Chase's Photography

I posted on Facebook a couple of months ago that I was looking at the memory card on my camera and noticed a bunch of pictures of people's feet, the couch, and a certain toddler's nose. Well, now it seems that the lens on our 6-year-old camera won't operate correctly, so it must be time for me to get a new one! (I must say I'm really annoyed that I bought my 6 megapixel Sony Cybershot in 2006 for $225 after Ross's Best Buy discount and now I can apparently get a 14 megapixel camera for like $90.) Any-way... I decided that since my camera is now ruined that I must at least showcase some of the pictures that led to its demise: Chase's photography.

Chase's own iPod Touch?

Ross and I recently got iPhones, something I thought I would never need or want, considering I barely used all of the limited features of my previous Palm phone. Now that I have one, however, I don't know what I did without it. To put that another way, Chase doesn't know what he did without it. The iPhone is so intuitive that he can easily unlock it, find his games, the shows he likes on the Netflix app, and his playlist on iTunes. Keep in mind that I did absolutely nothing to teach him how to use these features. A 33-month-old figured it out on his own.

Ross and I were driving back from California last week after attending my brother's wedding, and to keep Chase entertained, we let him play with either of our phones for almost the entire trip. (We aren't cool enough yet to have a DVD player in the car.)

After being in the car for 7 hours or so, and after Chase and I had a mini-fight over who's phone it really was that he was playing with, Ross suggested, "You know, maybe we should get Chase an iPod Touch. He could have all of the same apps that are on our phones, but he wouldn't call anyone or get on the internet and we wouldn't have to share."

My eyes opened wide and I thought about it. Ross added, "The only thing is, I think he might easily lose it."

I thought about how one of our blu-ray movies had mysteriously gone missing recently. "Yeah," I answered. "But, we could just allow him to use it only when he's being supervised. We could put it away in one of the locked cabinets most of the time."

All of the sudden Ross and I looked at each other and busted up laughing. From the back seat, Chase noticed, looked up from my iPhone, and copied us by laughing too. "What ARE WE THINKING?!?!" I exclaimed. "There's no way we're spending $200 on an iPod for a two-and-a-half year old!"

Man, I think taking long enough road trips makes you delirious.

Funny and cute

This is Chase's new favorite thing to do. This was taken a couple of days before his birthday, and now he has a new little truck that he climbs onto and off of over and again. He also now likes to push it and practice walking. Hopefully he'll take his first unassisted steps in the next few days or weeks!

Chase's First Birthday!

Party time for Chase!

We took him to the park for the first time on Monday, his first birthday. He loved the swings, enjoyed the slide, but was a little wary of grass (we don't have any at the house.) Ross and I played catch on the grass and he loved watching us. We even gave him the baseball and had him throw it a couple of times.

Later, when the family gathered for a little birthday party, we gave him a chocolate cupcake and expected him to make a mess all over.. you know, like babies are supposed to on their birthdays.(See picture of Gina, Chase's cousin, below, for an example.) Instead, he would only eat it if we broke pieces off for him, and when he accidentally got his hand stuck in the frosting, flipped out and showed us his hand, motioning for us to clean it off NOW! He apparently doesn't like to have sticky hands. He got some fun toys, and especially loves his new little Disney truck that he can climb onto and off again endlessly. Overall it was a pretty fun day. If only babies understood what birthdays are....

Swinging at the park

Figuring out the grass

Notice Gina's versus Chase's reactions to the cupcakes:

Having fun with some birthday gifts

I promise, I am not a blog abandon-er. It's been a LONG while though, so I apologize to everyone who has been wondering what happened to us.

The answer is not much. We've just been working so much and stressing about life that we haven't been keeping in touch with people like we should.

Chase is growing so much. He started to crawl at about 8 months, and he has been pulling himself up to stand all the time lately. We recently had to baby-proof the living room to allow more play room and to ensure he does not have many cords to tug. We're just waiting until he lets go of the couch or coffee table and starts running away! He babbles all the time, and says words like (what we think are:) "block," "book," and "dog." He also LOVES to immitate his blow-up rubber duck tub that quacks when you squeak his beak. (Thanks Jen!) But his immitation comes out as, "da da da da da" instead of "quack, quack." It's pretty funny.

I recently quit my job as assistant manager at the Buckle so that I could go back to Chili's. I'm excited to be back. I also found out that I was accepted to the Master's of Public Policy program at the University of Utah for the fall, and I've decided that I'm going to attend. Ross is still going to school at Universal Helicopters, steadily making progress toward his final licenses.

We celebrated our birthdays last week (Ross' 29th and my 30th) by taking a full day off from everything, and although it doesn't seem like a lot, it was to us! It's been a long time since we had the entire day to ourselves. Thanks to everyone for all of the birthday messages. It's nice to know people are thinking of us. We'll try to post again soon!

Chase and mommy, 5/13/09

Riding on daddy's shoulders, 5/13/09

Rooting for the Chargers! 4/3/09

Lovin' the ducky tub! 3/27/09

Merry Christmas and happy new year!

Merry Christmas, everyone! We had a lot of fun on Christmas watching Chase open his presents. (Frankly, most of the presents under the tree were for Chase!) He got a walker, some fun toys, books, and cute clothes, but mostly he just loved all of the tissue paper.

Maggie also got a stocking full of doggie toys. Below she is playing with her squeaky hot dog toy, refusing to give it up.

Early in December we went to a Jazz game against the Miami Heat. We decided to take Chase with us, so of course we had to buy him a cute little Jazz tee. It was fun but I think we'll wait til he's a bit older to take him to another game.

We have so much snow here in Woodland Hills! After that first snow storm in early November, we didn't get anything for a long time. Then halfway through December it snowed every couple of days. Then, the day after Christmas, we awoke to an extra 18 inches! Needless to say, I didn't even leave the house from Christmas eve until Sunday. (I really need to take a picture of this snow! All my SD friends will think it's crazy!)

Speaking of SD, go Chargers! FINALLY! It was such a crazy end to the regular season but why did it have to get to that point in the first place? Anyway, enough about that...

Chase is SIX MONTHS OLD! Can you believe it? He had his doctor's appointment today and he's 15 lbs. 14 oz. and 26 inches long, still small for his age, but normal for him, we figure. We also spent the day looking for a child care center for him, because I am going back to work next week. I got a job as assistant manager at the Buckle at Provo Towne. It's crazy to think that we won't be spending all day with him anymore, but what can we do? We hope he will have fun and gain some social skills.

We wish everyone a happy new year! We're sorry the Christmas cards were late but we figure you can enjoy our holiday cheer throughout the week. Talk to you all soon!

Snow, Spit, and (No) Sleep

For all of these Alaska people I live with, this much snow this early is nothing big. But for me, it seems weird not to have holiday decorations up during the first snow (that sticks, anyway.) I heard it was going to rain early this week, but on Tuesday morning, the rain turned to snow. Then yesterday, we got two to three more inches. Pretty crazy! This is a view of the trees behind our house.

Maggie in her little doggie coat. She loves the snow but hates the cold.

Views from our house.

We didn't really celebrate Halloween with costumes, but we did carve our pumpkin. If you can't tell, it's an upside down bat.

The Spitter: Chase is growing so fast! Some of the things he's doing are hilarious, while others make life a little difficult. As you can see from the video, spitting for no reason is one of his new favorites. He also loves to play with his toes, "fake" cough, pet Maggie, and make weird surprise noises. He had his 4-month appointment last week, and he's almost 13 lbs! (Finally back up to the 10th percentile or so; the doctor's happy.) However, he also can roll from back to front very easily - IN HIS SWADDLER! So we hear him crying after a nap or in the middle of the night, and he's totally rolled over. But the problem is that he absolutely won't fall asleep without being tightly swaddled, in a special swaddle blanket with velcro. On top of all of this, I think he's going through a growth spurt. For a kid who's been sleeping through the night since 6 weeks old, this seems like a huge set-back for us. I have been so tired this week, as has Ross. Chase has been waking up to feed or because he's rolled over anywhere between one and SEVEN times per night. (Actually I think the night of seven times was when we tried to get him to sleep un-swaddled.) When will it end?!?!? All in all, it's great to see him laugh and entertain himself for at least a little while.