managed to get 10 of them in at the same time. I kind of felt sorry for the ones who got stuck in the middle. (you can kind of see the pained look on Eleanore's face)

Bella and myself in a quieter moment when we had the hammock to ourselves. I love my hammocks. This is one I bought in Brazil while on my mission. (We got to cross the border once in a while for our P-days in order to buy cheap stuff in Brazil and eat at the Brazilian buffets. It was the highlight of serving near the border) My other hammock is made of multicolored plastic twine and I got it in Nicaragua. My host father there knew how much I loved theirs and helped me bargain for one from a door to door hammock salesman. (I guess he wasn't actually a door to door salesman actually just someone who walked down the street calling out and selling his wares. He only came to your door if you called out to him saying you wanted to buy something. It's a sales technique that is used too infrequently here in the US. The ice cream trucks have kind of cornered the market.)

This is a rather freaky pic of Bella taken during the 4th of July fireworks. She must have moved just as the camera went off. Unfortunately none of the pictures we took that night look much better. The reason I am posting this is that it reminds me of a scene in the second Ghostbusters movie where the evil overlord spirit is trying to take over the body of the baby. A bit too much Vigo the Carpathian for my tastes.

Memory tag

2008-07-12T11:56:00.001-06:00

I saw this meme on Susan's blog and thought I would play along:

Participate if you like. Ignore it if you prefer.

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn’t matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It’s actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I’ll assume you’re playing the game and I’ll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don’t want to play on your blog, or if you don’t have a blog, I’ll leave my memory of you in my comments.

Liberty Park

2008-06-29T16:01:00.007-06:00

One of the benefits of city living is our proximity to a lot of fun things, principal among these in my book is Liberty Park and in the summer the Seven Canyons fountain. Since we have no yard of our own we end up at the park at least twice a week. So anyway, here is a flavor of one of our favorite summer activities.

The fountain is a representation of the rivers and canyons that surround Salt Lake City and the water runs down the creeks and into a pool that represents The Great Salt Lake. Unlike other purely ornamental fountains, wading and playing in the water is actively encouraged.

These pictures were taken about a week ago when we went together as a family after the Blue Prince got home from work.

The Blue Prince had his hands full while wading through the bigger lake pool. Bella chose that moment to grab on his leg and knock him off balance. I of course took the picture instead of helping him out. (he didn't actually end up falling in)

Liberty park is also home to a large duck pond which is feeding Bella's current obsession with ducks. Here is a couple videos of her chasing after a flock. She got quite put out when they ran into the water and we wouldn't let her follow them in.

When Papi picks the PJs :)

2008-06-24T15:53:00.002-06:00

Papi was sweet enough to get Bella ready and into bed all by himself last night. This morning when I went to get her up I had to smile at the get-up.

My Garden

2008-06-20T09:43:00.005-06:00

As many of you know I have decided to try a garden this year. We live in a condo with very little green space but as there is very little formal landscaping either I was able to request one of the sunny dirt plots for my garden. (one of the benefits of a 8 unit HOA). So here are some pictures of the beginning of my garden. I took them last week and already there is a huge change with the peas, tomatoes and squash getting huge and being in bloom.

Here you can see my tomato and pea plants next to the wall. Onions in the middle,

Radishes in the front and Cabbage and Zapallito in the back.

We brought back seeds for the zapallito from Uruguay as it is a type

of squash that you don't see grown here. (apparently it is legal to transport seeds

just not fresh fruit or veggies internationally). I also have some tiny Bell Pepper and Cucumber plants that I started as seeds but haven't really flourished post transplant. We will see if they ever get big enough to actually bear veggies.

Here is the other side of the garden. More peas and tomatoes. My herb garden: Basil, Cilantro, Tarragon, Dill, Oregano and some Green Onions.

In the back you can see my Gardenia (Jasmina) plant that my dear husband bought for mothers day. It had/has several buds but has yet to actually bloom, I'm not sure what is wrong with it.

The garden has been a lot of fun and I've been able to harvest radishes, onions and all my herbs fresh for when I cook, which has been fantastic.

Bella Pictures

2008-06-12T22:56:00.007-06:00

Looking over my blog I realized that it has been far to long since I posted some updated Bella Pictures. Got to keep the core demographic of grandparents and aunties happy.

I've got a cute hat

But mommy I want to play with the camera
It has so many fun buttons to push.

Why yes I do let my daughter run with sharp objects.

The flowers obviously need fixing.

Bella and the tool supplier.

I'm a frog

Mom keeps saying don't pick and eat the flowers
But I conscientiously disagree. At least pansies are non-toxic.

And finally a video of Bella being a froggie with Papi.

Tempting offers

2008-06-12T17:53:00.001-06:00

So I got this e-mail from my dear Ishi the other day and thought it was funny enough to share.:

"Believe it or not - I read your blog - So I have mapped out your future - Move to Las Vegas and get your PhD. Bev and I help you with Bella. You could work part time with Kathleen at the PG's office or for Jared in his private fiduciary practice. And boy, do I know plumbers!!!!!!! xoxoxoxoxox"

Very,Very tempting. Excellent childcare, and good jobs for both me and the Prince. Bev has worked with Ishi since my youngest sister was born, and watched over us in the summers. She is practically one of our large mixed up family now. This is the only picture I could find in my online collection where she appears, which is a shame since she is not showing her fantastic smile :).

(Bev, Joanie, Ishi, Myself and the Blue Prince, Sho and Ariana)

As tempting as the offer is, unfortunately we will have to decline for the time being, at least for the next two years until the Blue Prince finishes his schooling to get his plumbing licence. We have actually been thinking what we want to do at that point and moving to Las Vegas is one of the options being considered (among others) but it is still very up in the air. (I tried to convince the Blue Prince we should live a year in Uruguay at some point but he's not convinced, I guess my villa in Piriapolis will have to wait).

The two Vans

2008-06-05T10:47:00.003-06:00

Michele wrote a comment asking who the these two good looking gentlemen were in my group of pictures. This is my Grandpa Van and my Cousin Van. Grandpa Van is my father's father who lives in Leeds near St. George. He has the best orchard I have ever been in. We stopped by his place on the way back from the Wedding and he filled us up with fresh cherries. I thought we had brought enough back for weeks but they are already gone.

Cousin Van lives with his wife in Arizona. He is going to Med School (following in the footsteps of his father) and will be starting his third year soon. Poor Sap.

My Grandpa Van once had the best personalized licence plate I have ever seen. It said "Van's Van" of course.

James's Wedding

2008-06-03T21:52:00.006-06:00

So last weekend we took the trek down to Las Vegas for my older brother's wedding. It was an eclectic bunch. My brother's new wife is Russian and that was the predominant theme in the food and beverages (Vodka anyone). Our family is conservative LDS and my brother and his friends are a Bohemian conglomeration of people he has met while living in Washington, Las Vegas and Chicago. His Best Man was dressed as a pirate. All went well everyone got along swimmingly. Here are some lovely pictures of the event. Enjoy!!

James, The Pirate Best man Jinks, and even odder my Dad without a Beard!! I was doing double takes all weekend.

The Beautiful Bride Nelly and her dad Nikolay. He is an incredible artist.

It was very cold and snowy for part of the day. Hence the blankets being passed about for the ceremony. My dad says no more May weddings at Mt. Charleston, but it was Memorial day weekend for heaven sakes. This is a picture of my mom's friend Danielle and a friend of my mom's from High School, Ann. (She wins the award for the most random person to show up considering she traveled from Utah just for the wedding. She hasn't even seen James for over 10 years. Maybe she just wanted to have an excuse to go to Vegas. The more the merrier).

Blue Prince, Myself, Bella, Emily, James (the dashing groom), Caitlin, Grandma Simper and my mom.

Me and my sibs, just missing Sho who decided to ditch us for a study abroad opportunity in Prague. Looser (just kidding sissy, we love you). I love that James is doing a Jig.

Our Beautiful little family. Bella was a hit and did well though we had to take a little brake in the middle as she was getting a bit overwhelmed by all the love. She was the only little person in attendance. Oh the pain of being the first grandchild.

An unexpected encounter

2008-06-03T20:29:00.005-06:00

Guess who I met at a random Costco in Las Vegas last weekend selling his wares?

That's right Greg Olsen himself, in all his glory selling and signing his artwork next to cases of frozen burritos and huge bags of apples. It was such a random encounter. He was very nice and chatted with me and my sister Emily for a few minutes and even gave us a copy of his art catalog. I almost asked him to sign the catalog but I thought that would be a bit much. Not to mention cheap as he was obviously there as a ploy to try and sell stuff. I guess that is one way to try and take your art to a more mainstream audience.

In memorium of the oldest cat I have ever known

2008-05-21T00:44:00.005-06:00

So my mom finally broke down and took the family cat, Crystal, to the vet to be put to sleep last Thursday. Crystal was 21 years old, suffering from severe arthritis and assuredly many other undiagnosed underlying conditions.
Crystal came into our lives on Christmas 1986 when my mother finally gave into the frequent begging on the part of my sister Emilyand asked my Grandpa Jim to find us a kitten. (Grandpa Jim was a vet and had the connections to know of litters with extra kittens) Since Emily was the one who wanted the cat she got to be the one to name her. Emily was all of 4 years old at the time and I have the suspicion that it had to do with my mom owning several Krystal Gail records at the time. I know that looking at record covers with a woman who had hair down to her feet deeply impressed me.
So that is generally how the little bundle of fur came into our lives. She was skittish, and liked to hide, and for years her collar had a bell on it so we could track her down. She was an attention hog and used to bite my hand when I was reading in order to get me to pet her. She ruled over our home, defending us frequently from invasion from other cats in the neighborhood. As she got older and more rickety she would spend most of her time between the warm sunny spots of the living room and the warm spots in my mom's bed. Not content to peacefully share the bed, she would plop herself down and stake out the exact middle forcing you to scrunch to one side or physically move her over. Considering her infirm state she put up fairly well with Bella's overeager toddler affections, only occasionally crying and nipping at her when Bella's fur petting became fur pulling. Her presence has become so much a part of my mother's home that last weekend I kept being startled by movements out of the corner of my eye. I kept having to reexplain to my brain that the shifts and rustling from the houseplants was due to the air conditioner and not a cat winding herself through the leaves. It's a part of our family history gone and she will be missed, but I have to admit that the practical side of me is giving a little cheer that maybe now we will be able to get some of the cat hair out of my mom's sofa.

Bella Videos

2008-05-13T08:37:00.003-06:00

Here are a couple videos of Bella that we took last week when Aunt Emily was over doing her laundry. Bella decided to help by pulling all the clothes out of Auntie's basket and then proceeded to play dress-up with Auntie's shirt. She carried it around with her all over the house. I also love the first video as it gives a close-up shot of my new favorite funny face.

Ponderings of what to do next with my life

2008-05-12T17:05:00.003-06:00

Ariadna
Originally uploaded by Daniel Naranjo

I have recently been giving a lot of thought to what I would like to do career wise with my life. The whole having my hours cut at work has been somewhat of a catalyst making me look at my current life and family situation and plan out a bit where I want to go. So if you will indulge me I'll share my current list of choices on the table with my thoughts for each plan. Here are the options I have come up with so far:

Continue with the status quo: For those of you playing along at home, the status quo is me working one day a week at the clinic, and the other days staying home and being a full time mom/Relief Society president.

Pro's: Plenty of good mommy time with Bella. Financially we can swing this option with no major lifestyle sacrifices or acquiring extra debt. No need to add complications to the current childcare situation. A stable situation that would not be unduly complicated if we decided to add another child to the mix in another year or so.
Con's: I don't do very well being at home all day with little structure. When my main goal for the day is showering and getting the two of us dressed, that is sometimes all we manage to get done. I often find myself frustrated from limited adult interaction and not using my education and clinical skills to their full potential. I really like my job and the population I work with and would like to improve my skills but this is happening in a rather piecemeal way right now.

2. Go back to school and get my PhD. in Social Work: I have my Masters degree and advanced LCSW licence so this is the next step up. The funniest thing is that I was exploring this option on the U of U's social work PhD page and my picture is on the page. It must have been taken my last year in grad school. Talk about a sign.

Pro's: I could see myself doing some teaching on a college level and there is a lot of focus in the U's program on Geriatric social work and they have a research institute set up with that focus so if I decided to go this route I should have support in my area of interest. There is also a grant opportunity from a foundation offering $25,000 a year for PhD students doing their dissertations in Geriatric Social work. It is competitive but a possibility. Plus the U has some decent childcare options for students which may address the what to do with Bella question. I have a supportive boss and should be able to work my schedule around to be able to keep my job while I do school if I would like.
Con's: This is a big, long term commitment. It means less time with the little one, and life would be more complicated by the addition of any other little ones to our family. The Blue Prince still has two more years in his plumbing program and it may be hard to have both of us doing school at the same time. We may need to take out student loans if grant options don't pan out. The application deadline for this program are in Feb. so if I do decide to go this route I wouldn't even actually apply till next year.

3. Getting a Gerontology certificate or Masters Degree: Since I already have a master's degree in a related field, the certificate would be more realistic. This is actually the middle ground between the two above options that I am the most strongly considering for right now.

Pro's: It seems to be a fairly flexible program, giving you up to 3 years to complete 15 credit hours of classwork and practicum. Some of the practicum options look very intriguing including some private Geriatric Care Management placements which is an area I've strongly considered working in (basically a private practice where you give advice and help seniors and their families make plans for their current and future needs). Doing a practicum in this area would give me a feel for the business end and much needed mentoring. I could do the program as a matriculated or non-matriculated student (which might be cheaper) but if I do decided to go on they would only count hours I did as a matriculated student. They start the program every semester. When I called they said that summer semester starts this week and that they would be happy to have me jump right in, but I think a bit more planning is needed so I would probably shoot for the August start instead. Again I could probably still work things around my current work schedule and keep my job.
Con's: I would need to look into childcare options and figure out how to pay for it but at least as a matriculated student I would be able to take advantage of on-campus resources.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. I think this was more for me than anyone else in order to get my mind sorted out, but I would love comments as to what other think of my plotting.

Picture updates

2008-04-24T13:06:00.008-06:00

On a lighter note and for the real reason most people follow this blog.... Bella Pictures and Updates:

The Blue Prince has been installing sprinklers at our condo complex. Bella has been helping in her usual way of digging in the dirt, testing it's edibility and pulling tools and parts out of Papi's tool bag and bucket.

Here is a close-up of the two worker bees and yes that is dirt around her mouth. (I love this picture of my husband, he is such a sweetheart)

Last night Bella discovered that she could climb into her toy basket and here is her showing off the skill this morning. Now she pulls half of the toys out, climbs in, pulls a book off the shelf and proceeds to read it. (I know Dad, Mr. "I used to sleep with books under my pillow", you are so proud)

Oh, and this post is dedicated to my loving sister Emily who likes to mock me for having a blog and joining the "trendy mommy blogging set". Because as she puts it "you get married, you have a baby and automatically you must start a blog"

Babysitter issues (aka: when being a working mom sucks)

2008-04-24T11:32:00.004-06:00

I think I am giving myself an ulcer, stress is leaving me somewhat catatonic this week and my eyelid keeps going into twitching fits. What could be causing this you ask, well let me give you a rundown of the past few weeks.
At the end of March Bella's fantastic babysitter had a baby by c-section and has been out of commission since then. The baby has had jaundice and anemia and this week ended up in the hospital for blood transfusions. (I think they have figured out that the problem is with the Rh factor incompatibility with her mom). I have been working two days a week which I have found puts you in a somewhat difficult category to find childcare. It is too few hours to be able to support paying a nanny and too many and too regular to be able to comfortably impose on friends or family connections. I have had the most success with stay-at-home moms who take in one or two kids in addition to their own as an income supplement. These people tend to be unlicensed by the state as licenced providers who depend on childcare as their primary source of income can only have 2 children under the age of two and understandably they prefer to fill those slots with children who will be with them full time.
So what has been my childcare situation these past few weeks, let me give you a rundown:

Week 1: The first week the plague hit our home and the Blue Prince and I managed to get sick on alternating days. His sick days just happened to line up with my work days so he stayed home with Bella.
Week 2: A very sweet lady in the ward who has always fawned over Bella had been out of work and offered babysitting whenever necessary. We took her up on it for a week and it worked out well, unfortunately she called me up the Saturday afterwards stating that she had been offered a full time job and wouldn't be able to continue babysitting. (Another discomforting problem that week was that a little Burmese girl in Salt Lake went missing and was found dead, killed by her neighbor. Guess where the little girl lived... in the same complex about four doors down from this babysitter, and yes Bella was staying with her the day the girl went missing)
Week 3: My counselor in Relief society had been out of work for a while and she happily agreed to take care of Bella for me. Unfortunately yet again I got a Saturday phone call but this time it was news that her parents in Mexico were ill and she needed to go home and take care of them, permanently. So now not only am I without a babysitter, I am down a counselor.
Week 4: Back against the wall I resort to asking a lady in the ward who has an in-home childcare to take Bella. She is a very sweet lady and takes good care of her but her husband generally makes me uncomfortable and she always has a ton of kids and adults coming in and out of the apartment. It is also the situation where I'm sure they stick her in front of the television for far more than I like. The good news is that she was embarrassingly cheap and I felt morally obliged to pay her more than her asking price.
Week 5 (this week): Getting desperate and not really wanting to go back to the week 4 lady I prevail upon a neighbor friend for Monday. On Wednesday I had set up with another lovely lady who lives nearby, has a daughter a little older than Bella and hopefully will be available on a semi-permanent basis but she ended calling me Wed. morning saying that her daughter had an emergency dental visit that day and that she wouldn't be back in time to take Bella. So back to Week 4 lady for Wed.

So that has been my month. Add to that the fact that my hospital is going through downsizing and I found out yesterday that my hours are going to be significantly cut and you can begin to see the cause of the aforementioned eye twitching. Apparently, when my position was switched to my current department no budgeted FTE hours were included in the arrangement so with the downsizing I became very vulnerable. It is only due to my fantastic manager and a doctor who values me and my contribution to the clinic and their willingness to make cuts in other areas of the department that kept me with any kind of job at all. With my hour cuts I am probably going to cut back to only working one day a week, (embrace the motto: how much work can we squeeze into 6 hours) and actually this will probably reduce the babysitter stress. Financial stress may become more of an issue but luckily we don't have any debt other than our mortgage and cutting back a bit we should be fine. My salary has mostly gone towards our savings and random expenses anyway.

Throughout all this Bella has been fantastic. I have no idea how I ended up with such a flexible sweet kid, who in general, steals the heart of every adult she comes in contact with. If she was the kind of kid that went into hysterics every time you left her with an unfamiliar person I think that would have thrown me over the edge.

People always ask me: "How are you doing" and my pat, automatic answer will always be "fine", or "doing well" . I tend to hide when I am stressed out and will never admit to it in passing conversations or to acquaintances. Even with friends or family I will put on a happy face and listen more than I share. Probably one of my defining personality traits. You may wonder why I decided to open up and share in this forum, beside the fact that actually it has been quite cathartic to get it off my chest. The fact is, I started this blog primarily as a way for people who care about our little family to know what has been going on with us. This is the type of stuff I would share with the people that I know frequently read this blog if I had a chance to sit down and talk to you all as much and as often as I would like. (And really this is not an invitation for worried phone calls because truth is we are doing okay)

Casa Pueblo

2008-04-08T21:17:00.004-06:00

I realize that I haven't posted many pictures of our Uruguay trip and in looking through them I came across our photos of a little side trip we took to Casa Pueblo, the workshop/home/museum of Carlos Paez Villaro.

Carlos Villaro is a world renowned Uruguayan artist primarily known for his public mural work in many countries. He is probably in his 80's now and has an incredibly long career as a painter, sculptor, architect and a Ceramic artist. His work is influenced by the art of Picasso and in his world travels he worked for a time with Picasso. Another factoid: Carlos's son was one of the Uruguayan rugby players that survived the plane crash in the Andes that the movie Alive was based on.

The home at Casa Pueblo is an amazing work of art and architecture perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The views are incredible. We found out later that a portion of the complex is actually hotel now as well. Next time we go to Uruguay we will have to find out the cost, it may be worth the splurge to stay in such a beautiful setting.

While at the museum I purchased a book that contains some of the colorful animal prints that Carlos has done through the years. Someday when I get organized I hope to frame some and put them up in Bella's room as a happy, colorful addition. My Dad and Kathy having more resources than us decided to purchase a numbered print of one of the artist's paintings of the house at Casa Pueblo. They were in the gift shop debating over two, one signed but with a slight rip and the other unsigned. When the worker at the gift-shop sensed that it was important to them to have a signed print, she asked for them to write down their names and wait for her to go into the workshop area for a moment. She returned a few minutes latter with the numbered print that they wanted signed with a personal inscription from the artist. Apparently Casa Pueblo is still Carlos's working studio and he just happened to be in residence that day and willingly took a moment to sign the print. The cynical possibility is that the gift-shop worker just took it in the back and signed it herself to make a sell but we prefer to believe the first option. Either way it makes for a good story.

Anyway here are some of the other pictures we took of our little group at Casa Pueblo. If you want to see the rest of our Uruguay pictures I have downloaded them to my Flickr account and you can see them by clicking the link on the left of this page. My step-mom Kathy should have some great pictures as well but we have yet to see those (hint, hint). Enjoy:

Visiting Bubie Ishi

2008-04-08T16:05:00.005-06:00

This weekend we decided to take the long car trek to Las Vegas to visit family, primarily my second mom Ishi and sisters Ariana and Shoshana (who flew in special for the weekend). Considering that it is a 6 hour drive there and back, Bella did great in her new front facing car seat.

Ishi generally spoiled us rotten and took us to the new Springs Preserve which was awesome. It is a group of museums, gardens and children's play areas that focus on the history and landscape of the area around Las Vegas. Considering that we were a group made up of 5 adults, a 16 year-old and a 1 year old and that we all had a fantastic time playing with the displays shows how well this place was thought out. Anyway, enjoy the pictures.

Aunt Shoshana showing off her excellent hand excavator skills.

The blue prince digging for fossils. Was overheard to be saying "Grandpa, Grandpa, where are you?"

Aunt Ariana teaching Bella how to play video games.

Bella riding Tita the Turtle

Me and the Blue Prince playing with the turtle shells.

"I know the Indian hut is cool but are you done taking pictures yet?"

Living the dream of being garbage men.

Casey and Blue Prince having scaled the mighty mastodon skeleton.

Water and Sand play, what could be better

Waiting for the flash flood.

This is the only picture I got of Ishi and I had to take it when she wasn't looking.

My day so far

2008-03-18T16:47:00.005-06:00

(No children were harmed

(as least I hope not permanently)

in the events of this blog)

It's been one of those days. It started today with a very hungry and upset Bella waking up at 7:15am (15 min after the Blue Prince left for work, otherwise he would have thrown her a bottle in order to let me sleep). Not a huge deal, but she is now becoming this loud, indignant screamer which is somewhat hard to deal with that early. I decided to grab a bottle and the baby and bring her back to bed with me, with the hope that both of us could get an extra hour or two of sleep. The plan was working until at around 9am she started struggling with the covers and literally launched herself headfirst off the bed, did a flip, and landed flat on her back on the wood floor. The wailing didn't stop till I let her play with my cell phone. (she likes to hold the phone backwards to her ear while saying "hola" quite cute)

We then played on the bed a while with Papi's socks, which she enjoyed until she discovered that with the socks on both hands she can't take them off without help.

After breakfast Bella was toddling around as she is wont to do when she finds a small ladder/footstool that I had neglected to put away, and next thing I know: Crash--- Wail--- baby trapped under the ladder.

Hoping for a safe activity I put her in the baby saucer and popped in Baby Galileo while I got on the internet for a while. She watches happily talking to the puppets on the screen when suddenly she starts screaming and crying. I couldn't figure out what had happened to cause that reaction. Other than biting her tongue or getting her leg caught in a leg hole, there is little she could do to hurt herself in that contraption. I put her on my lap and rewinded the tape to see what had gotten her spooked. Apparently she is terrified of a specific cow puppet in one scene. Either that or it makes her very, very angry.

So hopefully I am done traumatizing my daughter for the day, but who knows it's only 5pm.
Anyone else care to share parental failings?

Bella Walking

2008-03-17T18:02:00.000-06:00

Here is the previously promised video of Bella walking. She was chasing around after the neighbor's cat.

Slacker Blogger

2008-03-14T13:04:00.009-06:00

I know I have been a huge slacker about updating recently and almost every day I take picture or think of something that would make a good entry but the actual execution is somehow lacking. Today is not much of an exception. I don't have time to think of anything clever to say but I do have a bunch of Bella pictures to post, which is the main reason people read this blog anyway. I have been told by several people that they have been checking in. If you are a lurker feel free to make comments, I love them it makes me feel less like I am just sending posts off into the great unknown.

So without any further adieu Bella Updates:

She is now a fairly good walker, she took her first step in grandpa's hotel room in Uruguay and then in the airport before coming home. My dad worked with her a lot during the trip and I think was determined that she was going to leave there walking. The video doesn't want to upload but I'll try again tomorrow.

Her hair is almost long enough to do something with. This is my first attempt at pigtails per the request of Auntie Emmy. She screamed and cried the whole time I tried to put them in and they lasted all of an hour. So it may be a while before we attempt it again.

And other random pictures of dinnertime (she was eating black beans) and a recent evening in the park:

She is wearing the fantastic pink poncho that Grandpa bought her in Uruguay. So much easier to put on than a jacket.

Found in Uruguay

2008-02-26T23:10:00.009-07:00

This is likely to be a semi-short post but I did want to put up some pictures and let everyone know we are home safely from our South American Adventure. We had a great trip, with many ups and downs which I may or may not get into later... but anyway here are a couple of lovely finds:

My baby's Curls:

We have always taken it as a genetic destiny that this child would have curly hair but apparently Bella's curls only appear in the presence of humidity. Or maybe it's a genetic switch that's only flipped on when she touches Uruguayan soil. Anyway, they were lovely and I am missing them already.

The Origin of the Blue Prince's Nose:

This is my husband's paternal Grandmother posing first with Bella and afterwards with my husband, and Bella's cousin Francisco. (I think the cousins definatly look alike). She is a fantastic woman and she got so exited to see us, though she kept exclaiming about how fat I had gotten and kept asking me what I had eaten to get so fat. It was so funny and hard to get offended when she said it with such love and humor as she was giving me hugs.

Carolina:

Standing next to me in the orange shirt is a young woman named Carolina. When I was serving as a missionary I taught her the gospel. She was 14 years old at the time. It was such a lovely surprise to visit my husbands home ward and to find her there actively participating in the ward. She is now married and has a daughter of her own (way to make me feel old) and she and her husband are making plans to be sealed in the temple soon.

One of the most beautiful views in the world:

This was the view from our hotel room in Piriapolis and it wasn't even a particularly well or specially situated room. This is the view you get from most of the town, beautiful sea views bumping up to lovely green hills and mountains in the background. My husband teases me about how much I like this place. I admit it is an ongoing fantasy of mine to one day buy a house or build on a plot of land in this area. Maybe one day...

Happy Birthday my baby Girl

2008-02-05T23:11:00.000-07:00

It's oficial Princess Bella is no longer a baby. I can't believe how fast this year has flown by. Bella has gotten so big and independent and busy. She still sees no point in walking as of yet as truthfully she can crawl almost as fast as I walk. Aunt Ariana knitted this sweater for her for her birthday and it is absolutly beautiful. (and finally I got video evidence of her kissing noises). I love you baby girl.

We are off to Uruguay for two weeks starting tomorrow. We have been planning this trip for so long, it's hard to believe it is finally here. My dad and step-mom Kathy will be with us for the trip, including the majority of the plane ride. It should help the 20 hour plane ride to have several hands and laps available to take turns. I should have some fun picts and stories to post when we get back. But untill then enjoy these from Bella and Aunt Emmy's combined birthday dinner on Sunday.

Open the Gates and Seize the Day

2008-01-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

So browsing around the free library movies the other day I came across this little gem. I of course brought it home and forced my husband to watch it with me last night. Shockingly he wasn't as drawn in to it as I had been on my first viewing during my preteen years. (I guess I should be glad that he has no attraction to dancing and singing teenage boys) And yes I can still sing every word to all the songs. All the lyrics are still there swimming around with all those rusty Nintendo skills and plots from Judy Blume novels. Watching it again also brought back random flashbacks to skits acted out at my Jewish Day camp with me and my sisters wearing my dad's newsboy hats. (my dad has some great hats, a side effect of much travel and having a head that, to quote my dad, "burns under a refrigerator light"). So here's to Newsies!!!! Arise and seize the day, indeed.

Tree adventures

2008-01-14T03:17:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday my dad was in-town visiting and invited us all out to dinner (yummy Vietnamese at Mi La Cai, two thumbs up, thanks for the recommend Jules). When we arrived home there was a police car parked in front of our building, lights flashing and blocking our road. In general, never a good sign. When we got closer we found the source of the commotion. One of the large trees in front of our building had uprooted itself and fell across the driveway and into the street. The miraculous thing is that this driveway is usually full of cars but none of them happened to be there when the tree decided to give up the ghost. It completely missed the building and didn't leave a scratch on the nearby fence. All in all a very surreal experience but great in a way to see how all our neighbors pitched in to take care of it. My husband and dad were the first on the scene, using our saws all electric saw to cut branches to clear the road. A guy from the city came out to help clear the portion that was blocking the road. He had two gas chainsaws but couldn't keep either of them working more than a cut or two. Other neighbors soon showed up and by the next day it was all cut up and neatly stacked out of the way. (Anyone know someone looking for some free firewood?). The pictures don't really do the size of the tree or the mess of branches justice. We had news people from Channels 2 and 13 out taking video and I actually got interviewed by Fox 13. On the whole it was defiantly one of those count your many blessings evenings.

All the Whos in Whoville

2008-01-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks back we bathed Bella and then threw her into bed for a nap before church. When we woke her up to leave this is the fine hairstyle she was sporting. We call it her Grinch hairdo.

I am not sure exactly how Bella managed genetically to get the hair type she has. Coming from two curly, relatively thick haired individuals she has managed to avoid much at all in the way of curls. Unless of course you count hairdos such as those pictured where her hair will standout from her head at strange angles and resist all attempt to plaster back down.

New Service Project

2008-01-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

So on Sunday evening I was reading through the Ensign and came across this article about the church looking for 10,000 bilingual volunteers to help with the extraction of Spanish records. So I figured, why not, I'm bilingual and have an Internet connection and it's probably more productive than playing Spider Solitaire on my computer in the evenings while watching videos with my husband.

So that's what I've started doing, and it has actually been kind of fun. I decided to do batches of a project from Managua, Nicaragua where I extract names and dates from wedding records, all hand written by some clerk in 1934. I actually spent a summer in Nicaragua, just outside of Managua in a ghetto called Ciudad Sandino so this project jumped out at me. My husband joined me last night in puzzling out some of the handwritten names, fantastic gems like Pasquala, Borges, and Efrain. Though I think my favorite was Elia, I actually thought it was pretty though my husband was less impressed. Though he was somewhat surprised at the number of grooms that listed their occupation as carpenters (and how many 16-17 year-olds were getting married).

If anyone is interested I highly recommend it as an easy service project that you can do working at your own pace. For those that are not Spanish speakers there are plenty of English projects to choose from as well as a couple other languages. The batches are easy to download and they only take 15-20 min apiece once you get use to the handwriting and where to find the information you need to extract.

All this thinking about Nicaragua is making me remember my 8 weeks I spent there. I need to dig out my pictures....

Christmas Pictures

2007-12-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Spanish Branch, Different, Hard and Awesome

2007-12-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

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

2007-12-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Being contrary

2007-12-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

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.

My one concern for my daughter

2007-12-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

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

2007-12-03T01:30:00.000-07:00

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.

California Dreaming

2007-11-16T21:21:00.000-07:00

So last weekend we decided it was high time to visit the aunties in San Diego and since our credit card was nice enough to cash in our points for a plane ticket, off we went. We arrived early Friday morning with just enough time to say hello and introduce the baby to Bubie Joanie at the airport as she was leaving that day to visit family in Colorado.
A wonderful time was had by all. We ate dinner at Little Italy, walked along the port and saw cool ships, hung out at the beach on Coronado island and visited Bilbao Park. Blue Prince had never seen the Pacific ocean and neither had Bella and both enjoyed it immensely. Bella was a little angry at first that she couldn't eat the sand (she burst into tears at her first mouthful) but soon got into the grove and loved crawling around. Now if only I could teach her not to eat leaves.

Off and On

2007-11-15T16:44:00.000-07:00

So it has been a couple weeks since my last post but unfortunately that seems to be how my life has gone lately. Putting out fires and sporadic attendance for things in my life. I have been taking an institute class for mothers with young children this fall on Tuesdays and Thursdays, (my days off work) and I love the class and the teacher Sister Eagan but due to my life it has been hard for me to go. I actually made it again today after about 6 weeks of not going and as I walked in (late as usual) she stopped her class and gave me a hug welcoming me back. It makes you wish that every activity that you make the effort to go to while dragging along a small child could be so rewarding. Anyway at least she understood the time conflicts inherent in my new Relief Society President calling. The calling in general is going well, though most of the time I try not to think about it too hard or the sense of responsibility over all I should be doing overwhelms me and makes me slightly catatonic. Right now I have a family to visit to fill out a food order for the bishops warehouse, another sister I need to check on to see if she needs clothing to go to church, and oh yeah tonight they should be delivering the turkey I need to cook for Saturdays ward Thanksgiving dinner. It should be an interesting dinner, they are asking the sisters to cook the turkeys however they would be cooked in their own countries. The catch is that most Spanish speaking countries don't routinely cook turkey. Like I said should be interesting.

Anyway I should go check on Bella, she is in bed but has a nasty cold with a hacking cough and stuffiness. We shall see if either of us are up for the next nasal aspirator vs child battle. Man I can't wait till she can blow her nose like a human being. When does that happen by-the-way, it's not exactly one of those developmental milestones they put in parenting books. (okay I admit I have never actually looked to see if it is there, but I'm guessing it's not and I try to avoid the parenting books as much as possible, see above comments about too much responsibility causing catatonia)

Halloween

2007-11-01T23:40:00.000-06:00

So here is Princess Bella in her Halloween costume,

The pink leopard costume was a big hit and knowing her personality a perfect fit.

No Prissy or Passive sheep or pumpkin costume for her.

Here are myself and my Dear Husband holding Miss Princess

Both the rabbit ears and the devil horns lit up, they were very cool.

Anyway I just wanted to post some quick pictures, more to come latter.

Weird Dream

2007-11-01T23:07:00.000-06:00

So last night I had a very strange dream: I was dreaming about finding the blog of a girl living in Maldonado Uruguay. The thing is that she was an American and LDS and she was there living as an Expat off money she received from Social Security Disability for reactive airway disease. The dream must have gone on for quite some time because I remember her writing about several different getting adjusted type adventures but the funny part is how your brain gathers all the different parts of what happened and what you think about during the day and tries to make sense of it in a narrative form. It's like my brain said: "well you have been thinking about writing a blog, and you have been reading several expat blogs from the Uruguay coast, how bout we mix in a patient you have living off Social Security Disability payments and oh yeah, you spoke with a couple of your sisters today, so lets turn on the mental blender and see what floats up".

First Post

2007-11-01T15:27:00.000-06:00

So I have been threatening for several weeks to actually start this blog and following my initial miss-start where I got all frustrated trying to get creative personalizing the blog with a cool header and such (way beyond my limited computer publishing skills), I decided that cool looking or not, I wanted to give it a try, so here we are.

Some may ask "What's with the funky title"? In reality it makes slightly more sense in Spanish but only slightly. For those who know me, you will be aware that my husband is from Uruguay (a small South American country near Brazil and Argentina) (no not in Africa and no not the land locked one in the jungle, that's Paraguay). Anyway when my husband and I were beginning our long distance dating thing he would often tease me asking if I had found my Principe Azul, (Blue Prince) which in English would be more like White knight or Prince Charming. As things progressed there was a time when I let him know that he was the only Blue Prince even in the running and he has been the only one for me ever since. So there you have the Blue Prince in our story.

As for the Orange Sock.... During my first visit back to Uruguay to see if there really would be any real life connection between myself and aforementioned Blue Prince, I had the opportunity to go to church in a ward where I had been a missionary for 7 months. While greeting everyone in the traditional Uruguayan style (one by one, a kiss to the cheek and heaven forbid if you miss someone) I ran into a older gentleman friend of mine asking if I had returned to find my "Media Naranja". I, having never heard the phrase before, could not comprehend what an Orange Sock had to do with anything. I found out latter that "Media Naranja" is a term meaning your soul mate or other half. Technically "Media Naranja" is best translated as Half an Orange but in my defense to all my Mexican Spanish speaking friends, in Uruguay socks are called medias. (Contrary to what one of my MTC Spanish teachers believed and made a huge deal over when it came up on our vocabulary list, but that is a story for another time).

I decided not to take the name Half an Orange because that was the name of one of the first blogs I started reading several years ago, unfortunately now defunct. It was the bilingual blog of a woman who was married to an American and serving as a diplomat for Peru in China with her husband and two small children, cool premise huh, I miss it.

So I guess you can say for this blog's sake I will be the Orange Sock and my husband the Blue Prince. We also have a little one, known here as Princess Bella, who is the real reason for most people to be visiting this blog. As you will see in forthcoming pictures she is incredibly beautiful and in order to protect her from kidnappers and paparazzi we shall attempt to protect her privacy. Anyway welcome to my blog:)