Christmas Pictures

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

Spanish Branch, Different, Hard and Awesome

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

Different:

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

Hard:

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

Awesome:

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

public service announcement

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

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

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

Being contrary

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

My one concern for my daughter

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

Thanksgiving Adventures

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

California Dreaming

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

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

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

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

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:)