Lexi at 18 months

Lexi went to Nursery for the first time today.  According to Joseph, she only cried for the first 5 or so minutes and then did well.

Teeth Count: 8
Weight: ?? (We packed the scale already.)
Height: 32 inches  (Nicholas is 40 inches tall.)

Cute Things She Does:

• She tries really hard to jump.  She bends her knees and throws up her arms, but she can't get off the ground.  It is so cute.
• If she is having troubles getting to sleep at night, she will still rest her head on your shoulder if you bounce her.  She is definitely a toddler, but at that moment she still seems like a baby.  I love those snuggle sessions.
• She loves to color, especially if you give her a whole box of crayons to pick from.  She also passionately loves markers, but has been banned from using them because she takes a bite out of the tip when your not watching.  
• She is so sweet at story time at the library.  She loves to participate and do the hand actions when they sing the song, If You Are Happy and You Know It.
• Her favorite foods are fruits, vegetables, and candy.
• She loves powder sugar on strawberries.  She squeals when we give it to her.  We call powder sugar "kid crack." Both the kids are addicted to it.
• She loves to go super high on the swing.
• She is ADDICTED to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  She loves her Mickey.  She fusses every time she sees an iPad because she wants to watch Mickey on it.  She likes most cartoons.
• Bath time is a favorite activity.  She mainly likes to fill up big cups of water and pour them on her belly.
• She dislikes clothes, but will generally wear them.  She doesn't like shoes and will only wear them if I insist.
• She LOVES OUTSIDE.  She is completely content wandering around outside and will find sticks and rocks to entertain herself.
• She LOVES milk.  Nothing cheers her up quicker than a cup of milk.
• She loves blankets, especially her purple blanket.
• She carries around her baby dolls.  You know your baby is no longer a baby when she has one of her own.  She always tries to give her doll sips of milk.
• She is a wonderful sharer.  She is willing to give Nicholas a piece of candy even before she eats one herself. 
• She is definitely a second child.  She will watch and wait until a toy is free and then swoop in and get it. 

Bad Habits:

• She throws food and enjoys putting it on the top of her head.  She also spits out whatever she has in her mouth if she sees something she thinks she wants to eat more.

Talking:

• She is really behind on talking.  My theory is that she doesn't crave human interaction as much as Nicholas did. (Of course, few kids crave as much constant attention as Nicholas.)  She is perfectly content to entertain herself most of the time.  She also doesn't have too much incentive to talk because she gets everything she wants because she is very clear with her pointing, signs, and grunts.  Mainly she just will say the first sound of the word.  She is good at understanding, so I hope hearing isn't the problem.  If we tell her to point to objects in a picture, she will do it.  She is great at following commands, but she is just taking her time with the talking.  I'll start worrying about this more after we move:)
• Words She Says: Mama, That, Milk, More, Quack, Bug, Spin, Bug, Ba (for blanket)
  
  

South Padre in the Sping

Our big trip for spring break this year was to visit South Padre Island and some of the places in Joseph's mission.  We rented a condo right on the beach with some of our good friends here in Texas, the Riries, and we all had a splendid time.  We also visited the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi, which Nicholas actually loved.  The pictures aren't in any particular order, but do show most of the highlights.  

This was the best picture I could get of Lexi and her hands behind the head approach to watching shows in the car.

Nicholas absolutely loved the cockpits you can climb into.  He wouldn't look at the camera since he was so busy exploring his surroundings.

 We asked Nicholas which his favorite plane was, and he chose this one.  As a side story, the stairs on board are really steep.  We always tried to have one of us go in front of him, but sometimes he would start first or we would forget.  One time I was trailing him going down and he slipped.  I had all of the emotions of a dad watching his son undergo what seemed to be certain serious harm as he started to slide step to step.  Impressively, he was able to keep his head above his feet as he went down about 5 steep steps and ended up on the deck below on his feet.  After a second to collect himself, he decided it was a really fun slide and got excited to try it again.  Needless to say, he didn't get the chance to repeat that adventure.

 The beach was gorgeous.  It was overcast, but kept the temperature just about right.

While we were there, there hundreds of Portuguese Man-of-Wars that washed up on the beach.  They did lots of combing to get rid of them, but they kept coming up.  We didn't spend much time in the water because of them, but we were all happy to stay and play on the sand.

This is where Joseph lived while in Port Isabel.  It looks about the same as it did then.

The original plaster cast used for the bronze Arlington Iwo Jima monument is in Harlingen.  It was really fun to see it as I'd heard about it as a missionary but never got the chance to go by and see it.

The porch in the back leads into the apartment I had in Kingsville.  It is also where my bike was stolen from. It would be nice to have it now, but alas, I got my just deserts for not locking it up.

The kids loved putting on the hats and sunglasses at a gift shop.

Happy on the beach.

Nicholas was too busy exploring to smile for the camera.

We had a fabulous time and Maren decided we should try to spend some time on the beach every year in the future.  We would love it if we could pull that off.

Break Off Mormon Cemetery

Ever since I heard about the Lyman White group of Mormons who went to Texas after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and that there was still a cemetery there, I have wanted to go see it. The day before the match I needed something to get my mind off of the match so we loaded up the car and it drove down to Central Texas to find it. I had already scouted out where it was on Google map and was able to drive right to it. While we were there a foreman for the ranch it was on came up and informed us it was on private property. He said that the 2 story house across the street is where the owners live and that we should stop and ask there next time. It is actually quite well maintained and we were told that most of the grave inside the stone wall were the former Mormons but that there were also quite a few other graves outside of the wall many of which were not marked. I have included several of the pictures that I took including the few graves that still had legible writing on them. If you are ever interested in going to see it we could give you directions and what encourage you to ask before going unlike what we did.

Matched

Joseph matched at the University of Utah in their Internal Medicine program.  We are super excited and now super busy getting packed up and selling a house.  If you know of a wonderful place to live, please let us know.  I can't believe how fast things are moving now, because they have been moving so slow for the past few months.  We can't wait to be by family again.  Though we are excited, Joseph does want to make it clear that he will never cheer for Utah's sports teams.

Photoshop

Thanks to my new computer, Joseph has been able to teach me a little photoshop so I can do some digital scrapbooking.  Here are a few pages I have been working on.  

Little Miss Independent--Lexi at 15 months

Teeth: 4 (just barely got the fourth)
Weight: 24 lbs
Height: Around 31 inches

Words:
Mama
Ba (Uses for bye-bye, bottle, and blanket)

*She isn't a talker, but she knows a few signs and can let you know exactly what she needs.  There is a song on scriptures scouts about King Noah that we have altered and sing about Lexi.  It goes, “I want, want, want what I want, want, want, and this is how I get it.  I grunt, grunt, grunt for what I want want want and I always get it.”  It is funny if you know scriptures scouts.

Food:
She is getting pretty good at using a spoon and fork.  She still will not allow us to feed her.  She loves lunch meat, oranges, french fries, ketchup, and ice cream.

Other Cute Things About Her:

• She loves to run away when I try to get her dressed.  She thinks it is hilarious .
• She loves to dance.
• She clasps her hands together when we say, “prayers.”
• She loves TV and movies.  She especially loves Mickey Mouse and Sesame Street.  She is particularly fond of Elmo.  She will find the remote, hand it to me, and then go and stand in front of the TV.  
• She loves shoes and socks and taking them off.  When we go to indoor playgrounds, she will always rearrange all the other kids shoes.
• She loves playing hide and go seek.  Mainly, she loves finding Nicholas.
• She LOVES her blankets.
• She is a good napper and good at going to bed. Though if she doesn't think it is her bedtime, then there is no getting her down. She does not respond to snuggling, bouncing, lullabies, or begging.
• She loves books, though she does tear them.
• She is so much better than she was at not sticking random things in her mouth.
• She loves the outdoors MUCH more than her brother.  She loves gathering sticks and playing in the sandbox.  She will help me find her shoes and socks so she can go outside.
• She is fascinated by puppies.
• She can entertain herself, which is such a blessing.
• She is really ticklish on her neck.
• She grows all her hair on the back of her head so she is always being called a boy. She also wears some of Nicholas' old shoes so that contributes to the problem. She also refuses to wear a bow.
• She responds to both Princess and Lexi.
• When we ask for loves, she will snuggle up on your shoulder and lay her head there for a few moments.
• She is rarely in a bad mood. When she is upset, she drops to the floor and shakes her head. It her little mini tantrum.
• She will wave bye-bye. When she shakes her head yes, she often loses her balance because she does it so vigorously.
• If she sees or hears anyone clapping, she immediately joins in.
• She loves her bottle. She will often get upset if she sees a bag that at one time held a bottle. When she sees that (or anything she really wants) she will grunt and tense her jaws and start to shake.

Nicholas the Disciplinarian

Nicholas thinks that if we expect certain results and obedience when we say certain phrases then he should expect the same.  We hear phrases like this a lot. 

Mom, if you lay with me for 15 minutes.  Then I will be proud of you.  If you do not lay with me, then I will not be proud of you.

Here is the deal.  I want to go in your room.  The deal is I go into your room.  Okay, deal Mom.

You need to listen to me. Why are you not listening to me?

You got to keep trying to do what I say.

You have to listen to me, because I'm in charge.  I'm the child and your the parent and I'm in charge.

You got to stay right by me.  You can't leave me.

You have to do MY work.

 It is kind of scary to hear what comes out of his mouth.  It gives insight into what is going on in his little mind.  Sadly, all these phrases get about as much results when they come out of his mouth as they do when they come out of ours.

Appliances

We discovered after buying a house that appliances require maintenance.  So far, the major culprits for us have been the AC, the fridge, the furnace, and the oven. This is more of a what we have learned with home buying type post, so if you're not interested, feel free to skip this one.

The AC:
We still feel bad about this one.  Since we bought the house and then realized we weren't going to get to Texas for several months after, we had some friends stay here for a few months.  They were great sports and always told us things were going fine when we called to find out how they were doing.  It turns out the AC had lost most of its Freon and was totally useless.  This is not a nice circumstance in Dallas during the summer.  We got that fixed and it ran fine the rest of the summer.  Then next year we turn it on, and it isn't working again.  Turns out the guy who filled it didn't get the cap properly sealed, so we got to do it again.  Later that summer it just quit working.  After much head scratching and tinkering, I realized that a large capacitor inside the outside unit was bloated and dead.  Magically, I replaced it and it worked again!  The next summer, the hottest in record for Dallas, it stopped again.  This time the wires leading to the capacitor had completely burnt through so a few new connectors and another capacitor and we finally have a working AC again.



The fridge:
We were given an old fridge Maren's parents and were grateful to have it.  We decided the golden rod color wasn't ideal for the house, so we painted it black and it ran fine for a while.  The seal around the doors started to not work quite so well with time, but it still kept cold inside.  One day Maren and I were watching a movie, and heard something in the kitchen.  It turns out the fridge had decided it was done and sent out a smoke signal to notify us.  We quickly got on Craigslist and started e-mailing any fridge listing under $100, and soon found one we could pick up the next day, was running, was only $50, was running, and had and ice maker (only inside)!  We felt very blessed to find it and were grateful for our friend in the ward who helped me pick it up the next morning.


The furnace:
Just before we left for vacation to see family, the furnace quit working.  I won't go through everything I tried to fix it, but I ended up ordering a piece that it didn't need, and it turned out that the plug was just upside down. That was a lot of work for something should have been easy, but we are glad we figured it out before we called a service guy since then it would have been expensive as well as cold and embarrassing.

The oven:
We woke up late one night to a beeping in the kitchen.  It would stop if you pressed cancel, but then start up again.  We ended up flipping the circuit breaker and going to bed.  When we flipped it back, it stayed quiet for a few days, then started beeping again.  The error code it was giving indicated the ERC (the electronic range control, the part with all the buttons and circuit board) was dead.  Since it is a smaller built-in oven, replacing it was not a budget friendly option, and it also turns out that the ERC panel had been long since discontinued.  The only options then were to pay lots and completely replace it, or try sending in the ERC to a repair shop.  We opted for the latter, even though it was in the ~$150 range and there was no guarantee that was actually the problem.  The fact that there aren't that many things that can go bad on an oven and I had checked several of them and we really didn't want to figure out how to replace a built-in oven led us to go ahead.  The shop e-mailed us and said they have fixed it.  Hopefully it will work now when it comes back!