Baby steps

Well, here we are in October. After boycotting a September blog -- Andrea can blog about her trip taking Juliana to see her Grandma and we're gonna skip Josh's hospital adventure -- it is time for another update. Besides, what else do I gotta say about September besides I celebrated getting a year older? As we look forward, the days seem to crawl by too slow when we're only counting in baby steps. But when we look back at our achievements over time, our steps were big in every way.

Let's start with the "babiest"... (yes, that's one of her names). Juliana is growing and getting stronger day after day. She will be 10 months on Oct 11th. She quickly took to crawling around 6 months and by 8 months was already reaching for the table. By 9 months, she can scoot around and grab what she can reach. Jules is almost ready to walk, as we can see how she props herself on tables and couches to get around. She has a new hairstyle, too. Instead of a poof, her mommy has her wearing a cute little ponytail-on the side/bob/weave/curl whatchamacallit hairdo. She likes her new high chair because she likes to eat in style. Mysteriously, she still doesn't have any teeth breaking through. We will enjoy her toothless grins for now and we can laugh at her 'got milk' smiles.

Blakers is almost 40 inches tall, because he almost measured up enough for the kiddie batting cages at the stadium. He's already in to throwing balls - not very straight, yet - and making a fast break for the cookie jar when he comes home from day care. A nice lady from church has been watching the kids since school started, but she will go back to teaching soon. Luckily, we got word that our local La Petite is taking infants and toddlers now, so we will start them there in a week or so.

Blake is 2 1/2 and is almost done potty training! We started him on Pull-ups 6 weeks ago. Andrea took him to the store last Saturday to pick out Big Boy Pants, which he proudly wore the whole day. He went potty the whole day and he he's been dry every morning for 2 whole weeks! He's racking up stickers and sweets for doing such a good job. The next step is to get him to tell us when he needs to go. At La Petite, the teachers will have him go every 2 hours, so he'll pick up good habits there. We've heard there are kids who can potty train in a week (don't know who they are), but we still feel like Blake has learned fast enough.

Josh's school soccer team finished it's season with only 3 wins. Josh, wearing #7, was co-captain and played mostly defense and midfield this year. (add photos).

Josh is 13 1/2 and well on his way to earning Eagle at 14. That's because he is set to earn his Life rank at the next Court of Honor this month. He had a productive summer in Scout Camp and is enjoying 8th grade and a brand spankin' new school. Josh is scheduled to get his braces taken off in early November, so he can't wait (and neither can our wallets).

Andrea still is the smartest person at her pharmacy and is training the military pharmacists how to do their job responsibly. It's kind of like she's the babysitter. Those of you who go to the base pharmacy know what I mean. She took Juliana to visit her Grandma in Salmon, Idaho and saw her brothers and their families, the new Twin Falls Idaho Temple and BYU-Idaho along the way. I'll let her tell the story in another blog.

Then there's boring me... My social life is at home entirely. I remember the days when I had my brother living here and friends who would call me and hang out, but now I enjoy the slower pace of life. It's nice to know modern technology can keep us connected across the miles. You know what I enjoy? Seeing my kids learn new things and wonder how they're going to turn out in 2 or 5 years.

Andrea and I got some BlackBerry smart phones to try to feel smarter. Well, I am still testing it out, but the more I play with it, I guess I can get used to the "electonic leash". See, it grabs all your messages, from text to e-mails, so there's no hiding from, say, your boss or the hospital. But for us, these phones are for personal use, not business, and we got a way sweet deal to replace my broken phone. It's got an internal GPS so I'll never lose myself or my car, I can FaceMySpaceBook, I can read the scriptures in church like a nerd... I can do almost anything except bailout the national debt. Hey, I figured out how to spy on you as you read this very blog! Looking gooood!

I had another birthday recently and, hey look... I'm turning into my father. Now I know who I'm gonna be for Halloween! If you're bored like me, then go Yearbook Yourself. Just make sure you show me some of your pictures. Have a Happy Halloween. Until next time...