Quick Family Update

Chad
As I write this blog, Chad is in Columbus, OH suffering through the dreaded Ohio Bar Exam. It's a three day exam and today is only Day 1. He has studied mighty hard and I think he's ready, but please pray hard for him anyway! We're excited for Thursday when he will have a whole 11 days of "vacation" before he starts his new job. Everyone says I'll never see him again once he's sold his soul to the law firm, but it really couldn't be worse than the 24/7 bar studying, right?

Chad did take a break from studying one evening to take me to the John Mayer concert for my birthday!

Darbie

I'm just the Jay entertainment queen 24/7 these days. We've become pretty good buddies and I even got an "Hi mom, I love you" the other day. (Chad hasn't even gotten one of those yet, and he's widely known as Jay's favorite. In fact, Chad heard Jay say it to me while he was in the bedroom studying and he came out and said "Did he just say what I thought he said?". Yup, I got the first I love you, but once this bar thing is over, Chad will get his fair share.)

I take care of our little patio garden as well, but seeing as I have Jay spray the plants 5 times a day, it pretty much falls into the Jay entertainment category. We're all loving our little patio garden and I probably worry about it way too much seeing as I've never grown anything and don't know what to expect. We have transplanted some of the plants into my parent's garden, but we're seeing if we can grow some stuff to full maturity here. Here are some pictures of our precious plants:











Jay
Jay is quite the little character these days. His behavior has improved greatly since we tried the 1-2-3 Magic discipline system. (I know, it sounds cheesy cheesy cheesy). There were a couple weeks when we first got here that Chad and I avoided taking this kid in public at all costs. He was out of control and my pregnant self couldn't handle him in the grocery store. All is well now, and he has become quite the pleasant and hilarious child.

Jay showing us his "noculars" made from play-doh tubs

I'm pretty sure I should receive some sort of parenting award for this next story:

Jay and I were browsing around Target just killing time while Chad was studying, and we headed into the toy aisles. Here is Jay's reaction/conversation with himself as we enter the aisle:

"Buy toys! No, not buy toys, just look at toys."

He said it matter of factly with no disappointment in his voice whatsoever. I started cracking up and secretly hoped someone heard my angel child tell me we were "just looking" at toys. I was in luck, and another lady in the aisle walked up to me

Lady: "Did he just say he wanted to just look at toys?"
Me: "Yeah, apparently I've got him pretty brainwashed!"
Lady: "I have a 10 year old I can't get to say that!"

I then secretly slipped a small train toy in the cart for later, I couldn't actually let Jay see I really was buying a toy. The train will be used as a reward/bribe/keep my sanity trick while I'm left alone with Jay with no car for 3 days.

Baby Sister
She's still inside my belly, due to arrive around August 21st. Nobody believes I'm due in 3 weeks as apparently I'm quite small. I'm bigger than I was with Jay, so I feel enormous. I had a couple ultrasounds to make sure the baby was growing properly due to the fact that I was measuring small, but they're convinced she's average sized. I have no idea where she hides, but I assured them that Jay weighed 7 lbs 15 oz and I was smaller last time, so my insides must just get pushed around into crazy corners of my body.

She still doesn't have a name. I don't think Chad had room in his brain to analyze anything else but Bar material up until now, so it's on the to-do list for when he returns. Any suggestions? I've checked the family tree and eliminated numerous possibilities.

I know you were all hoping for a belly shot, but no such luck as I always forget to take one when I'm actually wearing real clothing and do my hair.

Party Plates?

During our married life, we've lived in Ohio for 2 summers before this one. Each time we lived here, we got the same reactions to the license plate on our car. Apparently, in Ohio, certain drunk drivers are punished with yellow Ohio license plates so other drivers are aware of their deeds (a scarlet letter, I suppose). We've been told that these drunk driver license plates (often referred to as "party plates") look quite similar to the New Mexico license plate on our car. Having never seen a "party plate", I finally looked one up on the internet to see what it looks like. See for yourself:

I can definitely see where our plate could be seen as a "party plate" when viewed quickly in an area where there are not many New Mexico plates to be seen. I'm embarrassed that people probably see our car and don't bother to get close enough to realize it's a New Mexico license plate and just assume we're convicted drunk drivers. I can just see them roll their eyes in disgust when they see a 2 year old in the back seat. Thankfully we're working on getting our car registered in Ohio since we've officially moved here.

Aeros Game

Last week we went to an Akron Aeros baseball game with my family. Jay had a blast and now he's eager to go to a "green base ball game" where the players are wearing green uniforms.

Jay and Grandpa Monte

Borrowing another kid's cooler glove

He spent most of the game like this trying to catch a ball with his toy baseball mitt, sadly he didn't get one.

The next morning he was obsessed and came out of his room with his hat and glove ready to play.

4th of July

For the 4th of July, we went to the Rib Festival in Akron with my family and ate some fabulous food. That evening, we headed over to the parade in Fairlawn. We've we quite grateful that parades in Ohio aren't quite as popular as the ones in Utah where you have to campout to get a seat. We showed up 10 minutes before it started and had great seats right on the road. Jay caught on to the candy throwing and had a blast gathering tootsie rolls. He was terrified of the fire trucks (they were unnessesarily loud) and sat on Chad's lap covering his ears while they passed. If you ask him about the parade he'll tell you all about really loud fire trucks and his yellow bag of candy. We skipped the fireworks, but no worries, there will be fireworks at the beginning of August for Heritage Days and we'll catch them then. Jay has still never seen fireworks, so we're excited to see them in a couple weeks!

Jay made friends with a dog sitting near us. These people thought Jay was cute and they hoarded tons of Tootsie Rolls for him to put in his bag.

Jay the realist

No joke, Jay came home from nursery last week and had learned a new song. Here's how he says it goes:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the street
Merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is hard.

Ohio

We've been here in Ohio for over a month now, so it's about time for an update on our new lives. We like it here so far, but our lives have yet to normalize into what our lives will be here, so we'll keep you updated. Here are some things going on so far:



-We love our apartment! I love the space and not having to store things in every spare space we can find in the living room. We even have a some empty closet shelves we don't know what to do with, but I'm sure we'll figure out something. I'm trying to get the place decorated, but I'm just so darn indecisive it's taking forever. Pictures to come of my crazy cheap decorating ideas.


-We were going to be adventurous and start a hardcore garden on our patio, but my dad had a better idea. My parents live on an acre of land and my dad thought we could join forces and start a garden in the back yard. Chad and my dad rented a tiller and tilled up some land and we planted away! It's been fun to watch it grow and we can't wait to eat some yummy food! (The radishes are already ready to eat, but who in their right mind would eat a radish? yuck!) We're also growing some tomatoes on our patio so Jay has something to water everyday. We really know nothing about gardening, so it has been fun to learn something new. Here's a few pictures of our adventure:






-The bishopric here in our ward knew we were coming, so on our first Sunday here we already had callings waiting for us (so much for laying low for awhile). Chad got called as the 11 year old scout leader, but after two weeks they released him and called him as the Scoutmaster instead. He's already purchased a new Boy Scout shirt and went to a day of scout camp last week. I stayed up late the night before sewing the patches on his shirt, something I thought I wouldn't have to do for another 10 years or so when Jay was ready for scouts.


-I was called as the 2nd counselor in the Young Women, which means I'm in charge of the Beehives (12-13 year olds). It's been a challenge figuring out how to prove to these girls that I'm awesome. I thought I could just walk in there as a 24 year old girl and they would automatically assume I was hip...apparently not. I think it could be a fun calling once I get the hang of things and get to know the girls a little better.


-Basically, our daily lives consist of Chad studying for the bar exam while I try to occupy Jay. Chad will take the bar exam at the end of July, so only a few more weeks of studying! Jay has been a little difficult to deal with since we made it to Ohio, so keeping him occupied all day without going insane has been a challenge. We're trying a new discipline system that seems to be working, so hopefully it just gets better and better.


-We're thinking about working on making friends, but so far we've gotten nowhere. We're hoping to turn our Olympic Opening Ceremonies party into a "get to know young families in the ward by forcing them to come to our house and eat free food" party. Hopefully we can successfully trick people into being our friends and hanging out with us on ocassion.


Alright, enough about Chad and I. I know 95% of you who read this really just want to hear about what cute (and not so cute) things Jay is doing. Here's the update on his development:


-We transitioned him to a toddler bed quite easily as he mastered leaping out of cribs and playpens in New Mexico. Now we just have to live with the consequences of him waking up before 6 most days and jumping into our bed to let us know he's awake. Sometimes we're a little slow at getting out of bed to play with him and he's even stooped to lying to us to get us out of bed. One morning he told us he was poopy just so we would get out of bed to change him. He wasn't poopy at all, but it got us out of bed. Smart kid.


-He quite the talker. He tells us about everything and anything and is always making up random stories. The other day he was telling us that he wanted to back to his white house (in Utah) because "Jay's new house tipping over. Jay fall down." It took us quite awhile to figure out what in the world he was talking about, but later he finally explained:
"Jay spin. Jay's new house tip over. Jay fall down."
I replied with an "Oh, you were dizzy and the house felt like it was tipping?"
Then he said "Yeah, Jay dizzy."


-Jay has gotten very good at correcting us lately. He has quite the vocabulary, but sometimes things we say don't fit into his names for things. For example here are some sample corrections:

"That's not jam, that's jelly!"
"That's not a shoe, that's a sandal!"
"That's not Mom's, that's Chad's!"

We go through this all day long. Usually it's a "that's not yours that's mine", but he's very quick to correct our terminology.


-Jay is under the impression that anyone that needs to be "taken care of" must not be able to walk. He talks about Grandma Baker taking care of Grandpa Baker because "he not can walk". He also cites Chad's mom taking care of his dad (who broke his hip) because "Papa not can walk. He died." (He didn't die, by the way, we have no idea where that came from) Anyway, when I told him one day that Grandpa Monte was going to come "take care of" him for the evening, Jay immediately said "Grandpa take care of Jay. Jay not can walk."


Alright, I can't think of any more random Jay things at the moment, but hopefully I can remember the good ones if I keep this blog current. Here's one last picture since we've been here in Ohio. My dad (Grandpa Monte) is on the left, and my dad's dad is on the right (Grandpa Carl).

New Mexico, Hannibal, Nauvoo

Here's a quick pictorial review of our adventures in Albuquerque, Hannibal, and Nauvoo. Now we can get on with our lives and tell you what we've been up to in Ohio for the past month.

Albuquerque Zoo

Mark Twain Riverboat in Hannibal Missouri

Jay dancing with random elderly people on the riverboat. They were the only people dancing so Jay approached them and wanted to join in.

Jay and Aunt Erin

Jay in Nauvoo